Seattle City Council Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee 5/11/22

the may 11 2022 meeting of the seattle city council's economic development technology and city light committee will come to order it is 9 31 i'm sarah nelson chair of the committee will the clerk please call the roll house member sawat council member strauss president councilmember herbald here council president juarez chair nelson present and i won three numbers sorry about that uh could you say what you just said again of course three present right and so for the public i want to note that council president juarez did let our office know she's unable to attend today's meeting and is excused there are two items on the agenda today both the continuation of our conversation um last month on at our last meeting on april 27th on group 4a of the surveillance impact reports on surveillance technologies already in use by the seattle police department if there's no objection the agenda will be adopted all right hearing no objection the agenda is adopted at this time we'll open the remote comment period for items on the agenda i think everyone for their patience in cooperation as we operate these remote public comments system i will moderate the public comment period in the following manner the public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes and we'll eat and each speaker will will have up to two minutes to speak speakers are called upon in the order in which they are registered online to provide comment each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when registered and use the id and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation please note this is different from the general meeting listen line id listed on the agenda if you did not receive an email confirmation please check your spam or junk mail folders again i'll call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website if you have not yet registered to speak but would like to you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov council the public comment link is also listed on today's agenda once i call the speaker's name staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak and then the speaker must process we must press star six to begin speaking please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time and once you hear that chime we ask that you please begin to wrap up your public comment if speakers do not end their public comment at the end of the allotted time the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on to the next speaker and then once you've completed your public comment we ask that you please disconnect from the line and if you plan to continue following this meeting please do so via the seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda and i will make an amendment to the scripture that i just read and say that um our clerk kate nolan will be reading the names of the people that are to speak all right the public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of you have been unmuted our first speaker is cynthia speece cynthia go ahead please press start i'm cynthia can you hear me we can hear you okay hi i'm cynthia spees an independent secretary researcher and district six resident my comments are regarding both council bills i support all nine proposed amendments across these two surveillance technologies regarding the undercover audio recording devices amendment 3 could be improved to include the device model names which would be straightforward for sba to provide given the purchase orders would include that regarding ibase amendment 2 could be improved to include with the tally the incident case types such as homicide burglary etc both these surveillance technologies could benefit from council members adding oversight by the requirement that they receive an audit on their use and scoping their use to only cases involving a violent or serious offense at the last committee meeting a city framed their current use of ibase is being limited based both on officers time and poor quality of certain features from within by ibase but neither of those are set in stone this means that if spd had more staff and or if certain parts of ibase function better then sbd would be using those more concerning features tomorrow as such the responsibility falls on city council to add official guard rails additional oversight of ibay should be added by council members prohibiting the use of predictive policing prohibiting pulling in bulk data from external data sources into ibase such as data brokers prohibiting coding and data from automated license but reader geolocation databases and requiring that the contract governing expedi's acquisition of ibis be posted publicly lastly and most importantly council members should require that the public comment period deadline for any surveillance technology extends until at least one week after all the public's questions have been answered either on the seattle i.t privacy departments or spd's website the vast majority of the public's questions on these technologies are still unanswered espide is dodging one of the key purposes of surveillance ordinance which is to provide transparency and accountability in order to address this problem the public comment period should be tied to spd providing answers to the public's questions as an official deliverable instead of tying the public comment period clearly to a calendar date please see my emails to you for detailed recommendations you should take on these surveillance technologies thank you thank you is there anyone else signed up to speak no chair that was the only speaker i think all right well then thank you very much uh for taking the time to call in for public comments seeing no other people signed up for public comment the public comment period is now closed and we'll now proceed to our items of business and since the items are related will the clerk please read both items into the record items number one and two council bills one two zero three zero seven and one two zero three zero nine relating to surveillance technology implementation authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2021 surveillance impact report and 2021 executive overview for the seattle police department's use of audio recording systems and ibm i2 base briefing discussion and possible vote thank you very much so to introduce these items just a little bit of background information in 2017 the city council passed ordinance 120 125 376 otherwise known as the surveillance ordinance requiring city departments to obtain advance council approval for the acquisition of surveillance technology and to request retroactive approval of those technologies that have already been in use when that bill was passed council bills 12030 and 120309 would approve the seattle police department's continued use of those technologies and accept the surveillance impact report sir and an executive overview for each technology at our last meeting on april 27th we had a joint presentation from seattle information technology and the