Seattle City Council Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee 42722

Good morning, everyone.

The April 27, 2022 meeting of the Seattle City Council's Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

I also want to say happy Denim Day and happy Welcome Back Day to the ledge department.

It's particularly fitting because yesterday I read a a quote from Dr. Fauci who says, we are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase.

So I welcome my colleagues back to City Hall and ready to meet new people.

All right, there are two council bills on the agenda for discussion today, which would approve the surveillance impact reports on surveillance technologies already in use by SPD.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Waters.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

Three present.

Okay, I move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Council Member Nelson, did you want to amend the agenda?

Yep, I'm about to.

I'm sorry, you know your protocols.

I have a self-script from Amelia.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda.

At the request of SPD, I have one amendment.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be amended to remove item two, council bill 120308. Hearing no objection, item two is removed from the agenda.

And if there is no objection, the amended agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the amended agenda is adopted.

All right.

We will now go into the public comment.

period for items on the agenda.

And so first of all, I want to thank everyone for their patience and cooperation as we operate this remote public comment system.

Looking forward to maybe when committee meetings come back in person.

Anyway, I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, and each speaker will have up to two minutes to speak.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered online to provide public comment.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when registered and use the ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

Please note this is different from the general meeting listen line ID listed on the agenda.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

Again, I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov slash council.

The public comment link is listed at the top of today's agenda.

Once I call the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak.

And then the speaker must press star six to begin speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left in the allotted time period.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you please begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comment at the allotted time, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, please do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

All right, we have two speakers signed up to speak.

The public comment period is now open and we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt, you've been unmuted.

So I will call on Cynthia Spies first and then followed by Jennifer Lee.

Go ahead, Cynthia.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Spies, a district six resident.

The city has not engaged in an honest dialogue with the public on these surveillance technologies.

Most of the public's questions on group 4A technologies are unanswered.

This is partly due to Seattle IP not allowing enough time to ask questions.

There's only enough time for me to ask 3 out of 25 questions regarding our IDBASE and 2 out of 15 questions from Altego and I wasn't able to ask any of my 9 questions about the audio recording devices.

The other half of the problem was SPD either not answering questions by saying we have to get back to you on that but then never doing so.

or providing incorrect information.

It makes no sense that I, as a random member of the public, can have a more accurate understanding of these tools than an officer who has direct access to use them and who was selected by SPD to answer the public's questions.

This implies either that SPD doesn't understand the tools or is willfully hiding information.

Regardless, the result is the same.

Neither an incompetent nor a malicious city department like SPD should be trusted to operate surveillance technologies.

Given the lack of honest commitment to the surveillance ordinance process, None of these three technologies should be approved by City Council.

Players require the public comment period for any current or future surveillance technology automatically remain open until at least one week after the public's questions are answered on IT's or SPD's website.

My written comments to you included precise improvements spanning security, bystander protection, data sources, tool functionality, contractual auditing, scoping, transparency, data sharing, validation, and privacy.

Oversight of the city's surveillance technologies only happens via you, council members, either voting against the technologies or passing amendments on their use.

At the minimum, please pass amendments to institute the recommendations in my written comments via email.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Jennifer Lee.

Go ahead.

Hello, my name.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Hello my name is Jennifer Lee of the ACLU of Washington and a member of the Community Surveillance Working Group commenting on agenda items CB 120 307 308 and 309 regarding SPD's use of audio recording systems Multego and IBM i2iB.

On SPD's use of audio recording systems we are very concerned that the SIR does not specify the manufacturer or the function of devices used which severely limits the ability of the public as well as council members to meaningfully review and approve this technology.

The purpose of the Seattle Surveillance Ordinance is to create transparency and accountability around the use of surveillance technologies.

And without public disclosure of the manufacturers, vendors, model names, and numbers of the audio recording devices, it is impossible for there to be meaningful public review and a council approval of this technology.

On SPD's use of Maltego, we are very concerned about the potential for this tool to be used for predictive policing purposes and dragnet social media analysis, which are rife with racial bias and inaccuracies.

We urge for a clear prohibition of the use of Maltego for these purposes.

Additionally, there are inadequate policies to assess for errors in data analysis.

The working group's recommendation for independent validation of data is not addressed by an internal SPD officer reviewing data on a case-by-case basis.

On SPD's use of IBM i2iBase, we are concerned that the city's contract with IBM has not been publicly disclosed as is required by the Surveillance Ordinance.

i2iBase's automated relationship analyses are likely to generate data errors that compound existing biases.

While SPD has confirmed that false connections do occur, they have not shared how often they occur.

There are no limits on the kinds of data that may be inputted into i2iBase, no limitations on employee access to records, no limits on usage of potentially erroneous I2I-based data, and no prohibition on the use of this technology for predictive policing.

We have many other concerns with these technologies, and without answers to outstanding questions raised by the working group and members of the public, we urge council members to pause on approving these technologies.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That was the last speaker on our list.

Thank you for taking the time to share your comments with us.

Seeing no other people signed up for public comment, the public comment period is now closed.

We will now proceed to our items of business.

And since we'll be taking up two pieces of related legislation, we'll read them both into the record at this point.

Will the clerk please read item one and three into the record?

Items number one and three, council bills 120307 and 120309, relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2021 surveillance impact report and 2021 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of audio recording systems and IBM i2 base.

Briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Per the 2017 surveillance ordinance, I'm just gonna give a brief description of what we're doing today.

The 2017 surveillance ordinance, city departments are required to obtain advanced council approval for the adoption of surveillance technology and to request retroactive approval if those technologies have already been used.

And that is the case here.

So council bills 120307, and 120309 would approve the Seattle Police Department's continued use of those technologies and accept the surveillance impact reports, hereafter referred to as SIRs, and an executive overview of each technology.

So today is the first discussion of these council bills, and the second impossible vote will be in our next committee meeting on May 11th.

So we've got a lot of ground to cover, and so I would like the presenters to introduce themselves, and then I'll explain how the discussing will go so we can be most efficient.

So let's have introductions, starting with IT, then SPD, and then internal staff.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

My name is Jim Loder.

I'm the Interim Chief Technology Officer and Department Director for Seattle IT.

And I am Sarah Carrier.

I am the Privacy Program Manager in Seattle IT.

Okay.

Moving on to SPD.

Morning.

My name is Brian Maxey.

I'm the Chief Operating Officer.

Good morning.

Rebecca Boatwright, Executive Director of Risk Management and Legal Affairs.

Good morning.

I'm Captain Jim Britt of technology integration for SPD.

