Do Bart Garages Have Cameras

The BART Board of Directors canonical a policy Th to govern the installation and apply of cameras that tin capture images of vehicle license plates at the transit system's parking lots and garages.

The lath at its coming together in Oakland voted unanimously to approve the policy that, in the wake of BART's aborted previous attempt in 2016, seeks to balance security improvements with privacy protections.

"This has been a long time coming. In fact it's been too long," BART Director John McPartland said. "It's long overdue."

The approved policy states that the cameras volition operate 24 hours a day and will be used "for BART criminal investigations and to monitor activeness to protect confronting impairment to persons and property."

"The security of our patrons and riders is our meridian priority," Director Debora Allen said.

The board was presented with BART criminal offense statistics showing motorcar suspension-ins and vehicle thefts, along with catalytic converter thefts, amounted to an estimated $vii million in losses to BART riders in 2017 and 2018.

License plate readers have been shown to lead to the recovery of half of all vehicles stolen from areas that accept implemented the technology, BART's manager of security programs Mimi Bolaffi told the lath.

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In addition to helping with the recovery of stolen belongings, the technology will serve as a crime deterrent, Bolaffi said.

It will "put criminals on notice that if they come up into our (parking) lots, their vehicles will be identified," said Bolaffi, who too noted that BART has received "very positive" feedback from the public almost the potential use of the applied science.

Still, skeptics of this blazon of "mass surveillance" technology bespeak out that it can lead to intrusions into police force-abiding riders' privacy, every bit well as civil rights abuses.

"You should exist thinking not about whether or how this will work, but whether you lot want to do this at all," said J.P. Massar, a fellow member of Oakland Privacy, an advocacy grouping.

Some other member of Oakland Privacy, Mike Katz-Lacabe, praised the lath for engaging in an open and public procedure when drafting the new policy and for taking privacy concerns to heart, which it failed to do when initially installing license plate readers at the MacArthur BART station in 2016.

"I'm non a fan of the mass-surveillance part of this, but nosotros're trying to be realistic," Katz-Lacabe said.

Also, while the policy specifically states that information collected past the cameras won't exist shared with U.S. Clearing and Customs Enforcement "or whatsoever agency conducting clearing enforcement or removal operations," it'southward unclear how much power BART will accept to prevent other agencies from accessing the data.

That'due south partly why Katz-Lacabe said it was a "huge deal" that the new policy prevents the license plate information from beingness stored for longer than 30 days -- barring a subpoena, court order or ongoing investigation.

Thursday's BART lath vote doesn't mean that cameras will be cropping upwards all over the system immediately.

The four cameras BART initially installed at the MacArthur parking lot will exist placed at a yethoped-for-determined station every bit part of a airplane pilot program that will last for several months. The board volition and then accept to concur another vote to approve a system-wide implementation of the technology.

BART officials estimated that it will cost between $15,000 to $22,000 to install each fixed-location photographic camera. The policy also envisions the apply of cameras mounted on police force vehicles and carried by officers, but no cost estimate for those cameras was provided.

Source: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/bart-to-vote-on-license-plate-readers-at-station-parking-lots/157994/

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