Dear City of San Clemente Council Members,
I am writing today as a concerned resident of California and also as a student of Saddleback College in San Clemente. On January 20th, the city’s council approved a lease agreement with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), giving the federal agency the ability to use high-powered surveillance cameras to monitor and record the city coastline. The purported reasoning was to grant more abilities to stop claimed incoming ‘panga’ boats and enforce immigration laws. A 5-year lease agreement for the price of 10$ gives an agency with already broad federal jurisdiction and power even further control for claimed protection against unvalidated threats.
This letter is written to those approving council members, Mayor Rick Loeffler, Mayor Pro Tem Steve Knoblock, and Council Member Victor Cabral; whose decision affects the civil liberties of far more than those crossing San Clemenete’s beaches. The placement of such powerful and constantly acting surveilling cameras at the hilltop of Avenida Salvador Reservoir comes with a lack of guarantees from CBP officials about the usage of these cameras, and whether their scope of surveillance will be limited to coastlines. Furthermore, the lack of shared access with local Law enforcement and city officials validates scrutiny of the agency’s position and potential actions.
In 2011, a Texas drone hobbyist was flying his drone recreationally when he caught pictures of pig blood being illegally dumped into a creek. After law enforcement traced the waste back to Columbia Meat Packing Company, the business was shut down. House Bill 1643 was signed in effect as result, limiting the public’s ability to partake in such actions as the hobbyist had.
In Louisiana, a college student filmed fracking companies taking water from the Missouri river without their explicit knowledge by using a drone. The University of Missouri Drone Journalism Program was shut down by the FAA subsequently in 2013.
The actions of approving Council members casts private views upon the public, allowing for the infringement of civil liberties. Such conversations of utterly consequential surveillance and documentation are highly complex and yet the decision to allow CBP these powers is not; it is disingenuous to the same issues this now in-effect lease seeks to solve. An entity which was just granted several billions of taxpayer dollars has far more power, especially unchecked, than any supposed threat to San Clemente that was not already protected from.
San Clemente lies some seventy miles north of the Mexican border. Only 18 panga boats in the surrounding area have been identified in the last 2 years according to the LA Times. Most of the sightings, captures, and arrests have come near San Diego and have swiftly been dealt with by the U.S. Coast Guard, as has been the case for many years.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading non-profit working to protect civil liberties, gave expressed concern over the approval of the Cameras. “CBP has routinely failed to implement even the most basic privacy safeguards for its surveillance technology.” This statement made to Fox 26 News is objectionable. A federal agency such as CBP has little regulatory oversight.
This letter is not an a testament to repeal federal authority and is most definitely not meant to belittle the threats of which formed the basis for camera surveillance in the first place. Rather, it is meant to give perspective on an issue that city council members have more impact than most typical decisions. The question of whether or not to lease the space and ability to monitor citizens is inherently attached to a dynamic and evolving entanglement of civil liberties and protections.
Citizens can be punished for the same actions that CBP could commit without any oversight whatsoever. It is not the recording, the surveillance, or the protection at question; it is the direct regulation of that protection. We have the tools to fight the claimed threat already and yet council members have acquiesced to their unfounded fears of an enemy from beyond. There are other manners in which these problems can be solved.
I end this letter by entailing my support behind law enforcement. The Coast Guard, the Police, Sheriffs, and any other trained officials of the law are given their powers with respect paid to those who they inherit those same powers over; allowing the law to act for citizens and not above them. These cameras are so powerful and raise such broad questions, meaning that the decision of three people can and will affect billions of people in time.
Elected officials are elected by their constituents, and act as a reflection of their needs and wants. But at the same time, these individuals have taken an oath to protect humanity. ‘Panga’ boats and immigration already have proven pathways of law and order; but the freedoms of which the U.S. was formed do not yet in their ever evolving history. It is up to you to protect those freedoms.
Sincerely, Calvin Trudeau
