Housing and Land Use Committee (2025-2027) - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Would the Disaster Recovery International Affairs and Planning Committee meeting of September 2nd come to order? The time is now 1.36. If everyone can please silence their cell phones or other noise-making devices, that will help our cause. Members, in accordance with the Sunshine Law, If you're not in the council chambers, please identify by name who, if anyone, is in the room, vehicle, or workspace with you today. Minors do not need to be identified. Also, please see the last page of the agenda for information on meeting connectivity. My name is Tamara Poulton, and I'll be the chair of the committee for today. Our committee vice chair, Nohelani Uhu-Hodgins, was en route to her house and should be joining us shortly. In the chambers, we have Councilmember Kawanoe Batangan, aloha wina la.

Aloha wina la kakou.

And we also have Councilmember Tom Cook, aloha wina la.

Aloha wina la kakou.

And we also have Councilmember Gabe Johnson, aloha wina la.

Aloha chair, council members, community members. There's no testifiers at the Lanai district office and I'm here and ready to work, thank you.

Thank you. I'm not sure where council chair Alice Lee is. She may be absent or she may be coming a little late. I haven't been informed. We have council member Kiani Rollins Fernandez. Aloha wina ala.

Aloha awin ala, Chair. Aloha awin ala kākou. Maimōn kainui ahina. I'm at my private residence alone right now. In about an hour, my minor-age children will be home from school, as well as my husband, McKenna Fernandez. There are currently no testifiers at the Molokai Tushuk office. Mahalo, Chair.

Thank you, I did receive word from Member Shane Sinensi that he would be a little bit late. Council Member Yukile Sugimura did inform us that she needs to do something else and so she is excused. I do see Council Member Nohe, or Committee Vice Chair Nohelani Uuhajins, aloha wina ala.

aloha chair um i am now at my private residence i do have two adult males and two minors the first adult male is my husband koa hodgins and the second is my son but otherwise looking forward to this meeting thank you

Thank you. This meeting of the Disaster Recovery International Affairs and Planning Committee of the Maui County Council is located on the traditional Aina of Kanaka'o-Iwi who never ceded their sovereignty to the United States. We recognize that Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom to the U.S. in duress under threat of violence to avoid the bloodshed of her people. We further recognize that Hawaii remains an illegally occupied nation state by the US as documented in a 2021 scholarly article for the National Lawyers Guild Review by Andrew Reed, adjunct professor of law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. Generations of kanaka maoli and their knowledge systems have sustainably cared for Hawaii and continue to do so. We're grateful to occupy this space and learn the ways in which we can contribute As a committee, we seek to support the varied strategies that the indigenous people of Hawaii are using to protect their land and their communities. and commit to dedicating time and resources to working in solidarity. I did receive word that Council Chair Alice Lee will be about 15 to 20 minutes late and so she is excused at this time. From the Department of Management, we have Managing Director Josiah Nishita. From the Department of the Police, we have Lieutenant Taylor Kamakaviva Ole and Officer Aaron Mark. From the Department of the Prosecuting Attorney, we have Fu House, Prosecuting Attorney Andy Martin, Chad Kumagai, Ryan Anderson Tishima, and Gerald Keone Enriquez. From Corporation Counsel, we have Deputy Corporation Counsel Caleb Rowe. Oh, and we see Council Chair Lee Aloha Winola. Any disclosure of who's with you?

Hi, Chair. Sorry I'm late. No, I'm here home alone in my workspace. Thank you.

Thank you. We also have DRIP Committee staff with us this afternoon, Senior Legislative Analyst James Krueger, as well as Legislative Analyst Jarrett Pasqua, Senior Committee Secretary Yvette Boutelier, Legislative Attorney Carla Nakata, Council Ambassador Ryan Martins, as well as Assisting Clerk Dean Pokipala. On the agenda today, we have two items, DRIP 27 and DRIP 26. which is Bill 113, 2026, establishing Chapter 8.38 Maui County Code on the Disclosure, Sale, and Commercial Use of License Plate Reader Data, and Bill 112, 2026, establishing Chapter 8.37 Maui County Code on Facial Recognition Technology. We will take testimony after opening remarks and presentations. Members, if there are no objections, I would like to take up both DRIP 27 and DRIP 26 together. Okay. And that still means that there's three minutes for each item. We'll be able to talk about the two bills in relationship to each other. Bill 113, establishing Chapter 8.38 Maui County Code on the Disclosure, Sale, and Commercial Use of License Plate Reader Data. And Bill 112, establishing Chapter 8.37 Maui County Code on Facial Recognition Technology. So Bill 113's purpose is to prohibit the sale and commercial use of automated license plate reader data and to require that county contracts for automated license plate reader systems and services protect that data from use by a vendor for a purpose other than the performance of the contract. The committee may consider whether to recommend passage of Bill 113-2026 on fresh reading with or without revisions. The committee may also consider the filing of Bill 113-2026 and other related action. For Bill 112's purpose is to require a county law enforcement agency's facial recognition technology only be used in connection with a documented criminal investigation, limit access to and training on the technology to designated users, and three, require that a result generated by the technology be treated as an investigative lead rather than as proof of identity. The committee may consider whether to recommend passage of Bill 112-2026 on first reading with or without revisions. The committee may also consider the filing of Bill 112-2026 and other related action. So these two bills were referred to our committee August 25th, 2026. There is a third bill that got direct referred, but still needs some work on it. I mean, these ones also need work on it, but that one needs more work on it. And it has other things like duration of data, storing the data and other things like that who can, when it can be archived and who can access what. But it wasn't ready for the whole package discussion. At this time, I would love to hear the opening presentation from the Maui Police Department, followed by prosecuting attorney, management, and Corp Council opening remarks. Last I checked with management, the county has no contracts with FLOC, so if you see FLOC cameras out and about, it's not the county's cameras. But I can allow the... managing director to expound on that. At this time, does the police department have their presentation ready to go? Or opening remarks? Okay, go for it. Oh, let's get you a microphone so that people online can hear better. Sorry about that oversight. We're like, you know, 40 minutes behind from the meeting before.

Testing.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Lieutenant Taylor Kamako Viva Ole. And we're here to just talk a little bit about our Not bills 112 and 113, but quick presentation on ALPR technology and also facial recognition. Next. Currently, right now, the MPD Model Police Department does not have any facial recognition. But facial recognition basically is a software that compares a face in a photo or video against a database of images and returns candidates. So it just generates leads. It's not a positive identification. It cannot establish probable cause on its own. It cannot be the sole basis for an arrest, a search warrant, a search or a warrant. A trained person has to confirm the identity and an independent investigation has to corroborate before it means anything. The national failure cases all came from investigations treating a lead as proof. That is what this bill prevents. Next. And how would it be used? Facial recognition will only be used with a documented criminal case number recorded before the search runs. So basically, in order for us to even run a facial recognition, we would have to document a criminal case. There has to be a reason why we're doing our things. Also, it will help us identify deceased persons. people who can identify themselves, you know, those in our kupunas, you know with dementia or whatever maybe because we've had a lot of cases where you know, Some some of our kupuna do not wear bracelets, you know, there's no markings whatnot So this technology would actually help us identify them and then also missing or endangered persons Who will definitely not? This is not for immigration enforcement like ICE, as well as our general orders prohibit us from working with ICE as well. This is not for civil traffic, not for people at a protest or expressing their First Amendment rights. Only trained, written, designated users will be able to list reviewed quality reports and every use logged will be audited. So every keystroke, every access, every search, every query that is used if we had the technology would be documented and audited and will be open to any report that is requested by council or whatnot. Next. So our LPR systems, which is what is proposed in Bill 113, it's a camera that is placed out and reads plates and records the plate characters, an image, the time, and the location. That's basically all it collects. It snaps photos of license plates. It does not identify people, as the cameras do not have any facial recognition technology, and it does not know who is driving the vehicle at the time. alerts come from hot lists and a lot hot lists are basically when no joel from the community reports his car stolen. We document a report we report the stolen incident to our central dispatch who puts the vehicles on a hot list the hot list then what we call you know bolo's or a pb's is basically a list of stolen vehicles so if a license plate. that we input into the system is actually taking a photo of the license plate is taken. It actually sends out an alert saying that this vehicle was seen here on this date and time. It doesn't actually show us the color of the vehicle, maker vehicle, whatever it may be. All it says is that this license plate was seen in this location. And again, ALPR cameras do not have facial recognition capabilities. Next. Yep. So again, ALPR uses will be for stolen vehicles, Miley or Amber Alerts, you know, help us locate the vehicle that, you know, for like any custodian interference type cases where, you know, a parent who does not have legal custody of their child shows up to the school, picks up the child illegally and drives off in a certain vehicle. We are able to you know locate that vehicle via the alpr system as soon as we get an alert officers will know where this is but still they have to physically go out to the location and find the vehicle make contact to the operator and so forth So every query again, you know, every search that is done online or in our system requires a case number, a written reason why, written reason recorded before, you know, the search for the vehicle. Every disclosure to another agency is documented. Who got it, what, why, and when. And the other agencies could be court, could be, you know, requests of, you know, the owner of the vehicle, whatever it may be. We do not sell any of the data and we will never will. The bill makes that a flat prohibition with no business exception. The bill that also puts hard conditions in vendors' contracts, including no use of our data to train their algorithms. So I know that a bunch of you have reviewed the bill and it specifically says that county contracts must ensure that this information is not shared, sold, or whatever it may be. Next. I mean, our systems and our technology, as far as ALPRs, is very simple at this point. It, again, does not have any facial recognition, and all it does is take pictures and photos of the license plates. But again, we physically have to go out there and make contact with the vehicle, locate the vehicle, and whatnot. I'll turn the microphone over to Officer Aaron Mark right now, and he has a few pictures of our ALPR uses.

