Several Ridgecrest residents urged the City Council on Nov. 19 to halt or reassess its use of automated vehicle‑surveillance cameras, arguing the system poses privacy and security risks.

At a public‑comment period, Mike Licitra told the council that roughly two dozen city and private cameras around Ridgecrest capture many images per vehicle and that the system’s cloud database stores license‑plate reads and vehicle identifiers. “These cameras take several pictures of every single vehicle that passes them by, run those pictures through an AI algorithm to extract license plate numbers, make and model, color, and other identifying information,” Licitra said, and he provided a white paper by an information‑security researcher outlining alleged defects.

Licitra and callers who identified themselves as Mike Neal and Mike Neil described technical vulnerabilities that they say allow an attacker to gain full access to a camera (including Android debug bridge access), the lack of device encryption, insecure bootloader and emergency‑download modes, and cloud accounts without required multi‑factor authentication. One caller said the system appears to retain multiple copies of sensitive data for longer than advertised.

Public commenters asked the council to publish search‑audit details and to press the vendor for fixes or suspension while the platform is reviewed. Councilmember Gorman echoed the request for staff to examine the materials and to meet with the commenter, saying there is “interest” and urging officials “to get together with the gentleman who made the comment and perhaps some of the material that he left with us and look it over.”

City staff did not announce any immediate suspension; councilmembers asked staff to follow up with the vendors and to provide details about search logs and security mitigations. The council’s next procedural step was not set at the meeting.

What happens next: Councilmembers asked staff to look into the white paper and the system’s security; residents requested publication of audit logs and the GA/contract documents that govern vendor access.