Good afternoon.
Good afternoon.
Good morning, everybody.
Thank you for being here for our Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee on December 18th, 2018. This will be our last year in meeting for this committee.
I will start off with public comment, and then we'll move into the three agenda items we have, which number one is a ordinance relating to the regulation of the for hire industry and the taxi and TNC world and the second one will be a discussion on an update on the community surveillance working group and the third one will be a discussion and possible vote on the great the use of gray key Technologies as a surveillance technology.
Okay, so let's start with public comment.
Thank you for being here.
We'll start off with Jessica McCoy We asked to try to stay under two minutes if possible Jessica be followed by Alex Zimmerman and then Ron Wilson
Good morning, Councilmember.
Good morning.
I am Jessica McCoy from Samaritan, and I am just coming to give you a brief update on Samaritan and our progress.
We wanted to let you know that we've had a growing need expressed from the community here on getting more beacons, both from individuals experiencing homelessness as well as shelters and service providers in the area.
We've established some new partnerships over the last few months, including partnerships with Salvation Army, with the Mobile Medic Van, Compass Housing Alliance, and DESC.
And so we're working on training their case managers to use the technology.
But they've also all requested to be able to have these beacons on hand with them.
As a refresher, Samaritan uses this technology to link individuals experiencing homelessness with financial capital and relational guidance.
And we're very excited.
We're up to about 60 significant life-changing outcomes from housing to employment to being able to purchase work clothes so they can accept a job or just get medication every month.
So we are looking now to begin increasing our current pilot of 500 beacons.
And I'd love to speak with you afterward on behalf of Jonathan.
I know you've spoken with him before on who you'd like to invite for a demo and discuss how we can expand this pilot to 2,500 beacons here in Seattle.
So Jessica, not to put you on the spot, I don't have a question, just a comment.
Thank you for your words.
So I would like to schedule a sort of a trial.
I'd like to see the technology.
And so I don't know, the problem could have been our committee or we went through the budget process, but like you or Jonathan, to bring the technology, maybe a few users.
Whenever we use technology, there's a process the city has to go through.
You'll see some of that today, as a matter of fact.
But I'm very interested in your technology.
I know how it works.
So I guess I'll say Vin, who heads up our technology works, watching what we're saying now and listening.
So I'd love to get that scheduled early next year, January or February.
Maybe have some users of it.
Maybe have some of our IT folks and really show how it works, but I'm excited about it.
Thank you for doing the work you're doing.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much, Council Member.
Thank you.
Our next speaker will be Alex Zimmerman, followed by Ron Wilson, and then Shankar Narayan.
Yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman.
And Ron Wilson.
Moving right along.
This little cell phone I carry, I'm sure everyone in attendance here today is carrying one.
I've had intrusions.
I provided this council dozens and dozens.
I'm not misstating the number of emails and narratives I have delivered to this council.
Narratives describing the third party voices on my phone.
The email saying that I wanted to sleep with Shawarma Sawant.
Describing my red tennis shoes that I was wearing.
These are traumatic.
This is very disturbing.
For a phone to be able to have the kind of technology that I believe the city IT is involved in, quite frankly.
The theory that I have is that the city wants me to go away, and I'm just not going to go away that easy.
I'm going to continue fighting for privacy rights, and I'm going to continue to provide narratives to responsible elected officials.
And hopefully, I will get a chance to get a response back.
After all my requests for a 15-minute meeting, I never received, and I have never received one call back from any council members.
This is despicable.
I think we ought to reelect all new council members if this city can't get its act together and address the damages that I have endured in emotionally and physically.
I don't even know what I'm going to come home to when I open the door to my house.
There were objects placed in my house, metal objects.
This is all after making declarations of misconduct in law enforcement, and it continues to this day.
Thank you, Ron.
I'm very sorry that I haven't had any response from you people.
And it's neglectful, it's willful, and I think that there's intent on the city to get me to go away, and I think that the IT is involved.
Thank you, sir.
The last speaker to stand up is Shankar Narayan.
Good morning, council members.
Shankar Narayan for ACLU.
I'll be addressing the grey key issue this morning.
And I have both process and substantive concerns about where we are on GreyKey.
And I'd like to make a few quick points about that.
One is that GreyKey is surveillance technology in our view.
It enables the unlocking of a phone for the primary purpose of observing or analyzing the movements or behavior of that phone owner.
In other words, it allows the download of the information stored on that phone.
That is really problematic.
There is no exemption in the surveillance ordinance for an agency declaring that it will use a technology with a warrant.
That's just not there.
There is an opt-out exemption, but there's a line in the privacy impact assessment that suggests that the ordinance is being interpreted such that if an agency simply declares that it's going to use a technology with a warrant, it's exempt from scrutiny.
That is simply not the case.
It's not supported by the language of the ordinance.
It's not supported by the legislative history of the ordinance.
And where there's doubt, the ordinance should be interpreted in favor of more public transparency and accountability and not less.
