A few alders were more than a little surprised to hear the news that items are being purchased and used without their knowledge and that might not be allowed to know what they are. Surveillance Committee meets again tonight at 5:00.
Here’s a quick run down of the update from Rebecca Kemble.
Kemble says they have met twice and are going to meet twice a month. She explains that their biggest task is surveying all departments to inventory what equipment all agencies have. They started with that and ran into a lot of really big questions along the way over the very concept of inventorying, including what is a surveillance device and coming up with a definition. There is also an issue with disclosure. She doesn’t know if this is the case with the equipment the city has purchased but many manufacturers of surveillance equipment require non-disclosure agreements with the agencies that purchase them that say that the agencies can’t disclose that they have them, even to government officials. This was kind of made a reference to in the last meeting by IT and MPD – that they can’t say what they have because then the public will know what they have and it won’t be effective. They questioned them hard – is it really the case that the council and the mayor can’t know – there is equipment that even the mayor’s office doesn’t know we have. That only MPD, IT and maybe Finance knows and can know. Then they got into a discussion that they might need to go into closed session to talk about some of these things. We are dealing with a level of technology and corporations that make it that think they are above the law and she doesn’t know how they are going to find out if they have that kind of equipment here. I just don’t know. Unless we ask finance if there were any purchases from corporation X, they won’t have to tell us what though. This is why we need to be doing this work and we are running up against this right now. They are meeting tomorrow.
Denise DeMarb asks who give authorization to buy this equipment.
Kemble says “Right”
“Good Question”
Demarb says ” . . . that is not disclosed”
Kemble says “Right?”
DeMarb says “No, I don’t know”
Kemble says “I don’t either, those were the questions we were asking IT and MPD”
DeMarb says “That just seems so weird to me”
Several reactions overlapped that I didn’t quite catch but it was a very uncomfortable room.
Samba Baldeh says that he thinks that they are just pushing back in the beginning but we must have the power to know what we are paying for. For now they can play all this push back but if push comes to shove we will learn these things.
Kemble says they may have to go to court like they did in Arizona. In Tucson the government had to go to court against itself to find out what they had because of this Harris Corporation non-disclosure agreement.
Again, lots of reactions, lots of discomfort and outrage and disbelief.
Sheri Carter adds there were a lot of splitting hairs, with them saying are you saying my camera is surveillance. She said that Rebecca’s description was really true about the meeting.
DeMarb interrupts and apologizes and is . . . Marsha Rummel fills in the blank and says “flabbergasted”. DeMarb says “yes”
DeMarb asks what kinds of things . . .
Kemble says telephone interceptor devices, stingray devices, . . . someone else says drones . . . Kemble says cell phone devices that act like towers and they can intercept everything going on. So when you see on the chief’s daily blog some of those reports that they tracked someone because a cell phone pinged – right? we have seen some of those frequently. How do they know that?
It’s beginning to sink in what we are dealing with at this point . . . some people are more than a little stunned.
Kemble says those aren’t the only things.
Bidar says that she (attended a training? went to a meeting?) where she learned about this stuff and she went home and thought she should hide under her bed – but there is probably something under there too.
They are all reacting and slightly unhappy about all this.
DeMarb says this is like something from Mission Impossible and she went to a training and she was like “beam me up Scotty” and it went over her head.
Kemble says “This is real, and this is happening”.
DeMarb says that they said it was real and that alot of it is military stuff.
Bidar says “its a new market”
DeMarb says its not all about the big vehicles (MRAPs) – its about technology
Carter agrees because a lot of purchases are things that the military is getting rid of becaus they are buying new and its out there in the market place and its relatively cheap for government buying vs buying the same product.
Kemble says two meetings ago they authorized the purchase of Navy infared night vision goggles for MPD, but those are things that come up on the agenda. The other is a budget question, where to we look to see this in the budget? Where are these purchases being made?
DeMarb says “Mike?” (the walking encyclopedia of Madison government)
Mike Verveer says that he is pretty sure that its all in the capital budget under capital improvements line item. Everyone seems to agree that is likely.
Rummel says at Finance they have asked the Finance Director (Dave Schmiedicke) to look at sole source contracts because the policies are unevenly written and agencies can write their own and don’t even have to go through purchasing. Staff are working on a more formal process and I think we need to put this issue into that when it comes back.
Verveer asks who the IT staff person was – he read my blog and it was missing. Kemble says Herb King. They all note that I didn’t know who is was but that information is there now. They figure out its Rich Beadles replacement. Verveer asks if he was the only one who attended from IT? They say yes. He asks if it wasn’t the police stonewalling, but Herb? Kemble says it was he and Vic Wahl and they were supporting each other in what they have to say.
Rummel says that they will bring this back on the agenda.
Kemble says they are meeting tomorrow (now today) and they are going to go over (Thanks to Heather and Debbie and staffers and Brenda and Scott Resnick) for reminding us of the work that was done 10 years ago and they will be looking at that report from the work done in 2003-2004.
