@startleseasily is a fervent observer of the Metro government's comings and goings. In this column, "On First Reading," she'll recap the bimonthly Metro Council meetings and provide her opinions and analysis. You can find her in the pew in the corner by the mic, ready to give public comment on whichever items stir her passions. Follow her on Twitter here.
“Hello, we’re here again.”
In her opening statement at Tuesday’s Metro Council meeting, community organizer Kelly (last name withheld to protect the innocent) perfectly captured the frustration and exhaustion anti-surveillance activists feel. After years of fighting license plate readers, there is a new fresh hell awaiting us in Axon Fusus.
Yes, Axon. The company that brought you TASERs is back at it, this time with a software that can offer the police real-time access to privately owned cameras across the city. In 2022, the MNPD entered into a contract with Fusus that should have required a public hearing and approval of the council — a move they’re now referring to as a “pilot.” They were just testing it out, y’all. Nothing to be concerned about at all. Never mind the fact that, during the test period, they integrated upwards of 1,000 residential and business cameras into their network.
The MNPD wanted council approval to re-up the contract late last year, but privacy concerns led the mayor’s office to request a pause on the Big Brother of it all. Undeterred, the MNPD is back again, asking the council to allow them to “utilize the full scope of work” of the contract, “including surveillance technology.”
Three forms of police technology raise questions about privacy and public safety
I can just hear George Orwell saying, “I told you so.”
The MNPD has assured the council for weeks that they will not be using the technology to integrate residential cameras; they intend to limit the use to “commercial” or “business” cameras. But that limitation is not specified anywhere in the contract, nor in the resolution approving it. Instead, it’s incorporated into one of the MNPD’s internal policies — policies that can change, as I learned Tuesday. Looking at the Fusus policy, I couldn’t find a single mention of a prohibition of residential camera integration.
Hours after I started asking questions about this, that Fusus policy — officially dubbed the “Community Safety Network Policy” — was deleted. Shortly before the council’s Public Health and Safety Committee meeting, where the MNPD would be subject to questions about their Fusus plans, the policy was updated to include the following: “The MNPD does not accept private residential donor cameras.”
This little bait-and-switch doesn’t inspire all that much confidence.
“We’ve been here a lot over the past three or four years, fighting surveillance,” Kelly continued. “We’ve done this for four years, and we’re still here.” True to form, she took no prisoners, using her two minutes to name and shame the people who’ve brought us here.
“When y’all say, ‘MNPD says this, Metro Legal or Dave Rosenberg says this,’ you haven’t done your own research,” Kelly said. “When [Axon lobbyists] James Weaver and Joseph Woodson come and tell you, ‘Oh, this is how it’s going to be done,’ those are lobbyists. Those are not your friends; those are not community members, they are paid ... to make these points to you.”
It’s probably a losing battle for anti-surveillance activists. Progressives and leftists don’t control the council; mainstream Democrats do. And mainstream Democrats generally are not interested in substantive police reforms. They’ll have us sleepwalking into the surveillance state with a spring in our step.
For each lobbyist shilling for companies like Axon, community organizers have to turn out 50 constituents to beg the council to consider the real-life implications of their decisions. And even with all that work, it’s still not likely to make a difference.
Putting Up a Fight
The council deferred the Fusus legislation for one meeting to allow the administration to craft an amendment to the contract. As an added benefit, it’s easier to take unpopular votes when you don’t have an army of constituents staring at you while you do it.
Progressives on the council fought the deferral tooth and nail. They wanted to kill the legislation on the spot. A deferral would make that more difficult.
Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda’s opening salvo was an attempt to table the deferral motion. Tabling is a procedural move that’s rarely used, as it cuts off all debate and leads to a showdown between the maker of the original motion — in this case, Councilmember Erin Evans — and the maker of the motion to table.
“We are ... setting the infrastructure in place that will create a mass surveillance network here in our city,” Sepulveda began. Faced with the prospect of mass deportations promised by President-Elect Donald Trump and under threat of state preemption, there is no way to guarantee that any surveillance guardrails Nashville may put in place will stick.
“There are no amount of amendments that can be added to this legislation that can make people feel comfortable,” Sepulveda argued, “or that can account for the possibilities of what the state and what the federal government can do, and probably will do, to try and harm us.”
Sepulveda’s tabling motion failed, on a vote of 16-22.
As progressive councilmembers pleaded with their colleagues to vote against the deferral, the audience erupted in applause. Vice Mayor Angie Henderson admonished audience members to keep it down. The audience ignored her. It was beautiful.
The deferral motion narrowly passed, with 20 members voting in favor and 18 voting against. That tight margin signals trouble for the police and an increase in billable hours for Weaver and Woodson, who will spend the next couple of weeks whispering sweet nothings into the ears of persuadable councilmembers.
What Now?
If you have thoughts on Fusus, you can contact the council. Emailing councilmembers@nashville.gov will ensure all councilmembers receive your email, but it’s also helpful to reach out separately to your district councilmember. The webpage offers a nifty address lookup if you don’t know who represents you. The five at-large councilmembers represent everyone in Davidson County; feel free to reach out to them individually as well.
While the legislation is technically in the council’s hands now, the mayor’s office still has a huge amount of influence at this point in the process. You can email mayor@nashville.gov to let Mayor Freddie O'Connell and his team know how you feel about this. Be sure to include your address or district number in your email signature, and avoid form emails if you can. Mass surveillance is a deeply personal issue. So make your email personal.
If anti-surveillance advocates want to defeat this, it's going to take the whole community working together. And it'll have to be done all over again when the council considers contracts for countywide implementation of license plate readers in the very near future. It’s exhausting, I know. But you’re not alone. About 40 folks showed up on Tuesday to speak against Fusus. Only three spoke in favor.
Email me at startleseasily@gmail.com if you need help finding the words or figuring out how to be most effective in your communications to the powers that be.
