Bay Area cities have asked individuals and businesses for years to help fight crime by registering their security cameras with law enforcement, or, in some cases, integrating them directly into police camera networks. The Jewish Federation Bay Area’s top security official, who works with more than 60 Jewish community institutions, warns against it.
According to Rudy Granados, the Federation’s senior director of community security, the problem isn’t the police’s intent. It’s that no institution can verify what happens to camera access once it’s granted.
“We have not been able to secure a process or procedure that limits the use of those cameras or regulates how others might use them,” he said last week in an interview.
Granados said the Federation has no way to verify whether an institution’s data-sharing agreement with police is actually enforceable.
“We cannot determine if their agreements with these agencies are sound and binding,” he said.
Even a seemingly foolproof agreement is no guarantee, he added.
“You can have policies for anything, but there are people who will step outside of that policy,” Granados said. “By giving an outside institution access, you’re making it so a large group or a number of people could misuse your systems in a way that you do not approve of.”
Granados, a former police officer in Pleasanton, said his views shouldn’t be read as distrust of law enforcement itself.
“Throughout my experience, I have observed that when law enforcement is embraced as an integral part of the community — rather than viewed as separate from it — there are clear benefits for everyone involved,” he said.
In San Francisco, the District Attorney’s Office runs a registry that only logs where cameras are located, without giving police access to the footage itself. In the South Bay, Connect San Jose program goes further, letting businesses and residents install a device that gives police direct access to live feeds — 1,189 private cameras are currently integrated, according to the department. Similar registries exist in Berkeley, Oakland and Alameda.
Granados said he is not aware of any Jewish organization in the Bay Area that has opted into these programs. His counterpart at Los Gatos-based Jewish Silicon Valley, Len Connolly, said he maintains a close relationship with law enforcement but did not answer questions about his guidance around camera registration and access.
Video surveillance is a common form of security for Jewish institutions. Many installed their first systems years ago, but the rise in antisemitic incidents since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel has pushed synagogues, schools and community centers to upgrade from closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems to cloud-connected cameras — devices that store footage remotely and can be monitored from a phone or browser.
That shift has coincided with many cities in the Bay Area embracing camera-based crime fighting more broadly. In recent years, cities and their police departments have likewise expanded their use of automated license plate readers, drones and tech-driven units known as real-time crime centers, arguing the technology helps solve and deter crimes.
One of the clearest examples of a camera’s value came in December, when a fire started just outside the San Francisco Hillel while students inside prepared for a Shabbat during Hanukkah. Security cameras had recorded a man trespassing on the property before the fire began, and Hillel turned the footage over to police, who used it to identify and arrest a suspect on arson charges.
But a synagogue or Jewish student center shouldn’t think about video surveillance in the same way that a business or homeowner might, according to Rafael Brinner, a security consultant to Jewish groups who previously worked as senior director of community security at the S.F.-based Federation.
“Most of us don’t think twice about active video surveillance walking into a bank or a gas station, but that’s not quite the vibe we want in our community spaces, even at a time when Jews are feeling unsafe,” Brinner said.
That’s why he advises clients of his firm, Meerkat Security Consulting, to stick with old-fashioned CCTV cameras, which limit the signal to on-site devices.
“In communal settings, staff and greeters can set the tone by conveying a sense of safety — of being seen and welcomed and reassured — while somewhere in the background a CCTV camera system keeps a temporary record for any contingency,” he said. “Part of maintaining that balance of security and welcome is keeping that feed closed-circuit.”
Fears about unauthorized access to networked cameras aren’t hypothetical.
Last month, a San Francisco police audit revealed that a California intelligence agency had improperly shared data from the city’s license-plate-reading camera network with federal and out-of-state agencies nearly 300 times over the course of a year in a violation of California law, which bars sharing that kind of data outside the state.
Granados’ concerns predate the audit, but he said it sharpened them.
“They were already present prior to that report, based on broader issues around oversight, data access, and safeguards,” he said, noting that the audit provided “a concrete example of the risks involved.”
There is at least one known case of an intrusion into a Jewish institution’s cameras — and it wasn’t law enforcement that did it.
In 2024 at a Jewish Community Center in Dunwoody, Georgia, records showed that employees at the surveillance company Flock accessed private cameras — including live feeds from a pool and children’s gymnastics area — to demonstrate the company’s surveillance technology to prospective law-enforcement customers. This was done without the knowledge of the JCC and against Flock’s policies.
“I viewed that situation as deeply concerning,” Granados said. “It is a strong example of why we do not currently support allowing outside entities access to internal/private areas.”
It’s unclear to what extent Granados’ views are typical of security directors at federations across the country. At least one said he holds the opposite position entirely.
James Somohano, director of community security at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, said he wholeheartedly believes organizations should give law enforcement access to their cameras.
“What reason on Earth would there be to not give a law enforcement agency access to your cameras when the reasons that they want it are the resolution of a crime or the prevention of a crime?” said Somohano, who spent more than 36 years in Miami-Dade law enforcement before moving into Jewish community security.
He said he rarely hears of police departments being hacked and believes law enforcement agencies protect their systems adequately. His one caveat: Institutions should make sure they have binding agreements guaranteeing their data won’t be shared elsewhere.
“I do recommend that if a Jewish space has the opportunity to participate in a program like that, that they do,” Somohano said.
A national organization that focuses on Jewish security lands somewhere in the middle between Granados and Somohano.
Patrick Daly, principal deputy director at the Secure Community Network, a national safety and security organization for the North American Jewish community, said caution is warranted but that live access can be a powerful tool for law enforcement.
“What’s really important is not the sharing of the cameras so much, but having very clear rules of engagement — policies and procedures around when law enforcement can access those cameras,” Daly said.
Some systems, he explained, only grant police live monitoring access when a specific trigger occurs, such as a panic button or a detected gunshot.
“We don’t recommend open access, where police can drop in and monitor anytime,” Daly said. “The systems are designed so links expire and can only be shared under specific circumstances. That’s generally where best practice has been … access if there’s a need to respond to a critical incident.”