Seattle City Council Governance, Equity, & Technology Committee 9/17/19

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee today, September 17, 2019. I'm chair of the committee, Bruce Harrell.

I'm joined by capable staff, Ms. Jennifer Samuels and Akilah Williams and Chase Monroe.

We have three items we'd like to discuss today and with possible votes.

The first two are reconciling basically city law with what was passed in the state legislature dealing with crimes and offenses concerning animals and the sale and use of tobacco and marijuana products to and by minors.

And then the third item, which would warrant more discussion, will be another attempt to pass an ordinance relating to surveillance technology and protecting the privacy rights of all of our people in our city.

So, having said that, let's start off with public comment, and we have a few folks that have signed up.

Thank you for coming down to City Hall and expressing your opinion.

I'll call you out in the order that you have.

You have about two minutes, and we'll start off with Jacob Mitchell, and following Jacob will be Geoff Froh.

I apologize when I mispronounce your names.

I'll try not to, though.

Hi, Jacob.

Hello, and thank you for having us.

My name is Jacob Mitchell and I'm coming out of concern about the Seattle surveillance ordinance.

I have worked as a software engineer.

That's my background.

And so When I learned about these systems, I was concerned about aspects such as the physical security of the devices which are involved in the deployment, how they're maintained, what's done to mitigate and handle potential compromises of those devices.

There seems to be many assumptions with the LPR and CCTV systems that they are fundamentally secure and having worked in that space, I'm somewhat skeptical.

I also think it's very important to address how this affects certain populations more than it does others.

They're victims of domestic violence whose whereabouts are a serious matter and we need to make sure their privacy is recognized.

Similarly, it affects people who need to engage with a free press.

We need to enable people to meet with reporters and investigators without having their privacy rights violated.

So I think it's very important that we just keep all these things in mind.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Jacob.

Following Jeff, Froh will be Jared Moore.

Good morning, Chair Harrell and committee staff.

Thank you for having me here today.

My name is Jeff Froh and I'm the Deputy Director of Densho, a Japanese American community organization based here in Seattle.

Since 1996, we've worked to preserve and share the history of the World War II incarceration to promote equity and justice today.

So, more than a decade prior to the beginning of World War II and the forced removal of some 110,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast, a bunch of various federal and state and local law enforcement agencies were already conducting a warrantless mass surveillance program against Japanese Americans based solely on our ethnic background.

So now more than 75 years later, we are seeing the ominous and unprecedented growth of a new class of AI-supported surveillance systems that disproportionately impact today's targeted communities, people of color, religious minorities, immigrants, and other marginalized groups.

So when the Seattle Surveillance Ordinance passed in 2017, I was proud to live in a city that was at the cutting edge of technology, but also understood that the haphazard implementation of certain technologies can have negative impacts on our civil society.

We made a stand here in Seattle to engage in a measured, reasoned, and inclusive process.

So that's why we at Densho are now concerned that the adoption of the CSER proposal will significantly undercut the original intent in the ordinance, which is to protect the rights of vulnerable communities through strong oversight and clear rules.

We're instead in agreement with the recommendations of the community working group that the council should implement the enforceable policies and procedures framework for the reports under consideration for all reports going forward.

And the EPP, we think, will help ensure transparent policies that are enforceable by the law.

So I ask you to take the opportunity to make the surveillance ordinance the model for accountability, fairness, and equities.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Following Jared would be Fernando Luna.

Thanks for having me today.

I appreciate the committee talking about these issues.

A little bit about my background.

I have a master's in computer science from the University of Washington.

I was previously working at an artificial intelligence research institute doing things like managing their data use protocols.

I've done security and privacy research.

This is all to say that I think that the issues we're talking about today are really important and as my as the man previously said, Seattle's really going to be setting the stage for the country on this.

A lot of the other cities in the country don't have the kind of regulations or organizational processes that are going to fill the gaps between the data that we have.

You know, we know with LPR and the CCTV that they're not really done that well, that the organizations that are governing these technologies say things like, well, we're going to use the data appropriately, or we're going to share it with relevant organizations.

What's a relevant organization?

How could that negatively affect, you know, historically disadvantaged communities in Seattle.

We can think about the New York City Police Department surveilling mosques and predominantly Muslim neighborhoods.

I think that while these technologies, the CCTV and the LPR as compared to, for example, automated license plate readers seem less important.

They seem perhaps ambiguous in nature.

It's really with these that we need to adopt strict regulations with regard to exactly how we're going to retain the data, with whom we're going to share it, what kind of processes.

Just so you know, we don't retain any of the data on this on these two technologies.

Go ahead.

I just want to make sure we have a baseline of facts.

Go ahead.

You give him his time back.

I interrupt.

I apologize.

I appreciate it.

But I think it's with these, once we adopt those kind of strict standards, as have been mentioned, that we're going to be able to approach the future technologies really well.

And so I appreciate the committee's time.

Thank you.

I apologize for interrupting.

I just want to, and I'm going to make a few comments after this great public comment we're hearing from all of you.

Let's see, Fernando.

Following Fernando is Ann, is it Sumi?

Good morning.

The Latino community is very concerned about this type of surveillance given its history of abuse.

We really need more clearer language on the policies and how to prevent abuse.

Something that the community really can understand and be able to be aware of the consequences of having these technologies around them in their communities and how they're going to be able to protect themselves of any potential abuse.

The Latino community wants more clarity and more time to understand what's going on around them and also concerned that this technology is gonna be focused on people of color, immigrants, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ people.

They're all concerned that these technologies can be disproportionately focus on their communities.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fernando.

Anne?

Is Anne here?

Nope, no Anne.

How about Cynthia?

Is it Speer?

And then Tiffany McCoy.

It's Cynthia Spees, but no worries.

Oh, sorry about that.

Probably my handwriting, too, didn't help.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Spees, a member of the public, an independent security researcher, and a Seattle resident.

My comments today are regarding the surveillance ordinance.

The Condensed Surveillance Impact Report, CSIR, uses weak language and doesn't explicitly state that it's enforceable by law.

Additionally, when comparing the CSER's overall and unclear content sections to that of other cities, Seattle's CSER is found to be lacking.

The ordinances of cities of Oakland, Berkeley, and Davis, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Santa Clara County all require specific content sections in each of their surveillance use policies.

While each city's ordinance is a little different, the commonly present sections that Seattle is missing include, one, public access, including how collected information can be accessed by criminal defendants.

Two, third-party data sharing, including any required justification or legal standard for sharing that data.

Three, a training requirement.

And four, auditing and oversight.

Regarding SDOT's license plate readers, both the CSER from the city and the Working Group's Privacy and Civil Liberties Impact Assessment assume a technical implementation that doesn't exist in reality.

WSDOT must inherently store plate information.

Not every plate will be seen a second time.

Therefore, the city should explicitly define an expiry value that WSDOT must adhere to, such as five minutes.

Pretending WSDOT doesn't store plate information doesn't make it so, nor does it mean that it would be feasible for WSDOT to do so.

Regarding SDOT's traffic cameras, aka CCTV, the FLIR Chameleon ITS camera management software is not audible and does not provide granular access control.

All users of Chameleon can pan the cameras, zoom in and out, and stop and start live streams to the public, and none of those actions are logged.

The system doesn't offer prevention nor detection of misuse or abuse of the cameras.

This is only made worse by the lack of a training requirement.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you.

And Tiffany is our last speaker.

Good morning.

My name is Tiffany McCoy.

I'm the lead organizer for Real Change Homeless Empowerment Project.

Council President Harrell, I'm really glad that you clarified that the city is not retaining that information.

I want to put an asterisk.

As of yet, are they retaining that information?

I say that because we are a proud member of the Tech Fairness Coalition.

And just a couple of months ago, we were meeting with an executive at Amazon.

to try to put pressure on them in multiple different ways.

And one was to make sure that they don't contract with ICE.

And this individual told us very clearly they do not contract with ICE.

We said, will you commit to not contracting with ICE in the future?

They said, we do not contract with ICE.

And less than a month later, it came out in the news that Amazon does indeed contract with ICE for surveillance technology.

So my job here today is to make sure that the individuals that I represent are protected in the future when governments shift and different individuals come into power or when different national agendas come into place.

You see lately that President Trump is starting to angle towards potentially policing, ramping up policing of homeless individuals in California.

There's no saying what national character that will take, especially if he does win re-election, hopefully not.

But we are here to speak today in favor of the surveillance ordinance being as strong as possible, accountable as possible, and transparent as possible.

We did not sign on to the surveillance ordinance and push for its mandate to be a rubber stamp body, just based on the niceness of what government is doing at the moment.

It's to protect civil liberties at all times.

