Washington Police: 'We Have To Respond With Smartphones Almost As Fast As We Respond With Guns'

from the say-what? dept

"If you see something, say something" is the (hilariously trademarked) phrase that has become something of a ridiculous "spy on your neighbors" cliche in the years following September 11, 2001. Law enforcement types use it all the time. However, apparently, they don't want you to say (or, more specifically, tweet) something, if the "something" you see happens to be the police themselves. We've written so many stories about uninformed police insisting that it's illegal to photograph or videotape them in action -- even though they're completely wrong about that. Amazingly, even the Justice Department has found itself constantly reminding police that it's perfectly legal for citizens to photograph and videotape police.

However, over in Washington State, the police are apparently taking a preemptive approach to citizen criminal-enablers and their mobile phones. They've kicked off a marketing campaign telling people not to share photos of SWAT teams and police on social media.

Police in Washington state are asking the public to stop tweeting during shootings and manhunts to avoid accidentally telling the bad guys what officers are doing.

The "TweetSmart" campaign began in late July by a coalition of nine agencies, including the Washington state patrol and the Seattle police, and aims to raise awareness about social media's potential impact on law enforcement.

They claim, of course, that this is about not tipping off criminals about what's going on:

"All members of the public may not understand the implications of tweeting out a picture of SWAT team activity," said Nancy Kolb, who oversees the Alexandria, Virginia, organization's Center for Social Media.

"It's a real safety issue, not only for officers but anyone in the vicinity," Kolb said.

But that seems ridiculous and unsupported in so many ways. First of all, it assumes that the "criminals" being gone after with SWAT teams are actively watching Twitter for the latest reports of SWAT teams mobilizing. Hell, you'd think it would be a lot "safer" for everyone else in the area to find out that there's something going down and to maybe stay inside until it's over.

It seems a hell of a lot more likely that this campaign is really an underhanded way to shut down the public's civil liberties in overseeing what the police are doing by photographing and videotaping them. In fact, a spokesman for the Washington State police, Bob Calkins, more or less admits that this is all about stopping people from taping the police:

"We have to respond with a smart phone almost as fast as we respond with a gun," said Calkins, who along with Kolb commended the Seattle Police Department for its use of social media.

That seems rather chilling, especially given the number of times we've seen police claim that a phone might be a gun. Police across the country need to realize that they serve the public. Treating smartphones as guns and encouraging censorship doesn't seem to be achieving those goals.

Indeed, as reporter Mónica Guzmán notes about all of this:

When any entity that holds power over us encourages us to limit our expression for any reason, it is probably better for us to err on the side of expressing more than it would want than less.

Guzmán also counters the narrative that the Washington Police want to spread. Calkins, the guy who talked about responding to a phone like a gun, claims that his feelings on this date back to the well-known manhunt in Lakewood five years ago:

"I saw it personally as far back as Lakewood," said State Patrol spokesman Bob Calkins, referring to social media traffic during the manhunt for a man wanted for killing four officers in Washington state in 2009.

At the time, people speculated online about why police were combing a Seattle park while a search was on for the man, Calkins said.

The AP article says that this event contributed to the police's determination that they need to train people to shut up on Twitter. Yet Guzmán remembers the event very differently:

During the 2009 manhunt of Lakewood, Wash., police shooter Maurice Clemmons, Seattleites were scared. Neighbors gave each other peace of mind by sharing what they saw, where, and where danger seemed to be headed, in real time. All that buzz drew attention to the effort, resulting in hundreds of tips to police from all over and a sense of unity that brought the city together in support of our officers.

In other words, seeing the police and tweeting about it actually helped that situation, rather than hurt it. While the police in Washington may claim they're just trying to keep people safe by asking them to not tweet what they see, it really seems that the safety they're protecting is their own reputation.

