Through the Static

By Hannah Saunders

On August 17, seven community members involved with the Community Not Cameras coalition took a trip to the Seattle Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) to better understand the technological capabilities of the City’s CCTV surveillance cameras. The group held a press briefing directly after, and several on the RTCC tour demanded the dismantling of the entire system due to severe safety concerns.

“We must ask the unfathomable question: who exactly is made more safe by these surveillance systems, because it is not immigrants being terrorized by ICE,” AJ Randall, an activist and cyber security engineer, said.

Randall’s previous career experience includes working alongside Axon, and the data from the City’s CCTV cameras is stored on an Axon cloud server located out of state, meaning it is not subjected to Washington privacy laws. Axon also collaborates with the Department of Homeland Security by providing body-worn video cameras, among others. The ability for federal agencies, including Customs and Border Patrol and ICE, to access these servers is high, putting marginalized communities at increased risk for tracking, kidnapping, and attacks.

Randall called on Mayor Katie Wilson and the Seattle City Council to shut down the camera system, dismantle the RTCC, and rather invest in community programs that have been proven to be effective against violence prevention.

“The time to re-imagine public safety is now, and we need real, radical, visionary leadership,” Randall added.

The Community Not Cameras coalition has been working to hold Mayor Wilson accountable for walking back on campaign promises of not increasing surveillance with CCTV cameras. According to Community Not Cameras, the RTCC intakes data from all of SPD’s surveillance camera units, where 308 are active and 112 are inactive. It also includes private businesses that have opted-in, like 877 registered cameras and 705 that have been integrated, as well as the Seattle Department of Transportation’s over 500 traffic cameras. The RTCC also incorporates all of SPD’s automatic license plate readers, in which there are over 415 that are currently inactive.

Noah Williams, a senior cyber security engineer in the transportation sector and a Transit Riders Union member who helped elect Mayor Katie Wilson, said there were some “very scary findings,” when asked who has access to these systems.

“The problem is that the control plane that governs access to that entire system decides when the footage can be uploaded and by who,” Williams said. “It does not live in our hardware.”

Williams said he believes the RTCC system is “structurally dangerous,” and that it feeds into the larger issue of a surveillance state. Williams also called for the dismantling of the RTCC, the disabling of all cameras, and the retirement of cloud control. Other speakers highlighted the need for the city to reinvest in community programs, and one even noted the negative impacts constant surveillance has on community, including lower social trust, increased stress, and more violent crime. Furthermore, there is a gross lack of oversight with the RTCC, according to a person who toured the center.

New minuscule poll shows desire to increase surveillance

Also on August 17, the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Challenge Seattle published findings from a 3-day poll (August 10-13) where 500 Seattle voters completed interviews, of which 75% of respondents were in favor of a public camera program. Data shows that 55% of progressives support such a program, as do 82% of liberals and 88% of moderates and conservatives.

The report also highlighted the July 26 Bite of Seattle shooting, that left three people dead and four people injured, including a two-year-old toddler. It noted how several prestigious groups that host large-scale events wrote a letter to Mayor Wilson to encourage the reactivation of over 20 CCTV cameras in the Stadium District, which are connected to the RTCC.

“Three quarters support expanding the Seattle’s public camera program to large event spaces and areas with open-air drug markets/high levels of street disorder and two-thirds support real-time civilian monitoring in designated high-crime areas and during large events,” according to the report. “Strong support is significantly higher than strong opposition.”

Despite this poll with a minuscule number of respondents, Seattle’s leftist activists and immigrant community members have been demanding deactivation to cameras since at least March. Activists have stated that CCTV surveillance cameras increase the ability of bad actors to target vulnerable community members, and that they do not prevent crime, but rather are reactive and act as property protection.

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