August 2026

Updates on the U.S. surveillance state

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Local News:

I wrote a piece about Seattle’s efforts to pull together a coordinated gun violence prevention strategy, which took some doing given the focus on Chief Barnes’s resignation during the time I was trying to research and write it. 

I also wrote about new Seattle legislation to ban algorithmic price discrimination, or surveillance pricing based on personal information, for Seattleites buying groceries. The committee vote on amendments to the ordinance will be on September 18. 

Speaking of Seattle’s police chief saga, here are a couple of interviews with interim Chief Andre Sayles. PubliCola reported on how much time Barnes spent out of the office (almost 40% of the time this year) and on how much his payout will be. And two of SPD’s command staff brought in by Barnes are leaving SPD.

Meanwhile, councilmembers are still angry that the press conference after the Bite of Seattle shooting was delayed for five hours, and the Mayor’s Office has asked the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an independent after-action review about communications. The review won’t be completed until mid-December.

In other news, there’s another hunger strike at the Northwest ICE Processing Center, and the conditions there continue to be terrible and shocking. ICE will be spending up to $20 million on torture gloves that deliver a painful shock at the press of a button. 

In better news, the Washington State Department of Revenue has performed a new analysis on the millionaires tax and thinks it will bring in more revenue than expected. The new estimate expects $3.1 billion in its first year (instead of $2.7 billion originally predicted) and $8.3 billion in the 2029-2031 biennium (instead of $6.9 billion).

Surveillance news:

The Community Not Cameras coalition toured SPD’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) this week, and it didn’t go so well. Coalition members left with many concerns in spite of a Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce poll that shows strong support for cameras. Reading the questions asked in the poll is instructive as to how seriously to take it.

Flock Safety’s PR disaster continues, with 404 Media reporting that they pitched a plan to put their license plate readers in the vehicles of Uber and Lyft drivers. In fact, the press around Flock has gotten so bad they’ve announced some changes, including shortening their standard data retention window from 30 days to 7 days. Their efforts at damage control aren’t stopping many cities from switching from Flock license plate readers to Axon license plate readers, which doesn’t permanently address the concerns many residents have about these cameras and the expanding surveillance state. 

Today Wired published a new story reporting that Flock has built an AI system/tool that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, facilitated by the large network of Flock cameras across the country. It appears that the tool is currently in the testing phase. As Wired wrote:

“Privacy and legal experts say Flock’s tools already raise serious constitutional concerns by giving police broad, often warrantless access to a vast record of people’s movement. But the prompts WIRED examined go further, turning a tool for finding a known vehicle into one that casts suspicion on drivers based on where and how often they drive, regardless of whether they are wanted for a crime.”

Meanwhile, the federal government has gotten in on the act by monitoring viral anti-Flock social media posts and surveilling protest gatherings and meetings. And DHS has been using Clearview AI facial recognition to help infiltrate activist groups.

Google’s AI Overview, while gutting newsrooms left and right, is spreading false information about the amount of valuable gold and copper that are inside Flock cameras, thereby accidentally encouraging users to vandalize the cameras for profit.

And people are going around cutting down and destroying Flock cameras, acts of civil disobedience that appear to be receiving significant public support.

Andrea Pitzer, who wrote a book about the global history of concentration camps, wrote an analysis that looks at what the new electric-shock gloves being obtained by ICE and the proliferation of Flock license plate reader cameras tells us about how the concentration camp regime/institutionalization of the police state in the US is going

Housekeeping:

I’m going to be taking some time off starting next week, so you won’t be hearing from me for a little while. But never fear, I’ll be back on the beat in time to cover Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposed budget. 

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Washington State Supreme Court justice races remain ones to watch in November

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Washington State Temple of Justice. Photo by Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The initial results of the Washington state primaries shed some light on how the races are shaping up for the five all-important state Supreme Court justice positions up for grabs in November. While later returns tend to favor progressives, the early numbers make clear that at least some of these races will not have a foregone conclusion in the general election. 

These justice races are always tricky because candidates are not allowed to say how they would rule on specific questions. Instead, they can be asked more general doctrinal questions, and their past records can be combed through. Most observers rely on a combination of endorsements and contributions to determine in which lane a candidate is running. 