Thank you, I'm Officer Aaron Mark of the Kihei District. One important thing to note on that presentation is from the hot list, we'll get say an email if that's how you wanna be notified. This email will show a close in image of the license plate. it just sees some characters it takes an image takes an overall image of the vehicle so before we even go and talk to anybody pertaining to this vehicle we have the ability to eliminate if it's an error we can see instantly that okay no it someone's blocking it it's a mystery that's fine we just ignore it right we don't follow up we don't do a traffic stop on a vehicle in that case you know we just this is just basically a tool same thing if you're looking at a camera and it looks like hey is that the plate Oh no, it's not. It's kind of the same thing. This is just an automated way of being able to search and use this as a tool. Um, it's not concrete. This is a great example. We have two here. Um, you can see the image of the license plate below and then these are ones that were recovered. I just got from my email real quick before the presentation. Um, obviously these are successes. So the vehicle on the left, um, it actually hit with a LPR on its way back to the tow yard after it was recovered as a stolen vehicle. So before it was taken out of the system, which would happen shortly thereafter, this is like minutes after it was recovered out in the field. And on the right, same thing. It happened to trigger, I've been driving around even in my POV and I'll get an email Hey, we have a hot list hit. And then I'm like, okay, interesting. I'll kind of watch for it. Just curiosity sake when I'm off duty. And then 20 minutes later, I see an image like this and it's couldn't be better. So we don't hear about police chases, people getting injured, you know? So this is a valuable tool that can then help us that can help us. Next one, please. So, and of course, things change with vehicles, right? They might spray paint them. They may have new damages that we wouldn't know about. So the initial report was, Hey, I had a white Kia soul and this is the license plate. Now it goes by, it triggers the license plate reader. Um, and the one on the right there is, you know, it, it, you can see in that description, I'm sorry, it's kind of small here, but it says it's a white Kia soul and it was spray painted dark gray or black or matte black, whatever you want to call it. So now we can update the, um, all points bulletin saying, Hey, no, we're actually looking for this vehicle. So, um, whereas officers are, you know, if it was a recently stolen, they have that in the back of their mind thinking, okay, a white Kia soul. There's a lot of them on the Island. Now we have a more accurate, uh, description of that vehicle the one on the left has a lot of damages that are new i'm assuming since it was stolen and now we just have a better picture of what that looks like next one please So, yeah, it's just looking at an image and saying, hey, these characters look like it could be this license plate. So the one on the left, the one on the hot list was Lima November, Lima 703. You can tell by that with the... the hitch in the way that it's probably a you or another character. So easy, that's ignored. Nobody's going and stopping this family or whoever this is. It's just ignored. Next one, please. That one actually met the description, but the license plate was incorrect. This one here, this is an example of a nighttime one. Clearly it's looking for a C instead of the D and it's just wrong. And that happens. It's just an optical character recognition trying to say, hey, this might be a valid plate that you're looking for. If it's not, we just ignore it. Again, we're not traffic stopping this family coming home from work or whatever they're doing. That's not the intent. I think that's the last one. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you. Prosecuting Attorney's Office, do you have any opening comments?

Thank you, Chair. Just briefly, I wanna say first of all, I really appreciate the efforts of MPD in putting the safeguards into place that they have. These technologies are incredibly powerful, they're useful. they're extremely helpful not only to their law enforcement efforts but our prosecution of cases as well but as we've all seen across the country that doesn't mean there haven't been abuses and other jurisdictions which of course are in the news right now so I appreciate the steps that MPD has taken in this committee's efforts to address these concerns now and at this time and have these conversations at this moment Having reviewed the bills, I'll state that we certainly strongly support the underlying efforts that are being made to ensure that the technologies being used here on Maui are not being used for law enforcement purposes or being abused by anybody. And so creating that requirement of a criminal nexus which aligns with MPDs policies is I think an important step to take. But that doesn't mean that in reviewing the bills, we don't have some caution that we'd like to, I guess, address with the committee. And of course, we'll be available to answer any questions that you do have. And most of our concerns or legal concerns have to do with section 8.37.030 of bill number 112, which is the limitations on use. As the committee knows, our federal state constitution, the White Revised Statutes are where our legal concepts of probable cause, reasonable suspicion come from. Of course, we have the warrant requirement. We have clauses in both the state and federal constitution that prohibit unreasonable searches and seizures, and all that's at play here. And not just our constitution and our what your vice statute and how those terms are addressed and defined there, but also our Supreme Court's interpretation of those legal standards. We discussed and racked our brain and are not aware of any other legislative body who has I guess attempted to limit what can be considered in a judicial setting for the purposes of establishing probable cause and reasonable suspicion. And that's really where I would urge caution. And that really has to do with the bulk of what's included in 8.37.030. Certainly legislative bodies have addressed and dictated procedures that should be followed in certain circumstances. An example of that for us here in Hawaii is the use of photo lineups in this state. The legislature has dictated certain procedures and what needs to be done for those photo lineups to be admissible in court. Certainly, I think that's what the bill is attempting to do in its other sections, is setting forth certain procedures that need to be followed. And those procedures are important because they provide for accountability, for documentation to ensure that the information is being used for law enforcement purposes only, those with a criminal nexus. But I strongly caution against any attempt to limit what the courts would determine with respect to what facts constitute reasonable suspicion or probable cause, or whether or not a warrant or other legal process would be required to access certain information. Those are constitutional and legal issues that are interpreted by our courts. And I think any attempt to limit those needs to be strongly considered and researched in terms of whether or not, number one, a local legislative body would have the ability to restrict the state constitution and state statutes in those particular manners. And then number two, invading the province of our state Supreme Court and its interpretation of those issues. You also want to be careful of not legislating things in a way that would have unintended consequences. That's why our Constitution uses the phrases that it does, probable cause, and why it's defined the way it is along with reasonable suspicion and then left to judicial interpretation. because our legislature recognizes that there are a myriad of circumstances available in a constantly evolving world, facts and circumstances that need to be weighed in each and every case individually and interpreted by our courts. So I think that's a real caution I want to give with respect to everything that's in 8.37.030. We did have one note with respect to the previous Section 8.37.020, and this applies to Bill 113 as well. The exception for the timing of the documentation requirements, and it's worded as when there is an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to a person. Our suggestion there would be to use the legal term of art when there are exigent circumstances. That's a term that, again, more broadly I think encompasses all possible circumstances and tracks what is widely used by the court as the term that defines that particular exception to the warrant requirement. If it's an exception to the warrant requirement, certainly it's a term that would work under these circumstances as well. So that would allow for just circumstances such as when the destruction of evidence is a concern, when an individual is at risk of some level of bodily injury that doesn't rise to the level of serious bodily injury, but still they're at risk of injury. And so we wanna make sure that we're able to cover all those circumstances. I think that meets the intent of the bill and the members as well. And then, finally, I certainly understand and support the concern that any type of technology is not used for racial, religious, or other profiling on a wide-scale basis. But I want to express this concern. frequently, on a daily basis. And, Lieutenant, I'm not going to put you on the spot, but you can speak this as well, right? You know, descriptions of individuals where there is probable cause, reasonable suspicion, when law enforcement is looking for individuals, racial descriptions are a common Thing that is a part of their overall description. It may include the color of their hair It may include descriptions such as a Caucasian male their gender as well their type and color of their clothing and So to the extent that that is used for those purposes again law enforcement purposes purposes that have a criminal nexus I think the the committee should consider how that particular section is is included in wording to, I think, address what the concern is. Not that I want to speak to what your concerns are, but I believe trying to address any kind of widespread profiling along those lines. Other than that, we're available for your questions when it's time. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Prosecutor and Attorney Martin. At this time, I would like to welcome Council Member Sinensi to the proceedings. I know he joined in earlier, but I didn't want to interrupt. Aloha wina ala, Council Member Sinensi.

Aloha wina ala, Chair. Sorry for my tardiness here at my personal workspace. Here alone, no test suppliers in college. Thank you.

Thank you. Managing Director Nishita, are you available?

Aloha, Chair. I hope you guys can hear me okay. Mahalo for allowing us to be here today. Thank you to MPD and Prosecuting Attorney for those opening comments. Here, I'd just like to express our appreciation to you. I think this is a very timely topic and issue to bring up, especially what's happening nationally. And then, you know, residents recently have... have raised concerns about what appears to be a fairly rapid deployment of a variety of equipment and whatnot. And so obviously we wanna make sure that our residents' concerns are heard and that they have the opportunity to voice their concerns and that that is taken into consideration with regards to however any tools are used for any purpose. We really appreciate bringing this forward. I apologize, Chair. I was hoping to have kind of more substantive comments from our security vendors and some other entities, but the incoming storms kind of diverted attention a little bit there. But we'd be also happy to follow up after the committee meeting if there's any questions or more substantive comments. issues to discuss. And ultimately, like I said, we wanna make sure that all of our residents' concerns and questions and whatnot are taken into consideration. And then we wanna support the council and work together in ensuring that whatever's developed protects the rights appropriately and adequately for all individuals involved. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Director Nishita. I was wondering if you could clarify what we went over before that the county, to your knowledge, has no contracts with flock cameras.

Oh, sorry. Yes, Chair. I did do some review with our security vendor as well as I asked our Department of Finance to survey for the company names. We do not have any contracts with those entities to our knowledge. If anyone is aware of alternative business names or things like that that they may go under, we'd be happy to search for that. But to our knowledge and understanding, none of those camera systems or technology are being in use by any of the departments.

Thank you, Director. Deputy Corp Counsel Caleb Rowe, do you have any opening comments for the body?

Thank you, Chair. I don't have many opening comments because of when we did receive this, it hasn't gone through our normal vetting process. However, we did review it and I know that Deputy Colby did work with MPD in developing it. I also reviewed it and there are a couple of suggestions that I have. Most of them are kind of stylistic, but there are two kind of more substantive things that I would like to make sure get discussed at some point. I'm not sure if you want me to mention them now, but I think maybe we can do that when we get into the discussion. Thank you.

Okay, members, tonight is the first Wednesday of the month, so that is our Wednesday night community meeting in Lahaina, so I'm gonna have a hard out at 4.15. Is that okay with members? We do have tomorrow as a recess date, so if we need to recess at 4.15 and come back tomorrow, hopefully we'll have quorum with you folks. But before we jump into public testimony, I want to kind of give a caution that the testimony is on Bills 112 and 113. It's not about other entities that have cameras. We're just discussing the county's use in... Bill 112 purpose is to mandate that facial recognition technology used by a county law enforcement agency be used only in relation to a documented criminal investigation with restricted access to designated personnel and training and that a result produced by the technology be regarded as an investigative lead rather than as identification. Bill 113's purpose is to prohibit the sale and commercial use of automated license plate reader data and to require county contracts for automated license plate reader systems and services to include protections preventing vendors from using that data for purposes other than fulfilling the contract. Just asking that testifiers keep it narrow to that, it's a lot already. Not saying that other members can't introduce other legislation to address other concerns. This is just the starting jumping off point. Member Johnson, did you have a clarification question before we go in?

Yes, I did. Thank you for that. I do have a clarifying question about some of the things that were brought up. These bills were submitted by yourself, MPD, whose bills are these?

They're my bills. I did reach out to MPD. They suggested some amendments to my original bills. So that's the starting off point. We're in committee to work on the bills. So there could be other amendments and that's why also that police is here so that we can discuss with them what works, what doesn't work, what they think. as well as prosecuting attorney, Corp Council Managing Director. As we get into discussion with the Managing Director, we can also ask who outside of the police has access. It was suggested IT might, but then IT said no, it's the Managing Director, so that's part of the reason why we invited the Managing Director.

Okay, and my second clarified question is why didn't it go through normal Corporation Council review? Was there a timeliness or something?

Yeah, well the South Maui Community Plan is my next thing. So this is kind of like I was rushing to get it on before the South Maui Community Plan. It is such a huge subject and there is one more bill that I had direct referred. But if we're able to pass it before the South Maui Community Plan, great. If not, we'll pick it up after, yeah. Clarifying question, Charlie.

Yeah, question about what you just said, something about possibility of reconvening tomorrow at 4.15, is that what you said?

No, recessing today at 4.15, possibility of convening tomorrow because Member Johnson gave it up for this important subject.

Okay, for what time? You know we have a public hearing at 4.30.

Yeah, I was thinking maybe like nine to three.

Okay, just checking, thank you.

