Santa Clara County Votes to Adopt Surveillance Technology Ordinance | Hacker News Reader

Santa Clara County Votes to Adopt Surveillance Technology Ordinance

restorethe4th.com

52 pointsdiafygi8 comments

Here are details:

http://sccgov.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=S...

Note that the jurisdiction is limited to unincorporated land in the county -- the vast majority of the population lives in incorporated cities and towns.

Ordinance text is available as a PDF here.

Darn.

Interesting, which got me thinking.. Where does it limit jurisdiction to unincorporated areas? After digging in the ordinance[1], it seems to apply to any "County department with a recognized County budget unit", which should include both cities and unincorporated areas [2], as the fiscal budget appropriates money to these populated areas.

If it's limited to unincorporated areas, then it would only enforceable in 8% of populated areas (primarily farmland), as 92% of the 1.8 million population lives in cities [3].

[1] http://sccgov.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID=1493... [2] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/sccphd/en-us/Partners/Data/Page... [3] https://www.sccgov.org/sites/scc/pages/about-the-county.aspx

Basically the jurisdiction is limited to equipment used by the county sheriff. To cover the police departments within the county, we need to pass a similar ordinance in each city. We are working on it

Excellent. Thanks for clarifying. Hope to see this adopted everywhere.

There are a few cities that subcontract to the county for their law enforcement. Cupertino, for one. [EDIT] But I don't see how the county has jurisdiction there for any ordinances.

This doesn't directly impact a huge population. But because of the relentless support of Supervisor Simitian, it was a good test case.

It will be much easier to move forward in larger cities now.

ACLU press release https://www.aclunc.org/news/santa-clara-county-passes-ground...

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