Filed Under: censorship, guns, police, seattle, smartphones, social media, washington
Companies: twitter

Seattle City Light Wants A Refund On Their Online Reputation Boosting Bill Funded By Taxpayers

from the streisand-multiplier dept

So let's say you're a highly-paid CEO of Seattle's publically-owned utility company, City Light, and you've just been ironically kicked around in the media for a couple of weeks because you spent public money to boost your own reputation. Let's say that, far from being successful in said reputation-boosting, you're now facing questions over why you spent thousands of dollars to do this in the first place and that now all search results tend to point to this story rather than whatever it was you were originally trying to drown out. What do you do?

You ask for a damned refund, of course. And that's exactly what City Light's chief, Jorge Carrasco, is going to do, even if it has to spend even more public money to get that public money back.

The project was concocted by the CEO’s chief of staff, Sephir Hamilton. In an interview with Ars, Hamilton said that the agency may even file a lawsuit to enforce this refund.

"We're leaving our options open,” he said. “I hope that they'll see that what we signed up for was not the service that they delivered. We were sold one bill of goods and we were given another.”

Ah, yes, the old "spend more public money on a lawsuit to get a refund on the public money we shouldn't have spent" strategy. I like it, not only because it's hilariously recursive, but because it allows for the possibility that City Light loses and the maximum amount of taxpayer money is spent inappropriately. Not that the folks they decided to do business with, Brand.com, seem to be anything remotely resembling reputable (editors note: alliteration combo!).

“We were told that they would provide help in getting some of our past material and news releases placed in reputable blogs and journals and ultimately didn't know that they would be paying for placement or creating fake news websites to place that news,” Hamilton said in an interview. “And ultimately, all of the material that was generated has been taken off search results because it violated Google's policies.”

E-mails from City Light show that Justin DeLisi, a Brand.com campaign manager, provided links to “stories” posted to websites that have since been pulled down and that appear to have been utterly fake. The "whois" information on those domains, which include weeklytimes.com, gazers.com, and advisories.com, is also obscured.

So, just to summarize, City Light, a publically owned utility, paid a shady reputation company thousands of dollars to placate the ego of its CEO and now wants a refund because said shady company wasn't able to produce results. Oh, and they're willing to spend the money to file and fight a lawsuit to get this refund. Look, at some point you just have to stop digging, even if you've legitimately been had. City Light's reputation hasn't been done any favors by any of these actions. Jorge Carrasco may want to take a little bit of advice from himself.

Carrasco said at a press conference that he regretted the entire effort to scrub his online reputation. Hamilton concurred. “It was an experiment that certainly didn't work and we would not do it again,” he told Ars.

Right, so just extend that regret out to this entire situation and stop digging yourself holes. Come on, guys, I don't want to have to write a third post about you.

Filed Under: jorge carrasco, refund, reputation, reputation management, seattle, sephir hamilton
Companies: brand.com, city light

Seattle Taxpayer Money Used To Bolster The Online Reputation Of Utility CEO

from the how'd-that-work-out? dept

We've written previously about this online reputation management thing and how often it backfires. For some reason, there are people out there who somehow think that you can effectively hide your past from the internet instead of understanding both how futile a thing that is to attempt and how horribly it can backfire on you. Celebrities, athletes, and criminals all have been forced to learn this lesson the hard way. But, hey, at least they didn't use taxpayer money in their attempts.

The same can't be said for the city of Seattle, which one paper discovered has been footing the bill for two years worth of internet reputation management of a utility company's CEO.

A newly-published document shows that Seattle’s publicly-owned electrical utility paid thousands of dollars to Brand.com to manage the online reputation of CEO Jorge Carrasco. The document, which was received and published Saturday by the Seattle Times after a public records request, shows that Brand.com charged City Light $5,000 in December 2013.

The report adds that the company actually extended that contract into 2014 and has paid out a total of $17,500, which really sucks considering the utility company is owned by the municipality. Any way you slice it, that sure sounds like thousands of dollars of taxpayer money went to bury some less-than-flattering links about Jorge Carrasco with trumped up positive search results. The most infuriating part of this is that nobody really seems to be able to find anything about Carrasco worth hiding.