I'd also like to point out that the privacy impact assessment that was done on this technology falls well below the transparency standards of what the council should demand.
Many questions were skipped, many questions were left blank, or just had one word answers, no, with no justification or explanation.
That's not real public transparency, and we need to make sure that no longer happens.
Finally, I'd just like to point out there's an extensive list of community groups that are concerned with surveillance.
They would have liked to have been here, but, you know, unfortunately I found out about the report that exists that mentioned us from a journalist yesterday and it would have been great for us to get a heads up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, that concludes our public comment.
Thank you for being here and we'll move into our first agenda item.
Go ahead and read it into the record, any presenters come forward.
I would like to call on counsel bill 119427 an ordinance relating to the regulation of the for hire industry removing certain considerations between an exclusive driver representative and the director of finance and administrative services.
Hello.
So, I sort of mentioned what we're examining in this You could give us, you have some introductory words, and you want to give some context, and then we'll just sort of talk through it and see what we got.
Sure.
Thank you very much.
Brian Goodnight, Council Central staff.
In December of 2015, the City Council passed Ordinance 124968, relating to the regulation of the for hire transportation industry, under which for hire drivers could determine whether or not to engage in collective negotiations with the companies that contract with those drivers.
The ordinance provides that subjects to be negotiated will be specified in rules or regulations promulgated by the director of FAS, including but not limited to best practices regarding vehicle equipment standards, safe driving practices, the manner in which criminal background checks are to be conducted, the nature and amount of payments to be made to or withheld from drivers, and the minimum hours and conditions of work.
So the bill before you today, Council Bill 119427, would make a few Seattle Municipal Code amendments to sections that were created with the 2015 ordinance.
First, the bill would remove as a subject of negotiations the nature and amount of payments to be made to or withheld from drivers.
Second, it would prohibit the FAS director from including those types of payment provisions as a subject of negotiation in any rules or regulations.
And third, to the extent that interest arbitration is necessary, the bill would remove from consideration a comparison of payments to other drivers.
The bill also makes some technical corrections to the code, and section two of the bill expressly provides that any city rule or regulation that is inconsistent with this bill is superseded.
And just lastly, attached to the agenda is a proposed substitute version of the bill for your consideration.
The proposed substitute simply corrects some typos that were contained in the originally introduced bill, which did not use the proper formatting to make the desired code amendments.
And so the proposed substitute is indicated as version D2.
Very good.
Thanks for that overview and thanks for the write-up that's been disseminated and available to the public.
Councilmember Bryan, you have some comments?
I do.
Thank you, Council President.
Bryan, thanks for that overview.
This is a piece of legislation, part of a broader body of work obviously we've been doing around the taxing for higher industry for a number of years and I think this legislation is the right place, the right direction to go at this time.
A couple reasons I want to share.
When we originally did the collective bargaining legislation, we gave drivers a whole host of things that they could bargain on.
One of the things that we know we specifically have the right to do and could act on is setting minimum rates and possibly compensation.
We do do something similar with the taxi industry.
And I think that as we move forward, it's important for us to preserve our flexibility on how we address compensation.
I think that the reality of a timeline for which drivers may go through the collective bargaining process and negotiate that is likely to be a fairly long timeline.
And I think that if we choose to do so, we might be able to do something more swiftly.
And so I think taking that piece of the body of work out of the collective bargaining agreement and putting it back in the city council's hands is something that I think makes sense at this time in light of kind of the couple years we're into this already and what may come next.
Very good.
I agree with everything you said.
For me, it's about, at this point, flexibility for both all of the industry participants, equity, and making sure we have a robust industry for both the owners of the company, the drivers of the company, the consumers.
And so I look forward to this.
I think this is a good approach.
So I don't have, I'm not going to grandstand on this one.
It just seems like the right thing to do.
Any other comments?
Are we ready to vote?
Okay.
Well, I'll go ahead and move to substitute D2 for the underlying version.
I'll second that.
All those in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
The ayes have it.
And so Council Bill 119427 is passed.
Substitute.
Yeah, substitute.
I'm sorry, the substitute bill is substituted.
And we'll present this in January.
I'll go ahead and move the bill as substituted now.
I'm sorry.
I've got my other hat on here, so I'm getting ahead of myself.
So it has been substituted.
So now we have the Council Bill 119427 is ready to vote.
Am I saying that correctly?
Okay.
So I'll now move it.
I'll move Council Bill 119427. All those in favor, say aye.
Aye.
Opposed?
The ayes have it.
Okay, so we substituted 119427 for 124968, and we'll present it at full council, I think, on January 7th is the plan.
Go ahead.
You didn't substitute for 968. You just substituted version D2 for version D1, which was in your packets.
Okay, so strike what I said.
So yeah, you approved council bill one one nine four two seven version d2 Correct.
Yes, and one two four nine six eight was the prior one passing.
That was the one that passed in December of 2015 Okay, so we will present One one nine four two seven.
It's the next opportunity unless something changes.