seattle police department that went over the process for reviewing technology surveillance technologies and uh describing the technologies that um that these particular sirs were concerned with and um also described basically uh what they did how they worked and uh and how the overall process uh floats so um they also went over the related laws and policies that authorize and limit sbd's use of such technologies and we also had a a central staff presentation that were that went over the civil liberties and the potential disparate impacts of each technology based on input from the um from the surveillance technology working group and proposed policy considerations that could inform amendments to the legislation before us and so today we'll discuss and possibly vote on the ten amendments proposed by committee members as well as possibly voting out uh council bills one two zero three zero seven and one two zero three zero nine out of committee all right so um i want to take a step back and uh just let people know the lens through which i'll be approaching this conversation on amendments and uh decisions because this process is fairly new to me and i just want to explain my rationale um so the uh the reason for the city's surveillance ordinance is to uh identify prevent and reduce or mitigate violations of civil liberties um that could result from the use of these technologies and in this case um spd uh in this case what spd is using in the course of investigations uh surveillance technologies are defined as surveillance technology this is from the ordinance means any electronic device software program or hosted software solution that is designed or primarily intended to be used for the purpose of surveillance so as we deliberate on these amendments the question i bring to the table is whether or not uh do they do they do these amendments uh better protect the civil liberties or privacy of individuals subject to an investigation in which these technologies are being used so that is uh so um that is those are the questions that i am going to be um considering as we go through our uh our conversation so first i'll move council bill 120307 and then turn it over to uh lisa k from central staff to walk us through the proposal and and the amendments thank you turner nelson oh councilmember herbal i i was just mentioning that chair nelson you moved the bill for purposes of discussing i seconded it that's all thank you okay um i'm lisa k i'm with central staff i also wanted to say good morning to councilmember herbald and council members trust um i'm also joined i think online we have uh brian maxie rebecca boatwright and captain britt from the police department and omari stringer from information technology department so as you mentioned chair nelson if it suits you i will describe the first set of amendments which apply to council bill 120-307 this is the bill that would approve the police department's continued use of audio recording devices and accept the surveillance impact report as you mentioned these devices are used under the authority of a warrant to covertly record conversations during a criminal investigation the committee today has four amendments before you each of these four are sponsored by councilmember herbald i will go ahead and share my screen with your permission chair nelson again is that working now you can see the amendments yes great okay so um and i will just be uh projecting each amendment as they come forward for discussion so members can see the the wording um amendment 1 would ask the police department to report by october 31st of this year on how the department ensures authenticity of these recordings and also ensures the accurate identification of recorded individuals as you'll you may recall from my staff report um sbd advised me that the police department's case detectives are responsible for identifying individuals and for reviewing any recordings obtained from these devices uh with that uh i will turn the mic over to council member herbal if that's your yes please do okay um i think the the statement i have i think is uh overriding for um each of the issues that you are going to uh cover lisa is that um these amendments are based on recommendations of the um of the working group so just kind of want to lay that out there as a foundation on these rec on these specific amendments uh council member do you want me to walk through each of the amendments and then have you go back and vote on each of them or do you want to yes i um hold on we're talking over each other and i apologize for that yes please do go into uh depth in this in amendment number one okay i think amendment one i summarized in council member herbald has spoken to unless councilmember you purpled you had some additional i'm happy to move on i have nothing more to add okay well um i appreciate the work that has been uh done by the surveillance working group um uh to to put forth these uh to inform your amendments um i do again come back to the questions that i had before is um how will uh how will this report um well basically let me just i'll just ask it in plain english um how are recordings already authenticated what would what extra steps would this amendment uh require them to do um in what ways is uh is the authenticity of recordings that have been in use um uh have they been problematic in the past i mean i i just need more information about why this amendment is important um considering that it does ask for some work by spd they're short staffed et cetera et cetera so i just wanted to get a better understanding of and absolutely only tells i asked spd to tell us what they're already doing it doesn't ask them to do anything more each of these amendments only asks spd to tell us what they're already doing how spd ensures authenticity we're not asking to change any any policies just to tell us how they how they do this function well it does ask for a report by october 31st 2020 and uh so that is asking for an additional actions so again i i will restate my question and ask a subject matter specialist if you can get to um perhaps try to answer my questions because that i do believe we do uh i think the amendment is designed to ask the questions that you are asking so that we get that exactly that information okay well um the recordings in question are part of standard investigative process so um i would suggest that this uh that when we are asking how spd ensures the authenticity of recordings and the accurate identification of in individuals in audio recordings obtained um are we talking about in general how are our audio recordings authenticated in general practice or in each recording and i will also ask um uh captain brett if you have any input here thank you councilmember uh like you said uh previously the the authenticity of the recording is established by standard investigative process anytime we're conducting an investigation any evidence that's obtained including audio recordings is validated for its authenticity further when we go to court it's validated by the court process regarding