Thank you. All right, no more clarifying questions. We will now move on to public testimony for DRIP 26 and 27. Written testimony is encouraged and we have received quite a bit. Can be submitted via the e-comment link at MauiCounty.us backslash agendas. Testifiers wanting to provide oral testimony should join the online meeting via the Microsoft Teams link printed on today's agenda or call into the phone number which is also on today's agenda. For individuals wishing to testify via Teams, please raise your hand by clicking on the Raise Your Hand button near the top right of your screen. For those calling in, please follow the prompts via phone. Staff will add names to the testifier list in the order testifiers sign up or raise their hands. For those on Teams, staff will lower your hand once your name is added. Staff will then call the name you're logged in under or the last four digits of your phone number when it is your time to testify. At that time, staff will also enable your microphone and video. Please ensure your name on Microsoft Teams appears as the name you prefer to be referred to as or as anonymous if you wish to testify anonymously. If you are in person, please notify staff that you would like to testify anonymously. Otherwise, please state your name for the record at the beginning of your testimony. Oral testimony is limited to three minutes. If you are still testifying beyond that time, I will kindly ask you to complete your testimony. Once you're done testifying, or if you do not wish to testify, you can view the meeting on Akaku Channel 53, Facebook Live, or MauiCounty.us backslash agendas. please let us know which item or items you are testifying on so that staff can time testimony for each item separately. If you're testifying on both items, please let us know when your testimony for the first item ends and your testimony on the second item begins so we can ask questions per testimony and adjust the timing. At this time, we will call on testifiers wishing to testify on DRIP 26 and 27. Staff, is there anyone wishing to testify on DRIP 26 and or 27?

Yes, Chair. The first person signed up to testify is Sheila Walker, testifying on both items, to be followed by Jake Carton.

Aloha, Chair Palten and members of the committee. I'm Sheila Walker and I live in South Maui in Maui Meadows. And I oppose the installation of flock surveillance cameras throughout our committee. Not throughout our committee, but throughout our community, especially when that surveillance infrastructure is owned or operated by private companies. This raises a fundamental question. At what point does tracking innocent citizens become an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution? I respect the bills that you've presented, the 112 and 113, and that they attempt to put safeguards around this technology, but I think we're asking the wrong question. Before deciding how this information can be collected, stored, accessed, or shared, we should first be asking whether these cameras should be installed in our communities at all. Our community doesn't need private corporations building a surveillance network across Maui and then asking government to regulate it after the fact. There is a difference between investigating a crime and routinely tracking people who are simply living their lives. Public safety should not require surveillance of innocent citizens. Mahalo for your consideration to my testimony. Are there any questions?

Members, any questions for the testifier? Member Cook, followed by Member Betonga.

Thank you, Ms. Walker. So I heard your testimony. Did you hear the presentation and the clarification of the status on Maui? Did that change your feelings at all?

Absolutely, and I understand that at the time there seems to be no surveillance facial recognition cameras from the police department, but there is definitely a concern that all of the flock cameras have been installed already by private companies. And I understand that the government is not coordinating with them, but who is, what are they doing? Where is that information going?

To clarify, we're only speaking on behalf of the county government. We don't know if the state or the federal.

Understood, so I'm pointing out that we need to have more infrastructure in place to make sure our private citizens and their private information is being safeguarded. And I do respect the current bills that you've presented. I hope you will present another bill.

I just wanted to clarify, I'm not seeing that the state hasn't installed cameras or anything. We're just speaking on behalf of the county and that the county doesn't regulate the state. It's like federal, state, county.

I don't know where the cameras came from.

Yeah, me either. Okay, Member Batonga.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for the testimony. So I heard you ask the question of whether or not we should have this at all. And I'm interpreting that to mean we as in the county, because that's the parameters of the bills before us. Can I ask how you think about you know, the right to privacy in a public place. Say this county building, a county park, a public road, for example. So like what kind of privacy is reasonable to expect in a public place and what kind of tools is it reasonable for the county to deploy when it's trying to protect lives and property?

Thank you for the question. And I understand that cameras at intersections can absolutely help when we're trying to, you know, solve crimes or solve what happened at an intersection accident. But some of those cameras can also see into private spaces. Along Peelani Highway, there's plenty of cameras that can totally see right into private homes. And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want a camera in my bedroom.

Thank you, Chair.

Members, any further questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Thank you, I yield.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Jake Carton, testifying on both items, to be followed by Heather Hirschen.

Good afternoon, Chair. My name is Jake Carton. I'm speaking on behalf of Maui Indivisible. I'd like to ask a point of order before making my testimony, which is we, as Maui's frontline homegrown civil liberties organization, Maui Indivisible is respectfully requesting the Chair provide us with 10 extra expert testimony rule 7B time as you have provided to numerous testifiers already.

I don't think that's legally permissible. Everybody gets three minutes per item.

Okay. We know that regulating two spy tools will not bring sanity to Maui County's mass spy project. We can't save the forest by talking about two trees. We can't fix a messed up development by regulating two hammers. That's why scores of states, counties, cities, and towns across the US have shut down these projects in the last year, not just regulated a few tools as is the case here. It's not just liberal and progressive places. It's conservative and even MAGA places. Maui is very late to the party on this and on the wrong side of history. Even Florida Governor DeSantis calls these projects, quote, out of control. You can try to block shutting down this spy project from the council agenda today, but we are not going away. These two bills are trying to do an impossible thing, make it look like we have protections against police and county spy abuse, but still not undermine the spy project that council funded. Bills 112, which is the facial recognition technology, and 113, which is the automated license plate reader, are constructed to undermine their stated purposes and are riddled with loopholes. They allow the county to abuse these tools, but not the vendors with which it contracts. They do not equally regulate the two targeted spy tools, leading to the question of why allow more abuse of one tool over the other. They partly protect some of our rights, but not other rights in which there has been significant historical abuse. So why discriminate against populations who experience these spy tools differently? These two bills are very technical and that masks their shortcomings Reading these two bills made my eyes glaze over many times But we're taking seriously this process council set up when council rushed these bills after funding and building this mass by project we respectfully dissect these bills on the technical merits and In 112, if the proposed predicate for the facial recognition technology is documented criminal investigation, the minimum standard for FRT use should be constitutional probable cause and not the standard in the bill. of the infield Terry stop reasonable suspicion, which was developed for sudden, brief, temporary investigative stops, which lasts no longer than necessary to confirm or dispel the officer's suspicion. Facial recognition technology's history of inaccuracy and police abuse is the reason why 112 avoids raising this weakened Terry standard in the purpose section. Worse, 112's loophole allowing retroactive documenting contradicts the bill's stated purpose that FRT, quote, be used only in connection with a documented criminal investigation and further undermines the probable cause standard. In criminal law class, we call this Frankenstein law. Number two, 112 fails to include all biometric and person-specific tech surveillance. Limiting 112 to FRT will soon put the regulation in an irrelevant time warp. Number three, 112 does not address sale and commercial use of FRT data like 113 does with ALPR data. Number four, 112's definition of where FRT can be deployed leaves almost no place for privacy except surrounded by four solid walls on a tropical island. Quote, the interior of a private dwelling or lodging unit. Let's not forget protecting the tourists. And I'm not sure anyone anymore... that's safe given heat map and night vision cameras that will soon integrate FRT. Number five, 112 and 113 failed to address transmitting, exchanging, and integrating this data with other governments inside the U.S. and outside the U.S., which may use it for commercial purposes or transmit it to a private entity for commercial purposes or for purposes that are not commercial, for example, political. nor do they prohibit a private entity sharing data noncommercially from one with another government, which is what Flock has done with ICE. Number six, 112 and 113 do not prohibit use of these tools to support police abuse of Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment activity. Number seven, 113 does not establish any probable cause standards of county use for ALPR data like 112 does for FRT data. Why does the county treat these two forms of personal location and behavioral tracking data differently? Number eight, 113 only prohibits one type, immigration enforcement of police abuse of ALPR, and not other current forms of police abuse, such as those partly covered in 112, sometimes documented of the MPD itself, widely documented of local police nationwide, and widely documented of the Trump regime, such as attacking First and Fourth and 14th Amendment rights. Given Trump has commandeered most of his police state forces to prioritize immigration enforcement, it is not good enough to forbid local immigration enforcement when we have no oversight mechanisms to protect that blurred line for all federal agencies and county currently collaborating with them. Why does the county treat these two forms of surveillance differently? Number nine, it's great 113 has, I just have two more. May I? Thank you, Chair. It's great 113 has set up standards for vendors' use of AOPR data. These standards should also apply to all county departments to prevent county abuse of the general public, and all notice and approval provisions should be directed to elected government leaders and subject to sunshine laws. Number 10, 113 should ban providing ALPR data to any federal immigration authority and not have anything to do with the provider's intentional purpose. In fact, the ban should extend to any entity one might reasonably expect will transfer the data to any federal agency after due diligence research. Thank you.

Thank you. Members, any questions for the testifier? Member Batonga.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Jake. I have a question about your written testimony. So in it, you argued that these two items need to be taken up in the Great Committee as well? Yes. So I know that several members of this body have met with you, Chair Lee and myself included. We've referred you to the resolution that established the jurisdiction between the committees. Those are written on each committee's website. You've now seen several examples in which these matters that you're asking for are taken up in DRIP. Can I ask why you still don't believe me when I tell you that DRIP has oversight over the Department of Police?

I believe you. We also believe this is a matter of two things that are very much part of your committee's name. One is government relations. This is not just about the MPD. They are one department. This is about the entire county participating in a mass surveillance project with the real-time crime center, but also the Maui Emergency Operating Center. Secondly, this is about transparency. We have repeatedly and formally asked several different county departments for documents that should be so simply given over. Um, for instance, the police department has a grant from the Department of Justice. It's $1.5 million to fund the real time operating center. This is the spy project that processes the images that then will be using this technology that we're talking in these about these in these laws. it's not just that's why we're talking about trees or hammers versus the whole thing so this is about transparency and i i guess my question back to the council and to the great committee chair is why are you keeping this secret from us why aren't you releasing these contracts that you have signed that you are taking this money for why can't we see the um the deliverables or strings attached whenever the federal government gives money, they want something in return. What are we giving them back? Why is ICE so much more effective and so much more here in the last couple of months than ever before? I mean, what's going on here? We don't know. We don't know the answers, but it's quite a coincidence that this is coming forward, that all this money is being spent on these spy projects, not just these tools, but a much bigger spy project. And we can't get answers that are pretty simple questions.

Thank you, Jake. Thank you. Okay, so I hear in your response and in the testimony you're giving today and the testimony that you've provided in the past, a lot of fear over government overreach. Is that correct?

I would expand it to also say concern about government and private corporations together. Violating our rights, yes.

So you've come to me personally and I understand other members of this body with specific requests and I've said, Some of these violate the charter or the code or the basic premise of separation of powers or the jurisdictional boundaries of our different committees and have offered alternative pathways to get to the things that you've asked for. Can I ask why, if you're so concerned about overreach and abuse and disregard for rules and regulations that we have within the county system, you expect me to have, to overstep those boundary lines?

because I think we have a fundamental disagreement about the interpretation of what the charter says. The charter gives this body the most awesome power of oversight of anybody on this island. It can conduct investigations, can require reports from every department, can conduct independent audits, That's what we're asking for. We're not going to, and you're elected by us. You are the most accountable to us. This is a democracy, hopefully still, we're fighting for that. And our concern is why is this being rushed? Why has the council been funding this work for two years, almost in secret? Why can't we get the documents? I think it's reasonable for us to be asking these questions and it's reasonable for us to be asking our elected representatives who have the most power to step in and do something about it.

