Viewpoint: City needs security camera policy
Nathan Stephens
Martin Kidston's reporting on Monday's council meeting was accurate as far as it went. The 8-3 vote to return the Verkada contract to committee was the right outcome, and the article correctly identified the central problem: the city has no written policy governing camera use, a fact city officials themselves acknowledged.
But the framing throughout the article does this community a disservice and leaves out facts that Missoula residents need.
This is not an argument against security cameras. Most residents who spoke Monday, including those who opposed this contract, said as much.
This is a specific argument about a specific kind of camera: networked, cloud-dependent hardware that continuously streams footage to a private company's servers, locks municipalities into a proprietary software platform, and bundles AI capabilities including facial recognition, license plate reading, and people tracking that cannot simply be switched off by stated policy.
The article presents the city's assurance that it "plans not to use" AI features as a meaningful safeguard. It is not. Capabilities embedded in a platform create legal exposure and operational temptation regardless of stated intent. Montana law prohibits state and local government agencies from obtaining, retaining, possessing, accessing, or using facial recognition technology, or entering into agreements with third-party
vendors for those purposes, regardless of whether the agency intends to use those features.¹ Violations carry civil penalties of $5,000 to $10,000 per violation, with the attorney general authorized to bring enforcement actions.²
The article also never scrutinized why this vendor. COO Eric Hallstrom told the council Monday that Verkada's federal enforcement history amounted to a CAN-SPAM marketing issue, essentially a paperwork violation. That characterization is incomplete. The consent decree filed in U.S. District Court, United States v. Verkada Inc. (Case No.
3:24-cv-06153), charges Verkada under Section 5 of the FTC Act for failing to use appropriate security practices to protect customers' personal information collected through its cameras and software platform, and for misrepresenting that it maintained HIPAA compliance and Privacy Shield compliance.³
Verkada was ordered to pay $2.95 million, placed under a mandatory information security program, and required to submit to independent third-party security assessments for 20 years. That is not a marketing issue. It is a data security enforcement action directly relevant to whether this vendor should hold cloud-based footage from public facilities.
Most significantly, the article missed the regional dimension of this decision entirely. Missoula County has already deployed Verkada cameras through the same vendor, Pine Cove Consulting of Bozeman, across multiple county facilities. A Pine Cove case study cited by name at Monday's meeting lists those locations: the county health department, sheriff's office, public works, fairgrounds, and the county elections center.
And this parks contract is not a standalone purchase. COO Eric Hallstrom stated plainly in his staff presentation that Verkada "allows the city to bring many security functions under one vendor over time, rather than having disparate one-off systems department by department," and that choosing Verkada "aligns with the
county, which already uses Verkada, and is valuable as we develop shared space with the county at the Engen Local Government Building."⁴ This is not a parks camera upgrade. It is the announced foundation of a unified city-county surveillance infrastructure, anchored by a vendor currently under a 20-year federal consent decree.
This concern crosses party lines. A speaker at Monday's meeting had just returned from the Montana Democratic Party's platform convention, held the prior weekend in Billings, where delegates adopted language opposing "the use of mass surveillance systems in the United States by any entity for any purpose." That same platform affirms protections under Montana House Bill 531, protecting Montanans from automated
surveillance systems. That is the state party of the council majority, on the record, just days before this vote.⁵
The council made the right call Monday. Now it needs a policy that addresses not just whether AI features are "intended" to be used, but whether this class of networked surveillance hardware sold by a vendor currently under federal court oversight belongs in public facilities at all without competitive bidding, independent security review, and
explicit statutory protections for Missoula residents.
All of this information is publicly available. The FTC enforcement documents are on the FTC website. Monday's meeting is on the city's public record. The committee round is coming. There is still time to report this story fully.
Nathan Stephens lives in Ward 4.
¹ MCA § 44-15-105, Prohibition of facial recognition technology:
https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/
² MCA § 44-15-112, Penalty:
https://mca.legmt.gov/bills/
³ FTC enforcement action, United States v. Verkada Inc.:
https://www.ftc.gov/legal-
— Signed consent decree:
https://www.ftc.gov/system/
— FTC press release:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-
⁴ City of Missoula City Council meeting, June 22, 2026 (public
record): https://pub-missoula.
⁵ As read into the public record by Lea Bossler at the June 22, 2026 City Council meeting (same source as ⁴). The 2026 Montana Democratic Party platform was adopted June 20-21, 2026 in Billings; the full text had not yet been posted publicly at time of submission.