San Diego's smart streetlight program has solved crimes, but also has raised privacy concerns.
A few years back, San Diego gave the OK to a plan to install energy-saving, and money-saving, LED street lights.
Those street lights had the tech world a buzz. San Diego was deploying the world’s largest smart-city platform, installing high-tech, data-gathering sensors on the street lights. The plan was to track movements of cars and people, particularly in urban and busy areas. Deeper understanding of mobility could follow. Apps could be developed.
Turned out that all that data-gathering required installing cameras on 3,000 street lights. For the public, that revelation last year was a surprise. And not only did all those cameras exist — covering about 5 percent of the city’s public right-of-way — but police were accessing footage.
Among critics, fears of mass surveillance, over-targeting of communities of color, and potential civil-rights abuses followed. Mistrust surfaced, too.