In June of 2017 the city of Sacramento signed a public-private partnership agreement with Verizon to make Sacramento one of the first 5G cities in the world. 5G had not even been clearly defined at the time and there is no possible way that the city knew exactly what it was getting with this deal.

In my opinion, and according to a number of wireless experts, the City of Sacramento got hoodwinked by Verizon; tricked into signing over access to their valuable public rights of way in exchange for Verizon building out their antenna network that Verizon is financially incentivized to build.

The agreement contains a number of alarming details. Page two shows that no environmental considerations were made in this agreement, meaning the City did not consider health effects from the antennas at all. Page seven shows that the city agreed to “streamline” the permitting and installation of the antennas. This is particularly relevant because it shows that the City is contractually obligated NOT to object to the placement of any antenna, an action that many other cities have taken in order to protect residents from the dangers of these antennas.

Throughout the agreement are sections about collecting and storing data. That means these antennas will be collecting and storing data from the wireless devices they are communicating with; the data of Sacramento residents. We were never informed about or consented to this data collection. It seems obvious that this is the primary reason Verizon is willing to spend hundreds of million of dollars building out this infrastructure even though no one is purchasing 5G service. Verizon will make significantly more money collecting and selling user data, the hot commodity of the twenty first century.

Perhaps most importantly, this agreement was NOT taken through the usual public participation process. It was done quickly and quietly, with legally dubious stealth.  This means that the city signed away the rights to valuable public owned infrastructure, payed for by our tax dollars, AND signed us up to be data mined, jeopardizing our privacy and security, all without our knowledge or consent. Even worse, they are allowing Verizon to expose Sacramento residents to UNPRECEDENTED levels of pulsed, data modulated microwave radiation, inside our homes and against our will. This agreement with Verizon is a direct attack on our health and our rights and Sacramento residents should be up in arms!