We don't have a schedule yet We haven't approved the IRC, but that's sort of our thinking at this time.
Okay, I believe okay.
Thank you, Brian.
Thank you very much Okay, let's move to the next second agenda.
I didn't see if I could slaughter that one, too
Go ahead.
Community surveillance working group update.
So we just wanted to sort of daylight the issue.
There's not a lot to chat about here, but wanted folks to know that we're trying to move ahead.
So once you get your paperwork situated, Greg, why don't you introduce yourself and just sort of talk to us about what you do know about how the working group is coming along and et cetera.
Thank you, Council President.
I am Greg Doss, Council Central staff, here to provide, as you said, an update on the working group by way of some brief history.
As you all know, the surveillance ordinance requires city departments to obtain council approval for those technologies that are deemed surveillance, either technologies that are possessed now or technologies that departments would like to acquire.
Last September, the Council passed Ordinance 125679, which expanded the public review process for surveillance technology.
The Council created a working group that would consist of members from communities and groups that are historically subject to disproportionate surveillance, including Seattle's diverse communities of color, immigrant communities, religious minorities, and groups concerned with privacy and protest.
The ordinance created a seven-member working group, three appointments coming from the council and four appointments coming from the mayor.
At least five of those appointments have to come from the communities and groups that I mentioned a moment ago.
The working group is charged with creating a privacy and civil liberties impact assessment for each technology that comes before the council.
The council president's office is working to create a clerk file this week that would finalize these appointments.
The appointments were made after a process that advertised to the community and also reached out to those groups that I mentioned.
So with that, I can go ahead and read the list of members and their affiliations, or if you want to comment, sir, I'm happy to do that.
I have no comments.
We want to get that out, and we'll go ahead and read the.
The names we have so far.
So the names we have, the names that will be appointed are Asha Mohammed, who's the program manager at the King County Department of Community and Human Services.
And I apologize for slaughtering names.
Dr. Negin Daihu.
I apologize if I said that wrong.
University of Washington assistant professor.
He's a mayor appointment.
Michelle Merriweather is the president and CEO of the Urban League.
Masih Folati, who's the Council on American, he represents the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another mayor appointment.
Rich Stoltz, who's the Executive Director of One America, and that's a council appointment.
Shankar, who testified a moment ago, is the Technology and Liberties Project Director for the ACLU of Washington.
And Shankar, I'm sorry about your last name, I'm gonna slaughter, Nairan?
Thank you.
Ryan, thank you.
And Joe Woolley, who is a volunteer from the Community Technology Advisory Board.
Those last three are council appointments, correct?
Yes, yes.
And then by way of update, the working group will immediately receive up to six technologies to start reviewing as soon as they're appointed.
And these technologies are used by the Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle Police Department, and Seattle Fire Department.
The ordinance requires the working group to review these technologies and submit the impact assessment as I said a moment ago And they have to do so within six weeks of receiving the technologies If necessary, they can ask for a two-week extension so the executive has said that given the tight timeline between now and the that a first impact assessment would be due, which would be in January, January 31st, that they're gonna consider maybe piecemealing these technologies to the working group to give them more time.
So we'll see how that progresses.
The final deadline, though, is that the city needs to submit to the council at least one technology that has been fully reviewed by January 31st.
Yeah, just for a refresher, there are a number of assessments that are required as a part of the enabling ordinance.
Can you remind us what the difference between the privacy impact assessment is and the surveillance assessment?
From my review of my notes here, both the surveillance impact report and the privacy impact assessment are documents or analysis that's supposed to be done by the executive.
What is the name for the assessment that the advisory group does?
And what are the differences between the different analyses?
So thanks.
I'll just start at a high level.
The executive has a privacy officer and a privacy policy.
And so regardless of whether a technology is determined to be surveillance, if it has any privacy implications at all, then the executive will do a privacy impact assessment, whereby they will ask the department to describe how they're going to protect the data.
how they're going to make sure that only the right folks are authorized to see it, many of the same kinds of things that you all would hear about as part of the surveillance impact report.
The surveillance impact report does all those same things, data privacy, protection, but it goes an extra layer deep in that it requires community review and then also review from this working group.
But the surveillance impact report only doesn't include everything that's in the privacy impact assessment, because the privacy impact assessment includes technologies that aren't defined as surveillance.
And the surveillance impact report is confined to the things that are defined as surveillance.
That's true.
And I might be overstating it, but the privacy impact assessment, does that sort of preliminarily determine whether at least the city believes an SIR is needed?
It can.
So it sort of could somewhat screen out, for example, in this gray key technology, Think that they had concluded it didn't require an SIR and that could be a difference of opinion there So so I look at the I call it a PIA the PIA is sort of a preliminary step Global step to see if the extra analysis is necessary at least in the city's mind.
It could be used that way.
Yes, and However as demonstrated by a great key I even the, well once we get the working group up, they will still know everything that a PIA has, they'll see all the PIAs to see if they agree or not.