And with me is violent crime analyst, Spencer Hain, one of our civilian crime analysts.

And I am Lisa Kay on council central staff.

And I would like also to note Kate Nolan is my clerk.

I should have recognized her at the beginning of the meeting.

All right, team.

So here's how we're going to proceed.

First, Seattle IT and SPD will go over a presentation that lays out the process for the review of these technologies and also describes each technology.

I ask that you hold your questions until the end of the presentation, and we'll try to group the questions according to the technology that they pertain to.

And just in case you're joining now, we have removed item two from the agenda, which refers to a technology called Meltego.

And so we will just be talking about recording devices and an iBase.

And then after that presentation, central staff, Lisa Kay, will walk us through her presentation, which identifies policy considerations for each technology.

And Lisa, do you prefer that people hold their questions Until the end of your presentation for both technologies we'll be discussing, or would you like them to ask right after you talk about each?

I think it would be helpful to hold the questions.

Okay, thank you.

So, dear public, linked to each item on the agenda is also a central staff memo with a table of issues brought forward by the working group and SPD's and IT's responses to those issues.

We don't have time to go through these beautiful memos today, but they can be used to inform future questions and colleagues' policy considerations as well.

And also linked to each item on the agenda is a memo prepared by central staff with background information on the SIR process and related legislative information.

OK, so without further ado, let's move on to the first presentation.

Take it away.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah.

This is Jim Loader speaking, and I am here to introduce some information about the surveillance ordinance and the process we follow specifically, or in general, but also specifically related to the technologies under review.

I will be handing this off to our partners in SPD to discuss the details of the specific technologies under review today.

But first, for a review of the surveillance impact report process, in 2017, as the council member already noted, the surveillance ordinance was adopted to require the city to conduct or to place additional controls and gain approvals related to the acquisition and operation of technologies that observe or analyze the movement's behavior or actions of identifiable individuals.

This ordinance provides additional direction related to the types and functions of technologies that are to be considered and classified as surveillance technologies, and the exclusions and inclusion criteria are listed here on the slides.

Next slide, please.

The surveillance ordinance requires the city to produce surveillance impact reports, or SIRs, that address the seven areas outlined on the screen here and follow a process that includes analysis, public engagement, public comment, and review, further review by a working group of technology and civil liberties representatives.

Next slide, please.

The process to develop a SIR and steward the surveillance impact report from creation to council review is about an eight to nine month process that includes multiple stages that include public comment, working group review, an opportunity for the chief technology officer to respond, and finally executive overview prior to being submitted to council for vote.

And yeah, as I mentioned, that takes about eight to nine months.

The surveillance ordinance required the city to review existing technologies that met the definition of surveillance.

And we're still in the process of doing that.

So we evaluated the existing technologies in use by the city.

determined which ones met the criteria, and have for the last few years been introducing them to council through this process.

We are now up to group four, which is broken into two subgroups.

And today we are talking about technologies that we've classified or grouped into group A.

Council has already received the fire department's emergency scene cameras, ASMAC camera SIRs, There is a memo pending about a technology called a cyclical that is being decommissioned by S dot.

And we are here today to talk about three audio recording systems.

I'm sorry to audio recording systems and IBM I to base.

It's my understanding Maltego has been deferred.

And the final technology on the list, something called Talyo, is still in development, and SPD can address the status of that if they have an update.

And then I think I'm passing over to Sarah at this point to talk about the public engagement process.

Yep.

Thanks, Jim.

So the 4A public engagement process ran from end of May through July.

of 2021. During that time, the Drafted Surveillance Impact Reports are posted publicly on our Seattle.gov website for the public to take a look at, as well as one-page high-level overviews of each of the technologies that are translated into the seven Tier 1 languages.

During that time, we also held two public comment meetings which as you can see from the table had approximately 13 attendees in total between the two meetings.

Each of those meetings is recorded and also made available after the event and posted online as well as the slide deck materials for folks to look who were not able to attend the events.

We also received two letters from the Community Technology Advisory Board as well as the ACLU and all of this information along with the SIR, is then bundled up and provided to the Surveillance Advisory Working Group, where they start their review and analysis in the process.

Now, I will hand it over to Captain Britt in SPD to walk you through the technologies.

Good morning, everyone.

Captain Jim Britt with Seattle PD.

The first technology we're going to be talking about is the audio recording systems.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

Yes, ma'am.

I would like to recognize that Council Member Herbold has joined the meeting and did so several minutes ago, and I did not see the notice.

Thank you.

Please continue.

Thank you, ma'am.

I also want to take a moment to mention that Mears Von Aschenkook is also on the call.

They work with SPD as a civilian, and they work with writing the surveillance impact reports on behalf of SPD by gathering information from the subject matter experts and working with IT to get the answers to the questions that are within those questions.

So they're on the call as well.

They didn't get a chance to introduce themselves earlier.

The next slide, if we could, please.

The mission of the Seattle Police Department is to prevent crime, enforce the law, and support quality public safety by delivering respectful, professional, and dependable police services.

The surveillance impact, the surveillance ordinance helps us doing so by making sure that we are fulfilling our obligation to the public by meeting these needs and making sure that we're doing it in a public and transparent way with accountability and responsibility throughout the process.

The first technology we'll talk about, if we can go to the next slide, is our audio recording systems.

These are the devices that you've seen on television oftentimes referred to as wires, and they are audio recording devices that are hidden either on a person or in a location or on an object within an environment meant to clandestinely record conversations that at least one member of the conversation is unaware of.

They have to be turned on by a person.

They're not remotely activated.

They're not left in a location for an extended period of time.

They are specific to an investigative effort, and they are governed very heavily by the courts and the warrant processes, which we'll talk about in just a moment.

The audio recording systems contribute to our abilities by allowing us to record conversations related to serious or violent crimes and gain information and evidence and investigative steps that would otherwise not be available to us.

We don't use these on low level.

run of the mill low level crimes.

We use these on very serious and violent crimes because it's very important that we locate the persons responsible for those crimes.

They allow us to pursue the resolution of criminal investigations by recording those conversations and provide key evidence when it comes time to present to trial with the prosecutor's office.

Next slide, please.

They're managed within one unit.

I know there was some concern raised about all the officers having access to these, and that's not quite accurate.

The technical and electronic support unit, the TSU, maintains control of all of these devices, and they are sent out or deployed to a detective upon request and upon completion of the warrant that they have to file with the courts.

The data is collected upon completion of the mission.

They're collected by the TSU, and then they pull the audio recordings from that, and then they're stored following our evidence guidelines related to digital evidence storage.