So you've mentioned in your testimony and in the follow-up questions, like the county's spy project or historic abuses, I think I've heard reference to violations of our liberty. Do you have a specific example or like an evidence of a specific example in which the police department has violated county law to this effect?

Okay, well, there's the checkered history of the MPD where there's been some officers who have actually stalked women. But I think also there's the systemic, I think it's become systemic where the police department signs contracts with the federal government behind the back of the council, the council should be providing approval of those. And that's under state law, HRS 46-7. I think we've talked a lot about that. But I think there's also this systemic refusal to provide documentation under the Uniform Information Practices Act. So there, there has been a lack of sunshine by the Maui Police Department when it comes to providing the contracts that we're, we pay for this, right? We should be able to see the contracts between the federal government and the police department. We should be able to see that the council should be approving. We should be able to see the federal government the contracts with the private companies that are putting up these cameras or doing other processes. We know they exist because we actually got a copy of a non-disclosure agreement with one of these companies, the Motorola subsidiary. So we know there's enough up there and we've put this online. We've put it up on a website for everyone in Maui to see. So they're like, This sounds a little fantastical, what's going on, except we have the receipts and we put them up with the Chief of Police's signature. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Member Sinensi, you have a clarifying question.

Thank you. Thank you, Jake. No clarifying, but I just was wondering if Mr. Carton can submit his written testimony. Yeah, it's in e-comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Any further questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Heather Hirschen, testifying on both items to be followed by Abe Vance.

Aloha. Thank you, Tamara, for doing this. I'd like to reserve three minutes for each bill. I'm probably just going to talk right through. So we know that regulating only two spy tools will not bring sanity or real guardrails to Maui County's mass spy project. That's why scores of counties and cities and towns across the U.S. have shut these projects down in the last year. They're not just regulating a few tools, they're abandoning and banning the tech. It's also not just happening in liberal and progressive places, it's happening in conservative MAGA heavy areas. Unfortunately, Maui is late to the party on this and sadly, I believe on the wrong side of history. DeSantis calls these, Florida, Governor DeSantis calls these projects out of control. Greg Abbott, Governor Greg Abbott in Texas says get the flock out of Texas. Governor Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania also welcomed a bipartisan bill to ban the cameras, among others. Our position is that if the council wants these mass spy tools and projects, it needs to take that responsibility seriously and provide us transparency and protection so that we hold the county accountable when our rights are violated. That's why this topic needs to be on the great committee agenda, please. These two bills targeting two spy tools should pilot conditions imposed on all county spy projects and tools. In other words, while the council has yet to put a moratorium on the county mass spy project on the agenda, the council should impose conditions immediately on the spy tools in 112 and 113 as a pilot because these bills right now only impotently regulate data collection and facial recognition as they need to strengthen our rights. Given the scope of the county spy project, these conditions on the county mass spy tools should be, one, annual council evaluation of all mass spy projects and tools, annual sunsets to council approval and funding of all mass spy projects and tools so that renewing them is intentional. Expand the scope of these bills to cover more general types of mass spy tools and from police MPD to every county department for transparency. Five, enforceable rights and consequences for violations. And six, reciprocity. We see council members want to track and record us with all these expensive cutting edge computer tools and cameras everywhere. If we the public must lose our privacy and other freedoms for council's poor judgment, promoting and using the guise of safety as your argument, then understand that the advocates and decision makers of this project will also bear the same aspects of the spying as the rest of us. As stewards of this new reign of total loss of privacy, to be fair, you should commit in the law to cameras placed all around your place of employment within all the meetings you attend. Heck, why not the entry to your home driveway, the grocery store you most regularly frequent, and maybe where you drop your kids off at school just like us. And maybe those cameras feed to public websites where we can all look at your comings and goings 24-7 because we actually employ you. Unfortunately, owning and operating these spy weapons come with a lot of extra work and responsibility for the operators. Being transparent takes time, effort, and expertise that you may not have. What do we mean by transparency? Built into these bills that legitimize mass spy tools, there need to be regular monthly agency reporting, public reporting and disclosure of statistical use and effectiveness measured by purpose of spy tool abuse and breach of data security. There need to be annual independent audits on these MassSpy tools reported to the council, including measures of cost, use effectiveness, transparency to the public, abuse, breach of data, security, and violation of civil personal rights. There need to be publicizing of county contracts as soon as they're proposed, as well as final forms, including public posting of where to read all the contracts, agreements, and legally enforceable documents regarding all parties, Since the MPD county regularly violates UIPA by litigation is the only consequence so far, the burden to publicize should be on the county. There must also be verification tours open to the public of all surveillance centers. We will need to see data traffic revealed. It should be open to regular public electronic inspection. There should be data batch logs sorted by data category, date, department, division, and unit that record the location of all the places where county collected data travels. All county collected data must be tagged so it can be tracked. Every recipient of the county collected data must agree to not interfere with these data tracking tags and to help with any tracking obstacles. But wait, there's more. When we say enforceable rights and consequences, we are talking about teeth because also built into these bills, there need to be model non-disclosure of data agreements to accompany every contract associated and enforceable on every contract party involved with these mass spy tool projects that are available online to the public. Also, meaningful consequences for violations of these bills, data breaches, other civil liberty violations such as triggering the exclusionary cause of in criminal proceedings, publicizing violations and breach details, and the names of people responsible for any breach, civil compensation to victims, and removal of violators from data access. This is a big job. But we'll see if you are up to it because with great responsibility does come, great responsibility comes with these weapons of mass surveillance that you wish to wield on all of us. So thank you for your time. Anybody?

Thank you, members. Any questions for the testifier? Member Batongan.

Yes. Thank you, Chair. And thank you, Miss, is it Hirschen?

Hirschen.

Hirschen. Thank you. So I hear in your testimony today, and I did receive your emails on August 27th and 31st, you make reference to or request that we, specifically me, investigate MPD's unlawful practices, but I'm not super clear on what those are. Can you... I mean, I'm happy to work with you, but I need something more specific to go off of. Can you give me evidence or even a specific example of the MPD violating a law that is not currently being investigated?

Well, that's not currently being... I mean, I'm just looking at the right hand to our police chief being arrested for what he was arrested for. and to put the tools in the hands of these gentlemen who, I mean, I might trust this gentleman right here, but I don't trust all of the MPD to do that. And I also would like you to investigate with the great committee, the connection between the federal government and our MPD, whatever they refuse, like he, like jake said they they refuse to answer those questions and tell us where exactly that data is going to be going um and then also this lady here sheila mentioned the privates you know all these cameras on private they they taking our data even if it's on a private uh private space that that cameras put on all that data is still accessible by y'all and Accessible by the federal government if need be if they want for any small reason so I would like you to investigate the connection between the MPD and the federal government because I think that's what your your great committee is about and

And then regarding that specific individual case, my understanding is that it is already being investigated criminally. Is the police commission also looking into that? So your request is that we have this body also take on

The great committee, your great committee, yeah.

Okay, so you want my committee specifically to also look into that?

I would, I would like that. I would like to know the connection between our MPD and our federal government.

No, no, no, the specific criminal.

Oh, this gentleman, I can't remember his last name. It starts with a V. He was our right hand to our police.

Okay, so just making sure I understand you correctly. Thank you.

Yeah, it's really just to, I wanna have trust.

I think we're getting a little bit off course of the bills that are on the agenda, but feel free to have a private conversation with member Batonga.

That's different, right, the grant committee, that's this question. But Tamara, I appreciate you doing this. I know it's a door opening, but I do see that we need a lot, there's a lot more to do, and maybe almost too much for us to do. So that's why I say let's get rid of these cameras. Members, any further questions for the testifier?

Seeing none, thank you.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Abe Vance, testifying on both items to be followed by Martin Hamilton.

Hawaii Chair, Council, thank you for being here. Officers, thanks for the conversation earlier. I'm here to learn as well, because I don't know what's happening locally here, and I'm watching what's happening nationally, and so I learned a bunch of things here. So really, I just more or less have a series of questions that I would ask myself if I was sitting in any of your chairs, and where I could find these answers, and maybe some of the other things that we've talked about here today. Are we able to name right now every agency and person that has access to the data of these devices? If access expands beyond the approval of these bills, as it has repeatedly everywhere, that's how we got to Flock and all these other things, who's accountable for the expansion? How does that happen and what's the transparency of that expansion? If federal agency, you never intended to grant access, requested this data next week, next month, next year, four years, what mechanism would be in place to actually stop them? Would you be comfortable with every person who could ever have access to this data had to identify themselves publicly as well? I think to the transparency aspect of this is, I mean, that's what surveillance is like. In the case of law enforcement, it's to be transparent so that you can solve crimes and make the, you know, have law and order and safety and all that. When the system misidentifies someone, which definitely happens, every version of it has so far, where does the cost bear? Is it on the vendor, the officer, the resident, and what are the systems in place to mitigate those? How would you know if the system was being misused right now without a victim having to identify it first? What are those redundant systems in place? If something does, sorry about that, if the next version of this technology is more invasive than what is going through with these current bills, and my understanding is these current cameras are offline from being here today, Who decides, do we have to go over this every time? And by I mean, do we have to, do we get to? And have these conversations as opposed to, oh, we said that was cool and then now we have drones flying around with tasers on them and things, which is a thing that exists and is happening. Is there a point at which this council would say, we've gone too far and we need to remove infrastructure? Or do we just keep building on it without an ability to scale back. So as the ability to scale back built into the expansion of these systems, again, problems have happened elsewhere. So it's not like this is gonna be perfect, nothing is. If the council approves in the next, skip that one. over prepared as because I actually like I seriously learned like a lot about this tonight locally so I throw out like half the things I brought so this is good fun. When you look at the communities that have already reversed course on systems, lots of communities, cities throughout the country, same technology, same tool maybe used in a stronger way. When they have reversed course on systems like this, what do you think they learned that we don't know yet? And are we actively reaching out to them for that matter? Are we reaching out like, hey, you guys tried this, that didn't work, what could we learn from that? If every council that approved this told them this was just a modest limited step, why does the technology keep escalating past that limit anyway? Do we have available and would we be comfortable having every contract amendment access log related to the system, not the data itself, we don't wanna expose people's private information, private. if that was published automatically without anyone having to request it so that the public is constantly up to date on what's happening. For instance, there are cameras on the island that people in this room do not know whose camera that is. I find that interesting. And so how can we figure that out as well? I think that's, and then I think a broader thing would be as these things, if it continues and it ends up in public spaces more and more, how does that affect the community's willingness to gather and speak once everybody is just like, well, we're just being recorded all the time everywhere anyway. How does that affect everything else? Yeah, every one of these things, all these different tools, again, they're tools. I've had these conversations. It's how it's applied, the guardrails in place, and so hopefully those guardrails will be transparent and strong enough to, so we don't have to make the same mistakes that have been made elsewhere, and ultimately we're actually serving the community and making it a better place for everybody. So those are my questions I have right now. I appreciate you all, and I don't know if you have any questions or anything else.

