BART Considers New Drone, Cameras As It Seeks to Expand Surveillance

BART is considering a new drone and two surveillance cameras in its efforts to reduce crime, as the public’s concerns grow over government agencies’ use of surveillance technology and sharing of collected data.

BART officials are asking the agency’s Board of Directors to continue its existing surveillance program and add two cameras, one at BART Police Department headquarters and another at a pedestrian crossing in Union City, as NBC Bay Area reports. Additionally, the Chronicle reported earlier this month that BART police are proposing a 180-day drone pilot program, with a vendor loaning the equipment for the trial period.

The agency is required to seek approval from its Board whenever new surveillance equipment is being considered, as Ars Technica reported in 2018, after it was revealed at the time that officers had been using license plate readers at the MacArthur Station parking garage for a year and a half without authorization.

The license plate readers had reportedly been installed despite the Board voting in 2016 to delay their use until a policy could be developed. The data was reportedly shared with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a federal law enforcement “fusion center.”

BART’s Surveillance Annual Report notes that the agency later launched another license plate reader pilot with Motorola Solutions, using seven mobile units and two fixed cameras at the MacArthur garage. After testing in 2023 and 2024, staff concluded the system did not provide enough benefit to justify its costs and staffing requirements. It did not lead to any recovered stolen vehicles, did not clearly speed up parking enforcement, and routinely undercounted vehicles.

BART terminated the contract in 2024, and the ALPR cameras are no longer operating. The agency says it will continue monitoring developments in the technology.

According to the Chronicle, the drone could follow a preprogrammed route or be remotely operated, collecting video stored on secure servers. Police say it would generally monitor the 3.5 miles between Bay Fair and Hayward stations, where infrastructure has been vandalized and equipment stolen.

BART police say the drone could help investigate and deter crime, prevent damage, and conduct safety inspections. They also say the program would include limits on data collection and retention, along with protections against cyberattacks.

The agency’s surveillance policy requires protections for individual-level data shared with outside organizations, including contracts or nondisclosure agreements requiring compliance with its surveillance rules. The agency says it did not share data with any outside agencies during fiscal year 2026.

The Board is expected to vote on the drone proposal October 8, per the Chronicle. It's unclear when the Board will vote on new cameras.

BART officials say its existing closed-circuit cameras, along with its new fare gates installed at all 50 stations, have helped reduce crime and improve safety.

The agency says its cameras assisted with more than 3,700 video requests, including more than 2,300 for criminal investigations, while police have produced 220 wanted-person bulletins using camera images.

BART’s history with surveillance cameras has also included some less-than-functional equipment. In 2016, it was revealed that 77% of the cameras inside BART trains were decoys or nonfunctional. By June 2017, every car in the fleet had been equipped with functioning video monitoring.

Backlash against police surveillance has escalated with the proliferation of drone and automated license plate reader technology. In July, it was announced that live video feeds from five SFPD drones had been publicly accessible online for roughly six months because of a misconfigured sharing link.

In February, a local law firm filed a lawsuit against Flock alleging federal agencies accessed data from the SFPD’s cameras more than 1.6 million times.

Comments