 All right, you're all set. Thank you. Good evening. Seeing that there is a quorum and attendance, I'm calling the September 3, 2020 meeting of the town service and outreach committee to order at whatever time it is, 6.34 or so. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee. I'm going to now call on each committee member by name to confirm you can hear me and we can hear you. Lisa Brewer. Present. Darcy Dumont here. Dorothy Pam. Here. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. I'm present. OK, so those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee member connections. And if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until the person is reconnected. So we just request that everyone be patient with our process. So do. Hi, Paul. Hi. Do we know if Mandy Jo and Pat are in the attendees? Yes, they are. I've made you host, so you can click on them and allow them to speak. All right, so I mentioned briefly already that normally at the beginning, I'm just temporarily skipping over the public comment because we're going to, we may be needing to use the public comment to get the present, to have the presentations from the sponsors because of the fact that the meeting wasn't posted as a meeting of the whole town council. But I just wanted to mention that the town manager appointments that were scheduled, that were on the agenda, are the director of human resources and the director of public health. They are not actually going to be put forward today, but they will be put forward at our next meeting, which is on September 17. So do you have anything you want to say about that, Paul? Or? No, if you were going to get them today, it would be so late. And if we do it on the 17th, the council may act on it on the 21st. So there's, you'll have more time at this committee level to review the applications. And we'll have other appointments as well at that time. Evan? Just clarification, I have on my calendar our next meeting Thursday, September 24th. Is that not correct? Oh. That is what I have as well. That's my bad, then. No, it's all right. It's on all the official documents I've been looking at. Yeah, mine too. Oh, well, interesting. I have it for the 17th. So I will double check. I've actually have a commitment on the 17th that I made based on the calendar that you gave us. As do I. So I'd prefer to keep to the 24th, if possible. I mean, I can change it if I have to. But everything I looked at said the 24th. So I agreed to a commitment on the 17th. OK, I did have it down on the 17th in the book. I just wanted to look at our calendar, which I, that this is all a surprise to me. And all of our meetings have been scheduled two weeks. Well, actually, I guess they're coordinated for this. I see. I had it down for both of those dates, which is kind of strange. So I had it down for the 17th and the 24th. OK, well, and I get it from community. That's that's fine, except that it will. How will that work with the with the appointments? Yeah. So the council's meeting the 24th and you're meeting on the 22nd. Are you being on the 29th as well, Athena, the council? Yeah. The 29th is a Tuesday. We were looking at dates for the master plan public forum, but not a regular meeting that Tuesday. We can't meet that Monday because I think it's the end of Yonkipar. It is. So we're meeting the 14th, the 21st, and tentatively master plan on the 29th. So for the department head, so we should think that through the department heads are the two department heads. I expect that by early next week, we will have finalized things I could get to you. But I can hold that to meet your schedules if need be because there's only 14 days to act on that. So you're saying if we're meeting on the 24th, then you would just hold it till then? I could do that. Yeah, I could use that means it actually doesn't get acted on by the council to the 29th. So I couldn't give it to you till the 15th. Yeah, I think I think I'll talk to the candidates. And if that's what the schedule is, we'll make the schedule work. OK, I will double check that, which I am not capable of joining it right at the moment. So OK. Yeah, OK. All right. So the main topic of the evening is the agenda item, surveillance technology by-law. And I think we're going to use the public comment period to hear the presentation from the sponsors because of the problem, the open meeting law problem that we have. Unless when we hear from Mandy Jo or Pat, they have some other idea. So I don't know. Let's see. Let me call on Pat and see what she's. Pat. I'm hoping that Mandy Jo won't be starting the presentation. OK. That's how we get it. OK, that's fine. Mandy Jo. So I think we need to know how many times we're going to get to speak during public comment because the original proposal was for us to make a preliminary presentation and then be able to answer questions on any questions you guys had on the questions you sent us and the answers we responded. If we only get to speak once, I think it would be better if we did that after we had a list of questions. OK, well, we could take your presentation during the public comment. We could hear from the town staff. And we have a second public comment where you could respond to questions. But, Alyssa? So this is not the way to solve an open meeting law problem. You can't pretend counselors are suddenly just members of the public in order to address an open meeting law issue. You didn't really need to post a joint meeting. The important part is that they're not deliberating on what we're going to be deciding is our recommendation. So they can give the presentation, just like if they weren't counselors. But when it comes to us then deciding, as long as you carve off and say, OK, now we're done with their presentation. Now we're going to hear from these other three people that are staff. Now we have some more questions for the presenters. OK, now we're going to stop talking to the presenters and we're going to deliberate as a TSO. When we deliberate as a TSO, as long as they don't participate, you're totally fine open meeting law wise. But just calling the members of the public and then figuring out ways to call on them multiple times as members of the public, that doesn't solve your open meeting law problem. That just looks like you're trying to violate open meeting law. So don't worry about the posting. It didn't happen. Don't worry about public comment. Just let them give their presentation. But when it comes time for TSO to decide what their recommendation is, if we're getting to that point tonight, if we're even getting to that point tonight, they aren't part of the roundtable discussion with us. Just like if, for example, Steve Schreiber is listening to this conversation, he doesn't get to be part of that conversation either. Not to pick on Steve, but he's not on the committee. I am. That seems reasonable to me. Does the committee agree? I do. Yes, that is what I actually thought was the case. So all right, why don't we go forward with that? We don't have anyone here for public comment. So why don't we just start with the actual presentation from the sponsors? I can bring them in as are they both already in? Yes. So why don't you just go ahead, Mandy Jo. She was going to present a refresher, and they were going to respond to our questions or provide any follow-up information from the questions that we asked. Is it possible to bring them in as panelists? Are they not already? No, they're still attendees. OK, let's see. How do I do that? You should be able to just click on them. I'm sorry. All right. Thank you. You're on, Mandy Jo. I was going to ask if we were ready. So my understanding of this first part was to just refresh on what this is and why Pat and I brought this and proposed this for the Council to adopt. This is a bylaw that would do two things. The first is it would ban the use by town entities of face recognition technology. And the second thing it would do is require a whole lot of transparency around the purchase, use, and acquisition, and storage, and all of that of any other surveillance technology by town departments or town staff. This is not a bylaw that affects anything that private residents or businesses or anything like that does. This is really directed at town staff, town departments, town employees, and the like. The reason we proposed this is because on the face recognition and the technology has been proven to be very biased and inaccurate as to certain specific types of individuals. And we do not believe that such technology and its biases should be used in this town. And the second reason is when you get into surveillance technology, things like body cameras, dashboard cameras, license plate readers that are used on the street. Those are just some examples. You get into things that not everyone might want their movements tracked or their video taken. And the storage amount and all of that, you start running into potential problems on who can use it, how it can be used, who can obtain it, what it can be obtained for, and all sorts of the like. And we felt that the acquisition of that, the