Thank you. Members, any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Martin Hamilton, testifying on both items, to be followed by Sharon Menefee.

Hi, thank you all. I was wondering, with my time, can I ask you all questions? Because I feel like some of the bills are a little, I see a no, sorry. I'm just gonna talk then.

You can ask the questions, you just.

Might not get an answer. Yes. All right, for sure, all right.

Lately won't get an answer, but we could repeat the questions when it's in discussion or something.

Thank you very much. I'll start with Bill 112. So as the bill stands, I would support it, but ask for the amendment to just not use AI facial recognition at all, or sorry, just not use facial recognition at all. The reason for this is because facial recognition in its current state is really poor at its job for a lot of things. So for example, a study by ACLU, they were looking at data collected from positivity and negativity rates. For someone like me, a white male, the error rate's about 0.8%. But for someone who would be like a brown skinned woman, the error rate would be 34.7%. so in a place where native hawaiians are the host culture we're a very diverse people here on maui and in maui county i think having like a one and third chance that someone who is you know a darker skinned woman would get an error rate i think is just way too high to say that we should be using Facial recognition the example given earlier from the officer was you know? We could use this to help scan kupuna who might not be able to communicate the air rates even higher for elderly people So I don't know if this is I don't think this should be used because the air rates are just so ineffective entirely my question which you may or may not answer and I hope you do is How would this facial recognition be? like first gotten, received, how is the database being used? Like how would it know what my face is? Is it pulled from another database? The second question is how would you get data on people's faces? The example earlier from the officer sounds like you just walk up and like you put your phone up to the capoon and it's like look here and then it scans them. Is anything else being used to scan faces with facial recognition? So that's my question on that. Then for Bill 113, I just heard a lot of questions that too because some of these bills seem, some people said maybe a little rushed or I'm just confused on them. They don't seem to be super clear. For Bill 113 as is, I would support the way it wants to stop sharing data. I think that's a very good thing. Some amendments though is, I guess again, I'm confused about what to amend because I'm unsure about how information is collected, so I'll ask some questions. The way it was said, it sounds like it only takes photos. Does that mean they're always on? And if so, can the live feed be accessed? Like, can you look at the live feed even when it's not taking a photo? Second, my question is, When it takes a photo, is it of every single vehicle that passes or only ones that are on, I think you call it like the red list or the hot list. Like when does it take a photo? Which company of course is being used, which someone, they weren't able to say earlier. And if I would offer another amendment for this one, as other people said, it'd be nice for there would be an ability for public access to, who accessed the data for the license plate reader, where the camera was accessed, and at what time. Because we've seen stories across the nation about police officers using these devices to spy on their ex-girlfriends or other people. When you're able to access that data and be like, oh, why is officer such and such keep looking at this one camera every single weekend at 11 PM at night, then it's able to go into and be more clear about if there's any sort of misuse of it. So that would be an amendment for that one. And then finally, my final question for both these bills together, do the officers or anyone have an estimate on the percentage of improvement on the crime rate, like their ability to solve crimes from this? Because if they're like, yeah, we're going to get like, 800 more crimes solved a year, like go up 800%, that's pretty good. But if you're like, maybe we'll get like 2% crime rate solving up, I'd be like, maybe not the best idea to put through these bills, which seem a little convoluted and confusing. So I'm hoping you all will be able to answer some of these questions, but then I'll yield my time. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. Members, any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Sharon Menefee to be followed by Robb Bentz on Teams.

You can begin your testimony.

Okay, just one second. Okay. All right. I have so many notes here, I'm not quite sure where to start. I guess I'll start with I appreciate the police for self-regulating themselves they're greatly appreciated and It's a noble act but I'm afraid that this tool is way way too powerful and Dangerous for it to be on our streets or anywhere near us They can be easily hacked into has been demonstrated. I had previously talked about this couple. There was somebody who demonstrated how they could be hacked. He went, found the cameras on another state. There was a couple arguing at a, um, at a restaurant. He was able to find out, through facial recognition who they were, where they lived. They'd had a child before. One of them was finishing school. The other one had irritable bowel syndrome. He was able to get into their medical records. He looked at their finances, said that their income to debt ratio was concerning. And then he also showed that where they lived and they had just had a baby. a year before. And all this information about these people came forward just by hacking into this flock camera. And so the flock cameras, they do collect a lot of data and they are easily hacked. They can be hacked by anybody with just a commercial type search engine. You can find out where the information is going. You don't need a user password. You didn't need or you know, a username or a password to get into this. He was able to, um, find somebody like go through the chemist and to look at the police records of their arrests that day. I'm able to find, um, people that had been escorted to an ambulance for mental health issues. they're just, just this plethora of all these things that these flock cameras can do. And, um, these are also being upgraded by is called the Leonardo. Um, I just didn't arrow to it. I can't remember. I'm not sure exactly where it is, but it's a, the Leonardo upgrading system by the Israeli defense contractor. So foreign entities can get into these. For an example, this August 26th, Communist China hacked into the DOG, the Federal Reserve. Other federal agencies, they got into the US Senate, they got into NASA.

Were you testifying on both bills?

Yes, hospitals, telecom providers, power companies, and let's see, financial institutions, and defense contractors. Okay, so plus hospital, I did say hospitals. Anyway, so... These hackers, they just are motivated by hacking. So you can have child predators, drug runners, anybody can get into these, they'll know exactly where the police are, they'll know exactly where they're supposed to meet somebody or what child they're gonna abduct or whatever, and they can delete. You can reach up on these cameras and you can delete the video that you don't want anyone to see. Or you can download directly from those cameras. So anyway, and it's too tempting. So for an example, the power of these things, I know the police have a tough job and they're trying to catch these criminals and that. And to not get to use these tools to do what they need to do is like, I don't know if anyone here could put their cell phone in a pot, you know, with a lid and not look at it for a week. Okay. So that's the kind of temptation that the drive and um, you know, corruption crosses, you know, all parties and all levels of government and it's just, it's too easy to abuse. So we have, okay, so, um, All right. And I totally messed up my notes, but anyway. Oh. Okay, so in the Hawaiian Constitution, it says words invasion of privacy were designed to protect against extensive governmental use of electronic surveillance techniques and undue governmental intrusion into areas of a person's life necessary to ensure individuality and human dignity. That's a 58 H boy, um, period four 12 comma five 70 P point two D 1323. And then if you go to a chapter eight Oh three dash 42, and go directly down to number seven. It says, uh, intentionally installs or uses a mobile tracking device without first obtaining a search warrant on the order of authorizing the installation and use of such drop it up, please. Um, okay. On such a device, she'll be guilty of a class C felony. Okay. And I think they put a couple other, a sentence in there about private property. But I think that's kind of concerning because that's actually in the Hawaiian Constitution, it's a classy felony.

So. Thank you. Members, any questions for the testifier? I had a question, most of your testimony centered around flock cameras and we the county at this time don't have any contracts with flock although there are flock cameras out there. Is your concern specifically to that company flock and they're being hacked and shared data or is it to automated license plate readers period?

All right, so the cameras that flash when somebody's speeding, that's one thing, okay? They're actually breaking the law and then they get a camera. But this contract that was signed in June by I think the Maui County Council was $1.7 million. Don't know who it went to, but it was involving AI surveillance. Okay.

So my question is, is your problem with flock specifically or all automated license plate readers?

The ones that flash when there's something, a violation, I'm not crazy about them, but it's tolerable. But the ones that follow you and if you get a Freedom of Information Act and you find out that they tracked you to 437 times, which one guy did, that's a problem. So can I address the facial recognition now?

that that was the entirety of your time when the first bell rang was the first three minutes and then, Oh, okay.

Well, if I may say one more thing, okay. So as far as the facial recognition and the police policing themselves, you know, like, uh, that's fine. What about Ford? What about Chevy? What about Toyota? they have the facial recognition, they have the data uploads, they sell the data. They have a kill switch on the car, so if you happen to cut yourself and need to go to the hospital, you get in that car and it tracks your eyes.

We don't regulate Ford, Toyota, the TSA, none of that. You're gonna have to go to a higher level of government than your county council. You can't ban it. No, yeah. All right. Thank you.

Thank you for your attention. Any questions?

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Robert Bents on Teams to be followed by Stacey Allapai.

Hello, Chair, Council, staff, and everybody, fellow citizens. I am in opposition to these bills as written. I provided an email to the chair and written testimony asking for amendments. it's uh i'll just read my amendments and i'll just talk sorry after that i asked the committee to amend bill 113 to prohibit the acquisition operation and expansion of al pr systems by county agency and to require the decommissioning of existing systems uh i heard the lieutenant that sounds like we don't have facial recognition maybe but we do have ALDPR already, or is this bill coming up kind of, It sounds like it's regulating it, but it's just allowing technology that even if the 100% of the police were all 100% great people, it's so easy to get them hacked nowadays and hasn't worked in any way. So I'm up against Bill 113. And for that one, I would suggest that amendment to remove them. for Bill 112, urge the committee to amend Bill 112 to impose a complete ban on the acquisition use or deployment of facial recognition technology by any county agency, including the Maui Police Department. Okay, I hope, This is kind of one of those moments that goes down in history. These tools, as the council lawyer was kind of saying, either you allow them and there's not much you can do after you allow them or you don't allow them. So I would say please don't allow either one of these. As far as the Supreme Court in 1967, it was a very different world as far as what was public, and they agreed, and I agree with that. But there's been four Supreme Court rulings since then, 2012 about GPS and following a car. This system, they haven't had a ruling, but it essentially does even more than GPS. You can follow the cars with these systems. As far as the flock rows by any other name, And there's a lot of other great videos on YouTube that talks about flock being kind of a scapegoat. Because the county definitely has conferences, contracts with Axiom because they do the body cameras. But then those body cameras didn't find the corruption on the website. first bill so mr bents that um did you hear the bell that was for the first um yeah okay you're gonna move on to your second one yeah i'm addressing both bills and okay the the it's pretty much orwellian if anybody hasn't read this book not only the technology, but the way these bills are being presented in council, because you get a presentation from MPD, but no presentation from ACLU or the defense, but the defense, that's pretty much only people that could maybe speak, but they're all overworked. So this is civil liberties. The problems with MPD aside, These bills, you either approve them or you don't approve them. So it's kind of a rallying to have a name where it acts like you're going against it, but you're actually allowing them. So please amend these bills and be clear is how are you, where you stand. this is very very important like only one in six people in the state that are adults vote it's like the lowest voter turnout since statehood because most people only heard about this 1.7 million dollars when it was on the state tv news and then they think about it they all again vote against all the council uh but before i tell them before you vote against the council see how they vote on this because if you support this with just the the fake protections because we know the world everybody can hack it now you don't even have to be a hacker they'll have a a tick tock video or whatever show the people what to download everybody can do them So it's not even like you gotta be all Akamai with computers or anything to do all this kind of stuff. And it's your power right now. You can either vote to not allow them and kind of repeal your previous decision or you allow them and it's just like every other jurisdiction has proven. The first one that used any of these technologies, the Axion contract not counting or not catching the Chiefs right-hand man. But even if it was a perfect system, it's never possible to have a perfectly protected system. So this is kind of like that Terminator moment where we can approve our local version of AI or we could stand up for what the Constitution in 2012 2018, as recently as 2026, four different Supreme Court rulings. So I hope you guys all do what is good for the community and I appreciate your time. Mahalo.

