Persistent Surveillance Systems Invoices (San Jose Police Department)
| Submitted | Aug. 1, 2016 |
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Communications
From: Brandon Smith
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the California Public Records Act (California Government Code §§ 6250), I hereby request the following records:
All records responsive to the below requests dated from January 1, 2014 through July 28, 2016.
- The full documentation of all contracts or non-disclosure agreements (enacted OR IN EFFECT between the above dates) with the companies "Persistent Surveillance Systems" or "Vigilant Solutions"
- Copies of all invoices to or from these companies, and documents sufficient to show any and all disbursement of public funds to either company
- The full documentation of all contracts (enacted OR IN EFFECT between the above dates) with any company other than the two cited above, in which said company provides your department with equipment or services (including software) for 1. license plate scanning or reading or automatic photographing; 2. aerial surveillance, excluding monitoring roadways for speed infractions.
- Copies of all invoices to or from any company that fits the description in the prior paragraph, and documents sufficient to show any disbursement of public funds to any company that fits this description
- All emails between police department email accounts and users on the domains "pss-1.com" or "vigilantsolutions.com". (One example would be brian.schockley@vigilantsolutions.com. Users on the domain would be in the form of XXXXXXXXX@vigilantsolutions.com)
- All paper-based communications between your department and Persistent Surveillance Systems, and between your department and Vigilant Solutions. In asking for all paper and electronic correspondence, this request necessarily includes marketing materials and descriptions of product capabilities for any device, software, or access/capability this department has purchased. A circuit court judge in Illinois recently ruled that non-disclosure agreements signed by public bodies do not trump freedom of information laws when it comes to surveillance equipment/capability purchased by police. Citation:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/chicago-police-must-finally-produce-stingray-records-judge-orders/
- Documents sufficient to show all rules or regulations governing the use of products (hardware or software) that do 1. license plate scanning or reading or automatic photographing; 2. aerial surveillance, excluding monitoring roadways for speed infractions.
- The text of all agreements (whether formal, email, memo, or otherwise) between your department and any other public body or department that allows your department to use or access the capabilities of 1. license plate scanning or reading or automatic photographing; 2. aerial surveillance, excluding monitoring roadways for speed infractions.
- Documents sufficient to show the month and year your department first entered a program of scanning license plates or accessing a database of scanned plates, if it indeed has such a program (and end date of said program if it has ended).
- Documents sufficient to show the total number of license plates scanned in your department's jurisdiction (whether the jurisdiction in this case is precisely or roughly represented) since the department began its plate-scanning program or first purchased access to such a program
- Documents sufficient to show the month and year your department first entered a program of persistent aerial surveillance, if it indeed has such a program (and end date of said program if it has ended).
- Documents sufficient to show the number of plane-hours of aerial surveillance (excluding monitoring roadways for speed infractions) purchased by your department within the dates at the top of this request. For example, one plane flying for four hours is four plane-hours. Two planes flying for four hours is eight plane-hours.
- Documents sufficient to show any attempt made by a representative of your department to inform the public about automatic license plate readers or persistent aerial surveillance. This could include but is not limited to records of town hall meetings, quotes from police spokespeople in local media, or text from the department's website.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 calendar days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Brandon Smith
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. 1, 2016. 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: Becker, Tamara
The City of San José has received your request for public records copied below. Your request specifically identifies license plate readers but mentions aerial surveillance. The City has already released numerous documents to MuckRock related unmanned aerial vehicles. Please verify you only require records specific to license plate readers?
The City makes some documents available on our website www.sanjoseca.gov<http://www.sanjoseca.gov/>. If you use the search function in the upper right you will find Council Memos, Committee Memos, Budget Proposals and other documents related to license plate readers. Attached are documents that were identified using the search term "license plate readers".
Here is some information that was released in a previous public records request (March 2016) that is responsive to information on vendors and cost managed by the department. The department will need to update this information and may need to refer you to the County (document 44552) which oversees SBISS:
The following is purchase information related to our Automated License Plate Readers:
* 2007 GTSI Corp for amount $118,999.60
* 2012 PIPS Technology Inc. for amount $103,785.55 - PIPS Technology a Federal Signal Corporation was acquired by 3M
Due to the Summer furlough in July and backlog of requests your request was just delivered to the Police and Finance Departments today for additional research specific to invoices, contracts, emails and paper documents.
Tamara Becker
Open Government Manager
City of San José |City Manager's Office
200 East Santa Clara Street | 17th Floor
San Jose, CA 95113-1905
(408) 535-8120 F(408) 920.7007
Tamara.Becker@sanjoseca.gov
From: Becker, Tamara
Mr. Smith,
Attached are the final records responsive to your public records (request copied below). Items have been redacted in the "ALPR Database Information_Redacted" document as they contain confidential log in information and a license number. The "ALPR" document contains the total number of license plates scanned.
This will close your request. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Tamara Becker
Open Government Manager
City of San Jose
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