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From a historic ban on police using face recognition, to landmark CCOPS legislation, to the first ban in the United States of police deploying deadly force via robot, for several years San Francisco has been leading the way on necessary reforms over how police use technology.
Unfortunately, 2024 was a far cry from those victories.
While EFF continues to fight for common sense police reforms in our own backyard, this year saw a change in city politics to something that was darker and more unaccountable than we’ve seen in awhile.
In the spring of this year, we opposed Proposition E, a ballot measure which allows the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to effectively experiment with any piece of surveillance technology for a full year without any approval or oversight. This gutted the 2019 Surveillance Technology Ordinance, which required city departments like the SFPD to obtain approval from the city’s elected governing body before acquiring or using specific surveillance technologies. We understood how dangerous Prop E was to democratic control and transparency, and even went as far as to fly a plane over San Francisco asking voters to reject the measure. Unfortunately, despite a strong opposition campaign, Prop E passed in the March 5, 2024 election.
Soon thereafter, we were reminded of the importance of passing democratic control and transparency laws at all levels of government, not just local. AB 481 is a California law requiring law enforcement agencies to
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