Thank you, Mr. Bentz. Members, any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Oh, wait. Chair, before you call the next testifier, can I ask for a recess? We have about an hour left in the meeting and we're about halfway through testimony. Can I ask for a quick break?

Members, any objection to a 10-minute recess? All right, we'll take a 10 minute recess to return at 325. Will the Disaster Recovery International Affairs and Planning Committee meeting return to order? The time is 3.26, and I believe we left off on Testifier Allapai. Oh, go ahead.

Aloha, council members. Aloha. I want to thank you first for beginning this discussion around data privacy and mass surveillance. I think it's been a long time coming in the for bringing this discussion to the table. With these two specific bills on the agenda today, I want to be clear that I support the bills in their intentions. But in general, I do not support escalating mass surveillance on our island or using surveillance tech for community policing. I don't think it's necessary. But the tech is here. It already exists. So I support these billed efforts to put more information on the agenda. of the necessary safeguards in place and doing like harm mitigation efforts. So mahalo member Paulton for introducing this. My preference would be to stop funding these cameras and take them down because I'm a proponent of community policing and humans managing ourselves. So I think I would prefer the county's money be invested into more community police over this. especially with video evidence becoming less and less reliable and admissible in court with the escalation of AI and the easy ability to fake video evidence. I think it's going to become obsolete and we're gonna need more human eyes on the ground to verify this information. That's how they do it in Oregon when they have red light cameras or speed cameras, they're required to have officers on site with the camera so that they have a human person to verify what the camera is seeing. I listened to the presentation at the beginning and I adjusted some of my testimony after that and I'm a little bit confused by the contradictions. While I'm happy to hear that the county doesn't have any contracts with flock or flock-like companies, Looking at the website maps.dblock.org, there are 37 cameras designated as block cameras or Motorola cameras on Maui Island alone. Most of them on a quick browse appear to be on state highways. So maybe it's the state that owns those. But if MPD doesn't have a contract with these companies, how are they providing the photos that were in that presentation? So I just would like some clarification on that. So if if the county doesn't have a contract with block, but these pictures are being taken with block cameras and then being emailed to MPD when they're hit on their hot list, that just seems like something that doesn't really match up. And so I would like to do more investigation on that during this conversation, if possible. I think that the question of who owns these cameras does need to be answered, even if it's not the county. We should know who owns them and who has access to them. so that the public just knows where they're coming from i think a lot of the hesitation to the technology and the fear that we're hearing in testimony is coming from that lack of knowing who's behind the cameras i'm testifying on both so is there a way for the council to advocate at the state or whatever higher entity that we identify in order to better regulate these cameras I'm starting to see the point of the multiple requests for this to be brought up in the Great Committee. I don't personally care which committee hosts this conversation, and I fully trust Member Paulton to guide us where we need to go here. Recommendations for ways to strengthen the bills. I would want to have real qualitative and quantitative data on how any of this actually makes us safer. Maybe a cost benefit analysis comparing this to human policing and how exactly these cameras are used to improve public safety, if at all. I'd also like additional safeguards in place to limit the data retention of these videos. I don't know how long they're stored, but I feel like it should be given an end date for multiple reasons, which I can elaborate on if you like. But I think holding the data for like maybe a month would be appropriate and then it should be deleted. So we're not just like hoarding all this data and increasing the need for more data centers, more energy usage, all of that stuff. Data costs money. I also think that we need to have a mechanism where they're turned off. They shouldn't just be passively surveilling people all the time. So I would love to hear discussion on how we can have these not be on 24 seven, 365. I've heard stories both locally and nationally of bad apples who misuse their access to these policing tools. And so I think it's important to have specific access control policies. It sounds like some of them are already in place and this bill would just codify them. So I support that. I also support efforts to have detailed logs and audits of who is accessing the cameras when and for what purpose. I also think it's important to have no blanket data sharing agreements with any entities. Sharing restrictions are really important because each point of sharing is another access point of weakness for potential security breaches of any kind. And so hearing that these hot list alerts are sent via email, email is notoriously one of the most vulnerable data points of entry that's much more easily hacked. So that's kind of a concern of like how the information gathered in both the LPRs and potentially facial recognition, even though we don't currently have it. How is that information then sent out to officers? And is that a secure delivery system that is not vulnerable to hacking? Because hackers do get more. elaborate in their schemes. So like if it's going to someone's phone and their phone is not a secure phone, that's probably not a safe point of entry. Or if it's using Wi-Fi, so there's a lot of different, we could talk for a long time about data privacy and data security. But overall, I just really appreciate the efforts at heart mitigation and look forward to the rest of the conversation. Mahalo.

Thank you for your testimony. Members, questions for the testifier? And I did wanna clarify that we are aware of the flock cameras in Wahikuli. Those were requested by the residents. I mean, not that they requested flock cameras, they requested cameras because their building materials were being stolen. And that I guess the managing director or somebody reached out to the Department of Justice and they were the ones to install the flock cameras in Wahikuli. Not sure who has access to that, but I guess when the time comes, we could send a letter to the state and request information. Any clarifying questions for the testifier? I had one, just wanted to clarify, you wanted to know the qualitative and quantitative measures of success of utilizing automated license plate readers, is that? And I also wanted to clarify, you specifically mentioned Flock and Motorola. Is it that you don't like specifically a brand or is it what you're seeing applies to any automated license plate reader?

I'm using the term Flock like we do Kleenex. I mean it for all of the technology. That's just kind of the colloquial name that people refer to it as. But I would say that in general, these safeguards should apply to all surveillance technology regardless of the brand name.

Thank you. And then to clarify, when you say all surveillance technology regardless of the brand name, that the county is the lowest governmental jurisdiction and we don't tell the state or the federal government how to utilize their equipment or private entities that have their private equipment on private properties. To clarify, are you asking us to tell other entities how to use things that they purchase or contract with?

are you seeing within our purview if i could wave a magic wand i would but i know that you guys have limitations and so i would probably advocate for the county to maybe try to collaborate with the state to get those safeguards that you're putting in place today to be uniform with what the state does. And then I would also, probably can't be added onto this bill since this is an MPD specific bill, but I would love to see more laws around just privacy in general to protect people's privacy in public spaces from being like tracked by privately owned or government owned cameras

Okay, thank you.

Oh, and then to answer about the qualitative and quantitative data, to clarify on that, I think it would be helpful since this is new technology for both the council and the public to better understand the costs and benefits of the technology as it's being used. Like say we're spending, I don't know the exact numbers in the budget, but say we spend a million dollars on these cameras, what did that million dollars get us in terms of public safety KPI, key performance indicators? and compare that to like just increasing more funding for more police in like human police officers and balance out balance that out of the cost benefit of of those comparing those is kind of what i meant because there's There's stories that you can tell, but then there's also real numbers of how many stolen cars did they recover with ALPR data versus not ALPR data. Because I'm of the opinion that coconut wireless is unmatched. So I think we're more likely to find stolen vehicles through word of mouth and community research. doing our thing over like a bunch of cameras everywhere, tagging every car and hopefully catching the needle in a haystack. So I would just like to see the data behind that.

Okay, thank you. I just, I mean, we've been down 25% of the police force that we funded for. So I think everyone would love to hire more warm bodies, but it's can we do it? But yeah, happy to brainstorm with you offline. Any other questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is the individual calling in from the number ending with 4945 to be followed by Livet Calentine.

Okay, go ahead.

Wish I could change my phone number to 1984, because here we are. It's 40 years late, but here we are. Hello, Chair Fulton. I could have planned it out better. I didn't know that this meeting was going to be scheduled. I didn't know what the agenda was for today. Thank you, Mr. Bing, Dr. Ross. And it's been a good meeting to be arrested at because I have many witnesses over there. Mr. Andrew is supposed to, he's hopefully is supposed to be prosecuting or at least defending my rights to attend meetings. I apologize that the up country is not there. I'm pretty sure she would have just, she's not there because she has already made her decision both the security cameras and she's pushing this melody and everything. So hello everybody. I wish I could be there because, I'm probably on facial recognition, but it's, like, more better just to be recognized by your fellow Islanders than to be having to let their camera do it. I was there at the Kaulana O Maui Halekui building when they installed the cameras a few years ago. You kind of get used to them. What you don't get used to is the security people in the basements texting up to everybody in the building, J.C. is here. I'll bet that is distracting, especially to employees who don't like them. and you're dark side corporation council lawyers, you transform citizen public interest into leaked terminology like disruption. County clerk's office might then transform it into harassment, and then the police department alerts the goon squad, and they turn it into trespassing. Yeah, it's the other thing that's out of hand. And they don't even know anything about the sunshine law when you ask them. The camera can be edited. It happened to me. It can be added to a particular narrative or deleted. I thought it was gonna be, I got some advice from Blake Takayama. I wish you guys could get him as an expert. He's the chief security officer for Maui County. Works under managing director Nishita, he says. So where's he at? How come he's not there? Moana Ludy accused me of harassing

If we can stick to the agenda items, Mr. Law.

Security cameras and facial recognition. I'm about 99.9% sure they have facial recognition there. I couldn't even get probably 10 feet into the left diner there before they sent down somebody to come and help me from getting there. So as campaign always says, who benefits and who loses?

Thank you for your testimony. Members, any clarifying questions for the testifier? Huh?

Can you please wrap it up? Okay. I need to get on board, I haven't seen them, where are they at? Thank you.

Members, any questions for the testifier?

on the facial recognition too, it's her government.

Seeing no questions, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the next person signed up to testify is Livet Calentine to be followed by, apologies, to be followed by Kevin in the chamber.

Thank you. Ms. Calentine?

Am I unmuted now?

Yes.

Okay, great. Thank you. Well, hi. Hi, and good afternoon. Aloha, Chair Paulton and members of the committee. I'm probably going to testify on both bills, but it's more about the issue than the specific bill, so I apologize for that. uh my name is livid calentine and i am a long time wailuku resident i'm here today to urge this committee to pause the expansion and to to mandate strict legislative oversight on maui county's newly approved 1.7 million dollar ai surveillance and automated license plate reading reader infrastructure While public safety is a goal that we all share, expanding an unvetted island-wide tracking grid without ironclad binding regulations is a direct threat to the privacy and safety of our community. Proponents often claim that technologies like Flock, and that's just used generically, only look at license plates and do not track individual people. This is flatly false. Internal industry training videos exposed by journalists prove these systems are designed to track targets from location to location to location in real time. In an island ecosystem like Maui's, An interconnected camera grid maps the daily routines, medical visits, and personal lives of every single law abiding citizen, of which I am one. The risk of insider abuse is not hypothetical, it is systemic. A major investigation by the Washington Post revealed that at least 50 law enforcement officers across the United States have been caught or criminally charged with misusing these exact camera networks to stalk ex-wives, girlfriends, or romantic partners. In Savannah, Georgia, six police employees were abruptly fired after an audit uncovered rampant personal abuse of the system. Without automated, unalterable audit logs and strict local laws we are handing a powerful weapon to potential abusers directly endangering maui's families fortunately we can learn from the mainland's mistakes over 200 cities and towns across the country country have already deactivated their cameras or cancelled their contracts due to data abuse privacy violations and massive community backlash Just days ago, Phoenix suburbs Tempe and Cave Creek completely terminated their contracts. As Maui navigates a painful historic disaster recovery process, spending $1.7 million on an invasive mass surveillance network is a stark misallocation of resources. These taxpayer dollars must be prioritized for urgent local infrastructure, emergency evacuation routes, and housing, not for turning Maui County into a corporate monitored surveillance state.

