Washington Privacy Organizers

@wa-privacy.net

209 Followers 117 Following

It's time for real privacy protections in Washington state! Skeets by @jdp23.thenexus.today. See https://wa-privacy.net for more -- although the 2026 leg session has been so hectic we haven't updated it yet

Keep ALPR camers off! Listen to your constituents. DeflockRenton.com
Edmonds had paused the City’s use of the cameras due to the same concerns about immigration, along with other safety issues related to the cameras’ surveillance capabilities, Rosen said. “And then last week I came to find that the FBI has put out a $36 million RFP [request for proposals] to get access to automated license plate readers nationwide that are without warrants,” Rosen added. “So, we are canceling the contract and will not be bringing Flock cameras back to Edmonds anytime soon.”
Since we’re likely to see more activity, it’s useful to contact your representative. A short message is fine! Here are a few variants. If they aren’t on the committee (or you don’t know whether they are or how they voted) I’m [NAME] from [CITY or COUNTY], a constituent, calling to ask you to ban the use of Flock and other automated license plate readers. I was disappointed that the Transportation and Infrastructure committee voted down a bipartisan amendment to ban ALPR usage for federal highway fund recipients, but legislators of both parties expressed interest in the issue. So please look for other opportunities for Congress to shield Americans from this invasive warrantless surveillance technology that threatens privacy, civil liberties, and constitutional rights.
I’m [NAME] from [CITY or COUNTY], a constituent, calling to ask Representative [NAME] to support the Perry/Garcia amendment to limit use of Flock and other automated license plate readers. Congress must shield Americans from this invasive warrantless surveillance technology that threatens privacy, civil liberties, and constitutional rights.
deflock presents: National Week of Action against ALPRS. Demand an end to automated licence plate readers! More info coming soon. Sign up to receive updates: www.noalprs.com
Sign our People's Petition! Strenthen ESSB 6002: Delete non-hotlist ALPR data within 3-min or less + other protective demands. Washington People's Privacy
Make Washington State an ICE free zone. WA is Sharing DOL data with CBP to ICE. Join a neighborhood ICE free Zones DOL canvassing training, 3/10 Tuesday, 6-8 pm. Do you want to canvas your local DoL to let folks know that their drivers license information is being shared with ICE/CBP? Want to learn more? Join our free class!
I’m [NAME] of [CITY], one of your constituents, and I'm very concerned that SB 6002, the Driver Privacy Act is much too weak to protect immigrants, rapid response groups, and other vulnerable Washington residents. There are thousands of Flock surveillance cameras are all over the state -- and cities like Redmond, Everett, and Olympia which have turned their Flock cameras off are likely to turn them back on once SB 6002 passes.  So the guardrails in this bill need to be strengthened significantly. Reduce retention time to three minutes or less unless license plates are already on a hotlist. This significantly reduces risk of data getting to ICE and CBP -- or being used by police officers to stalk people. Ensure that human rights organizations, local organizers, and journalists can provide oversight by eliminating the public records act exemption. This is very important legislation and its guardrails need to be strong enough to protect us.
I’m [NAME] of [CITY], one of your constituents, and I'm very concerned that SB 6002, the Driver Privacy Act is much too weak to protect immigrants, rapid response groups, and other vulnerable Washington residents. There are thousands of Flock surveillance cameras are all over the state -- and cities like Redmond, Everett, and Olympia which have turned their Flock cameras off are likely to turn them back on once SB 6002 passes.  So the guardrails in this bill need to be strengthened significantly. Reduce retention time to three minutes or less unless license plates are already on a hotlist. This significantly reduces risk of data getting to ICE and CBP -- or being used by police officers to stalk people. Ensure that human rights organizations, local organizers, and journalists can provide oversight by eliminating the public records act exemption. This is very important legislation and its guardrails need to be strong enough to protect us.
Leqislative calendar January 12 (Monday): First day of session February 4 (Wednesday): Policy committee cutoff February 9 (Monday): Fiscal and transportation committee cutoff February 17 (Tuesday): Cutoff for passing house of origin February 25 (Wednesday): Opposite house policy committee cutoff March 2 (Monday): Opposite house fiscal and transportation committee cutoff March 6 (Friday): Cutoff to go through opposite house - unless it's NTIB! March 12 (Thursday): Last day of session — Sine Die
A long list of amendments, in a small font, each with an 20-character code starting with 6002-S.E.AMH, a number, a legislator name, and a page reference
I’m [NAME] of [CITY], one of your constituents, and I'm very concerned that SB 6002, the Driver Privacy Act is much too weak to protect immigrants, rapid response groups, and other vulnerable Washington residents. There are thousands of Flock surveillance cameras are all over the state -- and cities like Redmond, Everett, and Olympia which have turned their Flock cameras off are likely to turn them back on once SB 6002 passes.  So the guardrails in this bill need to be strengthened significantly. Reduce retention time to three minutes or less unless license plates are already on a hotlist. This significantly reduces risk of data getting to ICE and CBP -- or being used by police officers to stalk people. Ensure that human rights organizations, local organizers, and journalists can provide oversight by eliminating the public records act exemption. This is very important legislation and its guardrails need to be strong enough to protect us.