There is already big money in these justice races, with candidates reporting raising almost $2.5 million so far. And that number is sure to grow in the next three months.

As I reported this spring, money spent on state Supreme Court justice races across the country has surged over the last few years, while the use of dark money in elections has greatly increased since the Citizens United ruling in 2010. 

For the two candidates appointed by Governor Bob Ferguson since he began his term, there is an assumption – whether warranted or not – that they would likely rule in favor of the millionaires tax, which Ferguson has staunchly supported. The millionaires tax would levy a 9.9% tax on incomes above $1 million, and should it survive the legal and electoral challenges against it, it would be likely to be seen as a cornerstone progressive achievement for Ferguson and the state Democratic party.   

The safest justice seat in this election cycle is clearly that of incumbent Debra Stephens, who has served on the court for almost 20 years. With a commanding 54.53% of the initial drop, Stephens is running far ahead of her closest challenger, Todd Bloom, who garnered about 27% of the vote. 

For justice position 5, Ferguson appointee Theo Angelis is neck and neck with more conservative Dave Larson: Angelis has 34% of the early vote and Larson a bit more than 32%. However, candidate Sharonda Amamilo, who is considered to be more progressive than Angelis, received 21% of the vote. It’s difficult to imagine an Amamilo voter pivoting to vote for Larson in the general election, which means the results of this race might rest more on turn-out. 

It’s worth remembering that Larson lost narrowly to state Justice Sal Mungia in 2024. Mungia, who was backed by progressives, won by only 0.7 points or about 20,000 votes. 

While Angelis has raised $350,000, Larson isn’t that far behind at $296,000. 

On the surface, the justice position 1 race looks pretty clear-cut, with recent Ferguson appointee Colleen Melody taking 51.20% of the vote. However, third place candidate Laura Christensen Colberg, who currently has 18.19% of the vote, ran on an explicit anti-appointee platform, which means many of her voters may instead opt for second place candidate Scott Edwards, who currently has 30.31% of the vote. If so, this race could end up being much closer than it currently looks. 

On the other hand, Melody has currently raised more than double the donations of Edwards, which should help her maintain her lead. 

Conservatives have criticized the two appointee candidates for state Supreme court, calling out the electoral benefit granted by their appointments leading to “incumbent” status as well as their perceived political ties to Ferguson. We can expect to see more attacks along these lines going forward into November.  

The justice position 3 race, with no incumbents, is much too close to call. We have three candidates with similar numbers of votes; conservative David Stephens with 35.79% of the vote is followed closely by both candidates to his left, Jaime Hawk with 32.92% and Mike Diaz with 30.94%. In a Stephens-Diaz match-up, it seems likely many of Hawk’s voters would go to Diaz, but in a Stephens-Hawk match-up, it’s possible some of Diaz’s voters would opt for Stephens instead. 

Both Hawk and Diaz – at $218,000 and $275,000 respectively – have significantly out-raised Stephens, who has only raised $40,000 thus far. 

Finally, we have justice position 4, which with only two candidates, didn’t go through the primary selection process. Moderate candidate Sean O’Donnell is facing progressive candidate Ian Birk, and both candidates have accumulated large war chests, with O’Donnell at $281,000 and Birk at $364,000. 

At one point, Full Court Press, a dark-money group that focuses on supporting and recruiting conservative judge candidates in Washington state, operates under the umbrella of Project 42, one of whose founders is Brian Heywood. Let’s Go Washington, Heywood’s political action committee (PAC), is bankrolling a ballot initiative against the millionaires tax as well as two anti-transgender initiatives.  

Full Court Press featured Larson and O’Donnell on a now-deleted “prospects” page on their website. O’Donnell told me back in April that he had asked to be removed from the website as soon as he learned about it, but the association with the conservative group might still impact his chances in the general. 

The current Washington state Supreme Court is considered to be one of the United States’ most progressive – especially when it comes to matters of civil rights – and most influential courts. While the legal question of the millionaires tax is expected to be heard in front of the court in the next year or so, that is only the tip of the iceberg when considering the large impact the court has on the lives of Washingtonians. 

The court is one of the most crucial institutions safeguarding the state from what many see as an increasingly threatening federal government. 

Articles on the Bite of Seattle shooting and SPD Chief Shon Barnes’ resignation:

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