A council bill introduced Tuesday would regulate the county’s use of public safety surveillance technology.
County Council President Kate Stewart, who is lead sponsor with Councilmember Kristin Mink, said their work on the legislation started when discussing the police department’s Drone as First Responder program.
The goal of the bill is to create a transparent process for the county’s acquisition and use of new public safety technology, and to safeguard residents’ rights.
“We knew that new technology is always advancing and coming online, and can be used in ways and deployed to help advance our public safety goals, and because it is advancing rapidly, we need to make sure that we have good procedures and guidelines in place to protect peoples’ privacy and their civil rights,” Stewart said.
Mink said they worked with county police, the ACLU, and the Silver Spring Justice Coalition.
Under the proposed bill, when the county wants to use new technology with surveillance capabilities, regulations must be created that make it clear how the technology and its data will and will not be used. The public would be asked to weigh in, Mink said, and the regulations must be approved before the technology could be used.
Mink said the bill “is especially critical right now as we’re working locally here to protect residents and protect our local values from federal policies that seek to harm them.”
According to council documents, the bill would grandfather technology that was in use before 2020, and would have a transition process for technology that was acquired after 2020 but before the bill’s effective date.
A public hearing is scheduled for March 18.