They would see the PIA and because they would go that extra step of doing the council surveillance impact report, they would also see the public testimony that had been done through an outreach process and they would have all of that information to digest and then create their own report to give to you all.
Okay.
Are those your opening remarks or do you have more?
That's all I had on the working group.
Okay.
A few things.
One is, we pretty much, it wasn't a great We didn't move mountains on the working group.
We pretty much got those that had come from the community that were pretty vested.
I think Shankar and a lot of these folks had made recommendations.
And we pretty much kept with, pretty consistent with that as I recall.
I didn't understand what, not to pick on you Shankar, but his comment about something that he didn't get till late.
That's just nonsense in terms of, not the point he made was nonsense, What we've been trying to do all along is daylight everything when we get it.
I mean, I got this document, I think, yesterday myself.
So with respect, go ahead.
I'm sorry, but I think he was talking about the gray key item that's next on the agenda and the memo that was written.
Maybe the memo, but the notification that this was coming up on the agenda came from our office last Thursday, so.
But I understand that perhaps the memo was not available.
I just, my feathers get a little ruffled when there's an insinuation at all that we're being less than transparent because what I've been trying to do, particularly on these issues, is just daylight everything.
I want some of the strongest critics on that working group to make sure, I may disagree with them, In fact, I do, but that's OK.
That's part of the process.
But in terms of hiding the ball or not being transparent, that's not going to happen, at least while I'm chair of technology.
So anyway, I'd rather have open disagreements anyway, so that way I can stand corrected as I often am.
In fact, my wife corrected me on something this morning, so I'm used to it.
I'm in a being corrected mood.
I mean, at least once a day.
So anyway, so it looks like we're going to have a good working group.
We should have all that finalized, I think, by our next full.
Well, we've got to go through committee one more time, I guess.
I think your office is trying to do it this week.
OK.
I think there was one snag on one person who just, I don't know, an agreement or something like that, a verbal approval that they were willing to serve.
And so I think we're almost ready to get that in place.
And so we know we're up against the time deadline.
So look forward to that.
So I look forward to working with the working group.
Thanks for the update.
And with that, there's a good segue, I think, to go into the next agenda item.
So unless there's anything else to say about the working group.
Shankar, I'm pretty informal since this is our last.
Did we miss anything on the working group?
Any points that you want to make on the working group aspect of that?
Come on to the mic, Shankar.
So the viewing audience can hear your point.
Thanks Councilmember Harrell.
We appreciate the process by which a number of folks on our recommendation list were, have been added to the working group.
I think my only point about notification on the working group in particular was that those folks were not informed that the working group was being discussed today.
I only found out when I learned about Grey Key coming up went to the agenda and found the working group on the agenda as well.
I think, you know, we do well to operate with notifications to all those folks because they have been engaged consistently on surveillance over quite a long time now.
Thank you.
Okay.
So, okay.
I see what you're saying.
I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have, I get all, hold on a second.
It's Ron, right?
Yeah.
Just one second, Ron.
I'll give you some mic time in a sec.
Sugar, I didn't, quite frankly, we thought it appropriate sort of at the last minute to talk about the working group just to get a status because people were asking about it.
So it wasn't a big deal.
It was just, I said, let's, let's daylight where we are so the folks upstairs can know we're putting it together.
So I'd agree we could maybe have done a better job, but it was sort of putting together the agenda and stuck it on there.
Ron, what do you got, sir?
Yeah.
You guys should know that I didn't receive any notice of this meeting either.
You did not?
Also, along with Narayan, I observed the Cairo news team mentioning this meeting to be held.
And I receive all meeting and committee information, times and events.
You get alerts?
Yeah.
OK.
I was hearing it on Cairo.
OK.
I don't understand that one, so.
Okay, so let's read the next clerk file into it and have a discussion on great key clerk file 3 1 4 4 1 1 determination of great key technologies as surveillance surveillance technology
Okay, Greg, why don't you give us some context?
Thank you, Council President Harrell.
Greg Doss, again, here to talk about Clerk File 314411. It was prepared at the direction of Councilmember Herbold and contains a memo from central staff to this committee on grey key technology.
But before I summarize grey key or the memo, I'm going to do a little bit of brief background on surveillance and why you all are here right now looking at this.
The surveillance ordinance requires the executive to establish a process for determining whether or not a technology is surveillance.
And to make this decision, the executive is supposed to evaluate the technology in the context of the definition in the ordinance.
If the technology is determined to be surveillance, then the executive is required to do all the things we talked about with the SIR.
surveillance impact report to go through the public process, to go through the working group process, and to come to you all.
If it is not determined to be surveillance, as I said a moment ago, there's still a privacy impact assessment on the city side.
The executive side that's done to make sure that the privacy rights of those involved are protected.
On clerk file 314411, the memo indicates that the executive had performed an initial surveillance review of the Gray Key technology and in that initial review had thought that it is not surveillance.
So as you point out, Council Member Harrell, there could have been subsequent reviews or at a later time they could have changed their mind, but the documentation that they go through and the process that they go through for initial review determined that it was not surveillance.