Unrelated recordings that are irrelevant to the investigation are deleted, so we don't hang on to information that isn't relevant to our investigations and that aren't covered by the scope of the warrant.

The protections there, audio recording devices are utilized only after the legal standards of consent and or court issued warrants have been met as required by the Privacy Act.

I know the word consent caused some concern and some confusion.

The concept here is that when a person is wearing an audio recording device or allowing an audio recording device to be placed within their vehicle, within their business, within their home, within areas that they control, they have to give us consent to do so, to have them wear that, whether it's a cooperating witness or a undercover officer or whoever might be doing so.

However, still, in order to record the piece of the conversation from the person who is unaware they're being recorded, we still have to get a warrant from a judge.

And that warrant, as it says in the next point, the judge gets to constrict or constrain what the nature of that recording is, how long the warrant is valid for, what areas the warrant is allowed to record, how long the recording can be allowed to go, and all the different stipulations that the courts can place upon us restricting our use of those recording devices.

The use of the devices is documented by the TSU.

They maintain the log record, and it's subject to audit by the OIG, the federal monitor, and any other internal audits at any time.

So the controls are in place regarding the use of these devices.

And the deployment of these devices is governed very strictly by courts and the law.

We can move on to the next slide.

These are all the related policies that are within SPD Manual and the Privacy Act that are governing the use of these technologies.

As you can see, there's quite the list.

And the SPD Manual covers a great deal of different areas.

But this one technology, like many of our other pieces of equipment, touch many, many parts of our policy manual, and it's rather extensive on how we can and can't use them.

Next slide.

The next technology we're going to talk about, and I have a crime analyst, Spencer Hain, with me to make sure that I don't misspeak on this, IBM i2iBase.

It's a link analysis software that's used to combine data stored in our databases.

and information gathering, criminal investigation, and display it in a manner that allows detectives to see the relationships between persons, between vehicles, between criminal incidents, between weapons that have been used in crimes.

And it displays it in a format that allows a detective to make those connections.

It's important to understand that this does not give us access to information we would not otherwise have access to.

IBM's I2I base does not reach out and grab information that we don't otherwise have.

It simply goes through information we already have and makes the connections that detectives would otherwise take a great deal of time to do.

So this is a deficiency process more than just a more than anything else.

We use it because to assist with criminal investigations and to try and connect the dots in cases that may be related, which allows us a higher solvability factor when it relates to certain offenses.

Later on, I have an example if requested.

I can display an example of what a result of an IBM I2I base display would look like.

We've scrubbed the identifiable information out of it, and Spencer was kind enough to bring it up with us so we can show that if requested.

Visualizing the information provides a much better understanding of the complicated relationships between these cases.

Go to the next slide, please.

As I said before, This is pulling information from SPD's specific systems.

It does comb our records management system, which we already have, and our officers have access to, and our detectives have access to, and our computer-aided dispatch system, which handles all of our deployments in the field and information related to the calls that we respond to.

Those are databases that are already within SPD's realm of control.

IBM i2iBase reaches into those and makes connections for that.

Again, not reaching into databases we don't already have access to.

The next point where it mentions we can manually add additional information.

This is where it relates to other agencies that have provided information related to their cases or one of the examples Spencer mentioned was night in hits, which is where we get ballistic information off of bullets that were fired at different crime scenes when we get results of those.

and it mentions that they're connected to other crimes, we can manually input that information into eye to eye base and it contributes to the pin board that shows us the relationships between where maybe this weapon was used in more than one offense.

Only authorized users can access the technology.

It's limited to password logging credentials.

Everybody using it is CEGIS certified and has approved access to the information that is being pinned to this pin board.

And there's an audit log that shows the usage logs, that shows when a person is logged on and what pieces of data are added to it.

It's important to note that IBM I2I base does not create any data.

It simply displays it.

Spencer, is there anything else that needs to be added to that?

No, just one clarification I would say.

The IBASE does not reach out even into our systems.

We are choosing exactly which data is put into the system every night.

So there's at 3 a.m., there's just the daily update of a portion of our RMS and CAD data is being pushed into the IBASE database.

It doesn't reach out and grab anything.

And like you said, it does not generate any linkages that we don't already have in our RMS system.

Thank you.

Go ahead and go to the next slide, please.

Once again, here are all the different policies and laws that relate to our use of I2I base.

It's a subscription service.

I know there was some concern about the lack of a contract, the lack of being able to see a contract.

We'll continue to look for any, I'll get any paperwork that we have related to our subscription with them.

But as I understand it, because it's a subscription, we don't actually have a direct contract with IBM.

Go ahead to the next slide, please.

And I'm open for any questions at this point, council member.

Thank you very much for that presentation.

And because you teased us with a, uh, you know, with information about a visual representation of how I base works.

Can you, can you show that please?

I would be happy to let me pull it up here and with permission from the moderator, I'll share my screen.

Okay.

Just a moment.

So hopefully everybody is seeing the display that's before you right now.

A simplified example of an investigative link chart.

At the very top, we have a gun.

This is the ballistic result of a match of the gun that fired these rounds, which are on the next level down.

The folders that you see here where it says agency SPD, these are SPD native cases.

These are cases that are pulled from either our RMS or our CAD.

with information in those cases related to vehicles involved in those cases or persons involved in those cases.

You see additional cases here that were pulled in by ballistic matches.

You can see King County Sheriff's Office, Renton PD, Kent PD.

These were matches that were returned to the case detective as it relates to, you ran this gun with this ballistic, it matched a report in this agency's ballistics, and then we go and we get that information, and we attach it, and we're able to pull in additional information, which helps us lead to an identified suspect at the bottom.

This is an excellent example of how I-2, I-Base allows us to display the information that is already in our reach.

very quickly reach to the point where we can have an identified suspect that we can further investigate.

I think that's an important point.

This is not going to make us go, okay, that's our guy, let's go get him.

This simply leads the detective to say, okay, that's where I need to guide my investigation to see what is going on with that information and that person.

And we can reach out to the agencies involved here and we can validate information related to their cases.

And all of that validation would still have to be done by a detective.

This simply allows the detective to speed up the process of evaluating the information at hand and try and get persons involved in gun crimes off the street.

And I would just note that this is something that we are and were able to do before we had IBASE.

It was just much more time consuming and much more error prone because we would have to physically type in all this information and that leads to people making mistakes.

Thanks, Spencer.

Okay, I have a couple of questions that were prompted by the presentation, but does anyone have a question about this particular slide or how IBASE works?