It’s not clear what negative stories City Light executives were trying to squash—or whether the utility got any lasting results for its money. Google search results for City Light last week were dominated by news and criticism of Carrasco’s proposed raise. Among the negative headlines from previous years that ranked high in search results was a Seattle Weekly article from 2008 that called Carrasco’s tenure at City Light “polarizing” and described the utility as “beleaguered.”

I mean, people bitching about you getting a raise might not be the most welcome thing ever, but battling that criticism about you getting more money by spending taxpayer money to drown out that criticism may not be the best of plans. Hello Streisand Effect. On top of that silliness, some other folks are getting caught up in the fallout.

"Among the mentions generated for City Light by the deal were blog posts on websites including Huffington Post, which did not disclose they were connected to a paid marketing campaign for the utility," the Times added. The relevant article on the Huffington Post has since been removed. Neither City Light nor Dana Robinson Slote, a city spokeswoman, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment. Ars did however put in a public records request for these documents.

Yeah, while rules dealing with what must be disclosed and when can tread into silly territory, this is kind of a huge no-no. If larger blogging sources like The Huffington Post are suddenly allowing unacknowledged paid articles to be posted to their site, readers are going to quickly lose trust. If THP received no payment for this article, which is very hard to believe, they will still find readers questioning what else on the site has been bought and paid for.

So way to go, City Light. Once again, attempts to "manage" online reputations results in everyone being worse off. Enjoy that Streisand Effect.

Filed Under: jorge carrasco, reputation management, seattle, taxpayer funds
Companies: brand.com

City Of Seattle Finds New Police Drones Might Be Too Invasive; Los Angeles Police Say, 'Hey, We'll Take Them!'

from the 'we-already-have-a-completely-lousy-relationship-with-the-public!' dept

Los Angeles law enforcement agencies' attitude towards surveillance has usually been, "sure, why not?" Whatever L.A. law enforcement can't collect with Stingray devices or secretly-deployed aircraft carrying clusters of high-powered cameras, it hopes to obtain with crowd-sourced surveillance apps and predictive policing. (This is only true of public-facing surveillance, however. Recording devices targeting officers have been tampered with, removed and deliberately broken.)

Since the public's input has never been high on the LAPD's or LASD's (Sheriff's Dept.) priority list, it makes perfect sense that it would take ownership of surveillance drones deemed to be too controversial to deploy in Seattle, Washington. (via slashdot)

On Friday, the department announced that it had acquired two "unmanned aerial vehicles" as gifts from the Seattle Police Department.

The Draganflyer X6 aircraft, which resemble small helicopters, are each about 3 feet wide and equipped with a camera, video camera and infrared night-vision capabilities.

Citizens of Seattle booted the two drones -- purchased with federal funds -- off the police force earlier this year.

Saying police need to stay focused on “community building,” Mayor Mike McGinn has pulled the plug on the department’s controversial drone program even before it got off the ground.

The announcement came one day after the city held a public hearing on a proposed ordinance outlining restrictions for the department’s drone program, which drew vocal opposition from numerous citizens concerned with intrusions into their privacy.

Not everyone was happy with the Mayor's decision. One council member, Bruce Harrell (who chairs a public safety committee), was disappointed the mayor listened to his constituents, calling it the "easy way out."

The LAPD now has the drones and it seems to have at least picked up a little on the public's increasing hostility towards pervasive surveillance. LAPD officials have been stressing how seldom its new toys will be used.

[D]epartment officials were at pains to make it clear the LAPD doesn't intend to use the new hardware to keep watch from above over an unsuspecting public. If they're used at all, the remotely controlled aircraft will be called on only for "narrow and prescribed uses" that will be made clear to the public, the statement said.

Noble aims often accompany the arrival of new technology, but those are often discarded as mission creep sets in. The LAPD claims this will be limited to incidents like hostage situations but once you have the technology in hand, it's hard to resist using it for lower priority situations.