And so...
Talk a little bit about why they made that determination.
Well, what I can tell you is that there is a different interpretation of the definition.
I think that we would probably need the executive to give us their specific rationale.
What I can say is that the assessment that they did talks about using Grey Key as a forensic tool, which implies sort of an after-the-fact.
The definition talks about surveillance being the monitoring or tracking of individual behaviors.
And I think the question might be whether or not We're talking about active tracking as in like a camera watching someone or whether we're talking about Forensic or passive tracking where you could get into a phone and see where someone has been I think if that is the way that the executive made the determination then it is a case where it is clearly just a a difference in interpretation.
And I know the executive had done due diligence and had had some conversations with the law department, but there was no formal law department document that classified it one way or another.
Greg, when you're saying the executive, are you referring to the IT and or the police department or the executive cabinet?
When you say the executive.
Thank you.
I'm referring specifically to the CTO who is charged under the ordinance to make the determination about whether something is surveillance.
And the CTO will look to his or her privacy officer to do that initial assessment.
And that initial assessment is what was done and that initial assessment determined to not be surveillance.
And just looking at the definition of surveillance in your memo, I don't see an explicit exemption that fits the analysis that it sounds like the executive is using to claim an exemption.
Are they claiming an exemption or are they claiming something?
I think they're just, in their assessment, they're not seeing that the tool is being used for active surveillance and therefore they don't think it needs to go through the SIR process, rather just the privacy impact process, which again is thorough, it just doesn't involve you all in the community and the working group.
So, Council Member Herbold, I have many questions.
about how this technology is used, what surveillance means, what we intended for surveillance.
For example, in this example, using gray key, if they have a phone and they can look at through, every phone would have perhaps a GPS tracker so they could see the past whereabouts of whoever owned the phone.
So that would be a surveillance in the past sense.
They could see where they had been.
But I'll wait for you to get through your overview first, because I have questions about it.
I am done.
Go ahead.
Oh, are you sure?
Yeah.
Oh, OK.
No, well, then let me just finish real quickly by saying that the ordinance allows that if the executive, or in this case, I'm sorry, the CTO, makes a determination that something is not surveillance, the council has the authority to essentially say, yes, it is, and then ask the executive or the CTO to put that particular technology through the rigorous council review, public review, working group process.
And so that's why you're here now is the memo attached to clerk file 314411 would make a council determination that this is indeed surveillance technology and should go through the more formal SIR process with the community.
And by voting the clerk file out, you would make that determination and send to the CTO a signal that that technology had to be treated as a surveillance technology.
Very good.
So a few preliminary thoughts and just around the table in the discussion.
This is actually sort of a good trial run and sort of the process that we're about to begin.
Because when I first, I've been aware of Grey Key.
There's been a lot written about Grey Key on a national basis.
And I don't think we, the city has it yet, but we're about to purchase it perhaps spring of next year.
So we're considering the purchase, correct?
Actually, the third quarter.
Third quarter.
Is when the department indicated they would purchase it.
Yeah, that's spring, right?
That's July.
And when I looked at, well, let me ask a specific question.
The executive indicated they were using this technology specifically for investigation of internet crimes against children, the ICAT cases, so child porn, that kind of crime.
Would we know that?
Are they stipulating that that's...
Because why wouldn't they use it for homicide and other types of cases?
It's entirely possible that they might.
Just in this initial impact assessment that they filled out, they had said that they would use it for ICAT cases.
They may also use it for other cases.
If the technology were to be approved through either the council process or just the regular privacy process, they would need to, they would be able to use it however they want it.
So my first flag, if you will, is how do we make sure that the stated use is in fact the use?
That how do we make sure that technology's not misuse or different than they're saying going through the process and so I want to make sure that that becomes a case because if it goes through the PIA and the SIR process and it's blessed by the council How do we make sure it's used for in compliance with what we approved.
Because in this situation, and quite frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with it being used in homicide cases, but I do have a problem with it deviating from everything that was approved.
And so I don't know if there's documents or if we state that in the surveillance ordinance that they have to use it for.
it's intended use according to the process.
Does that make sense?
You're right on.
If they went through the SIR process, they would have to identify what uses they were going to use it for, how they would use it, who would have access to the data, how it would be protected when stored, and a variety of questions along those lines.
And so it's, I think, Assuming that this technology did go through the process and was at a later date approved for purchase, I think the question isn't just about the types of crimes that it is used in a forensic way, but to create some assurity that it's actually The reason why they're claiming it's exempt is because they would only be using it in the case that there was a warrant issued.
Again, the definition of surveillance doesn't make that distinction between looking backwards or looking forward in surveillance.
But that would be the piece that I'd want to know whether or not there was an approach that we had to audit.
Again, less about the types of crimes, but more about whether or not it's actually being used in a backwards look.
in the case of a warrant or whether or not they had the flexibility to use the technology in some other surveillance way of people who are, perhaps there isn't a warrant and they're suspected of activities that the department wants to watch.