I have one simple question, Madam Chair.

Yes, go ahead.

Thank you.

I wish this was a little bit bigger.

I apologize for moving my face way in here on my laptop.

So I'm looking at all of the agencies that you're you're distributing the information to, like you have, are in King County, like you use this as an example, you have Kent and you have Renton.

So are you just, is this just an example or are you sending it out to, is this just within King County?

I can clarify that.

So we're not sending this, this would not be sent to these agencies.

This is for our case detective, for his knowledge, his or her knowledge to know.

It's basically a tipper system to say, Hey, look, this gun was used.

This gun that was used in your homicide was also used in a Renton PD case and they have an identified suspect.

You should reach out to the Renton PD detective that's assigned to that case and coordinate with them.

OK, so you're not obvious.

Yeah, I know this is for demonstrative purposes, so you're not limited then.

This is just an example of this one gun and how you got to the suspect, correct?

That's correct.

But this is a real case.

We simply scrubbed the PII off of it.

Right, it's a real case.

This is a gun that was used in 17 shootings.

Right, I see.

I got it.

I follow all that.

So you're sharing with me then that it doesn't necessarily limit itself to King County or it's how the detective would work this case, correct?

Correct.

So if Nibin, when we run the ballistics, if Nibin returned a hit out of another agency, we would be able to manually add the information that says agency Omaha, Nebraska, or agency New York, New York has additional information.

And we'd be able to add that information into this display as well.

Those agencies, anything that's not an SPD case was manually added to this board.

Okay, great.

Because I know that we have a lot of issues with overlap with tribal jurisdictions.

and police departments and everything.

So I was just wanting to see how that worked.

So I have a much better understanding now.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I do have a question about one of the previous slides.

Is this an appropriate time to ask it?

Yes.

Go ahead and ask what previous slide.

I also have a question about the presentation as well.

If you would like to go first, it's fine.

Sure, could you please go back to slide 5 on the presentation?

This is the general SIR creation timeline.

One sec, I can get it right back up.

Alright, let's go back.

Okay, thank you.

So this process says that it's eight to nine months, but the ordinance was passed in 2017. It's now 2022. So what was, and this technology was in use before 2017, otherwise it wouldn't be retroactive.

So what was happening, to get to this part of the process, what was going on in the beginning?

Because this seems like a long time to, to go through a review of a technology.

And what happens if another vendor or new technology comes on board that would allow for the same, that performs the same function?

So my point is simply this is a long time.

And can you just explain a little bit about what happens if there are other options that are available in the intervening time frame?

Sure, I'll probably ask Sarah to assist as needed, but I think in general I can address the timeline question, which is when the ordinance was passed and we evaluated and determined the number of technologies that met the existing criteria, we worked with council at that time to propose a sequenced path forward to do the retroactive analysis.

So, you know, eight to nine months is really an average if everything goes well.

And, you know, we don't have to go back and make a lot of changes or, you know, do additional research on the technology.

So this technology was slated for the time period that we're in now.

And that explains why it's taken really closer to five years, or four years, and not eight to nine months.

When we started working on these particular technologies, the time period is closer to the timeline that's listed here.

I think an analysis and a conclusion drawn that we had to sequence the technologies due to the resources that were assigned to do the work.

And that's why we're looking at group four today.

And we didn't look at that back in 2017. And forgive me, your second question was what happens if a new technology comes in play?

Sarah, can you speak a little bit to how we're evaluating new requests?

And I guess a sickle outcome might be partly an example here, which represents a technology that the department actually decided to decommission during the process.

Yeah, so the privacy team, the privacy program reviews technology acquisitions and makes an initial determination as to whether or not this technology meets the definition of surveillance or whether it doesn't.

Every quarter, we provide that analysis to you all by way of quarterly report.

And you all, you know, obviously reserve the right to make a different determination out of that report.

So that's how we evaluate new technologies as they come in.

And yeah, to Jim's point, you know, because of the length of this process, there have been times where technology changes rapidly, right?

And so there have been times where departments have chosen to, you know, move on to a different technology or a different way to accomplish the same business goal, you know, in the process, so.

I don't remember if I could add on to that.

Yes, go ahead, please.

So if there is a new technology or a better way to do this, basically, depending on whether it's a new version or an improved version or an expanded version of, say, the audio recording devices, they would need to update their SIR and the revised SIR would, because this would constitute a material change to the use of this technology, it would come back to council.

If it's a completely new technology, new vendor, different vendor that just has a better way of doing it, that's also going to require a different, another SIR.

Thank you very much.

Is there anything that Captain Britt or Mr. Maxey would like to add before we go on?

Okay, so basically setting up processes, and it takes a long time, and so that accounts partly for the length of time to get here.

So, moving on, Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you.

It's a related question, and maybe you've answered it, but I just, if you have, I need to hear it again.

We have the technologies that are in use that we're doing a retroactive approval of, and then we have new technologies or added capacities of existing technologies.

How do we prioritize which things that we're acting on?

Are we trying to just deal with all the retroactive technologies first before we get to the new technologies?

added capacities of already approved technologies or are we considering this process for the new technologies as we go as well?

Who would like to take that?

Sarah, can you address the issue of new technologies that have come up in the interim as well as instances where we've determined that there's been a material change to a technology and how often that's happened and come up.

Yeah, so the things are kind of happening in parallel, right?

So we've been focusing primarily on getting through the retroactive lists through the process for technologies that we've already determined were surveillance, right?

Owned and operated pre-2017.

So that has been the primary focus.

We are still doing reviews, right, in parallel of new technologies.

If we are aware of any material changes, we will, you know, go through that process that Lisa mentioned about updating the SIR for master list technologies that have already been approved through council.

So they're kind of happening in parallel, though the focus thus far has primarily been on getting through the retroactive stack.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

Yeah.

Well, that begs the question for Captain Britt.

Have you bought any new technologies, surveillance technologies since in this Yeah.

Since 2017 or since this process was begun?

No, ma'am.

There have been points where we have updated existing privacy impact reports and evaluated, for example, a technology that used 3G wireless had to be upgraded to use 5G wireless.

And so working with the folks at Seattle I.T.' 's privacy office and Ginger Armbruster and her team, we evaluated those updates and made sure that their capabilities were covered in the existing S.I.R.s. But since the surveillance ordinance passed, we have not added any substantive changes or additions to our technological capabilities.

And Council Member Nelson, I'll point out that in the CTO ordinance, it is Seattle IT's responsibility to conduct all technology acquisitions.

And partly it's because of processes like these, our security review process.