use of that, if the town was going to do that, should be entirely transparent, should be approved by the council, the chief elected officials in town, and have a plan for what it's going to be used for, for how people could access the data that is generated by it. And a plan for tracking to make sure it is not used improperly in a biased manner. I would defer to Pat on anything else she wants to include in why we proposed this, but that's the short summary of this bylaw and why we proposed it. I think that was well done. I kind of would like us to see if we can get to the questions possibly. Not sure. Well, we submitted five questions to you, which you answered. We got your questions back on Friday, I think. And so I guess the question is whether counselors were satisfied with the answers. Do you have follow-up questions? We could show the questions if we are confident to do that. Do counselors have questions? George. Just a follow-up to mine, which was, do we actually use any of this? And if so, what do we use? The response was that there might be some use, but the sponsors weren't sure. There was a mention of the use of body, what was it, body cameras? Anyway, I'm just wondering if we actually use anything currently that is considered surveillance technology. And if so, who uses it and where? Can I speak? Yes, Pat. As far as I know, I believe the police department, but I'd like the chief to chime in, because he's the real one with the information. I believe that there are dashboard cameras in use in police cars in Amherst currently. Yes, Pat, that's true. We've had dashboard cameras in our March cruisers, not all of them, but all the ones that are used for patrol purposes for 25 years, probably now. I think we are the second agency in New England to get them. They're for evidentiary purposes, like vehicle stops. It is a part of transparency, in my opinion, but it is used in the court proceedings for if there's an arrest made for operating under the influence type of thing. But the other thing I can think we use them for is sometimes if we respond to large gatherings and disturbances, sometimes an officer can use them as a method to show the size of the gatherings, but it's essentially used for car stops and OUI enforcement. Thank you. You're welcome. The other question that has been, can you hear me? I'm sorry. Yes. I was just thinking today, and maybe I'm out of water, and I don't mind being put in my place. So just go ahead if you need to. But George's question about what's our legal liability for the town enforcing a bylaw where there is no state law, there are several house and state acts being presented that have been presented over the last couple of years in the state house. But the other thing that I thought of today and I wanted to bring up is I got involved in town politics to help pass the sanctuary bylaw. And we passed it in town meeting, not town council, way before there was any state even recognition of this being a possible issue. And we did it taking and knowing that at that time the federal government was possibly going to deny grants to police departments. And so that's one of the things that I've done that I'm really proud of is the work on that bylaw. And I think that this is my personal opinion, not a legal opinion, is that our going ahead with the surveillance technology bylaw would be a similar kind of thing in the sense that we would be ahead of the state. Thank you. Any other questions about the council's answers to the questions? Does anyone have the desire for me to pull them up? George? Just, I'm sorry. There are other hands up. And I apologize and people can't. Oh, I am sorry. I'm sorry. Dorothy? On the question of, let's see, number four, is our understanding correct that the bylaw serves to inform grant applications and expenditures but doesn't prevent their purchase unless the council votes against funding the budget item? And then is it true that the council will have no control when it's purchased by a grant? And the answer was that everything will have to get approval by the council that even applying for the grant prior to getting the technology. I just kind of wondered who ruled that. I'm not saying anything against it. I'm just wondering is that an opinion of whom? What's the source of that understanding? Hi, May. Manager? It's the wording of the bylaw. Section C1 of the bylaw states that the town manager shall seek approval from the town council as set forth in the bylaw prior to the town seeking funds for acquiring, using, or entering into an agreement to acquire, share, or otherwise use surveillance technology. Seeking funds for would be seeking a grant for the acquisition of such technology. So I guess the question is, you can just do a bylaw, and then it's true. Is that what it is? Well, the bylaw creates a law that then needs followed. OK. OK. Thank you, Alyssa. So I and Mandy Joe is probably the best person to ask this then because of her experience on the Charter Commission, but I asked that specifically because I thought just saying it in a bylaw did not necessarily mean it was going to be true if it conflicted with our charter. And I might be persuaded to argue that our charter gives the authority to the town manager to enter into contracts and seek grants in ways that do not require town council approval. So I'm having a hard time reconciling those two concepts. I guess that information in terms of why that question would ask would have been helpful. I'd have to go back to look at the specific wording of the charter. If it conflicts with the charter, it would not be enforceable. The charter beats town bylaws. But the legislative and chief policy authority is set with the town council. So there could be an argument made that this is a policy decision the council is making. And so it would not conflict with the charter. We'd have to go to specific sections of the charter to determine whether it conflicts or not. Well, I just want to follow up that I can't support it until I know it doesn't conflict with the charter because I'm not going to pass a bylaw wondering if it's going to conflict with the charter. So I just wanted to make that clear. And I don't know why that wasn't clear when I asked the question last time. So my argument on that would be that's GOL's determination of whether the bylaw is actionable or not. And GOL's been the body of the council that is charged with making those decisions and determinations. And they're the ones that are charged with talking to town attorney about issues like that. OK, moving on. Thank you, Mandy Joe. Evan? Yeah, so I want to first apologize to Mandy and Pat because I was not able to get my questions in time in writing. And as you can imagine, I have quite a few. Which is mostly just because it was a very long bylaw. And so I just have some, and this is not my field. Once you all write a wetlands bylaw, we'll be good. But I'm trying to pick out, I guess, the main things. I guess one of my questions was about, I have the other thing is I wrote section and numbers and not what they are. So C5, which I think is the technology specific. Where am I looking actually? Technology specific surveillance use policy. I guess I was just a little bit confused about that because in my reading of the bylaw, it referenced a few times like if necessary, if necessary. But I wasn't clear about when such a policy is necessary or who makes the determination about technology specific surveillance use policy being necessary. So the first item is the definition of technology specific surveillance use policy is a policy that is needed because the specific technology is not already covered under a general surveillance use policy. So you could in theory write a general surveillance use policy that covers a whole lot of different types of surveillance technology. And but if you're then seeking to acquire something that's not under that general one, you would then need to write a specific surveillance technology specific surveillance use policy. I hope that kind of clears that one up. So maybe this actually then gets at some of my confusion over the surveillance use policy. I thought that my understanding was that the surveillance use policy was a sort of broad umbrella of whenever we're using any type of surveillance use, these are the policies around state of attention and authorization training. But is it that the surveillance use policy would also list the specific types of surveillance technology that that use policy applies to? Yes, I think so. I'm looking at the definition of what surveillance use policy shall include at a minimum and the purpose, the specific purposes for the surveillance technology and the authorized use. And so the surveillance technology, you'd have to identify which surveillance technology is covered under the surveillance use policy. So I hope it's okay then, I'm just continuing Darcy. So then basically two, three, four, five, six, all of that stuff under the surveillance use policy is expected to be detailed for every surveillance technology that the town uses. So it could be generalized. So