(Religion News) When San Diego’s city council voted to install 14,000 LED streetlights in 2016, the move was touted as a major step toward reducing the city’s carbon footprint and transforming the city into a hub for innovation.
But since the vote, local civil rights activists and minority community leaders have raised questions about the potential for the smart streetlights — which are equipped with cameras, mics and sensors to collect data for city planning purposes and traffic control — to be used to invade San Diegans’ privacy.
Now, a new analysis of the installed and planned streetlights by the Council on American-Islamic Relations has found that many of the city’s mosques are under “direct surveillance” by the city.
“With the metadata that these lights track, they can look at everyone that enters, every car that enters and leaves those mosques,” said Dustin Craun, executive director of CAIR-San Diego.
