Seattle Privacy Activist Attempts To Kill Accountability With Transparency

Legal Issues

from the it-was-the-requester-in-the-basement-with-the-gmail-address dept

You’d think that accountability and transparency would never get this screwed up. But theoretical good can sometimes become a practical nightmare.

The Seattle police department — one of several police departments around the nation to have spent some time under the DOJ’s microscope — is only weeks away from starting their body cam pilot program. This is good.* Or was, right up until the unlikeliest of wrenches was thrown into the works: a Freedom of Information request.

*Caveats apply.

Now that plan may get put on ice, due in part to an overly broad public records requests. The Seattle Times reported this morning that an anonymous man, known only by the email address policevideorequests@gmail.com, has made an official request for “details on every 911 dispatch on which officers are sent; all the written reports they produce; and details of each computer search generated by officers when they run a person’s name, or check a license plate or address.”

The requestor also wants all video from patrol car cameras currently in use, and plans to request video from body cams once they are implemented. He has requested the information “every day, in spreadsheet form.”

Look, I’m one of the biggest fans of freedom of information laws and police accountability, but what the anonymous requester is demanding creates a massive logistical headache. The problem is the request can’t necessarily be denied because the state law doesn’t provide a legally-sound escape hatch to use to turn down overly-broad requests. Faced with this request, the city created it own exit strategy: pulling the plug on the body cam program.

Not that the requester’s intentions were pure. The unnamed requester (who is in his 20’s and lives with his parents, according to the Seattle Times) has an ideological ax to grind.

“I think what we need is some sort of balance between transparency and privacy,” the requestor said.

The man, who runs a YouTube channel of police video and audio, also spoke to Reuters, stating his belief that “state law is simply too liberal when it comes to privacy.”

The requester is hoping to make the city realize that body cams create potential privacy problems, presumably by posting as many unredacted recordings as possible. Audacious, if a bit disingenuous. Fortunately, the city and the privacy activist have reached an agreement.

The programmer agreed to drop his requests if given videos in a deal that would then see him advise the department on thorny tech issues related to public-records requests for videos, such as how to more quickly redact footage and how to store it online for easy access by the public, media and lawyers.

“Under the law, they get requests regardless of whether or not I go away, and they view what I do as part of the solution,” the programmer, a man in his 20s, told reporters at a joint news conference with police in which he declined to reveal his identity.

With this agreement in place, the body cam pilot program is back on track. The comfort level of Seattle citizens may not be where it once was, however, not after watching the city being extorted into handing the control of body cam footage over to someone who still lives with his parents.

In the long run, this will probably result in less information and less accountability. Someone has given legislators a pretty good reason to patch holes in their freedom of information laws, and given them every excuse to load up on additional restrictions and exemptions. The anonymous requester may have made a point about privacy, but the end result will likely be more secrecy.

Filed Under: body cameras, body cams, foia, police, privacy, seattle