Much of what's being said simply sounds like a slightly panicked attempt to distance itself from the actions of the LA Sheriff's Department, whose spokesman indelicately noted that presumably the public wouldn't be thrilled to learn it was operating "Big Brother" overhead, so it just decided to keep the operation a secret until the test runs had been completed. So, grains of salt and all that when it comes to the LAPD promising anything privacy-related. After all, this is the same law enforcement agency that recently declared that every single one of the millions of license plate photos in its database were "relevant" to criminal investigations -- both those currently ongoing and any number of still-theoretical investigations that might be mounted in the future.

Filed Under: drones, los angeles, police, seattle, surveillance

NHTSA's Voluntary Roadside Blood-And-Saliva Survey Heads To Seattle With A Much Greater Emphasis On 'Voluntary'

from the it-can-be-taught dept

Although it's already been burned twice for its intrusive, not-mandatory-but-it-sure-looks-that-way "roadside surveys," the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) isn't letting a lot of bad press, a lawsuit and a Congressional investigation slow down its blood-and-saliva collections. After two straight debacles (Texas and Pennsylvania), the NHTSA is headed to Seattle in hopes of gauging the effects of newly-legal weed on the driving population. (h/t to Techdirt reader DeComposer)

Government-hired survey teams will soon ask hundreds of Washington state motorists to answer questions and provide samples of breath, saliva and blood — all to give safety and police agencies a clearer sense of how many people drive impaired.

The roadside surveys are voluntary, and participants will be paid up to $60, under the federally funded project this summer.

The only remaining question is how these will be handled. On its two previous attempts, the NHTSA sent an independent contractor to handle the blood draws and saliva collection. And both times, local law enforcement provided officers, vehicles and barricades -- all of which suggested to several motorists that these voluntary collections were far from voluntary. From what's being reported here, it appears that more effort is being made to ensure drivers know these surveys are indeed entirely optional.

Crews will not block or slow traffic, officials say. Drivers at a stoplight would encounter civilians wearing orange vests, with signs saying “Paid Voluntary Survey,” then be asked if they wish to participate.

The article also states that collected data will be destroyed when the report is published and that names and license numbers won't be recorded. The latter sounds ideal, but the reality of the situation is that, unless things have changed, consenting to a blood draw still requires the signature of the volunteer, which means there will be some sort of recording going on. And surveyors will still be collecting non-consensual "samples" using passive alcohol detectors. The defenders of this practice argue that these detectors are actually consensual (due to consent given by volunteering to be surveyed), even though people aren't notified about their existence until after they've already had their breath sampled.

The ACLU is keeping an eye on the NHTSA's newest survey, which, so far at least, seems to be headed towards a more obviously voluntary presentation. That's a huge improvement over its previous efforts and is likely a good indicator of how these will be handled in the future. Law enforcement officers will again be on hand to protect the cash payout and offer options to impaired drivers, but their presence will be far more muted than past instances.

If the NHTSA can learn from its mistakes and move on in a more honest and transparent fashion, it should be able to entice enough volunteers with its cash payments to present credible data at the end of its collection period. If it decides to go back to the old way, however, it will find it increasingly difficult to secure any participation at all.

Filed Under: blood, nhtsa, police, saliva, seattle, survey

County Government Pays Out $40k To Seattle Newspaper For Violating Public Records Laws

from the what-part-of-'public'-do-you-not-understand? dept

There seems to be nothing more feared by government agencies than transparency. They seem to like the concept, as incoming officials are always proclaiming the new regime to be the "most transparent yet." But when it comes to execution, they suddenly find a million reasons to withhold responsive documents. Poynter reports that King County, Washington will be paying a Seattle newspaper $40,000 for its violations of public records laws.

More than 1,900 pages of e-mails and documents help tell a story about what’s happened to people with mental health issues in King County in Washington, and what the county’s doing about it — not bad for a collection of documents the county couldn’t seem to find.