I also just kind of want to highlight the unreasonable timeline that is proposed for giving public comment.

It seems like there's only a month for the public to give comment on 10 different technologies, and that's just unreasonable for people to be able to digest this esoteric, at times, information and to come and advocate for their constituents.

So I ask that that be extended as well.

Thank you.

Are there any other public comments you'd like to be shared that I didn't get you on the sign-up sheet?

If not, we'll closed public comment.

Before I take the first agenda item, which is unrelated to the surveillance technology, just a few opening remarks.

I'm somewhat shocked by some of what I've heard.

I'm shocked because I continue to think there might be a misunderstanding of both the capability of the technology, the city's firm stance to protect privacy rights, the process that we've been working on since May. two-inch document as a result of a lot of public comment, community forums, the departments we have at council have required them to do a strenuous job of getting as much public comment as possible.

We've done everything but go fast in this process.

And these are enforceable documents supported by a private cause of action if breached, if violated.

And we had many lawyers look at it to make sure that it has real teeth in it.

There are some things, I'm sure, in a perfect world we might be able to do, such as require the state to do training, since we have a contractual relationship with them, but that is either impractical or perhaps unethical.

legally impossible.

We're using technology that in many cases are used in all 50 states and clearly have probably, in my opinion, the most safeguards in terms of protecting privacy.

And so I hope that many of you stay to hear the discussion, to not take my word for it, but this is a record we're creating even as we speak to listen to the departments.

I'm actually very proud that I believe the individuals in this department have embraced the notions of privacy and protecting rights, protecting immigrant refugees, protecting domestic violence survivors.

I believe that they have made concessions as they should be and willingly to make sure we have a meaty, substantive privacy protecting ordinance.

And so with that, that's sort of the spirit of what we're trying to do.

So when I hear these concepts that it's not as strong as it could be or it's watered down, you didn't say watered down when I hear this, I get it.

I get the concerns that we should be rightfully concerned about how technology can be used as a weapon, particularly against vulnerable people.

But I think that we've achieved a very good outcome.

We have a few amendments we will consider and have a discussion, but that's just the chair's comments.

I really appreciate the testimony.

in what was read, but again, I hope you stay around for the substantive conversations.

I think we have addressed those issues.

Okay.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox, but again, thank you for that.

Let's move to the first agenda item.

Please read it into the record.

Council Bill 119637, an ordinance relating to crimes and offenses concerning animals, amending section 9.25.100 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Okay.

Introductions, please.

Good morning, Council Member Harrell.

My name is Richard Green.

I'm with the Law Department.

Hi, Richard.

Nice seeing you again.

So the first one is on crimes and offenses concerning animals.

So sort of what happened in state law and what are we adopting to make it consistent with our city law?

Actually, it was several years ago that the state elevated the classification of the non-felony animal control violations to a growth misdemeanor.

Our code had a sort of a patchwork of some were gross misdemeanors, some were regular misdemeanors, and then some had a maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a $500 fine.

So what this ordinance does is to make them all gross misdemeanors.

I would like to point out, so in a sense it's making those animal control ordinances that have a corresponding state statute consistent with that.

I think three of our ordinances that do not have a state counterpart, and so we're not required to change the maximum penalty on those.

But our thinking was that because they're all essentially the same type of conduct, either having an animal that endangers the public or some, I guess, degree of cruelty to the animal itself, we thought that maybe making them all consistent would be advisable.

So that's the basis for that ordinance.

Okay.

And why don't we, why don't you read the next one into the record?

I won't, I'll vote on them individually, but read number two, because I think, is there anything else you need to tell me about 119637?

No.

Okay.

Council Bill 119636, an ordinance relating to the sale and use of tobacco and marijuana products to and by minors amending section 6.240.010 and 6.240.100.

of the Seattle Municipal Code and adding a new section 12A.20.110 to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Okay, and we're joined by Councilmember Lisa Herbold.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for being here.

And Mr. Green, tell me about this one.

So what this does is actually two things.

It raises the age to buy tobacco and vapor products from 18 to 21, and that goes into effect next January 1st.

The other thing it does is create a new, essentially a new crime that prohibits a marijuana retail establishment employee from selling marijuana products to anybody under 21, to sort of essentially make those consistent.

Very good.

I don't have any questions on these.

Customer Hurrell, these are the reconciliation ordinances.

I think I mentioned it during briefing.

Did you have any questions before I vote on it?

Okay, so I'm going to move that we pass Council Bill 119637. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

The crowd goes silent, so we're good on that one, Richard.

I'll move to pass Council Bill 119636. Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

Okay, great.

I'll present this Monday.

I'll explain to the audience a little more comprehensively why we did this again, but I've already briefed them, so we should be in good shape.

Thank you very much, Richard.

I appreciate it.

Okay, let's read the next one into the record, the surveillance ordinance, and anyone associated and that's been invited to the table, please come forward as Ms. Samuels reads it into the record.

Council Bill 119519, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2018 surveillance impact reports for the Seattle Department of Transportation's use of closed circuit television traffic cameras and license plate readers.

Okey dokey.

All right.

OK.

See, they thought I was going to stonewall on those first two items.

They weren't ready.

I need your help.

As we find our seats and get comfortable get our notes together.

I want to, in all sincerity, thank all of you, all of you, for engaging in this discussion.

We're taking these issues very seriously.

Even if we come out a little differently on some of the policy issues, I really appreciate the engagement.

So it hasn't been for a lack of engagement.

So thank all of you for working.

I actually had a timeline of events.

I'm not going to bore everyone with it.

My staff put together not only just the committee meetings, the departmental meetings, and the community meetings, but a pretty comprehensive view on everything that at least I've asked to be done as the chair, and I want to thank everyone for that.

So here's what I thought we'd do after we go through introductions, is I'm going to ask SDOT to give, again, a quick refresher, just a, you've already explained what the technology does and who uses it, but perhaps just a quick refresher on that.

And then I'm going to transition to Censorship Greg Doss to talk about, the memo that you've prepared on some of the issues to date.

And then we do have a few amendments that we'll consider and just keep it sort of an organic conversation and ask questions all along.

So I'm not going to wait until the end for any questions.

So just sort of free flow.

So let's start off with introductions first.

Greg Doss, Council of Central Staff.

Saad Bashir, CTO.

Ginger Armbruster, Chief Privacy Officer.

Sam Zimbabwe, Director of Seattle Department of Transportation.

Jason Cambridge, IT Manager for SDOT.

IDM Emery, Interim Director for Transmission Operation Division SDOT.

Shankar Narayan, ACLU.

Okay.

So perhaps SDOT could again, we have two technologies we're looking at.

Maybe you could sort of walk us through how the technology's used.

You could take either one in any order.

I don't know if we do have a PowerPoint or not, or we're just going to verbalize it.

You have given us a comprehensive PowerPoint in the past, but I just want to get the concepts out.

Go ahead.

Sure.

I'll let Jason give the technical overview, but I just want to say also that we at SDOT also appreciate the process that we've been through in getting to this point.

I think it's raised questions, and we've We've looked at those and been able to look with a very critical mind at our own policies and understand how to improve and strengthen those as well.

So with that, I'll let Jason talk about the technical side.

Thank you, Sam.

Thanks, Sam.

So we work in the Transportation Operations Division.

Our objective is to actively manage the roadway, and these two technologies are key to our ability to be able to do that effectively.

The first one is traffic cameras, as you alluded to.

They're used by all 50 states in the nation.

The primary user of this tool is in our Transportation Operations Center, which is active 24 hours a day, seven days a week to monitor the roadway and look for incidents and try and take part in a coordinated effort to clear those incidents as quickly as possible.

We have users in other departments that we've specified.

We have clear training goals for our team and for those external users as well about the use of this technology that we've clarified in the CSER.

The license plate reader is the second technology that's under review today.

It's another primary piece of technology that we use to gather travel time information, which is a key indicator for how our roadways are performing.

We put that information on Dynamic message signs on a web map.

We also use it to determine how well our streets are performing from one day to the next.

And they're very useful during times like the Seattle squeeze when the Viaduct came down to really determine where traffic is moving towards so we can really operationalize and adjust timing for the traffic signals to make it work as well as it can.

Again, both technologies, we train our operators extensively on their usage.

We partner with the state for license plate readers specifically.

And we are engaged with them in conversations about creating an MOU around data sharing and data usage.

On the traffic camera piece, can you describe, Jason, a little bit about the training as to or the technology limitations in terms of masking faces of people or training people not to zoom in on individuals?

What does that look like?

How is it used?

potential for misuse or abuse.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Certainly.

So we do take privacy very, it's very important for operation.

