News note: The Delco GOP FELL SHORT on the amount of signatures needed to amend the countys Home Rule Charter and guarantee the minority party at least two free seats on County Council. I wrote about that here.
Before I write this, I wanted to point out that I don’t currently have all of the information. I did put in a detailed Right to Know request with Delaware County DA’s office for the following:
1. Contracts and agreements. All contracts, purchase agreements, service agreements, statements of work, renewals, amendments, and change orders between the District Attorney’s Office (or Delaware County) and Fusus, Inc., Axon Enterprise, Inc., or any related entity, from January 1, 2022 to the present, concerning the Fusus platform or Real-Time Crime Center.
2. Cost and payment records. All records showing amounts paid, invoiced, or obligated for the Fusus platform, associated cameras, street poles, software licenses, and related hardware or services, from January 1, 2022 to the present, including the current annual or recurring cost.
3. Grant records. All records relating to the $1 million grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency referenced in public reporting, and any other state or federal grant used to fund Fusus, cameras, poles, or the Real-Time Crime Center, including the grant application, award letter, budget, and any expenditure or reconciliation reports.
4. Policies. All policies, standard operating procedures, general orders, or guidelines governing the use of the Fusus platform and the Real-Time Crime Center, including any policies addressing data retention, data deletion, access controls, permissible use, audit logging, and use of AI-enabled features such as object recognition, vehicle recognition, license plate readers, gunshot detection, or drones.
5. Private camera integration. All records describing the program by which residents or businesses register or integrate privately owned cameras into the Fusus network, including any terms of participation, consent forms, registration agreements, and the total number of privately owned cameras currently registered or integrated as of the date this request is fulfilled.
6. Inventory and location. Records sufficient to show the number and locations of county- or DA-controlled cameras and street poles connected to the Fusus platform, by municipality. If a precise location list is claimed to be exempt, I request the total count by municipality.
7. Oversight. All records concerning civilian, council, or independent oversight of the Fusus platform or Real-Time Crime Center, including any oversight board, review process, privacy impact assessment, or public input process.
8. Access agreements. All memoranda of understanding, interagency agreements, or data-sharing agreements governing which agencies (municipal police departments, county, state, or federal) may access the Fusus platform or its camera feeds.
A few years ago, Delaware County DA’s Office began building what local law enforcement calls a “real time crime center” … a cloud based surveillance hub driven by a company called Fusus. The plan, basically only reported on by WHYY at the time, was to cover parts of the county with camera equipped street poles, connect them through Fusus software, and then invite residents and businesses to opt their own private security cameras into a police accessible network…
It started in Chester and the surrounding areas like Chichester, Eddystone, and Marcus Hook. The DA at the time, Jack Stollsteimer asked County Council to accept a $1mil grant from the states commission on Crime and Delinquency to pay for the poles, cameras, as well as the software.
The Fusus spftware takes ordinary cameras and makes them searchable and “smart”. Object recognition for people and specific vehicles, and integration with tools like license plate readers, gunshot detection, and drones. It takes all of the private feeds that would normally sit siloed on everyone’s separate systems and funnels them into one central location that police can watch whenever the hell they want.
Also…there have been NO countywide public input meetings before this got underway, and little public information about the infrastructure being built. The DA mentioned it briefly to County Council while asking them to accept the grant money lol and that was pretty much the extent of the public process.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has tracked Fusus deployments across roughly 150 jurisdictions nationally, lays out the core problem cleanly. When police fold privately owned cameras into a real-time network, they gain access to footage that would otherwise require a warrant and a court’s permission. Because the cameras are privately owned, departments can sidestep the records retention and deletion rules that govern their own equipment. And it happens, almost always, without community conversation or oversight.
NOBODY is against catching the person who shot up a block or stole a car. The problem is that the DA’s office is being deceitful…”keeping us safe” is the justification for building permanent surveillance infrastructure, watching everyone rather than a suspect, and would come with no limits on how the footage is stored, searched, etc.
A “real time crime center” is simply capturing everyone and sorting it out later lol & once the infrastructure exists, so the poles, software, AI, integrated private feeds…the temptation to expand what it’s used for is obviously enormous and it won’t be stopped.
I mean, since the Patriot Act passed…look how far the federal government has taken that.
Object recognition built to find a stolen Mercedes can find a protesters car.
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Chester, Chester Township, Chichester, Eddystone, Marcus Hook.
Just blatantly racist…the surveillance infrastructure got started out concentrated in the county’s lower income, most heavily policed, and most disproportionately Black/working class communities. The same exact Chester that hosts the trash incinerator burning Philly’s garbage…the same Eddystone being lined up for an LNG export terminal being advanced under NDAs and back door meetings at the governors office with John Kane and Dave Delloso. I mean come the fuck on…its the same communities that absorb every burden the wealthier, whiter parts of the county would never accept in their own backyards.
And now they get the cameras first too.
Surveillance tech getting piloted on the people with the least power and time to refuse it…simply justified by the higher crime rates that decades of economic and social disinvestment produced.
The county and the DA’s office should be able to answer everything in my Right to Know request. What happens to the private cameras residents opt in? Can they even opt back out, and who else can access that feed. Is there any sort of civilian oversight, or does one elected prosecutor control the entire infrastructure?
The fact that these questions don’t have easy public answers…three years into the program, is the wrong & concerning.
Part 2 to come when my Right to Know request comes back. What’s in it, what’s left out, if i’m appealing to the state, etc.
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