for example, there's body cams and there's dashboard cams. If we owned both, you could generalize to the data collection of both, the data protection, especially something like data protection and data access, who has access to certain data that is collected, who has protection. It could be generalized to if the data is collected under a certain department, that department or the certain people in that department have access to the data collected for this group of surveillance technology. If it's a license plate reader, maybe only the parking enforcement officers have access to the data, no one else. And so you could generalize the surveillance use policy in that way. And so it wouldn't have to be data collection for this specific technology or this specific technology. It could be groups of technology. So, and I'm just trying to play this out using that example. So we had body cams and dash cams. We could say, okay, basically police department cameras are covered. So that would mean that they got, and I know this doesn't exist, but let's say that the police department got an under vehicle camera, that would be now covered, even though it's a new technology that would be covered under the surveillance use policy, or would they would now need a technology-specific surveillance use policy because it's not something that was initially covered under the surveillance use. I guess I'm trying to visualize when the technology-specific one gets triggered since it's this additional report and not just an amendment to the overall surveillance use policy. So I believe it would get triggered if it was a new technology not covered under the surveillance use policy. It depends on how you obviously write it. Most of the stuff is the same. So here's a thought in terms of that. You'd write a technology-specific one for maybe a new piece of technology and then you could add that into the general surveillance use policy at a different time or at a later time or combine them at some point, but if they're deemed, if the technology is deemed sufficiently different. I have other questions about it. I'll yield to other people so that they have time. Okay, we'll alternate. George. I think I'm beginning to get this, but just to get back to the intent of the bylaw, essentially to forbid under any circumstances the town acquiring any kind of facial recognition technology. And then secondly, with things like body cams and dash cams, which apparently are the only, well, apparently it's just dash cams. I'm still back to my question. Is there anything else that we own or use? And right now the answer seems to be, it's just dash cams that we've had for five years and that's it. Now, again, I'm still open to learn more about what it is we own that falls under this bylaw. But at the moment, my understanding is it's just dash cams. I see Sean, is this the end up? Yes, Sean, would you like to add something? Yeah, I mean, just with how broad the definition is of surveillance when you look at all those items, there's probably lots of things in town that would fall under those types of items. I think Sean Hannon mentioned the RFID section. There's some inventory type activities we have that might fall under that. The schools have cameras on the buses and vans. They have the ones outside, but they also have the ones inside. We talked about whether or not this policy, this bylaw governs if we use surveillance cameras that we don't own, but are owned by other entities. So for example, like the region has cameras inside the middle school and high school where this bylaw governs those. So again, with how broad the definition is of surveillance there probably are several things that we would really have to think about to see if they fall under this bylaw. That's helpful, Sean, thank you. Because again, back just to my understanding of the bylaw's intent, it's with those kinds of things, however many they turn out to be, that the purpose of the bylaw is to provide, apparently a very high level of transparency. So everyone knows that we own them. Everybody knows what happens to the data that's collected. Everybody knows where they are, et cetera, et cetera. And now I'm asking the sponsors. That's my very crude and somewhat simple minded understanding of the intent of this bylaw is to forbid any kind of facial recognition technology, which the best of my knowledge, the town has had no interest in acquiring and has no interest in acquiring, but nonetheless forbids that. And for all these others, you want a kind of high degree of transparency and accountability and you want reports on a yearly basis accounting for all this from the town manager. It's kind of my crude attempt to explain this to a constituent. Is that, to the sponsors, is that an accurate, I mean, well, it's a lot more complicated, but is that basically the intent here? Pat, do you want to answer that one? Or would you like me to? I'd like you to, I'm sorry. I also want to tell the group that I have to bow out at eight o'clock and I apologize. I have a commitment that I can't follow through on. So I'm relying a lot on Mandy tonight. Yeah, so George, yes. The answer is in general, yes. That is the intent of this policy because we've seen throughout the nation when things like body cams are adopted or instituted or dashboard cameras or license plate readers or the license plate reader that's on the mass pike. People adopt them, start using them, but don't think about what happens to the data say and who can get to the data and how long you're going to actually retain that license plate scan that you used was originally used to determine whether there was a parking violation, but now three years later can potentially if it's still kept be used in a divorce proceeding or some other type of proceeding like that. And so the purpose of this bylaw is to before any of that is acquired if it hasn't been acquired. And then if this bylaws enacted for everything that is currently there to say to force those decisions to be made to be written down so that people know what is accessible, how long it will be there, who can access it, whether the public can access it, who gets to do it under third parties if it's not your data in that you're not in it. Say it's someone else seeking data for random license plate on a license plate reader. And if someone complains about its use or something how that's going to be dealt with. I don't know whether there are policies for the RFID readers or the bus cameras in the buses at this point or even the data that is collected for parking right now. But the goal is to say, look, we're collecting a ton of data that has privacy implications, tremendous privacy implications. And we want the public to know how the town is going to handle it. Thank you, Mandy. Evan. Yeah, so I'm gonna ask two questions because I think the first one's probably just a yes or no question. And then I had one, the second one's a little bit more complicated. So just a confirmation, I'm in, oh geez, where am I? Sorry, I wasn't. F3, looking at that. So my reading of this is even if the council approves the acquisition or use of a surveillance technology, if we later get an annual surveillance report and feel like it's problematic, we can order the discontinue of that you, we can basically say, yeah, we told you you could get this, we told you you could use it, but now that we've seen some complaints we're telling you to stop. That's the correct interpretation of that section. Okay, thank you for that. And then I guess the second one's a little bit more complicated. I guess I'm just trying to wrap my mind around the idea that in some way, and I know that Paul won't read into this comment too much, but in some ways where the town manager, if he's submitting one of these reports, it's because him or our department is seeking to acquire and use some surveillance technology that they think will be beneficial to them. And sort of in that light, when I'm looking at things like they have to talk about privacy concerns or they have to talk about potential impacts of community members or marginalized communities. I don't know, there's sort of a weirdness of, I don't know how to phrase this. Do we feel like it's okay to sort of take at face value the statement, oh, this won't have any privacy concerns or this won't have any disparate impacts on a marginalized community, considering the whole purpose of the form is a request to purchase the technology. Does that make sense when I'm asking? I guess there's a weirdness I feel to say, I'm gonna come to you and I'm gonna tell you I wanna purchase this technology, but you're also gonna trust me that I'm gonna tell you the potential negative impacts on marginalized communities of this technology. Like why would I tell you that if I wanna get that? Why would I say I want to get this technology and also it's gonna discriminate against communities of color? Pat, do you wanna handle that one? I'm gonna ask the chief of police to respond to some of that if that's possible because I'm not sure, Evan. Right, he didn't write, he didn't write the bylaw. So I