State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

How Seattle Is Tackling Privacy Problems in Today’s Digital Age (Contributed)

Government Technology: As a municipal government delivering a broad range of services, from pet licensing to ensuring public safety to delivering electricity, Seattle has an obligation to build and maintain the public’s trust about how it collects and use personal data. Created in 2015, the city’s privacy program was initiated because of resident and city council concerns about drones, police body-worn cameras, advanced utility meters, wireless mesh networks and waterfront surveillance cameras, among other technologies.

The influx of these new and potentially intrusive tools threatened to create more and more personally identifiable and sensitive information that privacy advocates, the mayor and city representatives believed needed increased oversight.

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