And I don't know how we do that.
Do you understand her point?
They're claiming that they would only be using the technology if they had a warrant to use it.
And I don't know.
The assessment that they've done talks about use by warrant.
They would also- Exclusive use by warrant?
It didn't say exclusive.
I didn't see that.
It doesn't say necessarily- It implied it, but I don't know.
If a person consented to allow the police to look at the phone, then that is a situation where obviously the surveillance ordinance wouldn't apply because they're giving consent.
If there's a warrant, then obviously they're not giving consent.
It's a tool that's being used and the question is whether or not it's surveillance.
I think this is an opportunity for us to figure out how this process works.
This is kind of new territory for all of us and I think, you know, we spent a lot of time hearing from a number of folks internally and externally about concerns and I think There's a bit for me that we're going to have to try this on and wear it a little bit and see how it works.
And I think the clerk file that would designate this from the council as a surveillance technology that would require this, I think, is an important exercise to go through.
I think this actually is a really good example of the types of questions we're going to want to work through and ask and have some transparency around and understand these questions.
I appreciate the memo of outlying what's there.
And I think that this has the potential to be an amazing tool for fighting crime.
It has the potential to be really invasive on people.
And I want to hear specifically how it's going to be used, how we monitor it, how we make sure it's not used unintentionally.
We want to hear the tradeoffs.
Like, you know, is this going to be a huge thing in helping solve certain cases?
And without it, you can't do it.
But with it, we can do some great things and hear from the public about their concerns about it and work through it.
So I agree with everything you said, I think, because I don't think at this point it's a clerk file that should be filed and classified as going through the process yet.
I don't think I have all the information I need.
But I wanted to daylight it because of the points you made.
An example would be, as I understand the technology that the police department, our police department, would be in physical possession of the phone.
that they're not gonna give it, they're not gonna install the technology and give it back to the, at this point I guess this person would be a defendant, so I'll call them a defendant at this point, right?
They're being charged with a crime, right?
Most likely.
I would assume.
Okay, if it's, well it could, perhaps they wouldn't be a defendant because they haven't been charged yet and they're trying to find the basis for a charge, so maybe they're just a suspect.
So I'll call this person a suspect to be a little more clear.
So if they have the suspects phone and they are saying specifically we are only going after Internet crimes against children.
That is why we're installing gray key technology.
We're not even going after homicides.
We're going after child pornography cases.
And we have this, and we want to be able to see if, in fact, this person has visited sites through their phone and do what they're going to do.
Yes, they can look to where their physical whereabouts have been, their geography, their past tracking.
I don't know if that's as important as what they're really going after.
But so I probably would agree that that is still surveillance looking at someone's past.
I mean, I don't have a problem with that.
But I just don't understand where the, well, I'd rather have the department here, perhaps IT and the police department who are using this to better understand exactly the limited use of this technology Because I think one of their concerns is that they think this is good technology to go after the suspects.
And I think they're also concerned that this new system we have will just block all this kind of technology, that there will be an impediment and they're going to waste time and money and effort.
And I have little appetite for that as well.
So I'd rather hear the other side of the story.
And it is Sean Karsh I'll specifically say or the ACLU has brought up some issues.
But I don't think, I think it's premature to say that it goes through the SIR.
Now what I did hear is that the PIA was done deficiently.
So perhaps the city could improve that PIA and then perhaps we can have the community working group What are we calling it, the Privacy Working Group?
Just the Community Working Group.
Community Working Group.
If I could say one thing on your statement.
Please.
They hadn't done the full PIA yet.
They just had done that initial assessment.
So the PIA hasn't been completed?
The PIA has not been done yet.
So the PIA hasn't been done yet, but there's something out there that warranted the comment that it was done, I can't remember the word, deficiently or inadequately or something.
It wasn't complete.
It was their initial review.
They have a software that goes through and asks them questions.
And they complete that software and answer all those questions.
And it's sort of a first cut.
And then based on that and other things, they then either move forward with the full PIA.
They may move forward with the full PIA anyways.
But I just wanted to be clear that they had only done this first look.
A preliminary look.
So my take on this is simply that.
I don't think it's before a PIA is even done before the.
users of the technology sort of made their case on their specific use for us to suggest that it's surveillance under the ordinance and it should go through this fairly stringent process is premature.
That's the only point I guess I'm making.
Go ahead.
So just as a clarification, Greg, are you saying that the executive itself acknowledges that the PIA was non-sufficient and that they intended to do something more complete?
They haven't done the PIA yet, the initial review.
I know that they would have had to do a PIA anyways and that they would have done a PIA.
Whether or not they would have gone the other route and done the SIR and brought it before you is the question.
Because they, I mean, they clearly state that they don't believe that this technology is subject to the surveillance ordinance.
So why would we think that if they did another assessment, they'd come up with a different outcome?
I don't have an answer for that.
So maybe I'll ask you.
Well, I don't think it's technology.