This action will focus on one specific improvement: reducing the length of time that ALPR data can be stored to three minutes or less. A retention time of three minutes or less still allows agencies to use ALPRs to track vehicles whose license plates are on "hotlists" or “watchlists” – amber alerts, missing persons, stolen vehicles, cars actively fleeing a crime scene, vehicles registered to a person with an outstanding felony warrant. etc., which account for the vast majority of legal, successful use cases for ALPRs. A three minute retention with auto-deletion of non hot-list plates means that in WA, bad actors can’t access this sensitive data. That's a big deal, because once data is collected and stored on, it is extremely difficult-to-impossible to secure. Vendors have access. Third parties, sales reps, consultants, and service providers the company shares the data with have access. Because the data exists in the cloud, it is also regularly backed up on servers (yep, that means data centers!). If systems are misconfigured or left unsecured – as happened in Mountain View California – agencies all over the country can search it. If ICE and CBP get a court order or subpoena, they can get it. Even if we attempt to protect access to this data with “the guardrail” of an active warrant or investigation, law enforcement has major leeway to obfuscate actual intention, and access the data. The list goes on.
"A lot of us very concerned about Flock surveillance cameras. OneAmerica, WA People's Privacy, reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights groups, ACLU of Washington, and a lot of other organizations representing people who are impacted by Flock are all saying that the current version of SB 6002 -- the Driver Privacy Act -- is too weak to protect us. Will you support amendments that strengthen it? And how can we work with you to encourage your colleagues to strengthen it?"
A red t-shirt with white letters saying "Presumed Innocent. Tracked Daily. DeFlockLynnwood.com"
Restore the funding to the State Auditor that was cut out of the bill in the Senate. Especially with the history of abuses of ALPR data, strong oversight is critical. Require more frequent transparency reports from agencies using ALPRs, and move the timeframe up. Waiting until December 2027 for the first annual report is unacceptable. Remove the "knowing" loophole that was added in the Senate. The current language only prevents ALPR data obtained by law enforcement from being admitted as evidence if the violations were "knowing". This is an especially acute problem tgiven the long track record of misconfigurations and other issues where the agency unintentionally provided broader access to ALPR data than they realized – Mountain View (CA) for example shut off their Flock systems after discovering literally hundreds of agencies around the country had searched their data without authorization. Remove the authorization for institutes of higher education to use ALPRs that was added in the Senate. Students at community colleges, technical colleges, state colleges, regional universities, and the University of Washington are frequently targeted by ICE and CBP – and by law enforcement as protestors.
The current version of SB 6002 Act needs to be strengthened in several ways, including: Reduce retention as much as possible – to three minutes or less. The current version allows law enforcement agencies to retain data for 21 days, and other agencies to keep it even longer – up to 30 days in some cases. New Hampshire's law limits retention to 3 minutes. The longer data is retained, the greater the chance that ICE will find a way to access it. Police solved crimes before ALPRs, they will find a way to adapt. Prevent vendor access to the systems and data. Some vendors are believed to share information with ICE and CBP. Even for vendors who don't go out of their way to share information, they're located in other states so the protections of the Shield Law and Keep Washington Working do not apply – meaning it's easy for ICE, CBP, and law enforcement in hostile states to get a court order or subpoena to get the data. Prevent direct access to an agency's systems to other agencies as well. The current version allows the creation of what is in practice a regional surveillance database. Require a felony warrant for law-enforcement access to third-party ALPR data. The current version requires a warrant, which is good, but a felony warrant requires much stronger protections. Ensure that there is enough public records access for journalists, local organizers, and organizations like UW Human Rights Center — whose report is what galvanized widespread opposition — to continue to do oversight.
