Quick Take
The City of Santa Cruz led the nation in 2020 by restricting facial recognition technology, yet new artificial intelligence tools are quietly expanding the reach of surveillance, writes civil libertarian Steve Pleich. Before these systems become commonplace, he believes local cities and the county board of supervisors should establish clear rules that continue to protect both public safety and civil liberties. He insists privacy should not disappear simply because technology evolves.
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The deployment of artificial intelligence facial recognition has sparked significant debate regarding civil liberties and ethics. Rightly so.
In 2020, the City of Santa Cruz became one of the first cities nationally to ban the use of facial recognition technology and predictive policing.
I agreed with Santa Cruz’s choice and still do.
Studies have shown that algorithmic error rates can be higher for people with darker skin, raising the risk of false positives and discriminatory misidentification. Scraping billions of photos from public social media profiles to build mass databases undermines privacy and makes us all potentially subject to constant tracking.
Like Santa Cruz, many cities and regions have implemented policies limiting how government agencies — and in some cases private entities — may deploy facial recognition technology. Unfortunately, Capitola, Watsonville and Scotts Valley are not among them.
To be clear, I have found no public evidence that suggests these cities currently use facial recognition technology. However, unlike Santa Cruz, none has adopted a local ordinance prohibiting its future use by city government.
What about other potential threats to potential privacy? Should civil libertarians who, like me, prioritize individual rights, personal freedoms and protection from government overreach, be alarmed?
For instance, on the issue of Flock Safety cameras, which read license plates, we have three cities and three different conclusions: Santa Cruz voted 6-1 to remove them, Capitola kept its system, and Watsonville voted 5-2 to renew and expand its network to 37 cameras. The split showcases an unresolved question: where should we draw the line between security and privacy?
On police body cameras, reasonable minds also differ.
Police body cameras were intended for officer accountability, not public surveillance.
Yet, the casual and all-too-common use of facial recognition technology on body cameras surely breaks that promise by transforming these devices into a potential vehicle for mass surveillance.
AI can analyze huge amounts of video footage, recognize faces, track movements, identify patterns and connect information from different sources much faster than humans can. This could allow police to get more information on crime and possible police abuse, yes. But it could also allow governments or organizations to keep track of people caught on body cameras with less human effort.
So the big question: Does AI make it possible to monitor citizens on a much larger scale than ever before, or does it mainly help make existing surveillance systems — like police body cameras — more responsible and accountable?”
Researchers at the University of Michigan, UC Davis and Stanford University recently identified constitutional concerns under both the Fourth and 14th Amendments involving unreasonable searches and seizures and discriminatory practices by police in New York based on race and ethnicity. Using machine learning and natural language processing, researchers examined New York Police Department encounters captured on body-worn cameras, looking closely at whether officers followed legal standards governing stops, detentions and consent searches.
They found evidence of underreported police stops, troubling racial disparities in officer interactions and widespread use of unclear language during consent searches.
The report highlights how AI could transform police oversight by helping reviewers identify potentially problematic encounters hidden within millions of hours of body-camera footage. The research demonstrates the growing potential for AI-powered analysis to help courts, police departments and municipal governments better evaluate compliance while building greater public trust in law enforcement.
Reassuring perhaps, but also troubling.
Imagine being covertly scanned every time you encounter a police officer in any public setting. AI-assisted facial recognition could allow police to capture your likeness and then match it with a database of photos.
AI applications embedded in police cameras could automatically identify you and record your location. Once you’re scanned, your information could easily be added to a digital dossier that paints a picture of your life – from your known associates to your religious affiliation to your political activity.
And, in our current climate of increased police and immigration officer presence, immigrants, communities of color and LGBTQ+ people risk becoming primary targets.
The biggest danger is that this technology will be used too casually, for general, suspicion-less surveillance systems that will later give rise to wholesale and unconsented identification and tracking.
As a civil libertarian, I see the assemblage of such huge amounts of information in the absence of any clear plan for its use or designation of its purpose as a great concern.
Law enforcement agencies are intelligence-gathering entities, which are always engaged in an “investigation.” The instinct of any police agency, any police officer for that matter, to gather information is irresistible and, indeed, part of training and standard operating procedures.
And even though we hope that most officers in their pursuit of public safety would exercise a measure of reasonable restraint, we would also like to believe that our private lives will not become a matter of regular public record.
Locally, the Santa Cruz County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has had conversations about body cameras and AI technology with both the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) and in its regular meetings with Santa Cruz County Sheriff Chris Clark. Some concerns are rooted in the sheer volume of body camera footage, which makes it difficult to generate a problem-identifying base as was the case in the university study cited above. The ACLU has also had discussions with Michael Gennaco, the independent police auditor for the City of Santa Cruz.
As part of its investigative authority, that office has limited access to body camera footage. But that limited access is certainly not sufficient to generate a full or accurate picture of law enforcement procedure. The SCPD is sensitive to community concerns about body cameras and this concern is reflected in their policy and explanations available on the department website transparency portal.
Our county’s board of supervisors has also been careful and aware of potential dangers of the nascent AI boom. In September 2023, the board adopted an artificial intelligence appropriate-use policy that ensures members of the public must be “informed when they are interacting with an AI tool and have an ‘opt out’ alternative.”
The ACLU has also been pushing for more, lobbying the board of supervisors to adopt a model surveillance ordinance. If adopted, the ACLU’s ordinance would legally bar law enforcement from acquiring or using new surveillance technology without a transparent public reporting process and explicit board approval. Additionally, it would mandate strict usage guidelines and annual auditing reports to ensure any deployed tech — such as automated license-plate readers or drones — does not infringe on civil liberties or data privacy.
To their credit, city and county public officials seem knowledgeable and open to considering these requests. But we must keep at them. The price of personal privacy is constant vigilance.
Santa Cruz drew one line. The challenge now is making sure we don’t stop asking where the next one belongs.
Steve Pleich is a Santa Cruz resident and ardent civil libertarian. He has served two terms on the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury, 2023-24 and 2025-26.