Thank you. That's your first item.

I'm almost done with my entire... Thank you, Ms. Paulton. I'm almost done with the entire thing. I respectfully ask this committee to introduce an ordinance mandating a 30-day maximum data retention limit, automated independent audit logs to stop insider stalking, and an annual public transparency report before a single camera is turned on or connected to the county network. Public safety must mean safety for the community, not blanket surveillance of the community. Mahalo for your time and for your leadership.

Thank you, Ms. Calentine. The third bill that was directly referred has what you're asking for on length of time the data is collected. Just FYI on that.

The third bill? There's another bill besides 112 and 113?

Yeah, we just didn't, it's still being worked on.

Oh, okay. Okay, great. All right. Well, if you need any help, I'd be happy to help.

Thank you. Thank you. I have your number. Okay. Members, any questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

You're welcome.

Thank you for that.

The next person signed up to testify is Kevin in the chamber to be followed by Greg Rilski.

Just a quick clarifying point. All of the ALPRs in the county on the roadways are Motorola. Those are Avigilon cameras. Those are also owned by Motorola. Most of the cameras in the county are Avigilon cameras. I'm just going to read. This is a written submission, so you can read it online. Aloha. When I saw it on YouTube around a year ago, I thought, nah, nobody would do that here. We are fortunate enough to live in a paradise that doesn't have the crime to support nor the desire to self-impose this. Maui has been and will continue to be a place where people show mutual respect with emphasis and purpose. The continent is far, the ocean is wide, and the people's tolerance for oppression is closely guarded and razor thin. Not just the voters, the people. Then I drove past it, probably the one by North Firebreak Road or maybe the one just outside of North Kihei, a stationary license plate reader. I immediately went to the county council and Maui police. I spoke to my state senator. I spoke to the mayor. The wheels of government and the collective mind of civilization move in a synchronous fashion. Surely, if not our council, our Senate, and if not our Senate, our mayor, and if not our mayor, society as a whole. I waited, I watched. I became as patient as 10-year-old evidence lost in a license plate reader database just waiting to be summoned as testimony in 2036 by an AI judge. It seems that society got there first. In the interest of future complexity and social absolution, this is your opportunity to follow suit. I, like the database, now have the opportunity to offer my skulking testimony. In this, I think the highest consideration is what is the best possible outcome for Maui related to license plate readers and facial recognitions. Let's say we only take the steps put forth in this initial legislation. It's a good start. We as a community will have officially reached the 10-yard line after almost being tackled in our own end zone. Then, let's imagine we want to go all the way. Here are the steps as I see them. Number one, cancel all existing license plate reader and facial recognition contracts and then take down the cameras. Put them in a previously used box, let the transient residents of Pulehu Road across from Safeway pass the box around and send whatever they don't want back to Motorola. Number two, publicly and voraciously audit the Maui Police LPR and facial recognition databases and send a letter of apology and brief explanation to any vehicle owner or person that was searched or hotlisted without the very least verifiable probable cause. Number three, take the millions of dollars that the county is spending and planning to spend on this technology and give every member of the Maui police that did not abuse the LPR or facial recognition system a $6,000 raise. If we sell the police helicopter camera system and drones, even at secondhand prices, we could probably give the entire Maui Fire Department and ocean safety team a $6,000 raise per person as well. The ghetto bird can stay. I know you guys like it. Number four, examine when any outside group or agencies access the Maui Police LPR or facial recognition databases and disclose exactly what was released and to which entity while protecting the identities of those being searched. Number five, delete the LPR and facial recognition databases and make sure any information that was shared with other agencies is removed with prejudice. Number six, promise us you'll never do it again. Ask our forgiveness. Thank us for bringing this egregious error to your attention. We know you weren't involved. You must have missed those lines in the budget. Understandable. We see you out there working hard for the people. Put together some never again legislation just to show us you care. With these few steps, we're moving the ball. We are looking good as a county. We are steadily returning to the right side of history and regaining the people's trust. The only issue is now that the county has taken down these police cameras, we're beginning to notice complex cameras in every municipal lot and garage in Wailuku, with more spreading rapidly throughout Maui County parks and buildings. It can't be that a whole separate section of Maui County government outside of the police is conducting warrantless LPR facial recognition and or AI and enhanced surveillance on citizens in public, right? It is starting to seem like we're going to need a bigger box and more people to pick through the scrap metal. Since we already took care of this issue with Maui Police, peeling these technologies from Maui County Management's hands should be a cakewalk. Now we are getting somewhere, way downfield. Citizens are beginning to feel comfortable on public right-of-ways again. Most of the municipal cameras have been removed and only critical, non-facial recognition, non-LPR and non-AI cameras remain in limited quantities and localized databases. Legislation exists to protect the citizens from all related government technology. The back rooms of Kalano Maui have gotten bored without citizens to surveil and have returned to the sun. Then we start noticing the non-governmental LPRs and cameras. These cameras are capable of advanced features we just got rid of in government. Those trailers in every commercial parking lot adorned with cameras, blue lights mirroring the project buildings of their inception, large off-island corporations installing thousands of cameras with little or no labeling. They're not always selling your data. Sometimes they're just sharing, often directly with police via warrant-free surveillance back doors. But by now, you've figured out surveillance technology is a free-for-all. Private corporations are using, sharing, and selling license plate, facial recognition, and cell phone data internally, externally, crossing local, county, state, and federal borders. The ways in which corporations will be regulated is one of the most challenging parts of this whole equation. In this question, one must weigh the freedom of commerce against the rights of the individual. If one can't buy bread or lumber without becoming subject to indiscriminate invasive surveillance, can our society truly be classified as free? Solving this puts us right next to the goal line. Can I finish?

30 seconds on this one. Are you testifying on both items?

Yes.

Okay. And then I mean, finish up on this one and then start the next one.

Oh, no, I'm finishing up here. Oh, okay, go ahead. I'm wrapping up. How Maui County structures these bills will determine the value of everyone's future here, as privacy is held as our sixth and seventh most sacred principles in the Constitution of the State of Hawaii, and the fourth most sacred principle in the United States Constitution. If we take a proactive approach to protecting citizens from surveillance, we could be a beacon for the world. We could influence the future actions of state and federal legislators. Let us be the change that we want to see in the world. Finally, I would like anyone reading or listening to this to consider these other quickly changing related technologies, which are right on the heels and interrelated to LPRs and facial recognition. Can I read them? Number one, signal tracking. Number two, household cameras merging and syncing with police departments and commercial databases. Number three, invasive vehicle technology. Number four, body cameras with language and facial recognition. Number five, advanced robotics and humanoid machines. Number six, autonomous drones and other advanced drone technology. Number seven, audio detecting technology. I appreciate your careful review.

Thank you, Mr. Kevin. Members, any questions for the testifier? Member Butongan.

Thank you, Chair. Kevin, you said you submitted this in writing and it should be available online, but I don't see it. Would you mind?

I submitted it to the front and they passed it around. But I also emailed it directly to all the council members.

Oh, it's in the email, not the e-comment. Okay, thank you.

Any further questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, the last person we have signed up to testify is Greg Grylski in the chamber.

Good afternoon, everyone. So as a Lahaina resident going to the recovery meetings, seeing all of the thefts that were happening, cameras definitely proved to be an asset. You know, they're not preventing anything, but they're certainly helping us to recover. They're sending a message that we're watching. The mayor came out and said we're gonna double the penalties for that. So I mean, that was a fantastic use of camera technology. But now we have something a little bit more. We have the artificial intelligence. We have the facial recognition. We have the license plate readers. My concerns come to are the hot list whenever they get generated to start looking for license plates, are those signed by a judge? Is that based on a warrant or is that based on anonymous information? what has the ability to generate those alerts when those alerts are they sent to the camera or are the cameras feeding information back right so like if you have a license plate number in a description of a vehicle as the vehicles go by are they only looking for a gray kia with the license with that license plate or are they looking at absolutely every single vehicle and snapping pictures of that are they evaluating that information on the camera and then sending the information back. Clearly these cameras are using some sort of wireless technology. So what is that technology? How is that encrypted? Who owns that? Do we have the ability that it doesn't leave the island? Is that coming back to, does that go back to the continent? Does that go to Europe? Where does that information go? So it'll be good to hear where that goes. information where the processing takes place, how that processing is even determined, where the cameras know what to look for, and to then send those email alerts back. How are those email alerts generated? So we now have, is this coming directly from the camera? Do we have something centralized here on Maui, in Hawaii, in the United States? Where are we doing this? We're lucky that we don't have to have, other people they're not no one's driving here from another county right so we're not sharing this information with other counties for the you know everyone's so concerned about the you know watching everybody and tracking everybody's movement as they go everywhere so we do have some ability i hope to keep this information and these databases localized and and not anywhere else we have the communication piece to it. And that's like the license plate reader. And then as far as the AI cameras, that's such a slippery slope. Like, where do you, you know, I can't even imagine where we're gonna be in five years in this conversation, because it's only getting more and more more prevalent we don't just have the county side we do have all the private cameras we do have other cameras out there you know can we ensure that those don't face public roadways can we set up some sort of guideline regarding those cameras as well a while ago ring i don't know if they still do it but they kind of opted everybody in to be able to share their information with the police and then you had to manually go in and i'm going to keep going then you had to manually go in and opt out of that so are those also options right the vehicles now all kinds of there's there's lidar and all kinds of other things so cameras are all over vehicles so we have cameras everywhere in the island you know your cell phone there's just so much opportunity so so the the the chance to be able to set the guidelines to be able to talk about how is the data processed where is the data process where is the data kept how long is the data kept you know is the data backed up at all these are all things that we have an opportunity to to ask everyone you know how are these vendors um are we on the separate government type plan, or are we just on a commercial plan? Because there are different ways that these companies, they're selling to all kinds of people, so let's make sure we're on the right plan for that. And to make sure that... you know the police department's supposed to be our friend and the last thing we need is all of these accusations or a bunch of people coming in saying we want to review these things and you know you're following me around and the way it is right now we're not putting the police in a position of success because they have here all of these complaints that are coming from the continent all of these these individual bad officers that are doing bad things and so unfortunately people will think that there's a greater chance of that happening here. So if we can have safeguards around when people are seeing things, if there's too much activity from an individual officers, we just need to find ways to put safeguards in place to not only protect the public, but also to protect the watchers, the people that, you know, we don't want to have an opportunity for false allegations to spin out of control for the people that are looking at whatever is here. And if we can sunset the funding so that this has to be justified, if we can look at what were the metrics, you know, how much did we reduce crime? How much faster did we reduce crime? It wasn't that long ago when somebody stole that Humvee from the National Guard, and for some reason it was on island for a couple months. I mean, it kind of became jokes about that, but once people understand, oh, the cameras are out, they're going to garage stuff. It was good seeing that the spray paint and the damage to vehicles can be overcome by the cameras, but how are we really going to... put ourselves in a position where we can remind everybody this is Maui, this isn't the continent, this isn't the rest of the world. We do things a little different and we have an opportunity being all by ourselves out in the middle of nowhere that maybe we don't have to do things the way they do in the big cities. That concludes my testimony.

