Seattle is spying on you, but the city wants to come clean about it

The city of Seattle uses at least 29 different surveillance technologies.

Starting Monday, it’s holding a series of public meetings to explain what those tools do and to find out how people feel about these forms of surveillance. 

This first round of public meetings focuses on six technologies used by the police, fire and transportation departments.

They include license plate readers calculating travel times for vehicles and cameras rolling at emergency and crime scenes. The city even has software called Bootview that identifies parking scofflaws and announces when it’s time to immobilize the vehicle.

Ginger Armbruster, the city’s chief privacy officer, said the City Council will decide whether the technologies will remain in use.

The master list of Seattle surveillance technologies is at the city's privacy information page. Right now there are 28 on the list. Armbruster said since the list was made, another surveillance technology was discovered.

Under the city’s 2017 Surveillance Ordinance, future technologies with the capacity to watch citizens will be reviewed before the city begins using them.