The Seattle City Council Grease The Wheels Of Fascism, Approve Massive Surveillance Expansion

On Tuesday afternoon, the Seattle City Council voted 7-2 to approve a huge expansion to the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) surveillance pilot program. Only Council Members Alexis Mercedes Rinck and Dan Strauss voted no, siding with the overwhelming opposition from a long list of community organizations, almost 20 state representatives, several official City commissions, and all but one person (two if you count the guy advocating for drone surveillance) who testified during the three-hour long public comment period. 

The universal hatred isn’t just because Seattleites don’t want our boys and blue watching their every move — they’re worried that once the City collects this footage, they won’t be able to keep it from the clutches of the Trump administration who may use it to hunt down and punish political dissidents, trans people, abortion seekers and immigrants who call Seattle home. 

After this vote, constituents should never again take their representative seriously when they finger wave at facism, when they beat their chest in the direction of D.C., when they trash talk Trump. Their vote could prove to be a gift to the gestapo. 

The bill, proposed in partnership between SPD, Mayor Bruce Harrell, and Council Members Sara Nelson and Bob Kettle, will add $1 million worth of new cameras to to bolster a brand new surveillance pilot program known as the Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) in Capitol Hill, the Central District, and near Chinatown International District (CID), capturing the historically queer, Black, and immigrant neighborhoods respectively. A fascist would binge watch that kind of footage like it's fucking Love Island.

And then, if that wasn't enough, a second bill, which earned the same vote split, also handed SPD access to all of the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT) traffic cameras. The scale of expansion is best represented visually.

Opponents to the bill clogged their representatives’ phone lines, sounded off on social media, wrote open letters, all with a fairly unified argument. 

For starters, it’s unclear that the RTCC will do what the council intends it to do. The council specifically launched the RTCC to reduce ‘persistent felony crimes,’ ‘serious and violent crimes,’ or ‘gun violence and human trafficking.’ According to a memo by the Office of Civil Rights, research does not suggest surveillance will achieve this end. 

Even if Seattle somehow wound up being an edge case, such a determination would be premature, even by the council’s standards. The RTCC pilot program was supposed to last for two years and face independent evaluation before renewal or expansion. The cameras have only been rolling for three months. As Rinck noted, the independent researcher the City contracted to review the efficacy of the system haven’t even started collecting the data they will review. 

With no clear evidence the tech will make Seattle safer, opponents accused the council of installing cameras to prove their big and tough about crime, despite dropping crime rates. The council’s fragile egos don't outweigh the potential risks for opponents. 

Basically every public commenter warned the council that this footage served up Seattle on a silver platter to the Trump administration. There’s a few ways this could happen. The feds could just breach the data, Trump hasn’t shown much regard for laws or decorum. SPD could just share the data with the feds like other agencies have around the country and in Washington. Trump could do to Seattle what he did to Washington, D.C., take over their police department, including their RTCC system, a move the Seattle Police Officer Guild president has praised. Or, least ceremoniously of all, he could simply subpoena the footage. 

And it’s not alarmism. Commenters listed countless jurisdictions where surveillance tech has been compromised. Rinck said it’s not a matter of “if” Trump gets the data, it's “when.”

Some council members tried to sympathize with the public’s united fears. Council Member Mark Solomon validated their concerns, but then insisted they just don’t understand the tech like he does. Council Member Rob Saka personally committed to protecting the data, vowing to be "among the first" to call off the cameras should he suspect a breach –– the man can't even be a trailblazer in his empty promise. Council Member Joy Hollingsworth sympathized with constituents who apparently care enough about the issue to trauma dump about crime to her over late night phone calls, but not enough to publicly register their support of surveillance. 

Kettle tried to face the commenters head on, but merely handwaved all of the countless examples of the feds circumventing guardrails, convinced Seattle is somehow immune because their legislation is “different” and we aren’t in a “red state.” (Rinck noted, other cities have their own guardrails to prevent breaches. She conceded that yes, every system is different, but ICE is getting the data across the board and the feds have the power to subpoena the data at any time. She asked why her council colleagues think Seattle is so special.)

Other council members just straight up scolded the dissent. I don’t like to comment on a woman’s volume, but Council Member Maritza Rivera legitimately yelled at the public commenters while also implying she’s more respectful to her constituents than are to her. Council Member Debora Juarez mocked them for caring about a little data breach as though that data breach didn’t mean potential deportations and insisted the public commenters were "privileged," which seems an odd line of attack considering they didn’t get to vote on the bill and she did. 

In attempts to appease the overwhelming opposition, the council unanimously adopted Rinck and Kettle’s amendment to pause the program in the case that “Seattle CCTV data is demanded by or released to federal authorities for a civil immigration matter.” Rinck's concerns still stand. 

But the council rejected Rinck’s amendments to mandate a review to ensure the program actually reduces crime to set a 2028 end date for the pilot, which the City could renew contingent on a Surveillance Impact Report and Executive Overview. The council also rejected her amendment to restrict camera installations to arterial streets within the proposed new Capitol Hill Nightlife District and Strauss’s amendment to limit expansion to only the area surrounding the stadiums. 

There must be in this hugely disappointing day a nugget of wisdom. And that nugget may just be a reminder that this City Council doesn’t care if you take off work in the middle of the day, if you wait in line for hours, if you cry on the dais, if you fear for your life. They will gaslight you, mock you, and mostly meaningfully, they will vote against your interest. 

Fortunately, the council will look different soon. Nelson, the conservative ring leader, will likely lose her election to progressive challenger Dionne Foster who spoke out against surveillance tech. Solomon will be replaced and the frontrunner for that seat, Eddie Lin, also spoke against Tuesday’s bill. District 5 voters will get the pleasure of once again replacing Juarez next year, when hopefully the midterm turnout boosts a progressive. But even then, that council likely will not rush to decommission all the cameras and who knows what damage will have already been done.