think you're asking- I mean, I've read the bylaw and I still can't understand half of it, but the only one. Yeah, I think this is actually a question for the sponsors, because I think this is about the design of the bylaw of, and again, and I know that the town manager or the chief police won't take offense to this, but there is a level of we are trusting the people who are wanting to acquire this technology to be transparent if it's going to have negative impacts. And is that common for other communities, I guess I should say, when workable? I'd like to hear an answer. I'm not quite sure what technology there is out there that we could do something. One thing that we do know about facial recognition technology is that it is racist in the sense that it has been designed using Caucasian faces. And so therefore, the impact of it is affects a minority community. It also affects women more and Asians also. So we know that technology is flawed. This idea of trust is very interesting to me because I keep thinking I can trust people and then I find out, oh, maybe I have to think about this. So what I'm hearing a little bit is you're saying, Evan, you wanna buy some technology. You know it has some negative impact on women, on identifying women and you decide to hide that. So it seems to me that what I'm hearing is that we have to have some sense of how we, as the town council, will evaluate the technology for those disparate impacts. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess, you know, and I'm looking, I'm sorry, I'm trying to flip through this bylaw, but it's, y'all wrote a lot. But you know, I'm looking at like F2G, the annual surveillance report, you know, or any of these, you're looking at whether civil rights and liberties are experiencing disparate impacts. And I guess the, where I'm getting a little bit confused is one, I'm just not sure how the town manager is supposed to know in his report whether or not these communities are experiencing disparate impacts. And I also, there's a part of me that's like, if the intent of the town is to acquire and use this technology, how can we evaluate whether or not their statement on disparate impacts or the ways it could violate privacy is actually correct because, you know, facial recognition technology, you just pointed out, of course, you guys are looking to ban that. But if I personally, if you weren't looking to ban it and I wanted to get facial recognition technology, it would feel weird for me to submit a report to you. This is, we wanna buy facial recognition technology. And by the way, all of the data shows that it discriminates against people of color and women. Like it seems like I wouldn't put that in the report. So there's just, I guess, I guess there's a weirdness about it that I'm trying to navigate. Is there anyone else who wants to comment on this topic? And do you have anything else that you wanna say about that, Mandy Jo or Pat, or the town manager? I mean, I would say there is a weirdness to it, right? But the people using it in some sense are the ones receiving the complaints or the ones that might be best knowledgeable about whether it does have a disparate impact. Take something like body camps if they were adopted and immersed and there was a decision to only turn them on in certain types of incidents or for certain types of calls. Well, maybe that decision is for a call that only ever gets made by women or something or only is ever against women or is only ever against Asians or something. You'd be able to see that the only people ever recorded on that video are women or Asians or something like that and the data would show the disparate impact and it would be hard to then justify that there isn't one. And so, yes, in a sense, it seems a bit strange at the same time, the data will help make that case one way or another and the plan that given Darcy's question about why were we saying what the plan might be versus set forth the plan for some of this, setting forth a plan at least helps address the potential for disparate impacts. Thank you, Mandy Jo. Dorothy, you had another question on that? Yes, I'm still having trouble with the disparate impacts. If it was done using Caucasian faces and it does better with men, then if it identifies a man or you're used to identify a man, it would mean that that photo would be more likely used to convict that man. If you know that it's rather poor at distinguishing one black person's face from another, then it would seem to me that using it in the court of law would not be a slam dunk. So that's point one. So I have a little problem with calling it racist because the people it was set up and practiced to do, I guess it might identify them. Secondly, there's a lot of, I assume, cameras already out there in town because we were told the ballot box was under video surveillance. I assume there are video cameras in most equipment areas and equipment barns. And I did have another question which is in workplaces, I am strongly suspect that cameras are in many places and workplaces. And I guess I wanted to be sure there was a policy that the workers in that workplace know where those cameras are and that there are no hidden cameras. You're talking about town workplaces, Dorothy? In any town-owned property that has, I mean, people tend to have cameras if they have property and no one, they're 24 hours a day watching it as a way of protecting the property. Okay, thank you, Dorothy. I'd like to say something about the first part of her question, if I might. I'm saying that it's racist because it has been proven through studies that it misidentifies people of color. It misidentifies Asians. The faces of African-American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators where an image is compared to thousands or millions of it. When the technology was designed, it focused on Caucasian facial features, okay? And so that it is very inaccurate doing people of color. So if I were making this technology, I would be looking there to change it. So I call it racist because the actual data that was put in excluded people of color and therefore has a disparate impact on them. Does that make sense too? Thank you. It does, but then we have to call most medical trials racist, which don't include women or people of certain age. No, we do. I think the racism comes in the use. Now, I guess my thing is when you're talking about matching the technology, so you're saying that even though they know this is not really that good, they present you with somebody and say this is the person. In other words, they present with a strong verdict. Yeah, and they arrest that person and create an arrest record for that person, even though he's identified them. Because I have people who I know through the alternative to violence program that I'm involved with, I'm sorry, I'm tired, that have been misidentified and are in prison and where the Innocence Project is working with them. So it's a proven fact. Okay. So it's not just my going out and going, you're a bad person. They're bad because they're... So the part was it doesn't acknowledge its weakness is what you're saying. Yes. Okay. Okay, let's move on, Alyssa. Thank you. And so it's okay if these don't get fully answered right now, but following up on what Dorothy asked about, I'm not really again, sure how to reconcile the idea that the only surveillance technology we have in town is dash cams on police cars, yet we were just told at a previous town council meeting that there was surveillance technology being used to watch the ballot box. It seems to be the surveillance technology in item 10 is defined. So I'm not clear why we're not getting like a list of the surveillance technology. I wonder if people are still like just thinking surveillance technology means something else when in fact you've defined it as a lot of things. Which following on that as to what it is that are a lot of things, maybe you have a quick answer to this and maybe you don't, but parking machines. So I mentioned way back when we first talked about this that I had been frustrated that no one cared when and I mean no one, meaning the select board just looked at me like I had two heads when I brought it up as did the staff about the fact that when we got the parking machines when you had to put in your license plate number because of to me exactly what Mandy Jo was speaking of before you put in a technology, but depending on how you keep track of the data you get from the technology you might find yourself in a different place than where you originally intended to be with using the technology even with all good intentions particularly when third parties are involved as they are with our parking machines. So I'm confused by the fact that on the one hand it says automatic license plate readers do count as surveillance technology under A2, under B where it talks about what's not surveillance technology, it talks about parking ticket devices and related databases, parking acts and then also in item seven, parking access and revenue control systems and town. I don't know what all these words