{"id":450845,"date":"2026-09-02T08:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/450845\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T08:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:12:14","slug":"meet-the-d6-candidate-should-s-f-limit-police-surveillance-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/450845\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the D6 candidate: Should S.F. limit police surveillance tech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

District 6 includes SoMa<\/a>, Mission Bay<\/a>, Treasure Island and Yerba Buena.<\/p>\n

Its current supervisor Matt Dorsey<\/a> was appointed<\/a> by Mayor London Breed on May 9, 2022, to replace outgoing District 6 supervisor Matt Haney<\/a>, who was elected to the state assembly.<\/p>\n

Dorsey is up for re-election this November against one challenger, Alex Behrend. We have decided not to cover Behrend given our guidelines<\/a> here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

District 6 supervisor Matt Dorsey has called for expanding<\/a> San Francisco\u2019s use of police drones and automated license plate readers, arguing that both are helping solve crimes. The city has embraced both technologies in recent years. SFPD now has more than 400 Flock license-plate readers, while its drone<\/a> program<\/a> has expanded since voters approved Proposition E in 2024.<\/p>\n

San Francisco has rules governing police surveillance. A 2019 ordinance<\/a> requires city departments to publicly disclose the surveillance technologies they use and policies governing how they are used. But 2024\u2019s Proposition E loosened<\/a> some of those requirements for police, creating exemptions that allow police to use drones and public-safety cameras with fewer restrictions in certain cases, like police chases, and to deploy new surveillance technology for up to a year before submitting a use policy to the Board of Supervisors.<\/p>\n

Recent controversies have called the current status quo into question. Between 2024 and 2025, outside agencies improperly searched San Francisco\u2019s Flock data 1.6 million times, including at least 19 searches on behalf of ICE, according to<\/a> the San Francisco Standard. This June, SFPD disclosed<\/a> another 299 improper searches by federal and out-of-state agencies. Police cut off the access that enabled those searches, and the Department of Police Accountability and Human Rights Commission are investigating the breach.<\/p>\n

Police drones also operate under restrictions<\/a>, including rules intended to minimize the recording of people uninvolved in crimes. But its use in prosecutions has raised questions about how drone footage is interpreted. Prosecutors dismissed a drug case<\/a> based on drone surveillance after a defense attorney successfully argued that footage police believed showed a drug transaction instead showed a handshake.<\/p>\n

The city controller has identified broader gaps in surveillance oversight. A 2025 audit<\/a> from the city controller\u2019s office found that no single entity was responsible for monitoring compliance with the city\u2019s surveillance law and warned that inconsistent exemptions could leave room for privacy abuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s question: Should San Francisco place limits on police use of drones and automated license plate readers? If so, what should those limits be?<\/p>\n

Mission Local color codes the answers to yes\/no questions. A blue background means the candidate answered yes, an orange background means no and a yellow background means that the candidate dodged the question.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

Matt Dorsey<\/p>\n

Job: Current District 6 Supervisor<\/p>\n

Age: 61<\/p>\n

Residency: Renter, living in District 6 since 2008, has lived in San Francisco since 1990 (except for four years in Washington, D.C.).<\/p>\n

Transportation:\u00a0Public transit, walking, biking<\/p>\n

Education: Bachelor\u2019s degree from Emerson College<\/p>\n

Languages: English<\/p>\n

Website: Reelect Matt Dorsey 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

San Francisco already has some of the nation\u2019s most stringent privacy safeguards in place now: our voter-amended Surveillance Technology Ordinance<\/a>; our independent Department of Police Accountability<\/a>; our Police Commission; and 21st century police reforms SFPD has adopted to ensure constitutional policing.<\/p>\n

However, I also believe safety technologies are too important to a fair and functional justice system to tolerate abuses that could diminish public support or undermine its effectiveness. So, I\u2019m open to new guardrails that deter and punish misuses \u2014 but would oppose limitations premised on speculative harms to prohibit technologies that are measurably enhancing public safety and solving crimes.<\/p>\n

Endorsed by: Mayor Daniel Lurie, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Sheriff Paul Miyamoto, Senator Scott Wiener \u2026 read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Answers may be lightly edited for formatting, spelling and grammar. If you have questions for the candidates, please let us know at sarah@missionlocal.com<\/a> \/\/ io@missionlocal.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

You can register to vote via the sf.gov website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"District 6 includes SoMa, Mission Bay, Treasure Island and Yerba Buena. Its current supervisor Matt Dorsey was appointed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[35072,86268,1103,101,103,102,104,106,105,1911,169352],"class_list":["post-450845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-election-2026","tag-meet-the-candidates","tag-mission-bay","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-soma","tag-supervisor-race-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}