We also review technologies to make sure they're not redundant, that they're not going to cause undue support burden for the city.

There's a number of checks and balances that we have in place.

And so all the technology purchases do get a surveillance review either to determine if they are likely to be a surveillance technology or not.

And then the determinations there all get submitted to council annually.

So you all have a chance to review the ones that we determined were not surveillance and have an opportunity then to ask questions or ask us to conduct further review on those if you see anything that's concerning.

And that's worth a point of clarification on my end as well.

Thank you, sir, that we have purchased technologies, but every technology we've purchased, we've gone through the privacy assessment to determine with Seattle it to determine whether it was worthy of a surveillance attack as being a surveillance technology.

Since the passage of the surveillance ordinance, we have not purchased any new surveillance technologies.

Correct.

And with SPD and with other departments, we also engage in a process with them to determine if there are alternate ways to go about solving the problem they're trying to solve or getting the data that they're getting that don't require them to buy products or conduct surveillance operations, or surveillance or surveillance-like operations.

And again, I say, and other departments, it's not just SPD.

The surveillance ordinance applies to all city departments.

And we do that review for all city departments and have had many instances where we've talked the department out of acquiring something because we've determined that you can actually do what you want to do without being creepy about it.

And we're talking about technologies that, for example, City Light or, I don't know, parks would want, like even as basic as laptops or iPads or things like that.

I mean, that is why there's so much material to go through.

Am I correct at that?

Yeah, exactly.

There are certain classes of technology like standard computers and phones that we've done a general assessment of, and so we don't do a review for every instance of a purchase of that technology.

But yeah, I mean, if somebody wants to buy a non-standard printer, I mean, we ask the same basic questions of that that we ask of anything.

Are you collecting public data?

I mean, there's four or five basic questions that we ask to determine if we're going to do a further review.

We ask those of all non-standard purchases.

For anything we've decided as a standard, which is just something you can just buy, we've done the review on the technologies that constitute that standard.

as part of the standard development process.

So we're not reviewing every single laptop or phone purchase, but if you wanna buy something new that we haven't reviewed yet, no matter what it is, whether it's just a plain, a data set that's been accumulated from somewhere else, or my go-to example is a picture-taking robot that roams around downtown, we're gonna put that through a security or a, I'm sorry, surveillance review, and there have been instances where the departments have realized, well, yes, we agree this constitutes surveillance technology and the problem we're trying to solve or the results we're trying to achieve don't really merit the level of risk that this introduces to our public.

And so we're not gonna go forward with that purchase.

Understood, thank you.

Okay, unless there are any other questions about this, presentation, could we take it down and then proceed to central staff's presentation, please?

And if there are questions, please voice say it.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Chair Nelson.

Vin is going to put my presentation up on the screen.

I am grateful to his offer to run this for me.

Thank you very much.

And good morning, Council members.

I haven't seen most of you in person yet.

That will change at some point.

So I'm going to move pretty quickly through these first few slides, so as not to repeat the information that you've already heard.

My presentation will cover a little bit of background, and then for each bill, I'll focus on SBD's identification and mitigation of potential civil liberties and privacy impacts and policy considerations for each bill.

So my policy considerations are going to flag what's incomplete in the SIR and focus on issues that present a significant risk of civil liberties and privacy impacts.

As Chair Nelson pointed out, if you would like additional background on On any of this information, you can look at reference.

You can see table one in each staff memo that will talk about the working groups, privacy and civil liberties impact assessments, and note whether each recommendation is already governed by federal, state, or city law, whether it addresses a potential use that's not currently in practice at SPD, such as predictive policing, or if it's already largely addressed in the CERB.

So I'll, you'll, this will, Council Member, yes.

I didn't mean to interrupt, but can you, your voice is a little bit fuzzy or a little bit low, I mean, soft, so.

You can proceed, but I just.

Let me see if I can channel.

That's better.

A little bit better.

That is better.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

Losing my headphone here.

Thank you.

So if we could have the next slide then, please.

So this is the first of two hearings.

The second hearing will be on May 11th with a possible vote.

I would note that if you have any amendments in mind, please get those to me by May 2nd.

That would give me enough time to draft them and then obtain the legal review so that I can meet the deadlines for the May 11th meeting.

Next slide, please.

So in addition to being subject to the city's surveillance ordinances, the department's operations are also governed by section 1412 of the municipal code, which defines the police department's criminal intelligence powers and functions, including how the department can collect, record, retain, and share information.

So if you want information, more background on either the surveillance ordinances or the intelligence ordinances, I would point you to the background memo that Chair Nielsen pointed out is attached to your agenda materials.

Next slide, please.

I'm going to skip over this one.

This is an abbreviated version of the chart that CTO Loader showed you.

So moving to the proposed bills then, this is Council Bill 123-07.

It would retroactively approve the continuing use of the audio recording systems and accept the SIR and executive overview for each of them.

You've pretty much heard the description of this, so I think I'm going to go ahead and skip over this.

Let's go to the next slide then.

So, as CTO Loder noted, each SIR has to include an adapted version of a racial equity toolkit and identify mitigation of potential racial impacts or disproportionate impacts on individuals or vulnerable communities.

This SIR identified several potential risks to civil liberties and our privacy from these devices, including the risk that private information about suspects and victims may be acquired, and the risk that data sharing, storage, and retention could contribute to structural racism.

The Police Department mitigates these impacts through its evidence procedures and anti-bias policies and warrant requirements.

Next slide, please.

So for audio recording systems, you'll see three policy considerations in my staff report.

The first one speaks to equity assessment metrics.

For those of you who've been through this with some of the previous committee that looked at the SIRs, each of the SIRs asked the department to identify metrics that the CTO can use in their annual equity assessments of each technology.

These are ways to measure disproportionate impacts and racial impacts.

So none of the previous SIRs that the councils received have included any of these metrics.

I think there was an assumption of a process that didn't happen.

So what previous committees have done have asked, have requested by amendment that the various departments provide a report on the proposed metrics by a specific date.

The next item I've noted as a policy consideration is the mitigation of civil liberty impacts.

So, as I said, the CER states that the SPD's existing policies provide sufficient mitigation.

But I find that it's not really possible to fully evaluate whether the systems are being used inequitably without some historical data.

So you'll see in the staff memo, one option for the council would be to ask that the SPD report on how the audio recording systems have been deployed, perhaps by incident type and location, and identify any potentially disproportionate impacts.

This recommendation is consistent with some of the recommendations from the working group.

The next one also is consistent with the working group recommendation, which is authentication of the recordings.