From the very earliest stages of our training, which is an in-depth process, it's actually a 30-day process where a new operator is partnered with a more senior operator to understand and view the way that the two technologies are used to go over all the existing policies, the camera usage policy, recording policy, stream termination policies, et cetera.

As you mentioned, we do take steps to ensure that people's faces and license plates are obscured through the use of traffic cameras.

One thing we do is take advantage of features in the camera called privacy masking where we can actually draw and block the image so if any users manipulating the camera, they'd be unable to see what's behind that mask.

And we've done that with all of our cameras and seen where there may be private property there installed near a residential building, for example, and we could mask that.

What was the second?

The, I don't know what the second one was.

Oh, I know.

Sorry.

Go back and look at the tape.

I think you actually asked them both.

I know, yeah, so.

Training and masking technology.

Clearly, yes, we're using the cameras to look at traffic incidents to try and judge their impact to disseminate that information.

And we just try and be very clear with our operators, hey, never zoom in to an extent where you can determine somebody's, distinguish somebody's face or license plate while you're using the technology.

And so it's strictly used for traffic management purposes.

They're typically pointing a direction to help commuters as they view the cameras, make safer and more efficient trip planning decisions through the course of the day.

So certainly we take privacy very, we consider it to be a very important part of our operation.

And the ability of John Doe to look at this the live stream video is accessible to whom?

Just to the world or you have to have a certain kind of capability?

Who is the, the, the, the, who are the images?

Who could see the images?

So the video is shared on our travel information web map.

It's a map that provides a variety of trip planning information.

We have travel times.

We have congestion information.

We also have the live streaming video from each of our traffic cameras.

So we try and be completely transparent in our use of this technology and provide the live streaming video from each camera onto the internet.

So any user who has any sort of interest in any of our cameras can freely navigate to that website and actively view those cameras.

Which is publicly available.

And can you, my last question on this particular issue is, can you describe what happens to the camera data?

Once it's streaming, it's going somewhere, we don't keep it, we do keep it, can you talk about what we do with the camera data?

Sure.

We do not consistently record our traffic cameras.

We do have very stringent policy around the recording of a camera.

It has to have a very specific traffic management study use case.

And that, in those instances, we have a formal process for a user to instigate the request of a camera, why they would like it to be recorded.

We do provide them that link to the video.

This is all managed by my IT team so that it cannot be shared with other users.

And we delete that information within 10 days of it being created.

That's the kind of overview I was looking for.

Again, we had a PowerPoint and we went a little deeper dive on other cases.

Are there any questions just not about the policies but about the technology itself, either license place readers or the traffic cameras?

Are we okay?

Anybody want to add anything?

I'm going to turn it over to you, Greg, to sort of walk us through the legislative process.

Okay, thanks.

So I'm going to give a little bit of history.

As you mentioned, Chair, there was a lot that happened over the last couple months since our last meeting.

The last meeting where we heard, where you all heard Council Bill 119519 was on May 21st.

And in that hearing, committee members asked Seattle IT staff and central staff to find a way to take the 100-page SIR documents and essentially boil them down to a summary section that can be more easily read and digested.

Also at that time in the discussion, staff was provided direction to make sure that Those documents reflect the enforceable policies and procedures from the SIR.

And so with that direction, staff went forward and worked with the co-chairs of the working group and then also the Seattle IT, SDOT, the mayor's staff, and law to come up with a format for the summary sections.

There was a little difference of opinions about how that format should look.

And the working group co-chairs had a more succinct directive summary section in mind, and the city had a section that that had additional narrative that described the technologies as well.

So a little bit different vision for how those things would come together.

At your direction, we held some meetings to try to figure out how we could take those two documents and marry them together into one document that could sort of serve both purposes.

The way that staff did that, central staff, we put together a table.

that outlined the differences between the two documents, and we provided that table to all parties, to the departments, and then also to the working group, said, hey, tell us if we got this right, tell us if we missed any issues.

Once we had that table agreed to by all parties, we essentially sat down and started negotiating, trying to find language from the enforceable policies that could be added to the CSRS that the department have before you today.

There were well over a dozen issue areas.

Through the collaboration of the group.

Thank you.

Through the collaboration of the group, we were able to get that down to just four.

So the enforceable policies, I'm sorry, the CSRS that are before you today, you have copies of the CSRS that are redlined.

And the red lines represent the additions that came in through the negotiation process and represents the concerns of the working group.

Today's amendment would attach clean copies of those CSRS to the legislation.

Okay.

So before we get into amendments or discussion, I want to do sort of a technical thing.

And so Shankar, were you comfortable with Greg's description of how we've gotten at least to the table at this point?

I appreciate Greg's description.

I would just like to point out that, in fact, in the table that we worked through with staff, and I want to first say I appreciate all of the efforts of staff and everybody around this table, but this discussion, which happened, by the way, over a month ago, was about a table that contained a list of differences between the EPP document that the working group had endorsed and the CSER document that had been come up with staff, by staff and the executive.

That was not a comprehensive list.

So I want to be very clear that, as I said in that meeting, that there were actually other differences between the documents that were never discussed and never agreed to that remain outstanding policy issues in addition to the four that have been identified, including the critical one of enforceability.

So, you know, from my perspective, I just want to say You know, as the only community voice in this process, we had this meeting over a month ago.

The first time that I saw an editable version of this document that I could even opine as to whether it reflected our agreement was day before yesterday evening.

I have tried in good faith to come to the table and to represent the community concerns which, as you have heard, are real.

And I think there's a much larger group from the Tech Fairness Coalition that also shares them.

that has read the documents, but what I can say is the document in front of the committee does not even reflect the policy agreements that we came to and has a number of unintended consequences due to use of loose language that opens up new ability for the city to, for example, record.

I wish I had had the opportunity to point these out in a forum that was not open committee, but having said that, you know, I feel very rushed and railroaded in this process and would like to at least see a document that actually reflects the policy agreements, which I think were real, and that I appreciate SDOT coming to the table in good faith to reach, passed through the committee.

I don't think this document is that.

Well, I'll just respond to your comments, number one.

I guess that's your opinion.

You'll have to validate how you feel about that.

I have a different take on the, I think it was the three hour meeting we had that you were present with all of the department heads that we presented the, what we thought were the 19 points of disagreement.

I didn't hear you make that point during that meeting.

You did not make that point.

And so the first order of business I asked during that was, was this sort of, cause I asked the department and center staff to capture all of the areas of disagreement.

I asked, that was the charge.

And so when I believe in central staff who are impartial advocates in this process to capture all of the areas of disagreement, put it in one document and just one by one, let's just start plowing away at it.

And that was the 19 points of disagreement.

And because I think we got through two in that one meeting, I then said, Go back with the departments, and it's not like the departments were high-fiving me when I asked them to do that, but I said, go back and figure out, get rid of these 19 to the extent you can, and they came back with four.

Now, here on the morning we are to vote, you were saying that that wasn't all-encompassing.

I've dealt with you for almost 12 years now, and I didn't expect it to be all-encompassing just based on how you analyze.

You're very in-depth, I'll just put it that way.

So I'm hoping that we at least narrowed it down to something we could live with.

We are going to vote today, whether we vote up or down, because we're going to go through budget.

And so, but to say this was a rush process, that is almost, and I'd like the departments to talk about the process a little bit, to say just, how would you respond to Shankar saying, and I'll say the city, the city's rushed this process.

How would you respond to that?

I was just thinking today that we have an anniversary.

This is the second year since we started being compliant with this law.

It was September of 2017. This has been a laborious and very in-depth process with all departments for whom we identified surveillance technologies specific to these two the SIR document that is so voluminous that I know no one wants to read that can put you to sleep.

Believe me, if you put it by your bedside at night, they'll take care of that.

But what we worked very diligently to do was to identify those pertinent policies that were in the SIRs to surface those, to diligently go through the document that you had prepared, and with absolute good faith, identify those areas of disagreement and where should we be discussing verbiage or where you might have maybe an inaccurate idea of how the technology is used or where we had more information to share about how those policies could be aligned.

And so I feel we went through weeks and weeks and weeks of that exercise.

We worked diligently with the department.

We feel some sense of let's move along.

It's been two years, so I won't tell you that we're happy to take another six months on the same documents.

We feel we've reached agreement.

We feel we did that over the course of two very long and somewhat grueling meetings to go through those points.

felt we had done that.

It seemed all of us were in agreement around the table that we went through a very laborious process there.

So I don't feel we were trying to rush anyone.

I think we were trying to meet the meeting time here, knowing you were entering into budget time.

But more importantly, that we had done the work we were asked to do by Council.

Come up with a condensed version of this, sir, and a policy-directed version.

And thanks for that.

explanation.