mean. And so I would just like a practical application of is the data that people are putting themselves which is literally the only way they can pay to park they have to put their license plate into park. Is that data then not covered by the surveillance technology based on those two clauses or is it or is it actually and that those two clauses are referring to something else? So I'll answer that one. The way this is written number seven presumes that a lot of places take Smith College has a parking garage with an automatic gate monthly card readers might have monthly card holders might have a card that has an RFID or something that you just hold up to it. That would not be included in surveillance technology and therefore to purchase that or to utilize it or anything you would not need council permission or you would not need to institute a surveillance use policy. Similarly, a parking ticket device and the related databases would also be excluded from it as this is written. Obviously these types of exclusions can be if people want certain things in we can remove them from exclusions. If there are things that people want excluded we could put them in exclusions. This is part of the policy decision as to what needs a surveillance use technology and all the policy and all the related stuff and what doesn't. For example, the electronic card readers things people use to get into town hall would not be included on this. And so to answer the first question the reconciling the wheeling of dash cams we wrote that with a when I talked to the manager probably a year ago now and mentioned I was looking at drafting something like this. His off the cuff comment without having seen a definition was well maybe dash cams or something but we generally don't have stuff but that's without seeing a definition until you actually go through the definition as Sean has said. It's hard to identify exactly what in town we have that constitutes surveillance and that's why that answer was there that said we believe even though that was said it was said that way because there wasn't an actual reading of a definition when you actually get down to the definition and start thinking we were sure there will be stuff and as has been identified there is stuff and the purpose is as Dorothy was saying maybe the employees should know that there's a camera there watching their every move during the day. Maybe we should know exactly what's held and how long that video was kept and who has access to that video and how they get access to it. Maybe that's a good thing and maybe no one knows right now and that's what this policy is trying to address. Thank you. Paul has had his hand up off and on and I would really like to hear what he has to say. So I defer to the counselors so the team that's here today has reviewed this so when it first was presented it was talked about what Pat was saying which is facial recognition technology and that's what we were thinking cameras. This definition is so much broader and it includes all kinds of things so I think that one of the things that the chief already references is that for all of us who read it it was pretty hard to understand and we didn't know if we would be complying with the bylaw or not because we didn't understand it and I think a normal person reading it would find it a challenge to understand and we spent some time with it. The second thing I think as the technology expands a lot of things that we buy have this kind of technology in it whether you like it or not. I mean my telephone has facial recognition technology in it. I can't take that out of it. It's in there, it can be turned off but it doesn't mean that it's on and almost every computer that we buy or every pad that we buy has some kind of fingerprint or facial recognition technology in it at this point in time and sometimes we don't even know the depth of that and Sean Hannon can talk to that as well. He's ready to talk about that. So I think it might present a challenge for any new technology that we move into and I guess I just wanna make sure that we're talking, because the why do we need this? It sort of morphs between, it merges or jumps back and forth between facial recognition and the sort of proven racist technology that that has versus overall sort of this surveillance society that we're starting to wind up in. And I think the reason why is needs to be really explicit about what is the purpose of this. So and we have notes for the entire bylaw if you want us to go through that whenever the counselors are finished with their questions we're prepared to do that. Thank you. Okay, let's see if we have any more counselor questions before we get to the staff. George, no? I'd like to hear from staff. I have a number of comments but it's just me blabbering on so let's hear from the people actually would be affected by this I'd be very much interested in what their thoughts and concerns are. I have many, but I'd like to hear from them. Okay, do we wanna go to Sean now? Can't hear you, there we go. So I will be sort of walking it through and then Sean and Tim and Scott and Sean Mangana will jump in as we get through this and we're not gonna go to all the details just the higher level things that we've identified. So do you want us to spend time doing this? It'll take me a little bit of time. Yeah, we have time. Okay, good. So under definitions, B1 annual surveillance report. So this is what I was saying before the facial recognition technology is built into just about every tablet and laptop we buy. It's on by default if the intention is to only report on use of face recognition technology for searching for someone it should be clarified and there's additional comments on that. I had the same question I haven't had under B2 disparate impact. What are the standards that we would be applying to that and how would you know if I gave you the right report and that was useful? Some of the things under as we go down 9A2 like automatic license plate readers, there's a lot of things that we collect in terms of license plates which are visible to the, you know, anybody walking down and you know, but I'll make sure that this is, you're just talking about technology not if someone were walking down the street writing down license plate numbers that wouldn't be applied this and we collected that information that's not the intent of this. There are a number of things that we started to think about in terms of, you know, biometric surveillance technology right now, some restaurants you go into they take a temperature review and is that included in that? If we open town hall, we might have someone out taking temperature checks whether that's relevant or not anymore or if the schools may implement that, is that included in this that type of, you know, we've all been to places where they take your temperature before you go in. Didn't understand why gunshot detection and location hardware and services was relevant in this technology by law. We don't have it, but it was just a question I had. Surveillance enabled or capable light bulbs or light fixtures. And when we renovated my last office there were no lights, which is everybody when you walked in a room, it noticed you and it turned the lights on and when you left it turned the lights off it was an energy savings thing. Don't understand why that is would be included in this. Item 15 under a passive scanners or radio networks. I have a scanner, I listen to all the time with different networks of police channels and fire channels. Not sure if that is included. The RFID that's Sean Mingano referenced IT and that's a technology that's used and I think the library is going to be implemented that so there can be self-checkout. GPS, a lot of the DPWs are moving into having GPS facilities into all their vehicles so they can track them more accurately. It's done after negotiation obviously. Work at information kiosks to try to engage with people but a lot of these information kiosks have little, they're monitoring the chirps that are automatically coming from your phone to see who's walking by, they're collecting that data that's marketable data. I get why that would be a concern to folks. Under B9B, again, under, we would want to have where it says routine office hardware we want you to mention mobile devices. Again, so tablets and phones. Again, we frequently use face recognition technology or biometric surveillance technology which is the fingerprint for authentication purposes. So, and Sean Hannon, these are all his comments actually. B9B, we talked about the library automated checking, HVAC systems, the system currently uses air sensors but future upgrades may add sensors to determine occupancy for energy savings. Network troubleshooting tools. Sean, they use a passive scanner radio networks for analyzing wifi signal strength and our access points have some troubleshooting tools built in that analyze signal strength and connectivity. We do a GIS flyover every 10 years over the entire town to get access to the network. To the entire town to collect topographical information, collect things