admissibility defendants in court have the opportunity to challenge the validity we make our case in court and ultimately a judge in pre-trial motions determines the validity of the audio recording so there are checks and balances in the process even beyond our involvement in the in that but uh when we're creating a recording or when we're seeking the recording the standard investigative process which could include witness testimony and uh information from officers on scene or detectives involved in the investigation would all feed into validating that audio recording as part of the investigative process thank you all right any other comments folks remember uh brian maxey's hand is raised thank you very much go ahead mr maxie i mean i just want to echo what captain brit has said and there's no technological mechanism to ensure this authenticity this is done through the investigative process either the declaration of the officer that or a wire or the under uh the ci that wore the wire or um and all of this is done pursuant to a warrant so the target of the use of the wires already pre-established by the um the warrant application and then as captain britt said what the use of this is in terms of prosecution where both the department through the prosecutor has the obligation to and the burden to prove the authenticity of this and present it under a beyond the reasonable doubt standard so i feel there are many controls in place on this um so i this this would be our answer to the question so um whether we need the amendment moving forward i don't know or whether we can just add it into the sir at this point with this question answered councilmember herbolt i just wanted to um sort of redirect the issue back to uh lisa kay did you do you feel like having heard the response from um spd here that that gets at um the intent of the working group or is there some additional sort of texture if you will to the um desire to understand the um authenticity of records uh process i i wasn't partying to the working groups deliberations but in just reading their comments and their concerns as well as some of the comments raised by public member members of the public and just doing my own research i think that the question would be really whether any of that authenticity is verified and how it's verified before it ever gets to the court so i understand that the court will make a ruling and that is a very strong um check on on the use of these particularly through the warrants but i suspect that the working group may have been concerned about how information could be promulgated potentially and accurately um if for some reason these recordings weren't f weren't authentic um and that that um in authenticity wasn't found until it came to the court does that make sense yep so um a desire that for the department to have um some sort of process before it gets caught into the court system yes and i think i think the the surveillance impact report was did speak to investigative procedures but those aren't transparent necessarily and as to um mr maxey i don't think the council can amend the surveillance impact report as that's supposed to be documenting how the police department operates and so um we would potentially if you wanted to update this sir now we might want to um um for convenience i only have the uh i the i-based uh s-i-r printed in front of me but um does the s-i-r for uh audio recordings respond to a concern by the working group on this matter no now okay well um in uh what i heard saying uh council member herbal you are saying that you want you want to underst that the working group wants to understand better uh these procedures before these come into investigation um not before investigation before uh the spd referred to sort of um the inherent controls uh existent in the court process and the uh the limitations um around getting warrants um due process etc but i think the request is about what the internal processes are to spd before those other you know legal processes are are not so much before investigation but before um before the the sort of inherent controls of the legal system um are sort of kick in what are the policy-based controls that the department has but i'm happy to um withdraw this for now uh chair nelson work with you on how to bring something uh something forward that uh i think better addresses both of our questions about i appreciate that councilmember herbald and at last meeting i think that there was mentioned um uh that it would be beneficial for this whole you know going forward um it seems as though there could be better communication between um the seattle police department and the working group the working group does bring you know does take into account the questions that are uh posed by members of the public and so it just seems like if we could all sit around a table and some of these issues and spd could perhaps um explain a lot of the uh the internal processes that um that govern and limit their ability to use these technologies and basically how do they launch an investigation and how are controls imposed by the courts maybe that would help going forward because to my understanding there um a lot of the people well there are seven members of the uh working group i think only four are empaneled right now one is a representative from the aclu but i don't know how familiar the other members are of some of these police processes so um with that thank you very much we'll put this amendment aside and let's move on to the next please thank you okay okay uh you see amendment two on your screen now uh this would prohibit the use of biometrics honor with the seattle police department's audio recording systems unless council approves their use through acceptance of a revised or a new surveillance impact report and you'll see that biometrics is defined here as technology used to identify a person based on physical characteristics which may include a person's fingerprints dna retinas voice or face and i was advised by sbd as i was preparing my staff report that the police department does not currently use any type of biometric technology in conjunction with these devices that would i will turn this over to the sponsor and i do see mr stringer's hand up as well was that hand up for the previous item and i missed you uh no this is for for this item uh good morning uh council members um i just was seeking some clarification on the uh i don't know if my video on or not but um i was seeking some clarification on uh what the use of biometrics means uh as far as like collecting biometrics and aggregating that data with audio recording systems or using any kind of biometric identification in conjunction with the audio recording devices so just seeking some clarity on on that okay i appreciate that and i would like uh council member herbal to speak to this amendment and incorporate answers to your question if that's uh if she is best capable of doing so sure um the uh just to start with with what i understand to be the answer and lisa correct me if i'm wrong um we're we're speaking kind of