We're joined by Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you for being here, Council Member Mosqueda.

And I'll turn to central staff to ask, have you felt as though there is a deficiency in the legislative process, at least in our piece?

Are we missing something, some gaps, or are we just at a point where we, have we identified all the disagreements, I guess, is the issue?

Yeah, I think We had an email exchange with the co-chairs, and we asked for additional items that could be added to the table.

And we were provided back with a document that commented on what was in the table and provided some additional narrative.

And we thought that that was enough.

It may not have been, but it was certainly our best due diligence to try to capture everything that we could.

Well, let's see where we are on the documents.

So what we're going to do is, what you're, so we have, this is in my mind, correct me if I'm wrong.

So we have the ordinance, we have two attachments, which are the SIRs, which are an inch plus.

We also have two attachments, which are CSIRs, the condensed.

So we have an ordinance and four attachments, the condensed SIRs.

And all five documents, the ordinance and the four attachments, are all together in one document that if we pass the ordinance, that's the whole ordinance with the four attachments.

Am I saying that correctly?

If we were to pass just Amendment 1, that would be correct.

There are amendments today.

I understand.

So I'll table those amendments for right now.

That's correct.

So what I want to do first, just I'm working from the right copy, is pass that amendment, which incorporates all the four CS, all four attachments, and then take the amendments one by one.

Is that not the right way to do it?

Unfortunately that that wouldn't work.

Okay, and I'll try to explain if it won't work this I guess I'll try to really high level is that if the Caesars are amended with any of the amendments that we're about to describe reconcile them, right?

Yes.

Okay, so let's take let's go through the amendments I think we have a couple maybe two or three and Then what we'll likely do is see where we fall on the amendments and shake I'll give you some more Talk time here, I apologize.

Go through the amendments, and then what I may have to do is before we present it to the full council, assuming something passes, reconcile the SIRs with the CSIRs.

Ginger?

We've done that for the red line version, and then we'd be happy to add the additional whatever the amendments are.

That would be a...

Okay.

Yeah.

So we're going to take the amendments one by one in the order that they flew at me, I should say.

Okay, just one second.

So I have councilmember Muscade and councilmember Brian Let's see just one sec here Okay Does it I want to make sure everyone will make some copies if we don't okay, just one bear with me here Okay Mr. Chair, yes done this on hotel workers.

Take your time I had the last meeting that I had a multiple amendments flying at me.

So I understand.

Okay, so I have This is Amendment 2. Okay.

Amendment 3. Okay.

So I have Amendment 2 first.

And Amendment 2, sponsored by Councilmembers O'Brien and Mosqueda, it basically

It's, the first part of it is very jargony technical stuff.

I can cut to the chase if you'd like.

Yeah, cut to the chase.

Okay, so what it does is it adds to the CSER.

Oh, the training piece.

Yeah, it adds to the CSER language that says any city employee, whether internal SDOT employee or other department user of the system and those accessing the data collected by the system, city employees, must complete training prior to using the system or accessing the data by it.

Okay so I got that so this is a training requirement for users of the system basically whether they're city employees or SDOT employees and non SDOT employees correct?

Yeah any city employee.

Okay so now I was looking at and I don't have a problem with that but I want to hear the department is why it might be problematic but I was looking at and I'm gonna pay turn a page I don't know what page this is.

This is 2.0 data collection and use of the CCR.

And I thought we had already captured that because I'll read it.

It says, SDOT shall develop standard training for operation of the SDOT CCTV traffic camera system and handling and deletion of data.

collected by in accordance with this section and with any additional applicable SDOT policies and only employees who have undergone such training may access or use the SDOT CCT traffic camera system.

So it says any employees who have, it says it can only be used, the only people that have the access to use the system are people who have been undergone training.

So tell me how that's not captured.

What am I missing here?

It's like it's a duplication.

I think the intent with that language was that it would only capture folks from SDOT, not every or any city employee.

This amendment clarifies that it would capture any city employee.

So I read, because this section doesn't say anything about just SDOT, it says any employees.

And so I read that, it didn't say any employees.

So I don't have a problem with the amendment, but I do want to hear from the department.

I thought it was just redundant, but do you have a copy of it?

So we do run into this situation where, just to put SDOT a little on the spot, is we do run into exigent circumstances.

Someone comes in, a non-SDOT employee, that may have to use the equipment.

And is that the concern, that you don't have the ability to know who's using the technology, whether they've been trained or not?

Because I was reading this to say that you already say that whoever uses it is going to be trained.

Please.

We currently already train the IT people that are part of different departments, such as EOC and other people.

This will just expand our training to the users as well, which is just a matter of like creating a process with other departments, and they have to, you know, participate with us and go along because of this ordinance.

We just need to create the process for other users.

Well, let me understand that, Adyem.

It says only employees who have undergone CIS training may access or use the traffic camera system.

So you all had already agreed to that language.

That language you already agreed to.

So that's users and people who can access.

So you've already agreed to that.

So the new language, what is this?

I must be missing something huge because I don't see how this changes what you've already agreed to.

I think that you're indicating, Greg, that the language that's written kind of implies it's just SDOT employees, and now it's expanding it to all users.

That was the intent, and I can say that to the extent that it would imply, Council Member Harrell, as you read it, all employees of the city, then that was a staff error.

It should only be applicable to SDOT per the agreements that we had in the sessions.

Okay, so, and I'm just trying to have a transparent conversation here.

So, when we had agreed to, we as a city had agreed to 2.0 in the CCTV section, and I think this is a CSIR that I'm looking at, right?

That's correct.

It's not, I don't have a page number, otherwise I'd refer you to the page number, but it's 2.0 data collection and use.

The assumption was that by SDOT was that was just SDOT employees.

That's what I'm hearing this morning.

That's correct.

Okay, that wasn't my assumption when I read that.

I understand.

So now SDOT are saying that you will have occasion to have non-SDOT people use it.

They, you can't, I mean, they're coming from different departments.

And is this sort of an isolated, how often will a non-SDOT employee use or access the technology?

It's rare.

For instance, EOC.

When it gets activated, our cameras are the main tools that EOC employees or responders use to help coordinate the response.

So those people, even though we train the IT people when we incorporate this technology into their process, now we'll have to, like anybody that would touch the system or utilize the CCTV will have to go

So what I'm hearing, you're not saying it, but I'll say it for you.

So you're saying that it's a little impractical because those are exigent circumstances for the most part when someone's going to come in and start using the equipment and you don't know their training and now we are requiring you to train that person.

on those exigent circumstances.

Sam, did you want to chime in?

I think the ordinance has an exemption already for emergency circumstances.

So I don't think that we're talking about the exigent circumstances.

I mean, that might be something to clarify even in the CSIR so that people don't have to refer back to the...

Okay, how are we treating emergencies then?

So if there's an emergency hostage situation, are we saying just have at it?

We're waiving the training requirement?

I believe that the ordinance makes an exception for that.

Okay.

Not this, not the materials.

The ordinance on exigent circumstances.

Okay, so then on non-exigent circumstances, but you're only letting non-SDOT people use it for exigent circumstances, right?

Or not exigent, because it could just be not an emergency, but they need to use it for some practical reason.

I think a better example might be if the cameras in the Emergency Operations Center come on to monitor a parade.

It's not an emergency circumstance, but you might have personnel there from other departments that are assisting.

Tell me if that's, I see you nodding, so I'm hoping that's a good example.

It's a good example.

So let me ask the department to push back on why you think this doesn't make good sense, because we're going to vote on this amendment or not.

So tell me, if you can live with it, fine, then we'll vote on it.

If this is impractical and is messing things up, as I tell my kids, messing things up, tell us why.

I mean, I think from my perspective, We have a lot of control over the people who are using the system on a day-to-day basis, and we have, as Jason described, a 30-day onboarding process where we train them in detail.

In the irregular users of the system that might come from other departments who are going to be doing that in the context of an SDOT-trained operator, may not have, it's hard to know exactly who's going to be in the room at the EOC when we have, when we activate it.

So getting everybody, all the I's dotted and T's crossed to make sure that all of those people are trained.

Impractical.

Is a bit impractical, but I think, you know, it's not impossible.

Just when a non-SDOT employee are accessing using the system, it's not like SDOT leaves the room, right?

I mean, usually are they like standing over the person's shoulder and saying, oh, this is the button you push and this is how you do it.

I mean, talk a little bit about SDOT's continued presence when a non-SDOT employee is accessing using the system.

Just a couple of points.

So, one, each user needs a specific user and password combination, and so we're able to issue that and manage the personnel who have access to the system who are city employees.

Additionally, we do take part in a training procedure very frequently with these other users, external departments.

