The building formerly known as the San Diego Sports Arena, currently dubbed Pechanga Arena, is using Madison Square Garden-style facial recognition to screen event attendees.

Police profiling

Just as San Diego cops have begun a public relations push to install video spy cams on more city streetlights, word comes that the building formerly known as the San Diego Sports Arena, currently dubbed Pechanga Arena, is using Madison Square Garden-style facial recognition to screen event attendees. “The use of facial recognition technology at sports stadiums goes far beyond MSG,” reports a March 14 post on Slate.com by Georgia Gee.

“I’ve tracked at least 20 other venues and stadiums across the country — including college sports venues — that have used this technology on their attendees, usually to admit them through the gates, although it’s unclear just how broadly this technology can be used by venues if they are inclined.” The item links to an April 26, 2022, post by LiveDesignOnline.com, reporting, “Global venue operating company ASM Global has begun deploying facial verification networks at its venues to enhance the event experience through a partnership with secure facial recognition company PopID.

The first venue to be outfitted was San Diego’s Pechanga Arena, which fans were able to experience starting last week.” The individual intelligence thus collected can wind up in police files, notes Gee’s piece. “It’s harder [for law enforcement] to set up in private locations, but the companies are kind of doing it for them,” Katie Kinsey, chief of staff of the Policing Project at NYU Law, is quoted as saying. “Oftentimes, law enforcement only needs to ask these companies to hand it over; there’s no process that is required.”

Eric Otterson helped bring San Diego into the world of high-risk finance.

Face down facial recognition

Be careful what you wish for might be the motto of San Diego’s Eric Otterson, who, until the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank less than two weeks ago, was the institution’s managing director, “leading the San Diego-based technology banking team,” per a profile on the now-defunct SVB web page. “Eric is Chairman of the Board at the San Diego French-American School, and on the boards of EvoNexus and the San Diego Venture Group,” the bank’s write-up continues. “He is co-founder of Start Up San Diego, an entrepreneur-run mentor, advisor and investor network.” He is the son of late La Jolla start-up insider Bill Otterson, founder of Connect, UCSD’s so-called tech transfer operation to encourage taxpayer-funded inventions to be exploited by the entrepreneurial class.

Back on March 9, 2019, Otterson said in a Union-Tribune feature that San Diego was afraid to take chances with other people’s money and had been long consigned to a high-tech backwater. “When internet-age software took off in Silicon Valley, San Diego wasn’t even trying to catch the train,” according to the U-T. “After the dot-com bust left technologists disillusioned, San Diego suffered an additional blow in the early 2000s — the implosion of Peregrine Systems, one of the city’s most successful software companies at the time.

"Massive fraud charges crumbled the enterprise, and 1400 people lost their jobs. Experienced engineers and upper management either ended up in Silicon Valley or at companies like Qualcomm and WebSense, where low-risk culture is king.” Opined Otterson: “This was unlike the prevailing high-risk behavior in software companies up north, where the idea was to get the product out, then ask for forgiveness and upload a patch later.”

But things soon began to change, per the U-T story. “A younger workforce started to think the risk of jumping out to do your own thing was comparatively more interesting.” On the list of San Diego’s “best-known startups,” according to the account, was La Jolla Gateway-based Netradyne. Last September 2, the surveillance provider announced that it had “secured $65 million in a combination of senior and junior mezzanine financing from Silicon Valley Bank.” Said Avneesh Agrawal, co-founder, and CEO of Netradyne: “This round of funding from SVB will help propel us forward.” Added Otterson: “It has been a pleasure to work closely with Avneesh and the Netradyne team over the past several years to support their continued growth and expansion.”

Earlier this year, Netradyne was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging that the company “violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting scans of drivers’ faces without first making certain disclosures or obtaining consent to do so,” per a January 5 dispatch by ClassAction.org. “The complaint argues that Netradyne’s facial scanning and data storage practices expose drivers’ sensitive personal information to privacy risks.”

Wraith of Kevin’s wrath

The ghost of ex-GOP mayor Kevin Faulconer has returned to city hall to haunt current mayoral Democrat Todd Gloria in the form of a March 10 filing containing the name of ex-Faulconer honcho Aimee Faucett. “A broad coalition of San Diegans including former Mayor Faulconer and respected community leaders are collaborating on a citizens initiative that will require the City to provide adequate shelter for homeless individuals so we can make our streets healthier and safer,” Faucett said in a July 9 statement run by the Voice of San Diego news and commentary website. “Up until a couple of years ago, San Diego had become one of the only major regions in California where homelessness was decreasing. In fact, the people of Sacramento were encouraged by San Diego’s progress, and have gained the support of their community and Democratic mayor to place a measure inspired by some of San Diego’s actions on their local ballot.

Kevin Faulconer: down these clean streets a man must go...

It’s time to do the same in San Diego by taking solutions proven to reduce homelessness and making them into law. We look forward to sharing more updates in the future.” Now comes a March 10 registration filing for a political committee calling itself the San Diego Safe Shelters and Clean Streets Act, listing Faucett as principal officer and longtime Republican campaign accountant April Boling as treasurer. The ballot name of the initiative to be proposed by the committee is the Emergency Shelter and Clean and Safe Neighborhoods Act, according to the document. So far, no prospective candidates have emerged to challenge Gloria’s 2024 reelection bid, which he has already confirmed in a candidacy intention statement filed in January with the city clerk.

— Matt Potter

(@sdmattpotter)

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