GUEST POST: Mayor Katie Wilson Declared that She’s Fully Pro-Surveillance, We Can’t Keep Pretending Otherwise

Mayor Wilson was not wishy-washy on surveillance in her State of the City Address. She delivered full-on pro-surveillance propaganda indistinguishable from Bruce Harrell’s or Bob Kettle’s rhetoric. People need to acknowledge this, and let it inform how they approach this administration on surveillance– and every other issue. 

Here’s what she said:

I continue to have the concerns I expressed during the campaign about data security and how surveillance cameras could be abused to target vulnerable communities. I have also been moved by what I’ve heard from families and communities impacted by gun violence. I understand how CCTV cameras have been a useful tool to solve crimes, and can reduce profiling and protect witnesses.

Mayor Wilson immediately erases the actual, documented harm surveillance has already done. She frames surveillance causing harm as purely hypothetical, something that “could” happen someday, not something that is already happening constantly.

Mayor Wilson attributes the harms of surveillance to “abuse”, claiming the harms of surveillance are something that can be regulated around, not an inherent part of surveillance. This ignores how supposed guardrails have never managed to actually protect anyone. We’ve seen how the Keep Washington Working Act has utterly failed to prevent ICE from accessing surveillance data in Washington state, or other states with similar protections. We see this with the Department of Licensing sharing data with ICE, and with SPD working with ICE, even when ICE tells SPD it wants the data for “removal proceedings.”

Mayor Wilson further minimizes the harms of surveillance by using the incredibly vague term “target.” Referring to people being violently kidnapped, disappeared to concentration camps, and sent to random countries as merely targeting is incredibly disingenuous. So is calling police trying to charge someone for accessing abortion healthcare or being prosecuted as a “domestic terrorist” under NSPM-7. She also completely ignores many other harms of surveillance, including how it siphons public money from youth programs, food security, and other investments that reduce violence, and has negative psychological impacts on people being surveilled.

Contrast Mayor Wilson’s obfuscation of the harms of surveillance with how she describes the supposed benefits in the next sentence. Mayor Wilson presents sales pitches of surveillance as facts without any need to support them. “CCTV cameras have been a useful tool.” What are those supposed benefits?

The first stated benefit of “solving crimes” is contradicted by SPD’s own request to buy surveillance cameras. The only study SPD cited concluded “a body of research on the investigatory benefits of CCTV has yet to develop.” Other studies have also shown that CCTV cameras have no impact on clearance rates. In Seattle, multiple murders over the last two years are unsolved, despite taking place in front of surveillance cameras.

The most famous case of SPD using surveillance cameras to “solve” a crime was last year when SPD arrested an innocent person for arson and murder based on CCTV footage. The person was interrogated by SPD for over 10 hours, charged with arson and murder, spent over a month in jail, and if you do an internet search for the person’s name, the first results are stories about the person being arrested and charged with arson and murder. That case isn’t the only documented instance of SPD using CCTV footage to detain an innocent person. These cases are likely representative for how the police use surveillance, since we only know about them due to extraordinary circumstances – people with air-tight alibis, refusing to make a false confession, having the resources to mount a defense, given voice through diligent work by a small, local news outlet, and SPD deciding to brag about using CCTV footage.

Wilson also suggested in her speech that surveillance technology would lead to “reduced profiling.” It is hard to view the stated benefit of “reduced profiling” as a good faith argument versus part of her smearing people opposed to surveillance (more on that below). SPD put its surveillance in “some of the highest-percentage minority population centers in King County” and only those neighborhoods. The massive racial disparities in who gets surveilled are not unique to SPD’s CCTV cameras. It is inherent in police surveillance. SPD’s Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) surveille people in the CID 79 times more than people in Wedgewood. This echoes how surveillance companies and cops used the police’s own violence to shift the pitch for body cameras  from surveillance to “accountability” in order to get the public to agree to give the police billions of dollars a year for them.

The final  benefit Wilson alleged, “protecting witnesses”, shows how the justification for surveillance is always changing. When SPD was asking for CCTV and other invasive surveillance in 2024, the justification was that surveillance would somehow prevent violent crime. When expanding surveillance last year, the supposed reason was that surveillance would increase clearance rates. Mayor Wilson is continuing the pro-surveillance strategy of moving the goalposts. This item is repeating the first claim of “solving crimes” but pivoting to make it very nebulous and vibes-based.

Finally, look at who Mayor Wilson claims is in favor of surveillance. She sets “families and communities impacted by gun violence” as a counter to the harms of surveillance. She’s implying that communities impacted by gun violence are uniformly in favor of surveillance, and therefore the only people opposed to surveillance are communities that have never been impacted by gun violence. This is indistinguishable rhetoric from Debora Juarez dismissing all 115 people who gave public comment opposing surveillance as people “with a lot of god damn privilege.” It is akin to Bob Kettle smearing people in sex trade, survivors, and everyone else opposed to prosecution for sex work as “chattering classes”.

Mayor Wilson’s pro-surveillance propaganda is a reminder of how dystopian the surveillance sales pitch is. Investments in meeting community needs that are proven to reduce, and ameliorate, violence and harm are “politically impossible”. It is just about incarceration after the fact. And ignoring that caging people increases harm. Prisons are very violent, both to people incarcerated and their loved ones, and incarceration increases crime. Surveillance tells everyone that they, and everyone around them, are unworthy, unwanted, untrustworthy, and must be closely tracked because they could become a “criminal” at some point in the future.

Mayor Wilson is fully on the side of surveillance companies. People that are opposed to or neutral on surveillance do not deliver carefully-planned propaganda erasing the documented harms of surveillance, claiming imagined benefits, and painting opponents of surveillance as privileged idealists who have never been impacted by violence. We need to accept that her claim to be opposed to surveillance during the campaign was a standard lie told by a run-of-the-mill, status quo candidate begging for votes.

This does NOT mean we stop fighting to remove harmful surveillance from our city, or pushing Mayor Wilson to stop the surveillance. (she can cancel the contracts at any time). It means we acknowledge we’re dealing with another Jenny Durkan or Bruce Harrell, and act accordingly.