So the SIR is silent on this matter.

I've basically found that inaccurate identification of speakers could lead to mistakes in criminal investigations.

And I also found that accidental or intentional tampering with the rendering, of course, would render inadmissible in court.

So it is very important to have some way to verify that the recordings are, are taping the people you say they're taping, that there aren't any missing gaps that they would be viable evidence in a court hearing.

So council has an option to ask that the police department develop policies and procedures to more formally verify the authenticity of its covert audio recordings.

So I'll move on then to the IBASE link analysis software, please.

I'm just going to skip through a few.

Oh, you are so good at this.

Okay, I'm not going to go over too much more description about what the software does.

I think Captain Britt did a wonderful job of this.

So let's go ahead and talk about the next slide, which is the civil liberties and potential disparate impacts.

So in this SIR, SPD noted that the most important unintended consequence in the use of IBASE is the risk that you've mistakenly identified links between individuals who may not be related to the criminal investigations.

So, and in the SIR, the mitigation is defined at as taking place because there are only two detectives who use this.

So if there are only two detectives as opposed to 10 detectives, your magnitude of error goes down.

They also identify some other potential risks in terms of acquiring private information about suspects and victims, potential ethnic bias or bias built into its algorithms, and then the data sharing, storage, and retention that could contribute to and maintain structural racism.

SPD says that these set of risks are mitigated by its evidence procedures, anti-bias policies, and warrant requirements.

So let's talk about the policy considerations here then.

You'll see, again, the equity assessment metrics need to be provided.

The SIR also left blank a question that asked about how SPD would respond to public comments.

So obviously, going forward, if the council chooses to, you could ask for reports to provide those sets of information by a specific date.

Mitigation of civil liberties impacts is, I think, a significant policy consideration.

The risk of wrongly identifying individuals has significant potential consequences and could have tragic outcomes.

And again, in the absence of historical data, we don't really know how often this takes place.

We don't have an error rate, for example.

And so one way that the council could move forward on this is to obtain an independent evaluation as to the risks from SPD's current practices.

and that could help set the stage to know whether SPD could benefit from additional policies and protocols to protect against those errors and any potential bias in baseline data.

So that kind of an evaluation, for example, could look at a number of the areas that were flagged as being of concern by the surveillance working group.

Examples include the documentation of the types and number of incidents for which SPD uses the system, the databases used by SPD, the types of data that is historically input by the officers, any sort of data validation or information as to the accuracy of the analyses, and any demographic information about the individuals and groups that are associated with the analysis.

I would flag that an independent evaluation such as this would probably require additional resources.

And that might be something council may want to consider in an upcoming supplemental budget.

So I'll just quickly go over the last three and that will complete my presentation.

So contractual terms, Captain Britt noted that there is a-

I'm sorry, I asked you if you want to take questions, but you made a point of extra resources.

So that being me, the public comments that were described in the previous presentation, those public comments sort of feed into the working groups work.

I mean, they consider public comments before they begin their work.

Am I correct?

Yes, they generally monitor the public engagement process and participate to their extent as they can.

Thanks, go on.

Sure.

So for the contractual terms, the city has actually a template that FAS has provided that would provide terms and conditions that would protect the city's data and privacy and set privacy standards.

Any sort of vendor-provided licensing agreement probably doesn't do that.

I know that ITD has been concerned in the past about use of, for example, pre-technology.

That's not the case with this, but that by using a city contract, you're able to protect the city's data better than if you rely on a vendor-provided document.

So one option would be to ask SPD to go ahead and develop a contract for the use of this data using the city's template.

The retention schedule here, SPD uses the maximum retention period allowed or recommended by federal and state laws rather than the minimum.

So they retain these records for five years.

If you retain, this could result in a lot of out-of-date records potentially being on here.

They could be inaccurate, particularly if there's no way to validate the information each year.

So one way to go forward with this, should council choose, would be to ask SPD to develop a revised retention policy that complies instead with the minimum retention period, and then perhaps adds an annual validation of records retained for more than one year.

These couple of recommendations are also consistent with recommendations from the working group.

And finally, the SPD's computer-aided dispatch is now operated by the new Community Safety and Communications Center.

So that's actually a separate department from SPD.

Both departments are subject to the federal rules for data sharing, but a formal internal agreement would provide greater transparency about how data is handled and kept secure.

So should council see fit, you could ask SPD to develop maybe a more formal MOA or MOU with the Community Safety and Communication Center as to how data will be shared and protected.

That completes my report.

Thank you very much, Lisa.

I will now open the conversation to questions from my colleagues.

Council Member Herbold.

And can we remove the presentation, please?

No, don't remove it, because there might be questions.

Never mind.

Hi, Chloe.

Thank you so much.

So on slide five, I know one of the recommendations from the working group was that SPD disclose the names of manufacturers, vendors, model names, and model numbers of the audio reporting systems.

And the response from SPD is that they want to avoid the risk of counter measures as it relates to the audio recording system.

Can you explain a little bit about what that means?

I'm going to direct, I'm assuming you're asking the police department for that explanation.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

I'm Captain Britt here.

If we're required to disclose information about these devices, exactly what they are, make, model, people are able to gather information about them and would be able to develop ways to defeat or prevent us from using these items effectively.

Thank you.

A couple other questions, if I may?

Yes.

Appreciate it.

As it relates specifically to the recommendation that there be a specific prohibition on the use of biometric technology on or with audio recordings.

I appreciate that SPD has explained that they do not use biometric technology in conjunction with the recording systems, but wouldn't it still be an action for the council that we could take to specify in a way that's consistent with the working group recommendations that should there be a time that SPD might consider using biometric technology that we state proactively that we don't support that?

Or would that be sort of inconsistent with the approach that we use for these these surveillance technologies, which is basically, it is prohibited until we say it's not.

Council Member, I think you're right.

I think that would be a little bit of belt and suspenders, but sometimes that's an important policy decision to make, that the council could make.

And you're right, if they chose to, if SPD wanted to use biometric technology, they would need to submit a surveillance impact report.

And I believe we did do sort of a belt and suspenders approach for facial recognition technology.

Yes.

If I remember correctly.

Okay, thank you.

But would that be an amendment to this particular piece of legislation because, or would that be a separate policy process?

I think it would depend on whether you wanted to limit the prohibition to the use of biometric technology associated with audio recording systems or associated with any use of biometric technology.

Got it.

Council Member Herbold, do you have other questions?

I do, but I'm going to just pause for a moment just to see if there are other questions about this particular technology.

My other questions are related to the other.

Could you go back to the mitigating of civil liberties?

