The rationale for the cameras has been covered before. It appears city leaders were lead to believe the cameras were for energy conservation only: > In Decembe

The rationale for the cameras has been covered before. It appears city leaders were lead to believe the cameras were for energy conservation only: > In December 2016, San Diego’s Environmental Services Department presented the City Council with a way to bring down its energy costs. General Electric had been looking for a place to test out new sensor-controlled technologies that could brighten or dim lights from afar and collect anonymized data, and a pilot program had been initiated in East Village two years prior. The company was now offering to finance the installation of that technology across the city with a $30 million loan that could be paid back over 13 years through its own energy savings. https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/public-council-were-in-the-dark-on-police-access-to-smart-streetlights/ https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/public-... Later, law enforcement got its hooks into the new toys: > Since August, the San Diego Police Department has been accessing the raw video footage with permission from City Hall and using its contents in dozens of criminal investigations, as the U-T reported. Some of that footage could appear at a trial scheduled to begin later this month, according to police. The notion that law enforcement will somehow be excluded in any way from the video/audio feeds from these devices strains credulity. If history since 2013 has taught us anything, it's that if you give law enforcement an inch of surveillance, they'll take a yard. On a related note, the idea that these feeds will somehow not end up on some dark market or surveillance capitalism venture business plans is equally ludicrous.