We'll go there if there's a system upgrade, say, hey, who would, you know, be in the room to use the system, but specifically training the person who has that authorization so they can access the system as required.

Additionally, per our camera use policy...

I'm sorry, did you say you are training the person?

Yes.

Okay.

We do.

We do train them.

It's just not the formal structured process like we have for the employee onboarding in the Transportation Operations Center, but I think that that's something we could certainly formalize as part of this process.

Additionally, there is a procedure dictating that any other user must call the Transportation Operations Center prior to manipulating any camera.

gives us further assurance and participation, as you're mentioning, if there is an emergency situation.

Hey, we want to look at these cameras in other areas.

Why do we need to grant them access at this time?

Additionally, the user structure is hierarchical, so the TOC operator always can supersede any other user, lock any other users out of the system.

Again, this is a very infrequent action that occurs where somebody else is accessing the system.

So I'm going to entertain them.

Did the makers of the amendment want to advocate it a little stronger?

I'm not hearing a lot of heartburn.

On a scale of one to ten, I'm hearing about a good three.

Doesn't write the level of a No way, but did you guys want to defend it at all or propose it?

I'll just chime in a little bit.

Okay, please do, Council Member Skater.

And we're joined by Council Member Bryant.

Thanks for being here, Council Member Bryant.

I just want to thank you.

I know that these amendments were late in coming to you, so thank you for entertaining these.

I think what you started with is sort of the heart of the matter.

If it was the intent anyways to try to make sure that folks who were in the room accessing this data did have the training, Having this a little bit of clarification I think is helpful.

I appreciate that Director Zimbabwe said it's not impossible.

I heard you also say that it is, could be, what did you say, formalized.

Yeah, so to me that means there is shared goals here.

Just having it in statute I think helps us really clarify to the public as well that we're going to have some sideboards in place.

Okay, so I'm gonna, I'll just let you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna oppose the amendment and I'll tell you why.

That I think it's captured.

That I don't think that whether an employee's SDOT or SIT or OEM, I don't see, I would think a very good lawyer would look at this binding ordinance with a private right of action and would say, you didn't clarify it had to be SDOT.

And SDOT, a person could be on loan, a person could be a, that's an artificial distinction, whether they're SDOT or not.

And I don't think that would refute liability from an attorney's standpoint.

So I actually think it's adequately captured here.

And the risk of having a non-trained person is pretty minimal than if they're non-trained and they're non-estate.

I think it's still captured in this.

And for those reasons, I just wouldn't support it.

But I appreciate the argument setting forward.

And is there any—Shahar.

I guess I'd like to add, Council Member Harrell, just to offer perspective on this amendment.

There is actually a list of eight different agencies that will be accessing the cameras in this CSIR.

It's contemplated under the CSIR.

It doesn't say it's going to be rare.

It doesn't say it's an accident circumstance.

It's just contemplated.

And it is a basic best practice for people using technology to have some understanding of how to operate that technology.

including any restrictions that the council may pass.

So in this CSER, for example, it says that these cameras shouldn't be used for civil and criminal enforcement, and it also allows SPD to access the cameras.

So an untrained SPD employee, in my reading of this, could simply not know that they're not supposed to be used for enforcement purposes and inadvertently contravene that.

So I would strongly encourage the basic best practice of having only individuals who are trained on a given technology operate that technology.

It sounds like it's feasible.

If it's infrequent, it shouldn't impose much of a burden on the agency.

And I think, you know, this is probably one of the easier ones to try to get to.

So, again, I don't disagree with you.

What I'm saying is this statement, only employees who have undergone such training may access or use the SDOT CCTV traffic camera system.

I think those eight agencies and those SPD employees fall under that, that they will have gone some training.

They have to get password protection.

It could pass.

We've got three more council members here.

I'm just letting you know where I stand on it.

So I want to vote on it.

Go ahead, Ginger.

Can I make one suggestion?

Yes.

Am I allowed to do that?

Yes.

What if you added the word only city employees?

What if we just added one word?

Would that clarify any confusion about which employees we're addressing?

That's pretty much what the amendment does.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I should say, Council Member, I hear your interpretation and take no issue with it.

It was a highly negotiated language.

I believe that this probably originally said all city employees and in the process of the group working together, that was taken out and it was just an oversight that it still could be read the way that you're reading it.

Like I said each one of these was highly negotiated and so sometimes We could go only city employees or adopt the amendment I think we're covered either way quite candidly so

Mr. President.

Yes.

Thank you for sharing your perspective.

Just so I'm clear, it doesn't sound like you're opposed to the content or the effect of this amendment.

In fact, you think that it already accomplishes that.

So your concern is mostly you think we're being a little bit redundant.

My concern is, I'm just going to be brutally candid as I only know how to be in my age, is that we've gone through all these issues and it's a moving target.

And every time we think we've reached agreement, the dang goalposts move.

And I want to say that emphatically that we that we are requiring this is some strong language we have in here and the fact that it doesn't say s dot employees i would be making the amendment if it said s dot employees it doesn't say that and as an attorney i know that i could penetrate that any way I want and say if it's a non-S.I.

employee and this is binding.

So I know that and I think any good lawyer would understand that.

Anyway, let's move on.

You want me to support the amendment?

I can support the amendment.

Would that make you guys happy?

Okay, let's go ahead and move it.

Mr. President, I'd like to move proposed amendment two.

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded, I'm joking, I already said I'm not gonna vote it, sorry.

It's been moved, you're the swinger on this, you're the swing vote on this one.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to, I'll call it amendment number two, that talks about training, it's been described, you have the document in front of you.

So it's been moved and seconded to adopt amendment number two.

All those in favor of amendment number two, raise your hand and say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

Opposed, have, okay, so that one passes.

Let's go on to number three.

Okay, so amendment number three, like amendment number two, the first page is mostly technical stuff.

The operational language is at the top of the second page, and it says that SDOT may disseminate live video streams over its webpage, provided that the users accessing the stream are notified that the system is intended to be used only to monitor traffic for no other purpose.

And I sort of like this one.

Oh, let me.

There was one issue on the last amendment that just passed that I forgot to bring up and I apologize.

There's no ambiguity where it says must complete training prior.

It doesn't say RSGI training, privacy training.

Is that clear enough in the document where we know what training we're talking about?

I just want to make sure.

I forgot to raise that issue.

I would ask SDOT.

I think they understand.

I'll leave it alone for now Because there seems to be some training But it just says complete training and it's pretty wide open there But I looked back at the other training of references and it was they're clear So I think we're referring to that kind of training.

Okay, let's move on to this one.

So on this one I think we, I know Shankar talked about like a terms of use button or something like that that seemed to cause some heartburn, but this one here is simply a notification that

Yeah, and so I think when the co-chair asked for, in the enforceable policies, a terms of agreement, I think, and Shankar can speak to this in a minute, but I believe that the intent there was that the user would click on the I accept the terms of use, and the terms of use would prohibit anything that basically is not spelled out in the CSER policies.

As the council heard yesterday, there are some potential liability issues with that.

I won't go into anything further there.

What I would say is that this does something a little different.

What this does is does not in any way bind the user by anything.

It simply states that it's the city's intent that the system be used only to monitor traffic.

And how would we notify the system?

How would we notify viewers of the system how it's to be used?

That's a good question.

I would imagine, and I'm looking at the folks down here, that there would be some kind of a disclaimer on the page.

First of all, have you all seen this prior to this morning?

This, oh.

No.

No, we knew there was a, we understood there was a consent.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Do you have it now?

I have it now.

Okay, so tell us why this, if this is problematic and what your thinking is on this.

And I just got it this morning too, so I wasn't slow playing you on this one.

at the technology and see what's available in terms of that kind of standard ribbon somewhere on the screen for each of the views of the cameras.

And we would just have to figure that out.

I don't know right offhand how that works, so.

Yeah, I can't answer that right now either.

But yeah, adding a statement in the website will be.

Does the concept of notifying its intent, does that cause

It's pretty, yeah, that's a standard best practice.

I think trying to get some kind of terms of use was more problematic because there's no way to enforce that.

But just giving people a heads up, this is designed to be used for the following reasons, that's pretty standard out there.

Well, to be transparent, I should say, I think the intent of this is by the proponents are that when they're actually viewing it, maybe there's small language or something there that says what this is to be used for, so that every time it's used, they say, oh, I'm not supposed to do something bad with it.

Yeah.

OK.

Exactly.

I just want to kind of mention, the website itself is traffic.

It's a traffic website.

The intent is you go there.

observe traffic.

So we're happy to add the statement, but we just need to kind of explore whether it's a statement within the website or embedding it into the images might be a bit challenging, but we need to explore that.