like that. Zoom and Teams, they will likely be adding new technologies as we go through this. Under C, what is it? C, page three, I'm looking at C2A and 3A. It looks like the same type of language but they were different language and I couldn't really parse the difference why they were phrased differently. It looks like they're pretty much the same but I was just like, if they're the same, they should be written the same. What else? I'll just pick the big ones. Under on page six, E1, there wasn't really a timeline first for the town council to act. Once I predispredise to produce a report to the council, the council could take no action and then we'd be sort of in limbo for as long as the council wanted to act on that. So one of the questions we had was, what if you have the equipment that has the technology in it but you don't have it turned on or we try to disable it if we can? The annual report, I always worry about requiring an annual report because I would rather have it be a report on request once a year because the more and more reports you require on an annual basis, someone's going to forget one somewhere down the road and then they're going to get in trouble for it. On page eight now under G, so we have a video management system that records the security cameras and each one of these points, Sean Hannan can go in more detail if you want. On page nine under G, B, G2B, the wording is just odd because it says that the department head may apply a technical patch or upgrade and that seems odd to say that it has to be a department head that has to apply the patch. It doesn't allow a staff member to do that. And H says, but that's the same thing with some things that are automatic, if these things are automatically turned on, the facial recognition stuff, we can turn it on off, I think. So, and I guess I just looked to Sean Hannan actually to first to see if there's anything that made your issue. You went through this most closely, what your take on it is. If that's okay with you, Darcy. Sure. Okay. Yeah, I think you covered everything that I have. Yeah, I think you covered everything that I had on the list. So I think it might make more sense for anything that we want to go into specifically just to answer questions that come up about that. One question that I have for you, Paul, is that are you going to be providing your comments to us in writing? I can. Because that would be helpful to get those comments on each one of the subsections. I'm sure the sponsors are probably taking notes anyway, but it would be good for- We can detail them, sure. And to be able to pass that on to the other committees and to the council and so on. Of course. Mandy, Joe. On me. Sorry, if I may, I'd like to respond to one of the biggest concerns I heard the town manager identify, which is the definitions. Many of the things that he was identifying would not be classified as surveillance technology. Because when you read the very first paragraph under surveillance technology, when you get rid of all of the commas in the lists, it's any electronic surveillance device that is capable or things that are collected capable of being associated with or identified an identifiable individual or group. So, and then it goes on to say system device or vehicle that is equipped with some surveillance device that is capable of identifying and is being associated with an individual identifiable individual. So something like a self-checkout scanner is probably not going to be included. And things like the GIS, you're not capable of identifying an individual when you're scanning a whole town. Light switches, they're tracking movement, not who actually is in the room. So things like that aren't part of surveillance technology because they're not intended and they're not capable of really identifying an identifiable individual. Cause that's an individual whose identity can be revealed by the data or revealed when it's analyzed. So maybe the scanner technology would but that doesn't mean it can't be acquired. And that's part of this. It might be there but you have to have that, just the policy. It doesn't mean you can't have the technology. And that's the other important thing I think to remember. If something falls under this definition, and again, I said the definition is something that could be managed for what we're most concerned with. But it doesn't prevent us from acquiring, say that checkout scanner if it falls under this definition. It doesn't prevent us from acquiring certain iPads that have fingerprint recognition on it. It just means we have to have a policy on how it gets used and how the data is stored. The facial recognition gets a little more complicated. And I heard that, but I wanted to just talk about that definition. It's not just anything that happens to be electronic. It has to actually acquire data that makes something someone individually identifiable when you read the definition. So I'm reading the last phrase and it says, or any system device or vehicle that is equipped with an electronic surveillance device, hardware or software? Yeah, but the electronic surveillance device is something that is specifically associated with or capable of being associated with any individual, identifiable individual or group. Okay. Are we, do you have, do you want to have other staff presenting? Anybody, you should jump in guys, people. Or just respond to questions. Sean. I guess, do you want to go ahead, Sean? No, I'm sorry. I mean, the major questions I had were, Andy, Joe, I'm not sure. So is the intent to do away with the current systems we have in our vehicles for evidentiary purposes that we've had for 25 years? I get the whole facial recognition thing, but the transparency part and down the road with potentially getting body cameras, isn't that something we want? We want the transparency. That's why we would be enacting this by-law. So maybe I read the by-law wrong or we didn't understand it because it sounded like we didn't want to have that technology available to us or use it. So the only technology that Pat and I believe should never be acquired in this town is facial recognition technology, which is why there's a ban. And that's because it has been shown to be so biased. And I'm with you on that. Other technology, Pat and I actually have some disagreements on whether body cameras, we can get into whether they're good or not. But the purpose of this is not to say, no, you can't acquire them. The purpose of this by-law is to say, if you want to acquire them, let's make sure the whole town knows and that the chief elected officials have said, yes, that's a good idea. And then that there's all of these policies in place. So the intent is not to get rid of, say dash cams, but the intent would be, let's make sure we have a policy for how they get used and how all that data is stored and retained and who accesses it and who in the public can get access and stuff. And some of that access and all would be controlled by state law. And whether it's an open, whether it's a public record under state law and all some of that would be, some of it you have choices though, I'm sure, on how long to retain and stuff like that. And so this would make the choices that are made that aren't controlled by state law or that state law gives you choices set down in writing somewhere that anyone could figure out and see. That's true. Sean, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, I guess I would just like Manny Joe's opinion on like the cameras on buses or vans. So we read the section under with the exemptions. So security cameras, it sounds like are exempt. And I just don't know, would those be considered security cameras if they were on the bus of the van? I just don't know how we would define security for things like that. You know, my intent is security cameras, whether they're on a building or on a bus or a van are there to protect a worker, not to necessarily surveil the people getting on and off the bus and therefore would be exempt. If the purpose of them is to actually surveil and keep track of whether someone getting on and off a bus is misbehaving and then their uses, the main use is intended for things like making, you know, for purposes of if there's a violation of a rule or a law then it would be considered surveillance technology in my mind. Okay, so just on that example, so say the cameras on the buses were surveillance under the definition here, would the school have, or Paul have to get permission every time a new one was purchased or a replacement one was purchased or would he just need approval the first time and then create a policy and then it would be sort of approved going forward? Because those cameras get replaced often, you know, just wear and tear and things like that. So once a specific type of surveillance equipment is approved by the council once, would it be sort of approved going forward or would it have to be approved every time? So my understanding is that once a specific type of surveillance technology is approved, as long as it remains the same type of technology, it remains approved