And this applies to both of the both of the council bills, because that is mentioned in there.

So Are these, when we talk about civil liberties, these are all technologies that have already been, these investigations, you're using these because there has been a warrant?

I mean, can you, is that, that's a broad term mitigating of civil liberties.

So, What does the warrant process provide for any kind of mitigation of violations of civil liberties and the privacy ordinance that also governs the use of some of these technologies?

That is for SPD, I think.

certainly uh...

the the war process the detective when sitting before the judge has to show why they believe this person has relevant information why we should be allowed to record the way we're recording uh...

and then the judge gets to determine whether we're allowed to create a recording without person's knowledge where and when we're allowed to do that they can either say you know within this thirty days you have to serve this war within thirty days they could say You can't do it in, uh, privately controlled areas.

You have to do it in public.

They could say you have to do it when the person's alone.

You have to do it when there's a certain number of people around or less than a certain number of people around.

So the judges have a great amount of leeway in how they control our process.

But we have zero leeway.

We we go to the judge with this request, and the judge decides what the limits are on our ability to create this recording.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, are you ready for another question, or any of my other colleagues, please?

Sure.

Happy to jump in here on the next technology.

Just wondering, as it relates to slide 11, I think maybe Lisa covered it.

The IBASE combines data from other sources at SPD, And it looks like the IBASE retains the compilation of the data, the compilation of the data in comparison to the sources it's pulled from for the maximum of five years.

And I'm wondering, is there a minimum?

Lisa, you suggested that there may be an interest in asking for a retention schedule that is different than the maximum.

And I believe we've done that for some of the other technologies as well.

So there are state retention, there's a state retention schedule and the length of time, the minimum, maximum retention for those, I'm sorry, the minimum retention for those varies depending on the nature of the case.

But I'll also turn that over to SPD if you wanted to add to that statement.

So, for example, murder cases, the records have to be held much longer than shoplifting cases.

I mean, it really depends on the nature of the record.

And at risk of speaking outside of my lane, I would defer to SPD's legal department to make sure that we had the factual information correct on a case-by-case status.

But Ms. Kaye is correct.

The retention is set by the nature of the crime and state law.

Thank you.

Rebecca, do you want to add on anything here?

Captain Britt is correct.

It's on a case by case basis and is established by the state records retention guidelines.

Well, we don't have anybody in the prosecutor's office here, but I mean, it seems to me not knowing how long it takes a case to go through.

What if there is an allegation that, um, We got the wrong guy, for example.

I mean, and so is the idea that you want the records available for possible appeals?

That's the nature of why it's a case by case.

We are required, for example, in a homicide case, we're required now by law to retain all evidence related to that case, including all investigative files related to that case, until all appeals processes are concluded.

One of the reasons our vehicle processing room oftentimes gets inundated with vehicles that have to be held for a lengthy period of time.

But related to this, any information related to this would need to be held associated with the investigative file through the length of the required retention.

And you're correct, Council Member, it would be because of the need for appeals.

And just to clarify, the data in IBASE would be not the actual data that's going into the investigation.

Any link charts created would then be provided to the detective, and it's his or her responsibility to then hold onto that throughout the lifetime of the case.

Any manually added information would still, in IBASE, would still be deleted after five years, and it would only live on on the link chart that he has.

Thank you.

Colleagues, do you have any other questions or comments about either the technologies or the policy considerations before us?

Because we're not going to have the experts in the room to ask these questions unless we decide that we need that later.

But now is the time to ask detailed questions on these technologies.

OK.

Brian Maxey, please.

Good morning.

I just wanted to clarify a couple things that I heard because I just make sure the committee has the full understanding.

First of all, in terms of the contracts, those are generally because I.T.

controls the procurement of these technologies.

The contracts are drafted primarily by Seattle I.T.

and they're the ones that are looking at the use of the data within the system and whether the vendor has access to and for what uses they do.

And that's part of their privacy and data control analysis.

So that's not something that is controlled by SPD as I understand it.

Secondly, on the slide that's on the screen right now with the data sharing with the CSCC, the Community Safety and Communications Center, SPD retains operational control over the computer aided dispatch system.

That is an SPD system.

It is used by the CSCC, but we're the ones that have the data management responsibilities and control over that system.

So we do not have, the data sharing goes from us to them, not the other direction.

Could I ask you, Brian, is there a written agreement as to that operational control that SPD retains?

It has never changed during the decoupling.

Right now, SPD is still maintaining the operational, all the administrative systems for CSCC.

And so I don't think there is a specific, there would be an agreement to transfer the control to CSCC rather than an agreement to leave it at SPD.

So to my knowledge, that document does not exist.

Okay.

Are there any other comments from anyone, either my colleagues or the departmental staff that are with us today?

Okay.

Lisa, do you have any followups?

I just wanted to remind people, if you have amendments, please get those to me.

They don't have to be fully baked, but please get them to me by May 2nd and I'll work with you on those so we can get them ready in time for the May 11th meeting.

Uh, Captain Britt.

Yes, ma'am.

Uh, Spencer, want to make a couple clarifying points here?

Yeah, my name is Spencer.

Hey, I'm a violent crime analyst.

Um, and just to clarify the two people that have access to the two I base currently are me and one other civilian analyst.

We're both civilians, not detectives.

Um, and I So I looked through the agenda that was provided.

It was my first time seeing many of the comments and the concerns, and I fully understand and appreciate all the concerns that have been raised.

We have no desire to do anything untoward here.

We don't have time to be wasting on contributing to any sort of misappropriation or attribution of data.

So I appreciate those concerns.

I think many of the concerns, though, sort of driven by a misunderstanding of what exactly I base is and what it does.

It is not smart.

There's no algorithm.

It doesn't.

It doesn't make any sort of analysis that any analysis done using I base is manually done by us.

The two civilian analysts.

I think it sounds like a lot of the concerns, including some of the public comments were driven by sort of the sales pitch information that's provided by IBM on their website, which is at best an exaggeration of what IBASE can do.

For example, there was concern raised over heat maps.

The maps don't work.

We don't use it for mapping at all.

We were pretty disappointed in the way that it came out, so we don't even use the maps at all.

Another concern was over social network analysis.

The way we bring the data in, we cannot use it for social network analysis.

without getting too technical.

Social network analysis basically requires you to have linkages between people.

So two people that know each other, and then you analyze those social networks.

That is not how we bring the data into IBASE.

We bring it in only based off of records management system data, which is event-based.

So a person is arrested in an incident.