Provide written testimony – deadline Thursday 8:00 am If you've got a couple of minutes to provide written testimony, you can go into more detail about why your position on the bill is OTHER, The deadline for acting is Thursday February 19 at 8:00am 1. Click Here 2. From the drop down menu choose "Other". 3, Fill out the form. 4. For the written testimony start with ether "ALPRs should be banned. If that is not possible yet, SB 6002 needs to be strengthened". If there's a reason why prohibiting Flock and other ALPRs is especially important to you – or an anecdote about how they effect you, your family or neighbors, or your community – please make sure to mention that! You can also use one or more of the talking points below in your message, or start from scratch if you prefer. 5. Click the "Submit Registration" button
Sign in OTHER (Strengthen) – deadline Wednesday 7:00 am. At the previous hearings on the bill, law enforcement, Flock, and their allies all signed in Other. So did cities and counties across Washington. To make sure that our pressure to strengthen the bill doesn't get confused with their pressure to weaken it, we're recommending signing in Other (Strengthen). That's not actually an option on the signin form, so we'll need to be creative! 1. Click Here to Sign In to the Hearing. You are not signing up to speak! 2. From the drop down menu choose "Other" 3. Fill out the form. Remember that any information you include is public! You don't have to provide your street address. Email is required, and many people who care about privacy use a separate account for communications with the state government. 4. In the Organization field, put (Strengthen). 5. Click on Submit Registration
At the hearing, OneAmerica, Legal Voice, Pro-Choice Washington, Planned Parenthood, ACLU of Washington, and other groupstalked about the need to reduce retention time to 3 minutes. remove vendor access to systems (to keep data from going out of state, where it loses the protections of the Shield Law and Keep Washington Working); prohibit agencies from directly accessing other agencies' ALPR data without a warrant; require a felony warrant for law-enforcement to access third-party ALPR data from Home Depot and other companies; and make other improvements. Law enforcement representatives and Flock talked about the need to increase retention time. Unfortunately the committee didn't listen to the coalition, ignoring virtually all the requests to strengthen the bill. Instead, they listened to law enforcement and Flock, and passed an amendment that increased the retention time to 21 days and weakened the bill in several other ways. The full Senate passed a version with a few more changes, mostly technical fixes. Now it moves to the House. We need to pressure legislators to strengthen the bill, and an important first step to that is to let them know that the bill is not yet strong enough for us to support it.
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) like Flock are cameras that scan and store license plate data and "contextual images" that can include people in and around the car from countless Washington drivers every day. ALPRs allow police and other governmental agencies to know where people drive and when – and today, there's no barrier to federal agencies like ICE and out-of-state law enforcement getting data about Washingtonians. The UW Center for Human Right's' Leaving the Door Wide Open: Flock Surveillance Systems Expose Washington Data to Immigration Enforcement goes into detail on some of the consequences, It would be great to ban the use of ALPRs, but the votes aren't there for that to happen at the statewide level yet. Instead, the goal of SB 6002, the Driver Privacy Act, is harm reduction by introducing "guardrails" that protect our privacy and civil rights. The bill prohibits ALPR use in the immediate surroundings of sensitive areas like immigration centers, schools, and providers of reproductive and gender-affirming health care, limits how long the data can be retained, and.requires a warrant for any law enforcement access to ALPR dat, and limited a warrant for any access to ALPR data to three days. These protections significantly improve on the situation today, but are not strong enough to for meaningful harm reduction.
Specifies pricing practices for a business that sells retail products in a grocery store, including clearly posting the price and prohibiting the use of surveillance pricing or surge pricing. Prohibits the use of electronic shelf label systems in retail stores larger than 15,000 square feet until January 1, 2030. Requires the Department of Commerce to study the use of electronic shelf label systems and report on price transparency and employee job security by June 30, 2029. Specifies that violation of the pricing practices is an unfair or deceptive act for purposes of enforcement under the Consumer Protection Act.
Chair Kauffman, Ranking Member Dozier, Members of the committee, I'm Jon Pincus of Bellevue. I run the Nexus of Privacy newsletter, and am testifying CON on SB 6111. Big tech companies certainly do prey on children, and I've very sympathetic to the mothers who are testifying. But this bill is not the right solution. Section 3(1)'s requirement for age verification increases doxxing, stalking, identity theft, and immigrant profiling risks -- for kids, teens and adults. Age verification puts everybody's privacy at risk, and is especially harmful to vulnerable communities including LGBTQ, disabled, low-income, unhoused, and undocumented people. It's not like showing your ID at the grocery store. I'll discuss this — and Senator McCune's question of whether it requires everybody to show ID — in more detail in my written testimony, This bill does have some positive aspects, but in a short session, there isn't time to refine these positives into a good bill. Please do not advance SB 6111. And please do not advance any bill with age verification requirements. Instead, let's work together over the interim on approaches that really do help keep kids, teens, and adults safer online.
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