unless given the reports yearly or whatever, the council pulls that approval based on reporting of disparate impact. Okay, and then the last thing really to that, and again, I don't know if these things are issues or not, but just sort of for awareness. I believe that there are some things in the collective bargain agreement potentially around those cameras on the buses and vans. I'm not positive. I know there was with the ones in the buildings and I'm not just, I don't know if they conflict or if there's any issues there, but it's just something to be aware of. Could you repeat that one? I believe there may be something in some of the collective bargain agreements related to the cameras, because when they did put the cameras out, they did think about policies and procedures, at least the ones that are on those buses and vans at the school. So it would just be to make sure that there's no conflict between some of the work the school has done and this bylaw. And if there is conflict, how those kind of mesh. So I mean, I would say that that is likely part of the policy that would be adopted for the use of that technology. There's the bylaw provides for, that's why there's a surveillance technology policy, right, use policy, and then technology specific use policies. It's so you can say, here's some of some of the rules and some of those rules would probably incorporate the collective bargaining agreements and all into them. Okay. Any others, yeah, Sean? Yeah, I think I just have two of them. So one is on the face recognition we're not asking about using it for surveillance purposes, but if it's used for authentication purposes to log on to a tablet or a laptop, is that, it seems like that, is that exempt? Does that, I guess, where does that fall? And then the other question was if the library is gonna do an RFID book checkout system and automated material handling, would that be appropriate under an exemption or should that basically be applied for with a policy to go along with that? So my answer to both of those would be, it probably depends. So if the council or if this committee through conversations believes that library RFID checkout system should not be considered surveillance technology, it could be added to the exemptions. I'm not sure it is in the exemptions right now. I'd have to read them really closely thinking about that specific technology because presumably the card for an individual is attached to an individually identifiable person. So using that technology, if used for the purposes of checking out versus I think some of them have stuff now when you walk through to make sure it doesn't get stolen, but that's not used for the checkout purposes. But it could certainly be considered as added to the exemptions. As for the facial recognition, my brief quick read tonight is that that type of use would be banned. We can certainly, that's an issue that is understandably concerning given where sign-in things are right now, Pat and I had to leave, but Pat and I will certainly have to discuss whether and how something like that could be added into an exemption into this for the ban, because the whole purpose of the facial recognition ban is much more on a law enforcement grounds more than a security of devices. So that's certainly a question Pat and I will have to go back and read. I think right now as written, it would prevent the purchase of devices that include that type of technology, even if used solely for sign-in purposes, which is how I use my phone. So we'd have to go back and read carefully to check to see if that is the case. And if so, consider somehow exempting that from section H in terms of the ban, because section H is the one that bans the use of that technology. And so an exemption could be added to that for such purposes. Thank you, Wendy-Jo. Do we have any more like direct comments or questions from Chief Nelson or Chief Livingstone or any of the other staff before we go to answer questions? Yeah, sure. A question, I guess. We're looking at the UAS on that aerial systems, which of course have cameras. Now they aren't surveillance equipment, but we would use them for train training or emergencies, that type of thing. Where does that fall into all of this? In your opinion, Manny-Jo. So, again, I'd have to read the definitions really closely. My intent is not to have fall under this by-law technology that's primary use or main primary use is not for surveillance. So I would like some security cameras potentially to fall under it, but not all. Depends on what they're being used for. But something like a drone being used to monitor fire, which I think Chief Nelson is where you're going in some of this stuff that has the potential to identify someone maybe that's underneath the fire, but maybe not. But the intended use is not surveillance of people. The goal is not to make the town jump through hoops for that type of technology. And I do admit that the definition of surveillance technology is fairly broad because there's a lot of things that we don't want someone claiming the use is not for that type of surveillance when it technically is for that type of surveillance. And that goes back to Evan's question of if someone really wants it, how would they admit that it's biased? If someone really wants it for surveillance, but you could make a case that it's not for individual surveillance, would someone admit that it's not for, that it really is for surveillance? So the goal is not to prohibit technology that really isn't meant for individual surveillance or to cause hoops to go through for technology like that. But more of a goal that if it really has privacy concerns, I guess that's the biggest thing. The intent is to protect privacy concerns of people that don't even know they're getting data surveilled on them. It's to protect that. And so if that's not the intent of technology that's being purchased, I'm not necessarily myself looking to regulate it under this bylaw. And it sounds like from all these concerns, Pat and I really have to go back to that definition and potentially tweak that to make something like that very clear. Yeah, well, for you, for us, the way we were planning to acquire, or this is through grants and they're federal grants. And there are some pretty good restrictions there in terms of we can't, we're not allowed, we wouldn't be allowed to record in anyone that's exercising their first amendment rights. You're not allowed allowed to do anything that would give you purposeful identity, identifiable in information, that type of thing. And so there's a pretty strict restraints on what we can do in terms of you using a drone, a drone camera, and that's on the federal level. We would have to comply with that. Yeah, and so if it would follow, if it would fall under this definition that those types of restrictions would be presented as the request is made to the council, if it does end up falling under this definition with, hey, if this grant is granted, it can't be used for these things, that's part of the use policy, that's part of this, and it's likely the council would say, great, you know, go for it, in some sense. Like you said, the goal is really a protect people's privacy. Okay, so let's take some of these council questions, Alyssa, would you like to start? Yes, and again, I realize some of these might just be answered in future as opposed to address now, because I know it sounds like, I gotta say it sounds a little bit like the sponsors are feeling very defensive and I think you've put a huge amount of work into trying to anticipate every one of these questions and it's really hard. And I appreciate that, I really kind of thought you summed it up when you said, well, I'd like security cameras, but not all to fall into this definition. Well, good freaking luck figuring out where to draw that line, because it's really complicated. So I will just run through my items quick. In terms of the definition, when we had the back and forth where Paul was concerned about the last phrase associated with or vehicle that is equipped with, and Mandy Jo said, no, that's not what it means. Well, I'm sorry, but the plain English reading of what that paragraph says is what that means. Paul's right on that one, Mandy Jo, you need to rephrase it if what you're talking about as I believe you is entirely about being associated with an identified individual or group, then you can't have that last sentence be after the semi-colon just as a tack on. Just, you know, it's like, don't bury the lead, right? It's about the individual or group. And so figuring out a way, I'm sure you probably already rephrased it like 15 times, but to try and do that again so that you don't have that added phrase at the end because otherwise that added phrase does mean what Paul said it means. Following up on the theory about the use of the bus cameras, like that the idea is it's protecting the employees, not looking to punish malfeasance of some kind, this call comes back to like literally everything you've discussed in terms of it's the initial intent of the technology and then the later