The Seattle Times has more details on the county's attempt to bury its involvement in allowing potentially dangerous people to wander the streets (literally, in some cases) by not performing timely mental health evaluations. Reporter Brian M. Rosenthal had discovered that the county's mental health facilities were allowing people deemed a threat to themselves or others to walk free simply because they were either unable or unwilling to perform evaluations within the state-mandated time limit: 12 hours for those brought in by third parties or 6 hours if brought in by a family member.

The law is potentially a good one, preventing anyone (like say, the police) from simply dumping someone into an extended stay at a mental health facility simply because they didn't want to deal with the person anymore. Clearing people not deemed harmful for release within a short period minimizes the chance of wrongful detention. Unfortunately, the King County mental health system is short on qualified examiners and long on potentially harmful people.

“There are people who are psychotic, in need of help, and they get off on a stupid technicality, which essentially means that this poor person walks out barefoot and is in the middle of the street,” said Arpan Waghray, mental-health director at Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center, adding that, “You’re just waiting for someone to fail.”

Waghray isn't offering conjecture here: this actually happened, and the following wasn't an isolated case.

At 10:40 p.m. the night [Gregory] Benson was released from Fairfax, his parents heard a single knock on the door, a long pause, then another knock.

Their son stood on the porch, disheveled and shivering in 30-degree darkness. He had walked from the Kirkland hospital to their Redmond home, some seven miles.

The parents were relieved, confused and angry.

“We had been waiting almost two years to get him into a facility so he could get help. We kind of thought, ‘This is our chance,’ ” Maria Benson said. “I couldn’t understand what happened.”

Hospital records show it clearly: Benson was admitted to Overlake at 7:47 p.m. on Jan. 28 but not formally ordered to be detained by an evaluator until 20 hours and 41 minutes later, far more than the 12-hour limit for patients brought in by police.

But when Rosenthal went looking for more information on how often this deadline was surpassed, he was stonewalled by the county. First off, everyone he spoke to on record denied there was a problem, or even being aware such a time limit existed. Those who actually worked with the patients told a different story. Not only that, but there was evidence the rule was only selectively enforced -- some were sent out into the night to wander seven miles home while others were involuntarily held for days or weeks before being evaluated.

Rosenthal then attempted to obtain public records from the county.

A few weeks later, he was told there were no responsive records. Maybe he’d asked for the wrong phrases, he thought, so he tried again, requesting all communications between the head of the involuntary committment system and the head of the prosecuting attorney’s office.

“And the response was, we have no responsive records.”

So, he submitted another request. This time, documents began to appear. At that point, his employer stepped in.

In March, the Times’ lawyer, Eric Stahl, sent a demand letter and “threatened to sue the agency unless it explained the failure, conducted a thorough search and paid for legal costs and penalties…"

This seemed to work. By the end of the next month, the Seattle Times had obtained over 1,900 documents, many of which showed the problem was far more pervasive than country officials admitted. According to Rosenthal, this situation -- the release of someone potentially dangerous -- was happening on nearly 200 times a year. What the documents didn't show was any attempt by the county to acknowledge the problem, much less discuss how to fix it.

Now, with everything forced out into the open, legislators are finally aware of the issue and working towards fixing the law and its unintended consequences. But to get anyone to move on the issue, the newspaper had to threaten a government agency with a lawsuit, something few journalistic entities are willing to do. Not only are there costs to consider, but there's also the chance access will be severely stunted or cut off.

That a newspaper has to threaten its own existence in order to obtain documents a government agency improperly withheld is more than disappointing. It's a travesty. Publicly-funded entities have the financial means to outlast many private entities. And even when they concede and cough up damage awards, the money comes out of the public's pockets. As has been noted here before, government entities are swiftly turning the former last resort -- a court battle -- into just another step in the public records process.