Okay, so would you like to make the amendment?

Go ahead.

Just say one thing.

This, you know, I'll be moving the amendment in a second because I think it helps.

But I want to also just acknowledge that it falls short of what we ultimately want to do.

And there's a policy question here for me.

I think there is a benefit to have these live feeds available for people.

I occasionally use them when I'm trying to figure out what traffic is like and I can imagine.

people use them for a whole host of reasons, and I want to provide that as a public benefit.

At the same time, and I want to be clear that we've been clear that with some exceptions, but relatively few exceptions, we are not recording this data.

It's just broadcast.

Occasionally we will, you know, we talked about how they may be captured for traffic patterns and for studying and redesigning stuff in a way.

And I think that I'm comfortable that that is not going to be used in violation of the intent of surveillance.

But we also want to make sure, because we're providing these live streams, even though we're not recording, I imagine, well, I know that the technology is there, including someone just sitting with their phone, recording it on their phone, and that probably is more sophisticated, where someone else could be recording this, and someone else could be using this for other You know, they might be able to, I don't know what's available, but it's easy to me to imagine they might be able to layer on facial recognition software.

And if someone is, could be building up a massive database of how individuals are moving around our system, unbeknownst to us, but using our camera system to do that.

I don't believe that is happening.

We haven't seen any evidence that is.

I think the disclaimer is to make it clear that if you do that, this is not what this is for.

If the federal government, for instance, were doing that, I imagine they would Probably, well, they make bigger laws than us, so it would be hard for us to legally prevent them.

And if that were the case, or we became aware, or we were suspicious that that was happening, I think this body would have to reconsider whether it met the policy objective of giving our constituents access to real-time data versus the downside that this was being used unintendedly.

We would have to revisit that policy question.

And I also just want to acknowledge that there's a chance that that is happening at this moment.

I don't believe it is.

I haven't heard any evidence.

But again, we see things on a regular basis that do pop up.

And so this language, I just, I don't want to pretend that it will prevent.

you know, a federal government agency from doing this, because I don't think we figured out a way where we can bind them legally not to do that.

I think we want to make clear that this is not our intent, but it's, it's, it's really, that's about what it does.

And I think, you know, me for the next few months, hopefully this council going forward, will be paying attention to that.

And, and if we get, if we hear that there are people using this in unintended ways, we may want to revisit the policy about whether it goes on.

You know, maybe there's something that says you can only view this if you get a user account and, you know, create a whole system where, you know, any user can get a user account, but they have to go through and check a bunch of boxes that say they agree to these terms.

And, again, I don't know terribly how enforceable that is for someone like ICE if they're doing it, but if there's another level of hassle to the user to go through, but requirement that we could do.

Or we could simply just take them offline and say we're going to only use them internally and not make it public.

And so that is at the heart of what I think the surveillance ordinance is about, is about making policy decisions transparently.

and saying, we recognize there's some risk here.

This is how we're trying to mitigate it.

And we have the right to obviously revisit that at any point.

And this is what the technology is meant to do.

I think we've been very clear about what our intent is internally.

We've set some things up.

And that doesn't mean that it's flawless.

There is still gaps here that I'm trying to acknowledge.

Shankar.

Thanks for those.

I couldn't agree with you more on everything you said.

Thanks for stating that record.

Shankar.

Yeah, just to second what Councilmember O'Brien is saying about this language, I want to put on the record as well that Seattle, the city of Seattle's own open data program has a website that has a terms of service, a pretty extensive terms of service about what users can and cannot do.

And so I hear that you all have gone into executive session and been briefed on potential liability.

This is an area I've practiced.

You hear that?

That was executive session.

I'd either confirm nor deny that, but go ahead.

Fair enough.

This is an area in which I practiced.

I think there's certainly debate over whether Terms of Service can be enforced.

It's not a reason not to have the Terms of Service.

And for me, I think this language, although it's better to have this notification than not, actually doesn't make it clear that the user is bound to the Terms of Service.

So I would much prefer something stronger and more the ability to at least go back and flag a clear violation by a user that has used the stream to do anything other than traffic management using the live stream.

My other question, by the way, is this appears to apply both to license plate readers and CCTVs as it's drafted, and there is no live stream associated with license plate readers.

So I just wanna, maybe I'm misunderstanding the way the amendment's drafted, Is this intended to apply to license plate readers as well?

Yeah, it is.

While there is no live feed, it's the concept of using the system only for what it's intended.

This amendment actually amends both CSERs to include that language.

So it says SDOT may disseminate live video streams over its webpage.

For the license plate readers, we don't do that.

We don't.

There is no webpage for the license plate readers.

We can change that so that it just says use of data is as intended.

Okay.

I'm sorry, I, we, last minute.

Last minute.

May I add just one comment about our open data, our open data site.

That's actually collected and those are data sets that people are designed to download.

So the terms of service make a little more sense there because it's data you are ingesting if you decide to access those data sets for the uses.

For the live streaming because they're not recorded or recordable on the format that you're providing it to the public.

Then we're speaking to a theoretical of somebody maybe holding up a phone or finding another data capture, but it's not something we're providing.

So therefore, the term of service is a little different there.

I mean, this is also recordable data, I guess.

And this does illustrate the point that just because we are not intending for a website to be used in a particular way that we shouldn't.

put the safeguards around a given technology.

And I think that, you know, that's where this entire discussion seems to break down is we hear a lot about the agency's good intentions.

I think what I hear from the communities is we want real safeguards.

We don't want to be in a space where we're just saying, We trust the agency or the public not to misuse the technology and to put best practices in place that can enable that to happen.

So again, you know, I think this language falls short for that reason, although it's better to have it than not.

I just want to highlight one more thing.

The website streams videos that are controlled by the operators.

So there would not be any PII information that would be showcasing from the public facing perspective.

The safeguard is that we train our operators not to zoom in and not to identify or create an opportunity where they're capturing PII and that's where the control is and that's where we're controlling it.

So what the public is viewing are not zoomed in images.

They follow the procedures that we train our people.

And in fact, in the discussion that we had, we had explicitly talked about, you know, whether PII is visible.

We had actually proposed cutting off the public feed where PII was visible.

And in the conversation with the agency, we actually heard that wouldn't be possible.

In other words, there will be times when personally identifiable information is being live streamed to the public via the system.

And so because that is happening, it is all the more important to have these strong safeguards around the technology rather than simply saying this won't happen very often, operators are trained, et cetera, et cetera.

I understand the agency's intent is good and we appreciate again the good faith that we've worked through these issues with, but the end result should really be policy that deals with the worst case misuse of these technologies, not policy that assumes that the technology is always going to be used as intended, because as we've seen, with the federal government using license plate readers, for example, to enforce immigration, in instances where that was never intended, these things do have consequences and impacts on particularly marginalized and disproportionately surveilled communities.

Professor Mary Mosqueda.

Thank you.

So I think we're all saying, at least on the council side, the same thing.

We don't want to have this data used in unintentional ways and we believe the language in there specific to how the departments will project the data is really intended to track traffic.

I think what we're trying to make sure of is our legislative intent is very clear that when somebody does access the data and holds up their phone and records the information, we have been explicit and we have been clear that our goal was never to have it used in a way that is not related to traffic.

And I want to give you one very recent example and thank SPD and SDOT.

There was a one-day strike where workers walked out and they were along Broadway and it did have an impact on traffic and it did involve SDOT and it involved the police department coming in and making sure that people were safe in the area.

You can imagine a traffic camera looking at that area for regular monitoring of how the traffic was going to be affected by the picket line and having that data available.

If an employer wanted to stream that site and take a video of it, it is possible that not personally identifiable information was being collected and stored or even shared on that stream.

But if an employer, for example, wanted to engage in some form of retaliation, There would be a stream happening there where they happen to have information.

That would never be our use, right?

We are very pro-worker.

We want to make sure people can engage in their right to take a one-day strike, and we want to support making sure people are safe on the street and in bikes.

That there is proper barriers for the traffic as well We we are doing our job to make sure that people can express themselves But if in some way that was ever to be used against the worker We would now be able to say that was never our intent So I just use it as a recent example and want to thank you again for your work to make sure that folks were safe in that situation and people were able to engage in that and if that were to be online, we would want to have some protection.

So I think we're all saying the same thing.

This just helps us put additional fine point on it.

And Shankar, your point's duly noted.

I understand your point.

Thank you.

So Greg, on the issue of LPR versus traffic cameras to clean up.

It doesn't make any sense.

I suggest you just strike it, Mr. Chair.

So I strike the amendments to the attachment four on license plate readers.

So the second one on the second page.

Correct.

So the amendment is just where it starts off with the number five.

I think it's three.

Three.