broadly as it relates to the use of biometrics and we're referring to the acquisition of technology that would allow the department um to identify a person based on characteristic physical characteristics which may include a person's fingerprints dna retina voice or face um and so this is really focused again on the acquisition of technology that would allow you to do allow spd to do this and i think this is what we discussed in our last committee meeting is sort of a belts and suspender approach um i think everybody we all we all agree that um that this this would be a separate technology and under the surveillance ordinance um uh the understanding is that spd would have to come back and go through that process um of developing a sir for that but much like we did um on facial recognition technology um this uh in uh with the co-sponsorship of council member peterson when this work was going through his committee um we sort of took that belts and suspender approach with facial recognition technology as well in order to offer some some assurances to uh community members who um sort of want the the council to make that that extra statement um above and beyond just the recognition that these technologies go through this process thank you well uh mr maxi so i i think councilmember herrmold is correct that this is already part and parcel of the requirements of the uh surveillance ordinance itself we could not acquire technology that allows us to do this uh absent another uh tour of the surveillance ordinance and coming back to this body but i worry that some of the uh phrasing of this could have some unintended consequences for example um we do you know take dna we do take fingerprints and we do have technology that's used to examine that dna and if that's part of the validation process of who the person that we are recording you know for example if we had a room that we can't see into and we believe there's only one person in there we could rely on dna technology analysis to say the person that was in that room was so and so that corresponds to the voice that we're presenting to a court so it's not so much a technology it's more of an investigative process that we discussed in the prior amendment that could be used to validate this similarly the the voice we do not have technology that will compare voices but we might have a prior recording of a person and then you use that against the audio recording to uh validate that we have the the correct person so i understand when i said earlier that it was broad i i guess i failed to recognize it is broad as it relates to biometrics on or with the audio recording systems so it's it's related to a particular technology am i is that is that correct lisa that is how it is written i think i think um mr maxi is is correct that there is some ambiguity there in terms of i think i think the initial response that the department doesn't use biometrics with this probably um was intended at the very high level um but in terms of when you get down to the actual analysis of how you're going to authenticate or how you're looking at these recordings that it would be it would seem that these these analytical tools are in fact used is what i heard brian say mr maxie say is am i accurate they're mr maxine yeah or they could be yes and you know i i i think i fully understand the intent of this and i'm not in any way speaking about that it just the devil's always in the details and i just worry about collateral effects i'm sorry no go ahead please i think that is a serious concern here i'm not a lawyer but i i think there is some potential risk in in this amendment compromising current practice if in fact this one's not ready for prime time either apparently not all right well at least we're using this time to uh daylight these amendments yes okay let's move on okay captain brett did you want to add anything before we move on no ma'am mr maxie covered it all thank you thank you very much okay we're looking at amendment three right now this would ask the police department to identify the manufacturers and vendors of the audio recording systems that are described in the surveillance impact report that would be approved by or would be accepted by the council and as uh was mentioned at your first hearing the police department prefers not to publicly disclose this information to avoid the risk of countermeasures and due to safety concerns for officers and cooperating witnesses i believe council member herbal uh saw asking for manufacturers and vendors at a kind of a 30 000 foot level as opposed to a level of specificity that would be um risky to the police officers just a much more narrowly tailored ask um that hopefully does not have the same vulnerabilities that um spd had expressed uh concern with last time how is this a narrower ask it's only requesting the identity of the manufacturers and vendors and not specific model names and numbers okay uh captain bray thank you ma'am and while i appreciate the council members efforts to to broaden the the ask to to protect that this request still has the potential to cause the same risks that were identified previously should a manufacturer or a vendor that is disclosed in this process have a limited number of devices or similarly operating devices it would still lay us open for the potential for counter member counter measures or dangers to our cooperating witnesses or our undercover officers that utilize this technology isn't this information that would be disclosable under a public disclosure request it's just that would depend on the nature of the public disclosure request the nature of the investigation involved and the decision of the judge overseeing the case but i'll defer to becca no it's not i'm not i'm not saying about a particular case i'm saying the city makes a purchase and who you are doing who you are making the purchase of from uh is public information i'll defer to becca boatwright for the questions on the legality of disclosure rebecca i'm sorry could you repeat the question the um information requested in this amendment simply the manufacturers and vendors of the purchased audio recording systems that's that's public information correct uh it completely depends uh we would be providing third party notice to the vendor and the vendor would most likely intervene in the request okay back to my framing question how does the listing of the um the identities of the manufacturers and vendors of the recording systems um better protect the civil liberties and prevent against disparate impacts i mean i think the recent experience the city has had with acela is a really good example why it's important for the city to know who we're doing um business with that particular contractor who we no longer do business with um has a history of illegal sales bribery and um uh privacy advocates were have been um raising the uh sort of the flag about our involvement purchasing um these products from masala and because of that transparency we've made different purchasing decisions with public tax dollars omari please i see your hand up