By Tim Clifford

On Dec.19 the Seattle Police Department held its first ever SPD Hackathon in the basement of the department’s headquarters on 5th Ave. A training room was turned into a “geek den” replete with coffee, pastries and plenty of outlets to accommodate the 80 plus attendees; including representatives from Amazon, Microsoft, and the University of Washington among numerous others.
The event went from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Officials from the City Attorney’s office, Lynwood Police Department, King County Sheriff’s Department and SPD were also on hand to take notes and engage in the discussion. Even Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole were on hand for a short time.

“Really this was born out of a conversation that happened on twitter between @PoliceVideo and Mike Wagers, our Chief Operating Officer. So we had this public disclosure request for all of our video in addition to the Seattle Police Department had one for every email ever generated. We are truly committed to working to accommodate, but the scale, just the scale, was crushing us and there had to be an interim solution” explained Sergeant Sean Whitcomb, Public Relations Officer for the SPD, of the genesis of the event.

Converging events
On Nov.15 the SPD received a record setting public disclosure request from a local programmer and watchdog, who at that time was only known as Anonymous Anonymous or @PoliceVideo on Twitter. The request was for all videos and 911 dispatches in the police databanks to be made public for the purposes of being posted on a YouTube profile which makes police footage public.

At the same time the SPD was prepping policies for its pilot program with body-worn video cameras (BWV) that is currently being conducted in the east precinct, ironically beginning the day after the Hackathon.
Per the SPD blotter’s webpage concerning the event: “with 1,612,554 videos already on our servers—and more on the way through our upcoming body cam pilot program—our department is looking for a better, faster way redact those videos and make them accessible as public records”.

It takes approximately 30 minutes to redact one-minute of standard definition footage, with hours of more time required to properly redact audio and blur multiple faces.

Thus was born the idea to reach out to local techies, companies and agencies to produce faster redacting software or programs.

“We saw the opportunity for this [BWV’ in ’07 and quickly realized that it’s more about what to do with the footage acquired than the camera you use,” said Marcus Womack, a general manager with Evidence.com and TASER during his presentation. TASER is currently one of the BWV’s that is being tested in SPD’s pilot program.

Full disclosure
The sign-in sheet that all participants were asked to fill out with their names and email was published on the SPD’s Twitter page, a winking nod to transparency. Another nod to this ethic came when @PoliceVideo himself stepped up to the stage to present his own redaction proposal, as well as his identity.
Tall, wiry and sporting a shaggy beard Timothy Clemans, formerly known only as Anonymous, presented what was dubbed as the “sledgehammer” approach. Essentially over-redacting, or blurring the entire video image and then making minimal redactions available upon request.

“If they [the can look at an over-redacted video, especially if it has a transcript, then they can really make the decision is it worth going through the time. I mean, I make a lot of my decisions now just based on how much time they say it’s going to take. So I feel like it will be a huge win if we can just get this torrent of video out there” explained Clemans.

“If somebody asks for it in minimally redacted then, ok, that’s fine, in a few years there might be a solution for that, but they are going to have to wait”.

Clemans, who is currently living between Burien and Tacoma, sparked the Hackathon with his passion for governmental transparency, something he sees as a boon for both the public and the department.
“What I want is a highly curated database that has an automated notification system. Ultimately, the big thing is as a society we really need to eliminate inappropriate use of force and biased police. By giving out this data, reports and videos and stuff, computers can do all this analysis work really quick and make a big dent in telling us humans where we need to focus” Clemans elaborated.

Just as many ground level enthusiasts presented proposals as larger, well-known brands.

One striking presenter with Nerdshow.com, Henry Kroll, makes a living as a salmon fisherman and is a tech enthusiast in his spare time. His proposal, which demonstrated using open source software to track and blur faces, was seen as being very promising.

Another notable presentation came at the end from members of the Seattle Privacy Coalition, who along with suggesting funding by the department to open source software also recommended a Kickstarter campaign to generate funds.

Though the enthusiasm was contagious, not all of it was good will. Heated discussions were held with matters of GPS tracking, current privacy laws and the use of video footage to secure convictions. The ethics of our nation’s current privacy laws, the sharing of data by private social media and its use by government institutions remains an open discussion.

“The timing was so right, getting all these people in the room engaged as they are, and knowing that it’s not just people complaining or venting. This was productive conversation that started at point A and moved towards another point. We’re not at “Z” yet, we’ve got a long ways to go, and we’re at more like “D” or “E”, but we’ve got some pretty concrete next steps,” said Whitcomb at the end of the event.
“This is just the opening conversation.”