SB 6002 (Driver Privacy Act) House floor fight emails

Things are (unexpectedly) getting increasingly chaotic as time ticks down. This Friday, March 6, is the deadline for the House to pass bills. We started to see amendments on SB 6002 on Monday (March 1). First there was a trickle, including a couple of strengthening amendments from progressive Democrats that address some of the key improvements we've been pushing for, as well as one from a conservative Democrat trying to further weaken the bill and a couple from Republicans that don't seem likely to go anywhere. But then Tuesday night there was a sudden flood of 60+ amendments from Republicans. What's with that? They're probably trying to kill the bill by making it take up so much floor time to discuss their amendments that it would put all other bills at risk. Then again, maybe it's just a negotiating ploy, and behind the scenes they're offering to withdraw the amendments if they get the concessions they want. Time will tell.

Indivisble Eastside had set up a meeting with Rep. Salahuddin, the bill sponsor in the House, for Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 pm. Timely! But alas, it wound up getting cancelled. His legislative assistant asked us to send any documents and other information as a followup ... so I did. And then I realized I had clicked send too early, oops, so I quickly sent another followup. I've combined them here into a single message for readablity.

One main goal for the meeting was to understand how best to support Rep. Salahuddin in convincing his colleagues to significantly strengthen SB6002. His striker has some very important improvements, so we're encouraging Indivisibles across the state to support that with phone calls and emails. What else can we be doing?

This is an especially critical issue from an Indivisible Eastside perspective because Redmond (as well as other cities in the state) is considering turning their Flock cameras back on if SB 6002 passes. If the guardrails in SB 6002 are not strong enough, this will further empower ICE and CBP was they flood the state, and put immigrants, rapid response groups, mutual aid organizers, and other vulnerable people and communities at risk.We also have two specific asks in terms of strengthening we want to see in the bill:

reduce retention time to three minutes or less for all uses
remove the public records exemption for ALPR data

The attached letters from WA People's Privacy and 30 other groups (including Indivisible Eastside), 50 Indivisible, community, advocacy and non-profit organizations (also including Indivisible Eastside), and DeFlock Redmond, Olympia, and Lynnwood all discuss these issues. The WA People's Privacy letter goes into the most detail so that's probably the best place to start.

A brief summary of these issues ...

On retention time, Indivisible Eastside and other Indvisible groups have consistently highlighted that it needs to be three minutes or less (except for plates that are already on a hotlist) to protect immigrants and other vulnerable groups. We know that there isn't currently a three-minute-or-less floor amendment on the table, and so one of our questions for the Representative is who we should be working with to try to bring that amendment.

Also (speaking for myself and not for Indivisble Eastside) I wanted to clarify that while many Indivisibles (including me) are also supporting Rep. Thomas' amendment 2186 (which reduces retention time for law enforcement to 7 days, as opposed to the 21 in the ESSB 6002 and Rep. Salahuddin's striker), it's an incremental improvement that is not enough to address the harms. Once the data is stored it's vulnerable to abuse. And Rep. Thomas' amendment does not address the retention time for other authorized uses of ALPRs, which have significantly longer retention times. This isn't in any way meant as a criticism of Rep. Thomas' amendment, I'm sure there are good reasons for the focus it has, and incremental progress is useful!. I just really wanted to highlight that it's not enough.

In terms of public records access, this is crucial for oversight. The UW Center for Human Rights report that's the reason the legislature is focusing on this bill relied on public records access. Local organizers rely on public records to help people understand the risks and harms. And the recent case in another state where a police officer was caught stalking his partner was only uncovered when she searched the “Have I Been Flocked” site – which relies on public records.

In terms of our goal of understanding how best to support Rep. Salahuddin's efforts to strengthen the bill, please don't hesitate to contact us if and when there are ways we can help – in the House floor fight, and then in the cross-chamber negotiations and final vote.

Jon Pincus, Bellevue