hi yeah um i just wanted to clarify i think councilman referring to a cyclica um a cella is another i.t platform that oh thank you sorry middle's permitting i was like wait putting my i.t head on [Music] um yeah i i think um you know with that uh and the working group has expressed uh concerns uh again about what devices are used uh councilmember nelson to kind of answer your question i think it helps them kind of put together if i'm understanding their perspective of what is presented and what is the capabilities of the technology to assess it um i think that being said a lot of these technologies regardless of manufacture or vendor are kind of in the same it's a it's a microphone that records right but i think the the intent of that ask is to kind of validate that what what are other options uh out there what what or what devices are being used i think it's one of those um wanting to verify and provide oversight is the is the reason behind the ask um but i think that has to be balanced with spd's request that that information not be given due to potential countermeasures so i think that's the real uh the balancing question here thank you well um i am uh i am concerned about the potential of rendering the um the functionality of these devices um moot if uh people can find a workaround and and figure out how not to be recorded and so that is the question that is driving me um because all as was mentioned before the um some vendors perhaps only make one product so it would be fairly easy to get the specs on that product even if you don't um uh even if uh the the more broad um uh ask uh has been narrowed to simply um manufacturers and vendors and not make and model for example omari sorry that was my hand still up okay i uh if there are no other comments um i will now move this amendment is that what i am supposed to do here i'm sorry i thought we were going through all of them oh okay go through all of them that's easier for me that's way easier for me okay great and i think there's just one more in this bill yes okay so uh we will move now to amendment number four um this amendment is similar to all the amendments passed for previous surveillance impact reports uh which also omitted to provide metrics to the chief technology officer for that office's use in annual equity assessments so this um amendment would ask the police department to provide those metrics to the clerk by the end of this year thank you lisa yes so this is just again this follows um the requirements that we have included on reporting on the metrics that they use for for annual equity assessments that they already do um they're required to do um and it just is replicates the amendments that um we have included in the sirs for a previous technologies approved by the council so just it's a template amendment hopefully not a big deal um i have not looked at those other sirs so could somebody please speak to whether or not you could just use the other uh the other metrics for this um technology for this group of technologies i think if i if i may madam chair um the issue is is that the sir has a number of questions that the department's answer one of the questions is what will be the metrics that you're going to give this chief technology officer so they know how to measure the equity impacts of your particular device those metrics have never been provided in any of the servers that have come to council to date i think omari explained this in a previous iteration that the departments were kind of waiting to see what the council was going to do before they provided those metrics um and so the council has kind of provided a nudge each time saying we really would like you to give the metrics so that the cto knows how to do their assessment so basically are we trying to get at um whether or not the use of this technology is used more often in um in investigations in which uh uh a particular group of people are uh being investigated compared to another group of people is that because this is we're we're looking at um technology and use during an investigation so that is the is that the pool that we're looking at to apply the metrics to yes and you'll see i mean the the cto has done uh equity assessments i believe to date of uh one or two of the surveillance technologies already um i might ask um omari to speak a little bit more to that but yes it's basically broadly looking at um any data they can track in terms of disproportionate civil liberties impacts um from the use of these technologies okay omari you had your hand up first please yeah so i can speak a little bit more to the the equity metrics so by uh the ordinance um the cto is required every year by september 15th uh to submit the uh surveillance technology community equity impact assessment and policy guidance report we call it the equity impact assessment for short um and essentially we have a couple of things that we're looking at in that one of them is an evaluating of the ordinance in this process if we're meeting the city's race and social justice initiative goals uh as well as looking at if any communities or groups in the city are disproportionately impacted by the use of these technologies um as for an in addition to what adjustments we should make to the law and any new approaches we should consider in these reviews uh we also consult with working group uh as a part of that uh they get a draft and they provide feedback and recommendations on it um i think the idea is these amendments and the ser provides an opportunity for departments to to provide to us the metrics under which we will evaluate them by as kind of an oversight function so this is kind of how the the equity measurement is baked into the ordinance because we the cto is required to take a look at that uh every year and see you know are there disproportionate usage patterns in some of these technologies but given the wide range of technologies uh the different use cases we rely on the departments to to give us that information as as far as what makes sense as far as you know tracking deployments uh for for example with the cyclica sdot system uh those were kind of we used peanut butter around the city right so there may be that the question about equity is where are you deploying it versus who are you using it with right so there are different um measurements or dimensions of equity that we want to look at and i think this is just giving the department the opportunity since uh these are used uh in investigations i would imagine the pool of the demographics of folks that are would be used on this are the same folks that are under investigation but i'll let spd speak to that more mr maxie or brian yeah so i you know we are always interested in exploring um the impacts of our operations and activities um under the race and social justice lens so we have no objections to this um uh this is this amendment um it does i mean it is difficult especially in the world of policing to accurately come up with metrics to analyze this that's that legitimately assesses the impact of this to what amari just said um