I’ve always had concerns about the money spent to host the Democratic National Convention. This week, the Department of Justice and the city of Charlotte released a report outlining how $50 million in federal funds was spent on the event. That’s a lot of money, all of which came from taxpayers, and it raises questions for me about where the money otherwise would have been spent. Where would individuals have invested it? How might they have used that money to create jobs or develop new technology? It’s a theme we write about often at the Locke Foundation, whether discussing business incentives, environmental policy, or film credits.
But there’s another aspect of this spending that jumped out at me today. Evidently, at least $6 million of that money was spent on surveillance. According to news reports:
Maintaining public safety was the highest priority during the DNC. Police focused much of their attention and year-and-a-half-long planning in upgrades to surveillance technology.
“We have been able to enhance our technology capabilities immensely throughout the city. We went into this with a mindset we wanted to acquire equipment and manage the DNC effectively. We also want to re-deploy it throughout the city so it can be a greater benefit to the citizens,” said Chief Rodney Monroe.
$3.8 million was spent to renovate and equip the CMPD Command Center, and more than $2 million to install an additional 120 cameras to existing networks and other crime-fighting tools.
DNC Spending — Surveillance
Command Center & VOC: $3.8M
Wireless Camera System: $1.7M
License Plate Readers, Cameras: $589K
Of course, public safety is important, and the police need proper equipment to do their jobs. But after all the recent news about PRISM and the government collecting data on various communications, $6 million for surveillance makes me nervous.
The report itself says:
Crime analysts also monitored over 90 license plate readers, a variety of social media websites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and Open Stream), and intelligence databases/watchlists (e.g., National Crime Information Cente, CMPD, and NSSE watch lists) to compile and disseminate information as needed for operational elements.
What exactly were authorities monitoring? Was it appropriately targeted? Is it ongoing? Unfortunately, this report raises more questions than answers.
