We are often asked who can see what a Kerbside camera reads. The short answer is: whoever the camera’s owner decides. The longer answer is worth setting out, because sharing is what makes Kerbside work and it should be understood by the communities that rely on it.
The owner decides. Every Kerbside camera has an owner: a police department, a town, a homeowners’ association, a school district or a business. The owner chooses which agencies may search the camera’s reads, and can change that choice at any time from the Kerbside dashboard. Tellwright does not make that choice for anyone.
The defaults. When a community installs Kerbside, its reads are shared with its local law enforcement agency. Owners are also offered Kerbside Network, which shares reads with agencies within 50 miles that have joined the network themselves, and National Lookup, which allows any participating agency to learn that a vehicle on its hotlist was seen by the camera. Most owners choose both, because they want a stolen car or a missing person’s vehicle to be found wherever it goes. Both settings are explained during onboarding and both can be switched off.
Searches are logged. Every search of Kerbside data records who searched, from which agency, and the reason entered. Owners can see the searches made of their cameras’ reads by other agencies in the dashboard’s audit view, and many publish a summary.
Retention. Reads are deleted after 30 days unless the owner sets a shorter or longer period, or a read has been attached to an investigation or matched a hotlist. Records attached to investigations are retained under the investigating agency’s own policy.
What we do not do. Tellwright does not sell Kerbside data. Kerbside does not use facial recognition and does not identify people. Tellwright uses aggregated and de-identified data to maintain and improve the service, as our agreements describe.
Sharing decisions belong to the communities that own the cameras and to the officials who answer to them. Our job is to make those decisions easy to make, easy to see and easy to change. If your community has questions about its own settings, its Kerbside administrator can see all of them in one place, and our team is available to walk through them.
Media contact
press@tellwrightsystems.com