you know the n or sorry the the denominator in this case would likely be uh individuals where we have probable cause to investigate or reasonable suspicion to investigate that would be your denominator and then within the pool of that uh of that group is there a disproportionate use of this technology on any demographic or um certain group so that would be a i think a narrowly tailored metric overlaid on top of our general investigations metric and we will have to dig a little deeper to find out what what we have in our investigation files to create that denominator but certainly by december we can provide the metrics and the plan to assess the the equity of this uh technology um i'm also heartened here and i just wanted to confirm that you know this this type of amendment is going to all departments and not just the seattle police department because as we yes we've talked about race and data quite frequently in the public sphere you know i went to data.seattle.gov to find out what other departments provide race data and i was unable to find any other department other than the seattle police department that puts that information out publicly on data.seattle.gov so i'm heartened to

hear that this is being equally applied and we have no problem with it thank you very much okay moving on i think that's the last amendment for this particular bill so uh do you want me to chair nelson as your your pleasure i can go back and um move individually the two amendments i i'm still intending to bring forward this morning that is fine all right great thank you so much with that um i move amendment three as listed on the agenda requesting the department to provide a report to the clerk identifying the manufacturer and vendor of the audio recording systems in the server port thank you very much it's is there a second well it because we spent a long time talking about this second thank you uh appreciate that uh and just happy to um for the record i i was i appreciate the courtesy second thank you um and i i don't really have anything more to add this is not information um that would um have a negative uh impact on a law enforcement investigation this is in information that i believe is public information because it is simply the name of a manufacturer who is also the vendor um it's it's not information about a specific product and it's uh about the purchaser of um it's about it's it's it's about the identity of the the vendor who um spd purchases products from and that is public information because it relates to um the use of our tax dollars it is not information that is privileged um or can be with withheld um to my understanding by the request of a third party thank you do are there any other comments from my colleagues what i heard uh rebecca say is that um that uh manufacturers could move to uh basically try to block the release of this information is that correct rebecca i think that's a risk okay um again i come back to does this enhance the civil liberties of the of uh of uh seattle residents and um and that has to be balanced against the uh the ability of um the seattle police department to uh do thorough investigations so um if uh and i uh i am uh i am going to err on the side of the concerns of the department on this one okay all right uh if there are no other comments will the clerk please call the role on the adoption of amendment three member strauss yes councilmember herbal yes chair nelson no the motion carries amendment three is adopted and the amended bill is before the council uh lisa please walk us through the next amendment um i think we yeah we already did can can i just move it for yes sure thank you yes appreciate that thank you so much um i'd like to move amendment four as listed on the agenda uh requiring the police department to provide um a notification on the metrics that will be provided to the cto for use in the annual equity assessments that they do i second that i have nothing nothing further to add beyond um again recognizing uh councilmember peterson is the previous chair who used to see this uh and hear this legislation um who kind of created this as a precedent to to replicate in the technologies moving forward okay it's been moved and seconded to adopt amendment 4 as presented on the agenda council member herbal thank you very much for bringing this to our attention are there any further comments before we take the role okay seeing none will the clerk please call the role on adoption of amendment four member strauss yes council member yes chair nelson yes three in favor not opposed okay the motion carries amendment four is adopted and the amended bill is before the council are there any further comments on the amended bill okay will the clerk please call the role on uh will the clerk call the role on the committee recommendation that the bill passes amended yes that's remember herbal yes chair nelson yes three in favor none opposed okay the motion carries the community recommendation that the bill passed will be forwarded to city council on may 17th 2022 for final consideration and we now go on to uh the passage of council bill one two zero three zero nine i'm uh i move that the committee recommends passage of council bill one two zero three zero nine is there a second okay okay it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill there are five amendments to this bill before consideration of each amendment lisa k of council central staff will provide a high level overview of the bill and then walk us through the first amendment before the sponsor moves it lisa please begin the presentation thank you i will share my screen again and for everyone out there we're talking about amendment five um i think we're going to be talking about amendment one oh excuse me it is amendment one of this bill it's in my list it's one of five but you're yes the fight is is there in your head for a reason that makes sense sorry throwing revenge that's fine um okay so this is an amendment to council bill 120 309 uh that would approve ibm's i2 ibase link analysis software so it would prove the ongoing use of this and accept the surveillance impact report as you heard last week this technology is used to during criminal investigations to help detectives visualize connections between individuals known entities vehicles locations and other data as you mentioned there are five amendments before the committee today the first four are sponsored by council member herbald and the fifth is sponsored by council members trust so with your permission i can just move ahead to amendment one that is fine thank you trying to shrink it on the screen so that it will all show up okay amendment one would ask the police department to report by january 31st of next year on data and records retention policies and or guidelines that are applicable to the use in the operation of this technology the amendment specifically asks the police department to identify to the extent feasible retention policies that comply with the minimum retention period allowed by state and federal law and define a clear process for