As a Metro councilmember, Freddie O’Connell was a chief critic of police technologies. At times, his criticism looked ideological. During debates about automated license plate readers, O’Connell issued broad warnings about the mass surveillance state, specifically referring to the plan for integrated police traffic cameras as “spying” and “security theater.”
As mayor, O’Connell now backs the Metro Nashville Police Department's latest technology request, a suite of software and hardware that integrates video camera feeds marketed by security giant Axon. With Fusus, camera owners can link their residential and commercial video hardware up to a central MNPD network where police could, upon request, remotely view their camera feeds.
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The difference, O’Connell says, comes down to the nuance.
“ I always maintained the finer-grain approach to any of this, one or the other type of surveillance technology,” O’Connell tells the Scene. “ I always maintained, in opposing LPRs, highly concentrated scenarios like downtown always made a lot of sense. And so, similarly with FUSUS.”
Police were operating Fusus unbeknownst to the public when O’Connell came into office. The contract between Axon and the MNPD had made it through procurement without a public hearing, council public debate or community input.
“We suspended that part of the contract," says O'Connell. "There were some concerns expressed, so we added a number of safeguards. A kill switch, so that anything that violated our trust or the council's trust, or was not a specifically warranted use of this technology, could result in a termination of the contract. No unilateral terms changes on the part of a private vendor. We worked with MNPD to ensure that they had a published policy.”
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The latest MNPD contract with Fusus, brought to the council by O’Connell, narrowly failed a final vote in December. O’Connell’s council liaison Dave Rosenberg, a fellow surveillance skeptic when he was a councilmember, defended the legislation in his old chamber.
Rollin Horton, an attorney who represents Metro Council District 20, was a no vote then. He had the same fears and worries about potential abuse. In Horton’s view, the contract’s single-vote failure was due to the absence of an otherwise supportive colleague Jennifer Gamble rather than a firm commitment against expanding police powers within the chamber. The administration had multiple avenues through which it could try again, including some strategies that would require a lower vote threshold. It was just a matter of time.
“ Everyone paying attention recognized that this is going to come back soon and will almost definitely pass," Horton tells the Scene before Tuesday's council meeting. "If it does, it would pass without adequately robust legal restrictions on it, so I prepared this legislation to get ahead of that expected future moment."
Horton contacted O’Connell’s office shortly after the failed vote in December with a plan to draft a regulatory framework ahead of the next Fusus contract debate. Horton is now the author and main sponsor of new legislation that codifies policy and practices to govern a hypothetical “community safety camera network that includes donor cameras,” a legal placeholder that would apply when O’Connell comes back with a new Fusus contract. The new bill has earned 15 sponsors and puts Fusus more directly under the purview of the Metro Council, which will examine the legislation — and several associated amendments — Tuesday night.
“ Some of the key restrictions are, it can only be used to respond to a health-and-safety emergency — like incidents of mass violence, not people seeking health care or people's wardrobes or something like that," explains Horton. "It can't access a private security camera if it's located where somebody reasonably expects privacy. No [artificial intelligence] or facial recognition technology. MNPD has to promptly notify both the Metro Council and the mayor anytime there’s a violation of the rules, and any Fusus contract can be terminated by Metro Council if it's used in a way we're not intending.”
Police technology has divided Nashville for years. Body-worn cameras, Tasers, automated license plate readers and, now, Fusus each inspires its own referendum on law enforcement. Earnest supporters, including law enforcement agencies themselves, point to crime statistics and the promise that innocent people have nothing to worry about; skeptical opponents draw from a history of MNPD abuses of power and the broad fear that the state grows both more omniscient and more punitive every day.
In recent months, both the federal and state governments have shown an increasing appetite for strong policing and a disregard for constitutional protections. As the city prepares a more efficient network for centralized video surveillance, Fusus opponents connect the dots, offering a hypothetical future in which such technological capacity could be commandeered to enforce immigration or health care laws.
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“Fusus is not a system that creates or stores data,” says O’Connell. “It is very different from license plate readers, and I worry that there has been a conflation of the two. It's not sitting there with a running log of real-time video capture that gets stored in a giant database. It takes an existing surveillance resource and merely makes it more available to local law enforcement to resolve crimes.”
O’Connell stresses that the cameras are already in the city, eagerly installed by fellow Nashvillians in parking lots or on front doors. To those who fear the dangers of a tightly surveilled society subject to widespread real-time data collection, O’Connell implies that we already live in one.
“ I guess, again, I'm left with, these cameras are already installed,” says O’Connell, glancing out his office window toward the Cumberland. “If you’re worried about that, just throw your phone in the river.”