Filed Under: foia, journalism, king county, public records, seattle

Corruption Index Indicator: Cities That Ban Ride Sharing To Protect Taxi Incumbents

from the another-week,-another-disruption-stifled dept

Last week, lots of attention was paid to New Jersey's idiotic and corrupt decision to block Tesla from operating its own stores there, because car dealers don't like the competition and hate the idea of car manufacturers selling direct. As we noted, any such move is a pretty clear sign of corruption at the state level, favoring political allies over the public. There are similar issues at the city level, and this week's corruption highlight award goes to Seattle, where the city council has massively limited ridesharing/app-based transportation services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. The law doesn't ban them outright, but makes them a lot less useful for consumers (and drivers) by saying each can only have 150 cars on the road at any time -- which is a hell of a lot less than the combined 3,000 they had.

There's simply no reason for this, other than to protect the legacy taxi providers. If consumers want those app-based services, why are they being blocked? And, of course, because so few cars will be available, those services become a lot less desirable (less likely to have a car available nearby, etc.). The end result is that it sucks for everyone. People wanting to get places will have fewer options. People who might want to earn money as a driver cannot. These new innovative companies are held back. The only "winners" are the current taxi owners who have less competition.

One council member, Tom Rasmussen pointed out the absurdity of this, and offered up an amendment (which was voted down) that said there shouldn't be any caps on drivers from such services:

"Let's listen to what the public is saying," he said. "Let's not cut supply when demand is so high."

The public? The public? Ha! They're not lobbying like the taxi and limo companies.

As another council member, Tim Burgess notes:

"Someone told me that trying to limit TNCs would be like prohibiting Netflix because we wanted to protect Blockbuster," Burgess noted.

Indeed. And yet... it's now the law in Seattle. In a city known for having a fairly thriving innovation and tech scene, the city council has just made it clear that innovation that upsets local incumbents just isn't welcome.

Filed Under: corruption, limos, ride sharing, seattle, taxis
Companies: lyft, sidecar, uber

Comcast-Backed Lobbyist Insists Seattle Doesn't Want Faster, Cheaper Broadband

from the you'll-take-what-we-give-you-and-like-it dept

For much of the last decade, Seattle has explored the idea of building its own ultra-fast broadband network. Most of that motivation was fueled by the sub-standard service provided in the region by regional telco Qwest (now CenturyLink), which in turn resulted in regional cable operator Comcast not working very hard. After scrapping several fiber plans and shuttering its Wi-Fi network, Seattle last year announced it was working on a new 1 Gbps plan with the help of Gigabit Squared. Gigabit Squared calls itself a "digital economic development corporation" that promised Seattle residents last summer they'd "bring limitless possibilities to Seattle" in the form of 1 Gbps broadband connections.

The effort didn't turn out particularly well, with Seattle suddenly scrapping the project, after Gigabit Squared failed to do much if any work or pay $52,250 owed to the city for city labor. As such, Gigabit Seattle dies with a whimper amid the quiet resignation of a Gigabit Squared co-founder, leaving Seattle in the same spot it has been for years: relying on incumbent broadband providers with absolutely no interest in competing on price.

Bad business plans are bad business plans, and while there are many examples of community broadband efforts succeeding (from Chattanooga to the public-private efforts of Google Fiber), the incumbent broadband industry simply loves to make sure they celebrate implosions like Seattle's latest as proof it's futile to push back against entrenched duopolies. Right on cue, enter Ron Main of Comcast-backed cable lobbying group Broadband Communications Association of Washington, who in an editorial in the Seattle Times tries to convince Seattleites that relying on anyone other than Comcast was a fool's errand, and that the services Comcast already offers should be good enough for anyone:

...Comcast offers a 105 megabits-per-second (Mbps) download speed across its entire service area in Seattle and Washington state. Despite this widespread availability of high-speed broadband, residential use of this service is low. Only 5 percent of residents currently subscribe to this service, according to the company.