It's three, right?

Five.

Number five on amendment three is about license plate readers.

It's amendment three and it is on the

starts with the number five, though, correct?

Let me see, which one is the top of the session page, the number five?

That's the one you don't want.

That's the LPR.

That's related to the LPR.

So what's the language that we're moving?

One second.

Where is my staff?

OK.

So the one that you want to remove is attachment 3.

We're going to cross out the first one in the proposed amendments and keep the second one that says an attachment 4. That's correct.

OK.

So they are.

So why don't I, Chair if that's okay.

Please do it because I'm not quite following the document.

I would like to move on the document that says, this is all just for Greg's benefit, and I think Greg knows what we're doing here, but on the document that says proposed amendment 3 to council bill 119519 version 1. At the bottom of that page, it says proposed amendments to attachment 3 and attachment 4. And we're actually just going to move the proposed amendment to attachment 4, which is the second of the two amendments.

The language is identical, but we wanted to just apply it to that one bill.

Yes.

Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and move that.

Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded by Councilor Herbold.

All those in favor of the amendment as described by Council Member O'Brien, which is just the amendment to attachment 4, say aye and raise your hand.

Aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

Okay, so we'll clean that up.

And then we have one last amendment by Councilmember Herbold.

And let's see.

I have it.

Another late breaker here.

Okay, thank you for that one.

So make sure everyone has it at the table.

So Council Member Herbold, I did read it before, but you got to walk me through this one.

Sure.

Hopefully there won't be any controversy to this one, because from the city's perspective, these are enforceable policies.

This is merely an amendment saying so.

So it's clarifying, putting a little more teeth to the fact that these are enforceable policies, because we had some public testimony to suggest perhaps they weren't enforceable as well.

That's correct.

So, grammatically, where does this stuff go?

Right in the beginning?

It will go into the beginning of each CSIR, so that it is obvious to the reader that it applies to everything they're reading thereafter.

Do departments, do anyone have any problem with that?

We've said they're enforceable, we're just doubling down on the enforceability concept.

Okay, everybody good?

Do you need to explain anymore?

I think we're on board.

Okay, so you want to move it?

Yes, please.

I'd like to move Proposed Amendment 4 to Council Bill 119519, Version 1. Second.

So moved and seconded to adopt Amendment Number 4, as stated by Council Member Herbold.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

Okay.

Can I just add, in the spirit of this is two CSERs of 29 or whatever we're going to be working through, Hopefully, we don't have to make amendments in the future for these.

Some of this language will just carry over to the future.

That'd be the hope.

That's the goal.

That's the goal.

OK, so we have an amended piece.

Now I could do Amendment 1.

Actually, you don't need Amendment 1. You can just pass out the bill as amended.

OK, so I'll move to pass Council Bill 1 1 9 5 1 9 correct.

Yeah, but 1 1 9 5 1 9 as amended and just for the record we passed Three amendments as amended three times.

That's correct.

We've one verbal to one of the amendments.

We've okay.

We're tracking it and and also for the record The department will have to take the SIR documents and make sure that these changes that were adopted today are incorporated in the SIR documents and then those will have to be attached at full council before you pass the final bill.

Yeah, I'll make that amendment from the dais and I'll explain why we have to do that.

Council Member Bryan.

As we get into passage of this final bill, I'm ready to support it, but I have just a few questions of the timing and what happens if that's okay.

Sure.

What is the, Greg and Council President, what you just described, what is the time frame of that as anticipated?

Is that between now and Monday or is this a longer?

No, I was putting on a dice Monday.

Okay.

I would love to have an additional week if possible, and that maybe gave you some heartburn.

It does.

But what are the issues?

Because I'll work some right now and be here till 1 if we have to.

Part of it's just me.

I haven't had time to fully digest a final document, and I've been struggling just to keep track of the various amendments.

And I think having something that has come out of council to look at it.

The specific concerns I have are that folks from the C, sorry, what are the actors?

The working group.

Yeah, there we go, the work group.

raised concerns about some differences in language that have not made it very clear.

Not so much on the specifics around the technology, but just the overall arching language.

I haven't had a chance to really understand, for me personally, if I think that lack of clarity exists or not.

And so I would love a chance to simply review this and I know frankly between now and next Monday that I'm going full speed and don't have much capacity to do that and if I had an extra week to look at that.

There may be some places where like this should not say shall or I think these two words...

I think I've demonstrated history of being pretty lenient on these kinds of issues.

Yes.

Let me tell you my concern in this particular matter.

Again, I'm just gonna be brutally candid.

that I haven't been convinced, I've been convinced with the working group, and I hope I don't offend you on this, Shankar, but there's a lot of, it's document intensive, and there's a lot of technical issues, and I'm not fully convinced that the working group, it seems like Shankar controls the working group.

He heavily influences the working group, and I look at these people testifying, good people, smart, a lot of people a lot smarter than me, but I don't think they're looking into the weeds in some of this.

and saying this is bad policy.

I just think that they're repeating a narrative that seems to be almost self-fulfilling at this point.

And I am convinced that this is good, solid legislation, having read all this stuff.

So my concern is that Shankar and the ACLU continue to do what they do best, which is protect civil liberties.

I get that.

That's their purpose on earth.

But at some point, we have to move forward.

I have asked these departments to work feverishly on this stuff, and we are at the point now And I've postponed this meeting to date to have a final piece of work that I didn't anticipate was going to meet all of ACLU's objectives.

And so to prolong it another week, to me, is just quite candidly ridiculous.

Because we've just really been pliable in this process.

I'm sure, and what saddens me about this process, Shankar, and I'll just speak to you directly, what saddens me is I think you do know, because I think you're a good person, I think that you do know we have really tried our best to meet your needs.

Go ahead, Shankar.

I hope you agree with me.

You know, thank you for those comments, President Harrell.

You know, I think the intent here never was to impugn anybody's intent, right?

I think this isn't about intentions.

I think people have come to the table and worked with good faith.

I have really appreciated the agency's efforts.

I've appreciated the staff's efforts.

You know, Greg and Lisa have been heroic on this.

So I want to give credit where credit is due and also then acknowledge that there have been challenges with the process that have led us to this point.

But taking a step back, I would say we need to look around us to see the movement that is building in this country around pushing back on big tech and the way that technology impacts communities.

We have a long history of surveillance technologies disproportionately impacting marginalized and vulnerable communities.

And these were folks who knew this very well because they had been targeted by these technologies before Shankar Narayan and the ACLU ever came along, right?

We have seen them elevating these issues.

I just happen to be the one that's getting paid to be here, but I know that, for example, there were 24 organizations who do read documents who signed on to a letter to this committee to make sure that whatever you passed was clear, gave guidelines to the public, and gave guidelines to the agencies using these technologies, no matter how good their intent, to make sure that there were bright lines that couldn't be crossed.

That has been my endeavor through this entire process.

And looking where we're at right now, I greatly appreciate the amendments that have been made, and particularly the enforceability one certainly helps a great deal.

So thank you to Council Member Herbold for that.

But having said that, there are issues that we just haven't had time to work through, because again, I have had this document for a day and a half, and it does not reflect even the agreements that were made in the last policy discussion.

Not through any fault of the staff, but I think, you know, as you've seen, we just saw an amendment that didn't apply to an entire technology license plate readers.

because we've moved so quickly on this.

And so where I'm coming from is, let's at least get rid of the unintended consequences that exist in this document.

Just one example is in CCTVs, it appears to actually open up the ability for the agency to record in ways that's not even contemplated in the underlying SIR.

That's been something that I put in the red line that I circulated yesterday.

But it seems that that was never intended because as we've heard from the agency, they don't, they record only in rare circumstances.

Yet the language that's in the document that you are about to pass actually authorizes a broad set of recording under the rubric of just the misuse of the term data collection.

So that's the kind of thing that, you know, even if we're, you know, we're not trying to move the goalpost, we're actually just trying to get to the discussion that we had.

And because there's been so little time that I've had with this document and, you know, the CSWG as well, that's not the case with the document right now.

So I hope that can be fixed.

So appreciate those comments.

And appreciate your earlier comments, too, about not impugning anyone's motives.

I deeply appreciate that.

Can someone respond to Shankar's statement that, and I'll come back to the timing issue, too, against my breath, about the, if I'm hearing you correctly, Shankar, your concern is that the use of traffic cameras, the use of it, that even with the surveillance ordinance and the SIRs, the agency can still use it for something nefarious.

Well, that recording is now allowed under the document.

Under this CSIR, there's now going to be recording allowed that was never contemplated or even asked for by the agency because it uses the term data collection, which can either mean viewing or recording, and it doesn't actually specify that it's recording.