If another person is arrested in that incident as well, they're both linked to the incident, but you cannot run SNA on that.

So that doesn't work.

In addition, as has been stated, we have no relationship with IBM anymore.

IT has the contract with them.

They have no access to our data whatsoever.

I'd also say that no police action is ever taken just based off of any chart generated by us through IBASE.

That's at best a tipper system for a detective to then continue.

While we technically sit in our real-time crime center, that is down to just one detective and us two analysts.

We very rarely are even paying attention to the real time stuff that's happening in the city.

We just don't have time for that.

We're focused on larger homicide and shooting investigations and that sort of thing.

So it's really not being used to drive any sort of daily activities by officers.

Um, Yeah, I wish we'd been engaged in this process more directly early on.

We were not approached by the working group, but I could have provided some clarity on exactly how we use it.

We provided the schema of the manual entered information that we do put in there.

It sounds like that did not make it to the working group, but we have nothing to hide.

I welcome any oversight, anyone that would like to see exactly how we're doing it.

I wish I could give a demonstration here, but it is all CJIS data, so we're pretty restricted in who is actually able to see that data.

Beyond that, yeah, we have nothing to hide, and I look forward to further engagement with anyone that wants to ask us about what we're doing.

Thank you.

When you were talking about maybe some of the concerns were based on messaging on the packaging, it raised a question for me.

Can working group members just call you up and say, Hey, what about this?

I mean, it's is.

It seems like you're saying that didn't happen.

But, um, is there a relationship so that you can answer some of these questions earlier on?

Absolutely.

I mean, we'd be we would be happy to answer any questions and concerns that anyone has directly.

Miss Miss K has been very good about forwarding questions over from the working group, and we've been doing our best to answer them.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of times there's a telephone game going on there.

So at some point in the future, as we engage in this process, it may be good just to get everybody on a call or in a room together and run a demonstration so they can see it.

Yeah, it was pointed out earlier how onerous this process has become, and it has not taken eight to nine months as we had hoped.

But so, yeah, just by the nature of this process, I think it's difficult to get all the right people in the room at the same time, especially with COVID.

Which is apparently ending, according to Fauci.

Sorry, not the pandemic.

Moving back to my point.

I'm not so sure about that.

No, no, no, no, no.

CDC, girl.

No, no, no, no.

OK, so go on, Lisa.

I was just going to mention, I mean, we do have at least seven more technologies from SPD that will be coming forward this fall, and I would encourage the executive to potentially connect the subject matter experts to the working group earlier in the process so that they can help focus their questions on once they've received full information.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

On that point, Is there is the issue a purely a scheduling and logistics issue, or is the issue that there is no touch point built into the process that, um, uh, Seattle I. T. Kind of helps facilitate with not just with SPD, but with any of the departments, um, who have staff with subject area expertise, operations expertise around these technologies that they are actually brought in to present to the working group?

Does that step exist in the process or does it not exist?

I'm sorry, it exists.

I'm sorry, Lisa, I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, you should be answering it.

That's fine.

Yeah, it does exist.

So subject matter experts from the departments are invited to the public engagement sessions.

And Sarah, do you happen to remember for this technology in particular regarding the working group, what were their opportunities for the subject matter experts to meet directly with the working group?

I guess on this tranche of technologies, but also in general.

Yeah, so typically when we open a public engagement window, public comment period, we do inform the working group that we're opening the window, encourage them to not only show up to the meetings, right, which they're informed about with the joining links in our virtual world, but also to try to help encourage and drive participation from their connections and folks that they know in their community as well.

So there's no direct presentation to the working group from the subject matter experts, but they are encouraged, invited, and informed that there will be a presentation and an engagement with the departments, with the technologies under review through that public comment window.

So, yeah, I guess the short answer is yes, the opportunity exists for both members of the public and members of the working group to have engagement, receive information directly from and then engage with the subject matter experts representing the technologies.

And why would there not be an actual presentation from the department purchasing, seeking to purchase the technology or in the case of retroactive technologies, the department using the technology?

Why would that not be a component of that engagement?

You mean a presentation to the working group directly?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sarah, is that, is that?

part of the process?

Is that an optional part of the process?

Or that is not an ordinance defined process.

So it has not been requested, and it just has not been part of kind of the public engagement process.

It has not been something that I have heard be requested before, and so it just hasn't been part of the steps.

Thank you.

Well, in this case, I am hearing SPD saying they wish they were invited to give a presentation.

So it might, I mean, I don't think every nuance of a public engagement process needs to be codified in an ordinance and maybe we might just decide collectively, that it's a good idea to do so that this subject matter expertise isn't just held by city staff working in the departments using the technology, but that it's shared with members of the public who have responsibility for commenting.

on these technologies.

Yep, you're right.

So I've now heard that interest from you, council member, as well as from SPD.

And I think as we structure and evolve the working group process through this journey, we can take those into consideration and just get more information out for consumption by the public and the representatives.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ryan, you have your hand up.

Yeah, I won't belabor this at all.

Absolutely, we will welcome that opportunity to do so.

I suspect we were invited, but we probably did not have the internal mechanisms to really understand what we were being invited to and how best to engage.

So a more direct, clearer, please come tell us about your technologies and explain your case, we are happy to engage in that.

So I'm not in any way trying to pass the buck on this.

We're happy to engage.

And I heard very clearly from the public commenters that they want that engagement.

They want direct answers from the police department.

And I think we are absolutely in a position to provide those.

So thank you.

Yeah, and I like the idea of just getting on a call because it's not just you explaining the technology.

It is people being able to ask questions so that and that could maybe streamline the process going forward.

And we're gonna end at 11, by 11, but I did have one question.

In a public safety committee meeting, I think it was, I can't remember, it was two times ago, we heard presentations on task forces in conjunction with, is this the sort of technology that is used in those task forces that we're mostly looking at?

Guns on the street, is that the sort of, work that we're deploying these technologies for?

Do you know if those, if the IEDEA task force has employed these kinds of technologies?

This type of technology, like within SPD, I can't speak for what the agencies themselves use, but within SPD, this would be used by our gun violence reduction unit, by our homicide unit.

And yes, it could be an analysis, could be requested of Spencer and his counterpart, by a detective working with a gun violence task force, if they have information that they can bring in that can be manually added to an eye-to-eye based analysis chart, they would bring it in.

That is how it could be used, but not exclusively in any way, no.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you very, very much for your presentations, and we will take this up again at the May 11th committee meeting.

And if there are no other questions or comments, I will adjourn this meeting.

Looking around.

OK, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you all.

Bye bye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Recording stopped.