Did Mayor Wilson Keep Her Promise on the Planned Parenthood Camera? It Depends How You Count

Did Mayor Katie Wilson keep her promise to turn off one surveillance camera? It depends on how you’re counting. 

Last week, anti-surveillance advocates accused Wilson of failing to follow through on her already limited concession to turn off just one of the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) surveillance cameras, the one at N 105th St & Aurora Ave N, which faces a Planned Parenthood clinic. But in an email to The Burner, Wilson’s office maintained the Mayor had kept her promise — the camera immediately watching Planned Parenthood is off. The disagreement comes in what you count as a camera. And by how Wilson’s been counting cameras this entire time, advocates argue she effectively shut down only a fraction of a camera. 

It may sound nitpicky, but this is more than a semantic dispute. This is about whether Wilson meaningfully reduced surveillance of the Planned Parenthood clinic in an era of abortion bounty hunters and general reproductive injustice. 

Last month, in a half-measure that pleased neither side, Wilson paused part of the previous administration’s yet-to-be realized expansion to SPD’s surveillance capabilities, to perform an audit. Wilson’s base, including the advocacy organization she founded and many of the volunteers and staffers who got her elected, demanded she shut down the whole system. And they didn’t feel these demands were so out of left field. After all, Wilson took a firm stance against the expansion during the campaign and she even argued that surveillance does not make communities safer.

In addition to the pause and the audit, Wilson gave her allies one camera. She vowed to shut off a camera positioned near a Planned Parenthood to assuage fears that out-of-state authorities or federal actors would tap into the footage to hunt down abortion seekers. 

“I am turning off one currently installed camera which has a view of a facility which provides reproductive healthcare and gender affirming care,” Wilson said in a press conference last month. “I have confirmed that SPD’s current practice is  to  mask or ‘blur’ those locations, but until we’ve completed a comprehensive security audit and have stronger safeguards in place, I don’t believe it’s worth taking that risk.”

And the Mayor’s office said it has delivered on that promise. 

In an email to The Burner, the Mayor’s spokesperson Sage Wilson (no relation) said, “The cameras the mayor announced would be turned off have in fact been turned off as of March 19th, the day the mayor made the announcement. We have confirmed they are still turned off.”

However, public records obtained by activist group Stop Surveillance City show the camera installation at N 105th St & Aurora Ave N is still actively recording as of April 6, more than two weeks after she announced she would shut the camera off.

Wilson’s office disputed Stop Surveillance City’s characterization that Wilson had not followed through. 

“The point of confusion is that the PDR release contained video footage from three other cameras that are fixed, cannot be moved, and do not capture any activity at the sensitive location,” said S. Wilson in an email to The Burner. 

As both the Mayor’s office and Stop Surveillance City acknowledged, each camera installation consists of five individual cameras: four fixed cameras that make up a 360-degree view, and one pan/tilt/zoom ("PTZ") camera that can be moved to capture video in all directions. Wilson’s office turned off one of the fixed cameras with a direct view of the Planned Parenthood and the PTZ, but left the other three fixed cameras on. 

Wilson’s office is correct that the camera installation no longer watches over the Planned Parenthood clinic. At the same time, Wilson’s administration typically refers to each installation of five views as one camera unit. Even in the press conference when she announced she would cut one camera, she said that SPD has 62 cameras, when really SPD has 310 individual cameras in 62 installations. Similarly, SPD’s own CCTV map lists and displays each installation as a single camera, not five distinct cameras. By the City’s own metric and thus the advocates’ expectations, Wilson has actually turned off more like two-fifths of a "camera."

BJ Last, an organizer with Stop Surveillance City, accused the Mayor and SPD of referring to entire installations as one camera in order to “downplay” the full extent of SPD’s surveillance capabilities. But then the Mayor’s Office took a “pedantic” posture when they changed how they count to make it look like they gave their progressive base a slightly larger crumb, Last said. Besides, Last argued if the Mayor’s Office wants to be so literal, they should have said they would turn off two individual cameras.

When The Burner tried to explain why some anti-surveillance advocates felt misled by Wilson not turning off the entire installation, Wilson’s spokesperson said: “So the argument is that when the mayor said she was turning off one camera with a masked view of a sensitive location, it was misleading because actually she turned off one camera with a masked view of a sensitive location and also a second camera which could be turned to have a masked view of a sensitive location?” 

Whether or not Stop Surveillance City’s accusation amounts to splitting hairs, the public records request raises an important question about whether Wilson has meaningfully reduced surveillance near Planned Parenthood. SPD no longer has a camera facing the facility, but Stop Surveillance City noted that out-of-state law enforcement could submit public records requests to see if someone drove in the intersection towards or away from the clinic. 

In any case, it looks like Wilson has some trust to rebuild with her base. Last said her choice not to turn off the entire installation makes him all the more wary of how she will steward the cameras during the FIFA World Cup. Wilson said she will go through with expansion in the stadium area (she said 20 cameras, but that actually means 100 by the new way she is counting), but not switch them on unless the City gets a “credible threat.” 

Perhaps most importantly, Last said that the fact that Stop Surveillance City and anyone else can request the camera footage undermines any argument about data security.