Big businesses call for Seattle public safety improvements

Our Take

When Brad Smith, Brian Niccol, and a who's-who of Seattle's corporate class sign a joint letter demanding "restored surveillance cameras in high-event areas," it's worth asking whose safety they're actually optimizing for. Credit to KOMO News for surfacing the letter, but the coverage treats camera expansion as a neutral, common-sense fix rather than a policy choice with real civil liberties tradeoffs. More cameras in a city that already leans on Flock Safety's ALPR network means more plate reads, more location data, and more opportunities for that information to be misused, breached, or shared with agencies Seattleites never agreed to cooperate with.

It's a familiar playbook: frame surveillance infrastructure as the obvious answer to a public safety poll, skip the part where you explain retention policies, audit trails, or who gets access to the data. Corporations with the resources to lobby directly to the mayor's office rarely have to live with the downstream consequences of a camera network creeping into every neighborhood. Residents do. "Act with urgency" sounds great until that urgency becomes the excuse for skipping the public debate about oversight, data sharing agreements, and mission creep that should come before any camera goes back up.

If Seattle moves forward on this 100-day plan, the cameras won't stay confined to a handful of "high-event areas" for long — that's not how these systems tend to work. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and head to take-action if you want a say before City Council rubber-stamps a corporate wish list.