WILMINGTON — The Wilmington City Council assented Tuesday night to the Wilmington Police Department’s request for new surveillance equipment that has a history of raising privacy concerns.
READ MORE: Local law enforcement surveillance policy in question amid expansion of federal intelligence program
The first item on the docket was a five-year agreement with Axon Enterprise to upgrade and add to WPD’s in-car cameras, along with the installation of the Fususe Enterprise System. The safety intelligence system uses cameras in public locations to capture video and communicate to police in real time.
The entire agreement totals $3,662,333 to be spread across the five-year contract. It passed with unanimous consent Tuesday, though council member David Joyner was absent.
The WPD has been using the Axon cameras for the last five years. They outfitted 128 vehicles, but this contract will allow them to be placed in almost all police cars and some specialty vehicles, totalling 220 vehicles.
WPD’s Capt. Rodney Dawson was present Tuesday to further explain the request. He said Axon cameras will allow the department to livestream and use automatic license-plate readers to find wanted people.
Earlier this year, Axon acquired the Fusus Enterprise System, which integrates video surveillance from cooperating area businesses, government facilities, residences, data analytics and communication tools.
The Fusus system has been gaining popularity across the country, being used in over 150 jurisdictions, but not without controversy.
Proponents of the technology claim Fusus streamlines the video acquisition process, obtaining data police would already be requesting, in an effort to solve more crimes quickly. Detractors raise privacy concerns that can come with unfettered access to cameras across a city.
According to the contract, Fusus can pull in public and community video feeds, enable video sources with artificial intelligence, integrate automated license plate reader cameras, drone, and aircraft feeds, all of which is accomplished by utilizing and unifying existing equipment.
“There would be systems in place to determine who within the police department has access, when they have access, and how that access looks,” Dawson said.
Council member Kevin Spears questioned how the technology would be regulated within the department.
“The chief and I for years have have had this discussion, and I have always been reluctant to say, ‘Let’s do that,’ because this type of innovation or technology in the wrong hands — we’re casting a wide net, and it can be used outside of its intent, and so the controls have to be in place,” Spears said.
Dawson said he couldn’t agree more and noted state law now dictates how automatic license plate readers can be used and misuse is a misdemeanor.
Retention of license plate data is limited by law to 90 days, but Dawson said WPD’s policy is 45 days. The cameras are prohibited for use in enforcing simple traffic violations. Though the Fusus system has the capability of giving alerts for expired tags to expired licenses, Dawson said the WPD doesn’t allow them for anything other than stolen vehicles, stolen license plates, wanted persons and missing persons.
“We want to ensure that our citizens aren’t being targeted, and like you [Spears] said, casting this wide net hoping to get something,” Dawson said. “This is more of an officer safety issue, and we feel the four [alerts] that we have selected are the bigger ones in the system that we’re going to look at.”
Additionally, Dawson said an alert is not enough for an officer to make an arrest; the officer would need to investigate further.
Spears said he was satisfied with Dawson’s answer, but acknowledged an officer could act based on an alert and “worry about the consequences afterwards.”
“That ideology or that work happens from the top to the bottom,” Spears said. “In some instances, it gets lost, and that is a concern of me as a council person, but also as a citizen.”
Participation in the Fusus system is voluntary and camera owners — businesses, residents with Ring cameras, for example — can restrict police access to the video feeds. People also can register their cameras with police without providing video access; that registration notifies police to nearby cameras they can request video from for certain incidents.
However, the system opens doors to potentially a wide swath of cameras across the city to police and opponents to this technology say it can lead to over policing.
Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The group published an article on the Fusus system in 2023, saying it “threatens constitutionally protected activities” and gives police the ability to “surreptitiously spy on and track people of no real or alleged criminal concern.”
The foundation says Fusus’ expanded access to private cameras allows the police to gather personal information that would otherwise require warrants. Because these cameras are privately owned, they are also not bound by records retention and deletion policies.
Additionally, this opt-in feature for private camera owners is only consented to by them, not the people who would be surveilled. Proponents of the technology argue the cameras record activity in public spaces where recording is allowed.
The foundation also takes issue with the integration features of Fusus, touted by the company whose goal is to bring as many means of surveillance as possible under “one pane of glass.” Fusus can integrate with Shotspotter, a gunshot detection software used by the WPD. According to Fusus, ShotSpotter integration can allow gunfire detection alerts to activate private and public cameras connected to Fusus.
Dawson said Fusus will also integrate with the WPD’s Sting Center, which gathers cellphone data; it, too, has raised privacy concerns.The Electronic Frontier Foundation advocates for requiring police to have reasonable suspicion of a crime before accessing historical footage from private cameras and strict limits on retaining files. It also states there must be an audit trail, like one used by North Carolina’s Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office. It requires officers to log their access and reasons for doing so. It’s also audited by the office’s higher-ups.
Reach journalist Brenna Flanagan at brenna@localdailymedia.com.
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