I don't think it's surveillance technology.
I mean, I would agree with that assessment.
I would disagree with that assessment.
So it's not so much that it's premature, it's more that you don't agree with what the clerk file would do.
That and it's premature.
If the PIA hasn't been done yet, third I think it was a preliminary one that was done, but they're giving their sort of Have they formally said the S.I.R. was not required or is that just in conversations?
Staff asked them whether or not they were going to do the S.I.R. and their response was that they would do the P.I.A. and go from there.
So they have not committed to doing an S.I.R.
How, in your memo, it says, staff IT review.
What paragraph?
Second page, third paragraph.
Seattle IT staff review included a determination that Gray Key does not meet the definition of surveillance technology.
So to me, from their perspective, end of story.
And the question is whether or not, before us, is whether or not the council thinks it should be considered surveillance technology, because It's, I don't see a mechanism for them coming back and giving us a different answer.
They do go, I mean, the memo does go on to state that they acknowledge a high privacy risk and that they will, because of interests of the council and the public, they would do a PIA.
Which we talked about earlier, before we moved on to this item, they do privacy impact statements for things that are not considered surveillance.
I guess if I were to try to I would say that they could do a privacy impact assessment and change their mind later.
But as you point out, right now there's no indication that that would happen.
And their initial review and their initial discussions, some of which were with the law department, they come to the conclusion that it's not surveillance.
So unless something significant came up in the PAA review, I wouldn't expect their determination to change.
So Council President Harrell, I think the points you raise around the ripeness of moving forward on the clerk file are fair questions.
And I'm not sure until we get into some of these that we're going to really know.
I mean, I think you stated something along the lines of I don't want a burdensome process to get in the way of folks' ability to do their job and find criminals.
And I agree with that.
The whole point of this is I'm also concerned about a tool that has the potential of being pretty invasive in people's privacy.
How do we move forward with that?
You know, on anything when we start out, the first couple may take a while, because it may be the first time we've done it, and they're not sure what we want, and we have some back and forth.
But we're going to have to do that at some point.
I mean, the whole point of this is we're going to dig into it on some piece of technology.
And it may turn out that, like, this is a really good process.
This is a really important thing to go through on this specific technology.
But we learned that, wow, that took, like, four months and 18 steps, and we have to streamline it.
It may turn out that we need a pre-screening tool to say we're just going to, you know, come present to us and we're going to take you out of this loop if it passes the initial test because the next one is too burdensome.
But I, you know, whether this one is the right one or not, I don't know.
I mean, I think that's a policy question to determine.
But I do think that we should jump in relatively soon on something, go through the process.
This one to me feels pretty right because I think it has the right mix of the things that we're concerned about.
It has the potential to add some significant benefit.
I'd want to hear from the department what that is.
I'd want to hear how they're going to restrict the use, how they're going to disclose the use, how they're going to make sure that not every officer has this on their desktop and can do this thing whenever they want to, those types of questions, and then understand what it actually does.
I agree.
It's just a question of timing.
Yeah.
I don't want to jump every time the ACLU says, hey, it raises issues.
I want that analysis, man.
I want to give the executive and the IT group, the technologists, the opportunity to do a full-blown privacy impact assessment.
I think they should be afforded that.
At that point, we can say, hey, this has to go through an SAR.
We think this does raise the issues.
They may say, on the other hand, we never look at the GPS tracking.
We are simply looking at child pornography sites that they are visiting.
That's it.
They may say that in the assessment, in which case I would say, well, that's a good thing for you to do.
We want you to have that technology and go after those people.
So I don't like wasting time, energy, and resources on good technology.
So at this point, I just don't think we have the data to make a decision.
I think we just have some hypothetical concerns.
We're saying, okay, go through the system.
At least give the departments the opportunity to do a full-blown privacy impact assessment.
And that's why I wanted to daylight it early.
And I'll continue to daylight these early, even before the PIAs are done.
When there's purchases, and if we have a good department, whether it's the police department or any other department, SDOT is an example, they should be forthright.
They should, prior to purchases, during the budget time, they should let us know what, they know we have a strong surveillance ordinance in place now.
So prior to the purchase still, there's still some process to be done.
So I just think it's premature to require it now before the PIA is done.
Council Member Harbaugh.
Thank you.
As it relates specifically to the timing, I think the timing makes moving forward with this clerk file and this council determination ideal.
the executive is not contemplating purchasing this technology until third quarter.
So that's sometime in late mid-summer.
So that would give us some time to activate the advisory group.
And then secondly, I think it's really important that the only way that we can guarantee that we're having the kind of discussion that you're, saying that you think we would benefit from is by identifying this as a as a surveillance technology for the surveillance technology review because the privacy impact statement is not required to be submitted to the council under the ordinance.
So there's no requirement that the executive continue to have the conversation about the technology.
The only way that we can compel the executive to do so is by filing the clerk file.
That's incorrect.
They have to do a full blown PIA before they make the purchase, correct?
Yes.
