Mobile Biometric Technologies (San Bernardino County Sheriff)

Dave Maass filed this request with the San Bernardino County Sheriff of San Bernardino County, CA.

It is a clone of this request.

Est. Completion None
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Fix Required

Communications

From: MuckRock.com

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Aug. 16, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

From: MuckRock.com

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on Aug. 16, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

From: Michael Morisy

Dear Custodian of Records/Public Records Coordinator,

I am collaborating with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest group, and the media organization MuckRock, to survey how law enforcement agencies deploy mobile biometric technologies.

Mobile biometric technologies can be defined as any mobile device or mobile app used by law enforcement agencies to scan, capture, analyze, store, or automatically recognize any physical or biological characteristic of a subject. Commonly used mobile biometric technologies include fingerprint/thumbprint collection, facial recognition, scans of the iris or other elements of the human eye, Rapid DNA, and tattoo recognition. (Please see below for examples.)

Pursuant to California Public Records Act (California Government Code §§ 6250), I request the following records pertaining to mobile biometric technologies, including those listed above, as well as other biometric technologies I have not identified:

1) Purchasing and procurement documents, including but not limited to: purchase orders, RFPs, responses to RFPs, invoices and contracts

2) Policy, procedural, and training documents, including but not limited to: use policies, standard operating procedures, training materials, presentations, privacy assessments, data retention policies, and other guidelines

3) Programming documents, including but not limited to: funding opportunity announcements, grant applications and grantor status/progress reports, reports to legislative bodies, annual reports

4) Audit documents, including but not limited to: audits of the system, misuse reports, and reports to oversight bodies

In your response, I would appreciate that you individually address each of the above categories of documents individually.

In addition to the above classes of documents, I am also seeking the following information:

- The total number of individuals whose biometric data has been collected over the last three years,
- The total number of [biometric data points] contained in the agency’s database
- The retention period for biometric data
- The number of mobile biometrics devices purchased and in use
- The total number of authorized users of the mobile biometrics devices
- Which external agencies and entities have access to biometric data in the database and under what conditions,
- Whether biometric data is combined with biographic data such as name and address in the database, and
- The process by which data is entered into the database

These documents will be published online and inform the public dialog over police technology. Because of the great public interest in these issues, I ask that you waive any fees. If your agency is unable to do so, please contact me with an estimate of the costs.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Michael Morisy

Examples:

Mobile facial recognition
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/nov/08/cir-facial-recognition-software-san-diego/

Mobile fingerprint readers
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1824&issue_id=62009

Mobile iris scanners
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-crime-identification-iris-idUSTRE76J4A120110720

Rapid DNA
http://www.policemag.com/channel/technology/articles/2014/02/speeding-up-dna-analysis.aspx

Mobile Tattoo Recognition
http://www.lawofficer.com/articles/print/volume-10/issue-4/features/new-smartphone-app-interprets.html

From: Torres, Cesia

Please see attached letter.

Cesia Torres
County Counsel Paralegal to Sheriff's Department
909-387-0665

From: Torres, Cesia

To Whom it concerns:

This is a follow up to our letter dated December 14, 2015, regarding your Public Records Act Request addressed to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department (“Department”).

As stated, we wanted to provide you with an updated status and inform you that since the time of our last correspondence, this Department has been diligently working to determine the availability of any records that may be responsive to your request. Please be advised that the search for responsive records is ongoing and we have not completed the search. Once the Department has gathered together and ascertained what records, if any, may be responsive to your request, we will determine what portion of them may be privileged and notify you as to what records may be provided, or provided in redacted format. In the alternative, if the Department is able to identify specific, non-privileged record responsive to your requests, we will advise you of the nature of such records, advise you of the cost of duplication, which must be paid in advance, and provide copies to you following such payment.

We will contact you as soon as possible and provide you with an update on the status of your request.

Sincerely,
Cesia Torres
County Counsel Paralegal to
Sheriff’s Department

From: San Bernardino County Sheriff

Please be advised that we provided a response directly to the requester on January 10, 2017.

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