By Erica C. Barnett
Editor’s note: This post has been updated with comments from Mayor Katie Wilson’s office.
On Tuesday, Seattle City Councilmembers Rob Saka and Bob Kettle trashed Mayor Katie Wilson’s decision, announced in March, to leave newly installed police cameras turned off in the absence of a “credible threat” to public safety during the upcoming World Cup games, suggesting that the mayor is “afraid, apparently, to use technology from the World War II era” (Saka) and deriding the “credible threat” standard as “not a professional standard” (Kettle).
“Ask the mayor of Atlanta during the ’96 Olympics, was there a credible threat notification on that bombing? There wasn’t,” Kettle said. The Atalanta Olympics bombing, infamously, was falsely blamed on an innocent security guard, Richard Jewell; the real bomber wasn’t caught until 2003, after setting off several more bombs in Georgia and Alabama.
“Reacting after the fact is not going to get us there, and so, as someone who’s worked in this field, I do have to say, I do not understand the [mayor’s] position related to credible threat,” Kettle said.
In a statement Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said, “Identifying a credible threat involves multiple experts from federal, state, and local agencies monitoring and assessing various streams of information. In collaboration with one another, they weigh incoming intelligence and jointly recommend whether to elevate security operations. Mayor Wilson’s decision whether to activate the Stadium District cameras will be informed by this group’s recommendation.”
Saka, who showed up to this morning’s public safety committee meeting decked out in 2013 Boston Marathon gear (he held up his finisher’s medal, seen above, through much of his 12-minute speech), said he “didn’t know how to protect my wife” when the bombs went off that year, shortly after the two had finished the race. “I was there. … I know what chaos feels like.”
“I don’t think that our city is is as ready as it could be to host the world for such a global event of this scale,” Saka continued. “The good news is that the solution is simple. There’s a quick fix available. This council has previously authorized and funded the expansion of critical security cameras in key areas throughout the city.”
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Saka accused Wilson of wishful thinking. Waiting for a credible threat, he said, “falsely assumes and incorrectly assumes that the purported threat will always pop up on a radar every single time with no fail rate whatsoever. As someone who’s a former intelligence officer who did this work, I wish that were true. It’s just not.”
As Office of Emergency Management Director Curry Mayer reminded councilmembers this morning, the Seattle Department of Transportation already provide live camera surveillance feeds to the city’s Emergency Operations Center from hundreds of locations around the city, including more than a dozen traffic cameras around the stadiums and several around Seattle Center. The EOC, which will be heavily staffed during the World Cup, is activated during all major events in Seattle and will serve as the central hub for live monitoring and emergency response during the World Cup games.
“The cameras that we rely on in the EOC are the cameras that SDOT uses all throughout the city,” Mayer said, and are “very helpful for any kind of event.”
The EOC, notably, does not have any ability to access any of the surveillance cameras operated by SPD, which feed into a separate Real Time Crime Center at SPD headquarters.
Wilson is clearly feeling the pressure to turn the cameras on, whether or not they will actually add significant coverage to the existing web of surveillance surrounding the stadium district. Her spokesperson said the mayor “continues to consult public safety officials regarding circumstances that might warrant use of the expanded set of cameras during the FIFA World Cup. We appreciate councilmembers’ perspectives, and those will be part of ongoing discussions.”
Well it is pretty damn stupid to install cameras and keep them turned off. “Oh no, we might capture a shot of a gender bender or an illegal immigrant” so the cameras remain off. Dumb!
They were not going to be installed. Katie went against her base and compromised. Install, but leave them off.
Not dumb. ICE is not going to monitor feeds etc.
Ask Mayor Paul Schell about the credible threats during the WTO Riots. There were certainly a boatload of warnings.
Oh? You mean a once in a lifetime event 30 years ago or more? Yeah..Solid argument *sigh*
Kettle is the one who is really behind this, and he is attempting to manipulate and play on Saka’s emotions and the emotions of everyone in Seattle to pursue mass surveillance like he is still in Navy Intel. The problem with applying a mass surveillance tool of war to city streets is it conflicts squarely with the Constitution of the United States. It reduces America to a totalitarian country like Russia, in which the movement of everyone is monitored for the pleasure of those doing the monitoring.
Snowden exposed the abuse of power attendant to mass surveillance very powerfully when he was at NSA. There were people there tracking their girlfriends, ex’s or potential love interests, with an average of 7 misuses per day. And to think that the SPD who was just recently (last year) released from a consent decree for “abuse of power” and the rampant covering up of misconduct of its officers by supervising personnel, it is simply CRAZY to give them this unconstitutional power.
The law is fairly clear. In Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018), the Court noted that individuals retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the “whole of their physical movements,” even when traveling through public spaces. And even with public spaces, you cannot practically limit the surveillance of cameras to public spaces only. There are lots of private property, apartments, etc., within view of public spaces.
The only fair compromise I see is ROBUST access control to solve ‘specific’ crimes AFTER they have occurred, in which an “authorized” person who applied for and was granted a warrant from a judge, can review the footage of cameras in a time-limited way to help solve a specific crime. Wide access or real-time access absent a verifiable emergency is prone to abuse, just like what we had at NSA. There also needs to be independent monitoring of authorized persons who access cameras to insure that the cameras are not used for unauthorized purposes.
Kettle is MAGA lite.
“Can’t wait for a credible threat.” So we might as well continue legislating on: 1) the fantasies of a small minority of Seattle citizens who think an all-encompassing surveillance state benefits society, or, more likely, 2) are being paid to say it’s so, and will advance anything that further erodes privacy rights no matter what, because money feels so silky-smooth good in their pocket.
The small minority are those who exaggerate fears of misuse of cameras. Have there been any incidence of ICE or police misusing Seattle City security camera data? I have seen plenty of examples where criminals were identified and arrested due to camera evidence.
“Have there been any incidence of ICE or police misusing Seattle City security camera data?”
No…Not that we are aware of.
That question is a red herring. The REAL question is this…
“Has law enforcement ever used the exact same equipment and methods and misused it?”
The answer…CHYAAAaaaaa! There’s a laundry list.
So give us a break. Alarmists are not part of a sound reasoning for cameras everywhere.
“I don’t think that our city is is as ready as it could be to host the world for such a global event of this scale,” Saka continued. “The good news is that the solution is simple. There’s a quick fix available. This council has previously authorized and funded the expansion of critical security cameras in key areas throughout the city.”
So use the FIFA games to dictate local policy? NOT! Keep the damn cameras in boxes.
It is not like someone will get away with something. There’s cameras everywhere.
Wishing doesn’t make it so. Cameras are not a preventative and don’t warrant a hair on fire rant. They may be effective in some after the fact scenarios in a review process to determine who, how, etc.
Amen!