They can't purchase until they go through the stringent process of the PIA, at which point we can say it has to go through an SIR.
But there's no requirement for it to come back to us to authorize it.
you're both correct.
The council, if the council was to become aware that a PIA had been done and a full analysis had been done and the council wanted to pass this clerk file later, they could do it later or they could do it now based on the initial assessment.
That's why I asked a question earlier that the community, the working group will always know what PIAs are in the
in the pipeline?
No, that's not necessarily.
If a PIA is done, there's no requirement that the council be notified.
So that's the difference, is that the surveillance ordinance process would require the council to pass an ordinance, would require the working group to look at it.
If the PIA was done, there's nothing that says that the council would for sure get to see it.
So that might have been either an oversight or just no one thought of it, because I assumed the PIA process would be daylighted in front of everybody.
Go ahead, Council Member.
It's not clear to me that we're in a fight with the executive on this one.
It seems like there's conversation happening back and forth.
We may have disagreements on how to classify it, but that's because we're working through stuff.
So, you know, Council President, out of deference to you, I mean, I would be comfortable passing the clerk file today.
I also would be comfortable with just making a clear statement to the executives that we want you to do a PIA on this, and we would like you to bring that back to council by a certain date.
If we don't see it by that date, the intention is to move forward with a clerk file that would I think it's important that we mandate this as surveillance, so that we would require you to do that.
And when you come back on a certain date, we will evaluate what the next step is.
I appreciate that.
And let me make something clear.
I've had no conversations with the police department, the executive, or the IT on Grey Key.
just making my own argument, and they may say, hey, Harold, we want to do an SIR.
I don't know.
So I like this as an exercise to say that I was trying to make the PIA work now.
But one of my takeaways is I thought all the PIAs were fairly well known to both the council and to the working group.
So I'm going to go back and look at the ordinance and that process.
What I'd like to do is, You know, it sounds like it's two to one if you want to move it forward, that's fine.
But what I'd rather do is, this isn't too time sensitive, quite candid, I'd like to have some more conversations with central staff and you all and IT to sort of better understand the use of the technology and what the plans are and maybe we, and the PIA process.
I'll probably draft something to really alert them that, yes, there could be some surveillance issues.
I don't want to be the person that's invading folks' privacy on this technology.
I thought, as I understood the technology based on the write-up, very limited use, very specific use going after ICAC cases, not surveillance, okay?
That doesn't raise, no one has a right to privacy when they are visiting child pornography sites.
So they don't have that private right.
Now, if there's room for abuse by the department and looking at past surveillance issues, where they've been, all this other stuff, or other cases, other than the specific use, then yeah, maybe we should expand it.
But I don't even know if what I said was accurate in terms of their specific limited use because I haven't had the conversation with them.
And I want to have those conversations quite candidly before I say let's go through the whole process.
But go ahead.
That works for me.
I think that the, if there is, you know, third quarter of next year doesn't feel like it's particularly urgent.
I don't know what the ramp up is to approving this and all that.
But I just would say if we're going to, I would hate to get to a point where, We're a month before they're going to buy it.
And then we're like, we want to do a surveillance, an SIR.
And they say, well, now that would put it off a year.
And then we're out.
I'll have it resolved by January.
I mean, either January we'll do a clerk file or the issues that have been addressed have been addressed.
So I'm not going to wait till the last minute.
But I'm also certainly going to look at how the PIA process works because I want to make sure that, again, What concerns me, just to be transparent, is that these PIAs are done, and if no one's reading every single file, then we don't, I don't want to have to always rely on someone to look at every single file, that that should be more of a daylighted process.
It seems like, it seems like, you know, I don't know that it requires a, presentation at committee, but there should at minimum be a website that shows all the PIAs in order and what they are so that anyone who wants to track that can go look at it as opposed to do a public records request if you want to find our PIA.
And it's very possible that they've done this.
Their website is really thorough.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'll get a little more information, but I will work on this in January, that I'll assure you.
Just, I want to be clear because I also, have a preference to defer to the chair, the person who has the most expertise on issues of technology, that I brought this forward with the understanding that you were supportive of voting on the clerk file today.
I would not have asked for this to be on the agenda today if I understood that you had concerns and the information that I had received from your office is that you were prepared to vote on this.
So I just want to be clear.
I'm not interested in having this discussion in committee, and I really would have preferred that if you weren't ready to vote on it, to not bring it forward until you were.
That's accurate, that when I first heard about it, I said, yeah, let's go ahead and put it on the agenda.
And then when I sort of dug deeper, which was last night, by the way, I said, oh, we're actually going to trigger the process.
But I told Greg this morning I wanted to have this discussion because I'm glad you flagged it.
And so I appreciate that process and I appreciate the working with me on this.
So we'll get through it and I'll put some energy behind this in January and work with the departments.
I'm happy to follow up with the departments.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for raising the issue.
Shankar, thank you for raising the issue.
Okay.
And with that, we'll stand adjourned.
Everyone have a great rest of the afternoon.