Thank you, Mr. Roski. Members, questions for the testifier? Seeing none, thank you for your testimony.

Chair, there's currently no one else signed up to testify, so we'll do a last call. If there's anyone else who would like to testify on either DRIP 26 or DRIP 27, please identify yourself now. On teams, you can do that by raising your hand. We'll do a countdown. Three, two, one. Chair, there is no one else to testify.

Thank you. Members, any objection to closing oral testimony and accepting written testimony into the record? And it'll remain open for written testimony.

No, no objections.

Okay, thank you. I did want to clarify, we're focusing on Bill 112 and Bill 113. There were a lot of other outside remarks on it, and I'm not sure as to the legalities of us regulating private property or the state or the federal, but we can certainly send letters out. I do know the people that were concerned about us sharing the data with other governmental jurisdictions that we are under this current legislation. occupation system subject to the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Judicial Administration, Chapter 1, Department of Justice, Part 23, Criminal Intelligence Systems Operating Policies. So that's 28 CFR 23.1, which regulates how data can be shared with other entities, but I think at this time, based on the testimony that we all heard, I wanted to check back in with the police and the prosecuting attorney, possibly the managing director, if they have any further remarks in relation to the testimonies that we all heard.

No? Not at this time, Chair.

Okay, we have about 15 minutes left. I'd like to open it up. The floor looks like Member Cook followed by Member Johnson because we have a short amount of time. We can have more tomorrow at the recess, but three minutes for today so that we can try to get as much people to at least answer their burning questions. Go ahead, Member Cook.

Thank you, Chair. I'm curious, because I see it in Longs and other places, so legally, broad strokes, how is it, like the county's catching a lot of heat because of lumping at everybody. These things at Longs and other places, they basically have the right to supervise their area, and anyway, I guess, This is a really complicated thing and I was hoping I could get some light education.

So let me take a stab at this. Number one, if we're talking about cameras in a public space owned by a private entity, there's no state action involved. The government hasn't placed those cameras in that place, right?

I understand that, I'm just wondering about where, like their legal right on their property to put cameras and do what they want, is there any limitations or any factors on that? I know the government's not doing it, but what I hear is people see it being done in different areas and lumping it all together, and I'm just wondering, because I've seen in Long's, is there any rules whatsoever about uh photographing and recording people in a parking lot so when when you're in a when you're in a public space right i mean there you

don't have the level of reasonable expectation of privacy that you would in other private spaces such as your own home right so if i enter longs i'm i'm here in this chamber right now i think i counted seven cameras on me right now I have no reasonable expectation of privacy as to my current location. In fact, it's being broadcast. So if I walk into Long's, if I walk into a grocery store, public parking garage, it's the same idea.

Thank you. I mean, and what you say is obvious, but that I've never had I felt that way, I thought that was the deal, but I just needed to get some clarity because of the extent of concern and linking everything together. So you answer my question, thanks.

Member Johnson, your opportunity.

Okay, I have three minutes real quick. I'm glad Mr. Martin brought up that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places, and yet still you go down the state building and there's signs up in the offices that say you can't take pictures here as a resident or as a customer of the building. and yet the state building has cameras all over the constituents. That's an issue. People get sued all over that all over the time on the mainland. It's called PNAC, photography is not a crime. It's a movement, whatever. That's not what we're talking about today. I'm glad Mr. Martin brought that up because there's awareness on that. What pot of money did we use these cameras from, or we used to buy these cameras from? Can you guys explain where that money came from? Was it out of your general budget? What budget pot did it come out of?

That we intend to, because I don't think the contract has been executed yet. Go ahead, Mr., sorry, Lieutenant Kamaka Vimo.

Yeah, we could get the exact line of funding and whatever information you guys are asking for. We can get that and send it back.

If it's a letter, that's fine. I am on limited time, so I'll just jump right in. I would like an outright ban on any type of, or a moratorium on any type of traffic control using cameras or AI in public spaces. I asked the chief here in this building, in this chambers once, and I asked him if the juice is worth the squeeze on a different topic, and on this topic, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze. I feel that there are some tools in the police box that can be misused, and this is one of those tools. I don't really like the way it's going. Um, and I'll just lastly say that, you know, in the state of the county addressed by the mayor, we had a 14% reduction in crime rates. So good job. You guys are doing good on that way. Reduce the crime rate. There's other ways to do it than this. And I appreciate that you guys are working to get that crime rate lower. I don't support technology just for the sake of technology. I'm not a technocrat. I'm a father and I'm a farmer. So that's where I stay on this. Thank you chair.

Staff, you got the information to send the letter per Member Johnson's request?

Yes, Chair, thank you.

Okay. So you didn't require any further answer to any of your questions?

No, that's my question. Thank you, Chair.

Member Sinensi?

I didn't quite get, remember Johnson's letter was to whom? Because that was my request.

It was to the police department where in the budget is the money to enter into a contract with a vendor. Got it. Camera automated license plate reader.

Okay, thank you for that notification. My request would, if we could, I think Ms. Walker mentioned that there are already existing flock cameras on some of the highways. So if we could request from either the State Department of Transportation, if they currently have any flock cameras on any of the state highways, because several testifiers I believe mentioned existing ones. I know you mentioned about Wahikuli for the residents, but if the state has any, that would be appreciated.

To clarify, you'd like us to send a letter to the state asking if they have flock or any other type of automated license plate reader cameras in use in Maui County? and where they would be located.

Yeah, that was some of the concerns from our testifiers.

Okay. And I don't know if we just send it blanket to the state, to the Department of Justice or the Department of Transportation or all of the above, but we'll figure it out. Did you have more questions?

Just that one question. Just if I mentioned the pictures that were included of the license plate breeders, do we already have that? Are we already receiving those pictures online, hot lists, and from whom?

Officer Mark, did you care to clarify in the presentation if we don't have automated license plate readers where those presentation picture and emails are from?

So we have automated license plate readers existing in common traffic gateways and then given like the initial presentation showed if we have a legitimate reason to, you know, all the different ways outlined in that presentation to put it on a hot list, then it will send a hit saying, hey, this vehicle was on the hot list and it's a potential stolen vehicle or a potential, you know, abducted person possibly connected with the vehicle or what have you, depends on the case. I'm sorry, did that answer the question?

We already have those cameras, but they're just cameras mounted on top of the intersections on street lights.

These are just fixed point cameras that are picking up optical character recognition as a vehicle drives by and saying, okay, this looks like a license plate or looks like a... you know, characters on something and it's gonna take a photo and then if that matches something on the hot list, then it will say, hey, this is a potential match and worth looking at by a human.

Do you mind clarifying if the county owns or is contracted with those cameras that you're referring to?

So the cameras that we're talking about, the Motorola cameras, those are operated by us. But I will have to get the same letter that I'll submit to Councilmember Gabe Johnson as far as line items, cost, and then also any agreements that are there. But there is no huge contracts that are being mentioned today in regards to these cameras.

Staff, you got the information for that to be included in the letter for Member Johnson, for Member Sinensi as well?

Yes, Chair, thank you.

And I believe, I thought, was it Mr. Nishita, did you have your hand up that you wanted to answer Member Sinensi's question as well?

Thank you, Chair. No, I just was going to add, and I'll follow up after this meeting as well, just in relation to the discussion about the cameras at Wahikuli, I did specifically ask our team about that. Those cameras are from the Department of Law Enforcement. I was told that those are not flock cameras, and I was given another name, and I can't remember him for the life of me right now, but I will follow up with our team following this. who can provide that information to the committee as well. But I just wanted to note that at least to our understanding, those cameras being used at Wahikuli were not flat cameras.

Okay, does the county have access to those cameras?

Thank you, Chair. To my knowledge, we do not have access to it. It's a law enforcement piece. I'm not aware of anyone on my staff or anything having access to those cameras.

Okay, thank you. Member Sinensi, does that satisfy your opportunity? Okay. Member Batongan?

Thanks, Chair. I do want to note the time. It's 4.16. Do you have to, Hele?

Yeah, you'll probably be the last question, and then we'll recess till tomorrow. Okay.

Corporation Council, I have in my notes that you had concerns with the bills as to formal legality and wanted to make two suggested amendments. Can you walk us through those two amendments, please?

Sorry. The first one I did already talk to Chair about It was a typo. Yeah, it was. She confirmed it was a typo in 112 in paragraph. 8.38.060 it says the county may execute and then goes on to say business practices which sale and license um i confirmed with chair that that is supposed to be must not uh so that was that was my main one uh because okay it seemed like it was against the intent of the rest of the bill and so she did confirm that uh the other one that i had was on um bill 112 um In the section on prohibitions on usage, there was an act passed in the last legislative session, Act 212, that prohibited use of facial recognition technology in relation to quote automated speed enforcement unquote and quote photo red light imaging detector systems unquote so I thought that those should maybe be added I believe that those might fit under the already in there for civil. Traffic enforcement but I'm aware that you know at least for automated speed enforcement there are actually there's criminal. There are criminal sanctions for. for speed enforcement as well. So in order to comply with the state law, I thought that those should be added. Those are the two things that I had mentioned.

Okay, thank you. And then I guess just before we wrap up, Chair, I know that there was some comments from the prosecuting attorney on suggested edits to 112 and 113. I guess if we're gonna break, can I ask that they work on a specific language that we can consider for an amendment when we pick this back up tomorrow? Absolutely, we can do that. Thank you, Chair. That concludes my questions.

Thank you. As noted, we did have a hard out at 4.15. We did secure a recess date for tomorrow to begin at 9 a.m. We only polled for 9 to 12, but if members are available, we do have also a public hearing at 4.30 for the whole Anani bills, so I figured, you know, take an hour and a half break in between unless you guys don't want to and we lose quorum. We have the South Maui community plan coming up after the HVAC conference that we're hosting. We're all a bunch of busy little bees. So we'll take this back up tomorrow. I would like to recommend that we recess this meeting till 9 a.m. tomorrow at the same Teams link, same physical location, and that's it.

Yes, Chair, so we'll recess to tomorrow at 9 a.m. using the same Teams meeting link and the in-person meeting location will be here in the council chambers on the eighth floor.

Seeing no objections, this meeting is in recess till 9 a.m. tomorrow.