Omitted, of course, is that because Comcast sees no serious competition in the city (CenturyLink struggles to provide most users 6 Mbps on DSL, much less 100 Mbps), they're allowed to charge rates that make those speeds unappealing. Comcast does, for example, offer 505 Mbps in some markets -- but at $400 a month, plus a steep early termination fee higher than $1,000, as well as a $250 activation fee and a $250 installation fee. Compare that to 1 Gbps service from Google Fiber at $70 a month and no fees. Still, Main continues with what has become a broadband-industry mantra of sorts, insisting that because nobody is buying existing expensive offerings (when they're available at all), users simply must not want them:

The fact is residential demand for speeds greater than what is now available is very limited. Most people take service around 20 Mbps to 50 Mbps. This is fast enough for typical residential uses, from streaming movies and working from home to Skyping with family. Higher speeds of 1 to 10 gigabit-per-second service are available to local businesses and large institutions.

In other words, the broadband industry is doing good enough in the broadband industry's humble opinion, and efforts to try and do better (or perhaps -- gasp -- exceed expectations) are unnecessary. Comcast has spent much of the last year pretending that the United States leads the world in broadband, and when you combine that sort of raw, blistering denial with can't do attitude and regulatory capture, you get the kind of painful mediocrity the U.S. broadband industry is famous for.

Filed Under: broadband, dsl, fiber, seattle, wi-fi
Companies: comcast

San Diego Refuses To Answer FOIA Requests About Drones Because 'There Is Very Little Public Benefit'

from the keeping-the-public-in-the-dark-for-their-own-benefit dept

A few months ago, MuckRock and the EFF teamed up to start a drone watch effort, in which they send Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) -- or the local equivalent -- requests to local governments and police departments, seeking to find out information on local law enforcement using drones. At last count, over 200 such requests have been made. You can track them here. As you might imagine, they're getting very varied responses, with some saying that there are no responsive documents. In many cases, it's likely that this is true.

However, the folks at MuckRock discovered something interesting in looking over some of the responses. While the San Diego County Sheriff's office initially stated that they had no responsive documents, reviewing the Seattle Police Department's response suggested that San Diego was lying. Why? Because the Seattle release shows an email from a manufacturer of drones, Datron World Communications, to Seattle police in which they share a sales quote that was sent to San Diego for a drone, the Scout UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle).

Attached is the quotation recently provided to the SD Sheriff's CID team. They visited Datron's facility and experienced the system with all three cameras and left with a flashdrive full of personal footage and a new found purpose for submitting their wish-list early. Use this quote as a reference point for configuring your system. With this we should be able to tailor an ideal system for your needs and gain marketing support for 'special pricing' specifically for Seattle PD.

Given this contradiction, MuckRock sent a followup request to San Diego, asking the Sheriff's office to explain this newly revealed information. In response, the sheriff's "legal advisor" sent a note saying that "we decline to comment on the sales quotation referenced in your September 4, 2012 letter." Well, isn't that nice? Of course, under freedom of information laws you can't just ignore such requests. As MuckRock notes:

As is true in most states, California's public records law provides that documents related to equipment purchases are matters of public record unless exempted by statute. Accordingly, the San Diego County Sheriff and other public agencies have the latitude to justify denial of public records requests, but not to "deny comment" when faced with such a request.

After continuing to press the San Diego Sheriff's office, MuckRock was first told that San Diego had not purchased such drones and then that it will not release the records because "there is very little public benefit in the release of such records," in part because the quote from the company had not resulted in a purchase. The office then notes that the request is denied "on the grounds that any information and/or records obtained by the Sheriff's Department are protected by the Deliberative Process privilege, as well as the Official Information privilege (Evidence Code 1040)."

Again, MuckRock notes that San Diego is misreading the law in question:

But public records law puts the burden of evidence not on those who seek disclosure, but on those who would keep them from public view. Evidence Code section 1040 of California's disclosure law, which the San Diego County Sheriff's office has invoked as a basis for its denial, provides that public agencies may refuse to disclose official information in the case that such disclosure "is against the public interest because there is a necessity for preserving the confidentiality of the information that outweighs the necessity for disclosure in the interest of justice."