deletion of records after the retention period has been expired and you heard during your first meeting that the police department retains manually added data after five years which is really the federal maximum requirement the state law enforcement records retention schedule for intelligence files for example requires retention until no longer needed for agency business but federal law allows for a retention period of up to five years so um sbd applies that five year period to all manually entered data that concludes my overview councilmember herbal would you like to speak for here sure um and i thought um and i'm really i apologize if that was your if your intent in the first uh piece of legislation was for us to take and vote on each amendment as they come and i'm happy to do it that way i i thought i heard that was in your instructions for for this bill that you wanted to vote on amendment hear amendment one from lisa k and then vote on it and then move to the next one is that i believe that the process we just went through went well so why don't we continue with that okay perfect thank you so much so um in that case i'd like to just allow um lisa to just go through the amendments and i'll speak to them when i move them that's okay sure i do i just want to repeat myself right well okay then but let's not get too far away so i guess um i will ask a specific question about this because um this particular one while we're on it um so the the question is uh will records be retained for five years maximum or three years maximum and um what i've been trying to understand is uh to what extent will um retaining the uh the records for less amount of time um have negative impacts on um continuing cases uh or or appeals and so that is what i have asked uh seattle police department about in other words um does this put the city at additional exposure if those records are no longer available if the city is trying to um defend ourselves or or um aid in uh in defending uh a suspect that was subject to these investigations so can the amendment doesn't uh doesn't promulgate a particular records retention policy it asks it simply asks what the records retention policy is um it says um the report identifies a retention policy that complies with the minimum retention period allowed by state law and federal law but but also includes a cleared deletion oversight process to ensure deletion of manually added data after the specif specified retention period um so i mean it speaks to both the minimum retention period allowed by state and federal law okay uh spd what would be the real life impact of this so i guess i'll jump in first here and i'll let captain brit clean up anything i say um and there's a couple things in play here one is when we generate an i2i base link analysis that is associated with the underlying investigative file and the retention for that document would track with whatever the investigation is so for example homicide cases are con are maintained in perpetuity so if this was a homicide case we would it would track with that if it were something else it would track within the retention for that type of case so this request as i understand it is for us to identify what the retention policies are and present that back uh to exactly the clerk and i see no problem doing that um it and and i don't see this as mandatory that it comply with minimum retention periods i see that there's a value that's been put in there but it does not appear to be um mandatory and certainly the feasibility i'm assuming the legitimate law enforcement interests involved in that would go into the feasibility determination there the operative language is the reference to uh state law that retention should be until no longer needed for agency business which you get to define yes so if that's the request i i don't see a problem with us uh spelling this out and being and and identifying what we're doing that's a fair request okay all right uh let's go on to the next one please thank you madam chair amendment two uh would ask the police department to report by october 31st of this year and the number of incidents over the each of the past three years for which this software was deployed i think the only thing i have to add on that is that this is recommendation 12 from the working group it is not an issue addressed in the sur and it is um been requested because of a belief that it is important to under for the public to understand how this technology is being used and the number of incidents per year again this data would vary its data it's not uh it's not personally identifying data and it would be governed by public disclosure laws anyhow okay um so to remind people and i think that perhaps a description of of the technology is is warranted here because this my understanding is that i base is uh allows uh the department to see linkages um it doesn't ibase is not a technology that that actually captures information from individuals or um uh transmits it etc so um i it's kind of like a um it allows for um officers to see the relationships between individuals and um in previous cases etc so um can you please speak to in general how often it is used and would it be easy to get that information i mean would it be easy to report on that information the number of incidents so uh i'll go ahead and speak to that this isn't something that we would be readily able to provide uh the number of incidents per year um it's it's a matter of if if you run one eye2i based link analysis it could link to 32 incidents it could like the the example that was shown in council last last session was 17 incidents related to one link analysis once again like the council member stated this doesn't create a data set this simply analyzes data that already exists so this would be akin to asking us how often we put together a powerpoint presentation because all that is is displaying the data that's already there so this isn't something that uh we would be prepared at this moment to provide for the last three years that was something that that we would need to affirmatively start to track further with the working group um the the data set that can be analyzed that um perhaps would satisfy um the transparency requests here if not if not incidents what i'm happy to take take this amendment back to them for um additional refinement thank you appreciate that let's go on to the next thank you madam chair amendment three would ask the police department to report by january 31st of next year on the employee access policies under guidelines applicable to the use and operation of this software it asks the report to identify to the extent feasible a policy or procedures to prevent employee access to i2 based records that are unrelated to their assigned investigations sbd reported last week that two civilian spd analysts and one civilian seattle i.t employee currently have access um that only two of the two civilian analysts can produce the visualizations for detectives but that multiple detectives can ask for this kind of assistance okay are there any other comments