So there's a term data collection in the CSIR that allows, under the rubric of data collection, recording.

which is wide open and you don't feel it's adequately limited.

Yes, that's right.

But to clarify, President Harrell, I use that as an example among many examples of unintended consequences in the document.

I know that's one example of many that you could do.

And quite candidly, though, you've had the sir, not the see, sir, but you've had the sir for how long now?

Well, quite a long time, but you all are passing a document that I think was not made available to us.

The sir is still, well, you're certainly documents are not ceasing me as well, right?

Sorry, say that again.

You're ceasing documents around and aren't ceasing me either too, right?

Okay, so anyway, so the point being is that you had the SIR, which uses the term data collection now for how long?

You said a long time, it's been a long time.

So that issue could have been raised as one of the, and they're trying to pull it together now to see if that representation is correct.

But go ahead, Council Member Bryan.

So, um, I want to just, uh, higher level because this is one of the parts, um, that's been challenging for you.

It's a moving target.

That's what I'm, that's, this is an example of the moving target that we're...

Council, Council, Council President, um, you have done a Herculean effort shepherding an extremely complex piece of legislation that frankly no one in the country is doing.

And I have been able to show up at moments doing my best to get up to speed on something that's complex and I'm just personally struggling to keep up and try to show up and do my job.

But that's not because you're moving this too fast, it's because I have other things going on and it's complex.

I think that and I think I really appreciate that the engagement that's happened particularly in the last few weeks where we've actually had representatives from the work group and the city sitting down working through that because those feel like oftentimes when there's a deadline that happens but it feels like a lot of good work has been accomplished.

And in the race to get things finalized, my sense is that the language back and forth, because it's so complex and the words mean a lot, there's some questions about what those mean.

And I, sometimes that's just people, you know, different parties will have different interpretations and I need to come to my own interpretation.

And I understand that you want to move this and I will commit that if it's next Monday that I will do what I can over the weekend to figure it out.

I also want to comment too about your comments about how the ACLU and Shankar are showing up on this because I think the optics you describe, I also feel you are clearly the expert on the work group that is in my ear a lot.

But I also believe, you know, I know what One America, for example, is doing right now.

And they are facing Herculean challenges across the world and the fact that, or across the country, the fact that they are not as deeply embedded in this and are relying on the ACLU to do the heavy lifting, both the technical legal stuff and the technical around the technology.

to me doesn't mean that they care less about it and it's really about ACLU.

I think it's, from my interpretation of what I see is like, they are relying on the ACLU because this is your expertise, but they care just as much about it because it has direct impacts on the work that One America is doing too.

So I don't think that's necessarily a negative, but you know, that's just, I think the optics are fair.

That's why we constructed the working group that way.

Yeah, so let me describe the timing on my thought at this point.

So I'd like to pass out a committee today.

My plan is to bring it to the council next Monday, but my door is still open to whatever, because I'm going to anticipate that even if we pass it and successfully pass it on the dais, I wanted the working group to celebrate.

I didn't want them to feel as though they didn't pass it.

And to some extent, it's like a lot of the legislation we recently passed.

We get it past a goal line.

Sorry to use football terms, but sometimes I can't think that quickly enough.

We get it past the goal line.

And we want everyone to high-five, and everyone doesn't high-five, and sometimes we take it.

So a long-winded way of saying is that we'll chat before Monday, and if it really looks like a dire need, sorry departments, to hold it.

I've demonstrated a history of holding things if I have to, but that's not my intent at this point, but the doors are open, and I mean that sincerely.

And I love your point about, I'm reading a book now called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by, I think it's Zuboff, the author.

It's just scary what, not just with camera technology, but the use of social media and everything else that we're doing.

And I think we've just got a fraction of really what's happening out there in terms of all kinds of surveillance.

And so it's a fascinating book.

And so I get this stuff.

But we're also trying to get something in place, and we have like 26 more to go or whatever.

So let me do this.

Let's get a vote, and then we can have some more comments.

But I want to get the vote behind me at least.

So I'll move to pass Council Bill 119519 as amended.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed?

The ayes have it.

So possible vote Monday.

Let's see, and any other closing remarks you'd maybe like to say?

Council Member Bryan.

Greg, Lisa, one, you guys have done amazing work and I'm really grateful because I've relied on you heavily to just keep my fingers hanging on to the edge of this, so thanks for that.

How soon can we have essentially a clean version of what passed out today that I can ask the work group to provide some comments on so that I can really dive in to do that work in the next few days?

I can get you that tomorrow morning.

OK, that'd be great.

I appreciate that.

And Shankar, of course.

And I guess I do take a little umbrage sometimes where if there's, and I don't think you said this, I might be overly sensitive, but we've tried to be just completely open and transparent in this process.

And so when people are saying they're not getting documents, I got these amendments this morning myself.

So I mean, this just sort of happens when you're doing things in this process.

But there hasn't been an intentional slow playing as the poker term, they say, for those who play poker.

So again, thank all of you for this.

I know this has been excruciating on some level, but also it's very, very important work.

And Shankar, I thank you and your organization for all that you do to protect our civil liberties.

We appreciate that.

Okay.

The question.

What question?

I didn't hear the question.

Oh, there was a question.

Oh, he's gone.

So there was a question about the date of the use.

Yes, if we haven't answered at least.

So I think, and I'm going to look to Jason to help me out here, is that the, I believe the underlying SIR says that they don't record the data.

What the, and the CSIR being a summary of the SIR, it doesn't say everything that the SIR says, but what it does is it talks about recording that happens.

It says for any recording that does take place, the operator will record no more information than is necessary for a traffic management functions.

Operators will make reasonable efforts to limit CCTV or still images of traffic condition, to traffic conditions.

But to Shankar's point, that's what the SDOT shall try to do, but it doesn't explicitly say that's all they can do, correct?

I'm gonna side looks like he's got

So why?

I was going to highlight section three at the bottom of the page where it says the system will not be used to collect any data other than the following.

And then it does list three very explicit reasons why the data would be collected.

So that's in the CSIRT?

It will not be archived except in specific scenarios.

The examples of these include monitoring effects of a change in traffic signal timing.

There's some specifics in here that limit.

So yeah, so it's a combination of both documents that would make it so that SDOT will not record or cannot record for anything other than a traffic management purpose.

Caller, if I'm saying anything wrong.

You're saying it right.

Okay.

I'd just like to make very clear, so that is exactly an example of the unintended consequence I'm talking about.

So what this says is the SDOT CCTC system will not be used to collect any data for any other than the following.

And it actually then says live streamed feed of current traffic conditions.

As far as I can tell, collecting data can actually be used as a term for recording, right?

The underlying SIR actually says nowhere that this recording can happen, yet this language appears to enable all live streams to actually be collected, i.e., recorded.

So, you know, I just want to say, if the intent is not to record, And I understand from the agency that other than limited traffic engineering studies, that will not happen.

Let's make that clear.

Let's make it clear for the public.

Let's make it clear for the agency.

It doesn't sound like it ought to be controversial because the agency is saying, we don't intend to do this.

But unfortunately, the read of this language is that it can happen now.

I heard it differently, though.

I understand your point and would agree with your point, but I thought the language captured the limitation on use, so...

Right, so we completely agree with you, Shankar.

In fact, on page three, item number two, it says, for any recording that does take place, the operator will record no more information than necessary for the traffic management function.

I think it's very explicit.

I think the intent was never to prohibit any recording ever.

I think the intent was to ensure that when recording took place it was only for traffic management and engineering studies.

I think this is a good example of where it might be helpful to have the final bill and then do a kind of a crosswalk with what maybe we hear from central staff or stakeholders of unintended consequences and then just make sure we're doing exactly what we've done today.

Either clarify that that's not what the language says or see if there's anything else that you need.

Not to totally amend the bill, but just to make sure we identify.

So since this is an example, I think this is a good example.

I think this is a good example of where the language is crystal clear on the limitations of use, but Shankar is saying that it's not.

I think that's what this is an example of, because I don't know how else we could limit it.

If you have some other language, but it seems very clear, we state when we're using it, why we're using it, what we won't use it for, and it puts limitations on use, and it has the word shawl, I think, in there.

So I don't see how I think he has a incorrect...

I mean, I can understand possibly there could be some nefarious use somewhere down the road, I guess, but if it is, they're violating the policy.

They are violating the policy.

And that's the issue.

The issue is if there's that kind of nefarious use, they are violating the policy.

I think that's the issue.

So anyway, anyway.

Anyway, let's...

We will have a clean version by tomorrow.

We'll get it to Shankar and we'll go from there.

And everyone have a great day.

All right.

All right.

We'll stand adjourned.

And I look forward to public engagement.