The onus is on the Sheriff to demonstrate how releasing the documents sought by MuckRock would injure the public interest.

As they note, the public has a "right to know" when their government is using drones to surveil the public, and it's unfortunate that some governments seem to be stonewalling requests for information.

Filed Under: drones, foia, san diego, seattle
Companies: eff, muckrock

Court Rules Yellow Pages Are Protected Speech

from the and-landfills-groan dept

A couple of years ago, the publishers of a number of phone books in the Seattle area sued the city for passing a new ordinance that required the publishers to pay a fee and subscribe to an opt-out program. The ordinance was implemented to allow Seattle residents to opt-out of phone book deliveries and the fee was created to pay for the program. The publishers sued stating that this fee and the other regulations that came with it violated the publishers' First Amendment rights.

While we lost track of the lawsuit over the following years, it finally made its way to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in which the three judge panel ruled that the city's ordinance did indeed violate the First Amendment rights of the publishers. The ruling is very thorough in defining just why the phone book is protected by the First Amendment and thus requires strict scrutiny before any regulations can be applied.

To be sure, the Yellow Pages Companies are in the business of selling advertisements and contracted to distribute the noncommercial speech to make their advertising space more desirable due to greater directory use. But it is important to keep in mind that the First Amendment protections available to newspapers and similar media do not apply only to those institutions of the type who “have played an historic role in our democracy.” To assume that every protected newspaper, magazine, television show, or tabloid’s “noncommercial” content precedes and takes priority over the publishing parent company’s desire to sell advertising is at odds with reality and the evidence in the record.

Ultimately, we do not see a principled reason to treat telephone directories differently from newspapers, magazines, television programs, radio shows, and similar media that does not turn on an evaluation of their contents. A profit motive and the inclusion or creation of noncommercial content in order to reach a broader audience and attract more advertising is present across all of them. We conclude, therefore, that the yellow pages directories are entitled to full First Amendment protection.

The city had argued that because the phone books are commercial speech they qualified for a more lenient scrutiny when it comes to regulation. This was argued because the publishers are in the business of selling advertising space and the phone books are the medium. However, the court ruled that neither the presence of advertising nor the financial motive of the publishers disqualified the noncommercial content, such as the phone listings and maps, from strict scrutiny under the First Amendment.

The Ordinance does not satisfy this standard. While arguing that the Ordinance survives intermediate scrutiny under Central Hudson, the City advanced three governmental interests: (1) waste reduction, (2) resident privacy, and (3) cost recovery. See Seattle Ordinance 123427 (Oct. 14, 2010) (Preamble). We need not determine whether any or all of these interests are “compelling”; even if they are, the Ordinance is not the least restrictive means available to further them. One clear alternative is for the City to support the Yellow Pages Companies’ own private opt-out programs. With proper implementation, the private opt-out programs could achieve precisely the same goals as the City’s registry. Even fining the Yellow Pages Companies for a lack of compliance with their own opt-out terms would be less restrictive than compelling them to fund and advertise the City’s program.

While most people these days get annoyed with the constant receipt of the yellow paper brick, that annoyance does not qualify the books for such regulation. As the court states, the city could have performed a number of other actions that would have met the needs of its citizens while still protecting the rights of the publishers. The publishers, perhaps in anticipation of this ordinance being passed, set up a voluntary opt-out program. The city could have instead promoted that voluntary program with its residents.

Despite this ruling, the future of the Yellow Pages still looks bleak. With the majority of people in the US and many other parts of the world now connected to the internet, owning a physical book of phone numbers has become rather pointless. The internet has changed the way people search for goods and services in such a way that the phone book can never compete. Without that ability to stay competitive, this ruling will do little good for these publishers in the long run.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, seattle, yellow pages