uh captain britt yes ma'am in speaking with uh the analyst that was on the call last week we have draft policy uh ready to work through the process so uh should this amendment be passed we should be able to meet the january 2023 requirement thank you very much okay moving on to amendment 4 please amendment 4 is the same equity metrics amendment that you considered for the audio recording devices nothing more to say about that one that's the same amendment as we had already addressed in the other bill thank you okay thank you okay and let's go on to the last one please okay this amendment is sponsored by council member strauss it would request the ask the executive to include funding in the mid-year supplemental budget for the office of inspector general to retain a consultant to evaluate and report on the civil liberties risks associated with sbd's use of this software they'd ask for the report by march 31st of next year the request asks that the report include an analysis of the accuracy of the data that is manually input into the software the accuracy of the linkages that are identified by users of the software and demographic information about the individuals and groups identified in the visualizations that are produced with the software we'll turn this over to councilmember strauss let's move stress thank you chair here in the great city of balor working from the district office today thank you for your time um amendment five uh this amendment would request that the supplemental budget include funding for an independent evaluation on the risks associated with i-based technologies including the risks to civil liberties data accuracy and accuracy linkages that the system identifies the cost of special assessment is around 100 000 similar other consultant reports we've funded and i know from funding the water safety study this last year that those those numbers campaign i think that it isn't important to have this assessment as any assessment would be overseen by the inspector general for public safety even though it is completed by an independent consultant i recognize that this request would require funding in a difficult budget year uh and my amendment would not prohibit the use of this technology it only make it clear that the assessment is needed and that we should work to fund it while there would be a small physical impact if we're able to hear funding for such a risk assessment reality is that if this technology is misused it would send someone to prison wrongfully i don't necessarily think that's going to happen i just find that having this third party accountability does provide additional protections for spd for the city of seattle and for the people of our city a small pocket of funding for a consultant to evaluate that risk is worthwhile um that's i think that it's worthwhile i mean and at the end of the day if it prevents prosecutions based on faulty information that's that's money well spent if it just simply is an accountability measure that demonstrates spd is is using this in the correct fashion that's a good use of funding because it does provide accountability and third party evaluation for all parties involved thank you chair thank you how is this um i is have you talked to the inspector general um inspector general judge about this um yeah because i guess one of my questions is um after passage of the uh sirs then it's now on their plate to uh to evaluate for a year or three um the deployment of these technologies and they take into account a lot of the i think the questions that um that we've been talking about now disparate impacts and so on so um would this be do they keep do they just start doing that work until this consultant report is finished can you describe the mechanics of how this will work yeah it's my understanding the uh report would be overseen by the inspector general and completed by the third party consultant okay got it are there any comments from the uh from the department so i i did have one um ibase links different investigations so if data is entered into a case um as we were presented last time someone in kent but the bullets were found in in seattle i mean would they would i'm just wondering um would they also with this consultant report also verify the uh the processes by which and the accuracy of by which data is input into um cases in in other jurisdictions i think that's probably a question for the development of the scope of this evaluation and you know what i can tell you is that growing up there were two people in the city of seattle with my name and with my father's name i would regularly receive mail for that person my father would regularly receive mail for for the other person um you know this was in a day day and age where things were a little bit more simple in this day and age with so many levels of technology uh being able to connect i think mr maxey described it at the last meeting as if you see those old uh detective videos of linking you know pictures on a wall and linking uh with the string from each thing to another in in a in a world where technology is now doing that for us i do think that it is important that we have independent evaluation to ensure that we're not making uh the old mistakes that i described about having two people with the same name or or anything else but the the scope of the evaluation i think that that is iterative and if you have input i think it would be welcome point taken and just try being sarah nelson okay councilmember uh if uh you've got uh both omaree and brian have their hands raised and i have a comment uh that i could if neither okay if neither of them speak to what i was gonna say okay uh i do not know if um if brian or amari was first so could the person who had their hand up first please speak i'm not sure brian you can go ahead no you go you were first i'm certain all right so i just wanted to point out more of a comment than a question uh maybe both um uh just wanting to flag for the the committee that the oig uh does do audits on a regular basis they're i think in the ordinance it's supposed to be on a yearly basis so uh if they haven't been um i don't know if they were consulted in the in the drafting of this but i think just making sure that that can align with um maybe their audit for that year or just kind of working that into their schedule for their annual audits i just wanted to flag that as a potential concern here i appreciate that and that was a more eloquent way of basically saying what i was trying to say um and uh right now they are suppo they're charged with uh annual um uh audits um and i do know that they um have expressed that uh their staffing needs uh make that difficult but um making sure that they are in alignment i think is important okay all right brian oh you know i we didn't speak up earlier because it's not really our place to say what the oig should be doing we we accept they have unfettered access to our systems for efficient oversight i just um in hearing the description of th

2022-05-15 01:53

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