usage, right? Ooh, it turns out we have some technology. We didn't realize maybe we could think we could use it for this. And that's gonna happen with bus cameras because part of the way it protects the adults, the workers that are there is that you have a way of finding out who is the kid who brought the firecracker in the back of the bus. The fobs and building cards similarly, right? So you have fobs and building cards, you say, well, we're not counting that as surveillance technology. Well, I guarantee you that if something gets stolen from town hall, there's going to be somebody that's gonna look at who was in the building according to the fobs and time cards. And so they could be punished or under more suspicion than they would be otherwise. You'd be foolish not to look at who was allegedly in the building or not based on their fobs. And then we find out their fob got stolen, right? And it's something completely separate. I'm a little concerned, but not as big as my other concerns on the enforcement where it appears to encourage people to sue us, which I didn't really think people needed any inducement to do. But, and I'm really not being facetious. I'm just not sure that we're sending, we're quite getting that right. I'm still going to say, and I know that Mandy and Joe and I disagree on this because we had this conversation about a previous item that was brought forward. I object to TSO spending time on something that GOL might not find actionable because it turns out that it literally is in conflict with our charter. That should have been known before we spent this much time on it. And then that could have been addressed then and we could find a way to fix it rather than it coming to us and then finding out. Yeah, actually, as it turns out, KP Law says, nope, Paul gets to decide. So too bad, so sad on that. Along those lines and concerns to the other thing, I totally get it on like all these things. I want to draw those lines too. I'm not sure we can do it without being like the king of surveillance technology. So in the meantime, I would really ask that the sponsors go back and think about if there's a way to strip it back to the original facial recognition ban, which I think everyone can easily support. And I think you can define facial recognition technology as opposed to some of these other technologies pretty clearly in a way that like all the staff, all the residents would understand what it meant and say, this is out. We just don't want this. This is our biggest thing. We pass that by law and we say, and given what we learned about developing that by law, we want to talk about all these other things too, but put that into some additional study to figure out where to draw some of those lines. And then maybe the next by law covers some of them, but not all of them. I really appreciate you trying to give us the full context here, but I don't think you're gonna be able to get this through in the current fashion that it's in, but you can absolutely get a by law pass which I think everybody would be fully supportive of banning facial recognition technology for all the reasons you talked about and then say, and this is only part one, we're moving on to the other parts as soon as you pass this other part and we're not sending it to committee to die, we're gonna actually work on all those other parts, but we get the facial recognition ban done right away because that to me is the critical one. Thank you. Gavin? Yeah, so I have a couple of things that I want to run through some of which are since like we're doing questions and comments, so I'll do those. I have a little bit of a concern over the grants aspect which is different from Alyssa's charter concern, which is that, I know from watching some town staff and others apply for grants and sometimes grants open and have very quick deadlines. And I have some concern if the town manager needs town council approval before even applying for a grant for technology which requires him to write a report, which and I'm just working, envisioning this through the town manager might support, might write a report to the council, the council might say, well, this needs to go to a committee, send it to TSO to consider for a recommendation on whether the council could approve and by then there we've missed the grant deadline. And so I guess I have a little bit of a concern for that and I'm wondering if maybe to deal with that concern and Alyssa's concern if maybe the grants thing can just be carved out completely and just deal with the actual procurement or acquisition instead of actually the grant application. I had the same question that I heard Paul mention which was C2 and C3, they just seem almost identical. Except one's police department and one is every department is not a police department and the only difference I could find was the statement about exigent circumstances which just seems like it's already sort of covered under D and so I guess I'm questioning, am I missing a difference? And if it is just that difference, is it necessary if section D already sort of covers that? And then two other just quick things that I'm trying my best to find really quickly. Oh, one was that the, you know, go to someone else and Darcy if you could come back to me because I'm getting lost in my notes. Sure, George. I'm at the stage of deliberation. So I'm not going to say anything. I think that people that have questions for either the sponsors or for our invited guests, we should get through with that. And then I think what I have to say should be under deliberation. So I'm just gonna be quiet and do people have other questions or either for sponsors or for these town staff? Yeah, Evan does. Yeah, okay. So I'll try and do this real quick because I found at least one of them. There's the surveillance policy and then the technology specific surveillance policy which I'll be perfectly honest even though it's been explained to me I still 100% understand what differentiates them and why it's not just an amendment to the surveillance use policy. But I noticed that they have almost identical comments except that the technology specific one doesn't include a complaint section whereas the surveillance one does. And I was curious about that. And then I'm looking at, I think it's F the annual surveillance report is submit an annual surveillance report pertaining to the police department. And then it says at the request of the town council any other town department. And I guess I'm just curious why the only one that's required to have a report is the police department and then the council can request. I assume the town manager would come to us and say, hey, I'm gonna write this. Do you have a request for any other departments? It seems weird to me that it's only the police department unless the council requests it and would that request come before the reports ran or would he give us the report and be like, hey, but we're also curious about IT. So I got a little bit confused there as well. And those are all of my questions and comments for now. Would you like to respond to that? I just want to respond to the annual report one. That was done when I first mentioned this to the town manager and I said that there would be an annual report requirement for the whole thing. He said what he said tonight and Pat and I talked and we thought given that our biggest concern is with this type of technology used through the police department that we would want that every year but that not knowing exactly what anything else might be covered or if we do approve something like say that checkout scanner or RFID for a library falls under the definition if this gets approved and the council said do it does the council really need a report on that every year? And it might not. And so our thinking was to try and accommodate the manager's concerns about having to do something every year with our desire to ensure that the really big potential concerns mainly at the police level where these technologies might be used to be arresting people that that would be reported on every year and everything else could come back to the council with the council saying we haven't had that in five years maybe we want something now or we haven't heard about this recently has anything changed or are you still using it? But to give the council the discretion to ask if they really want it on anything else. Other questions? Any other comments from the staff? Well, it looks like we have finished this portion of the meeting. So thank you very much all of you staff. You know, you were probably at the UMass meeting and then you had to come to this meeting. Really appreciate it very much that you spent the time here. So, but I think that we're probably gonna go to just the committee next to talk about what our next steps should be. So unless people have anything else they wanna ask or request of the remaining sponsor. So if you want, we could summarize everything in writing so the sponsors have the notes that we have and just wanna thank you for asking for our input on this. Yeah, no, it's been very informative. So I think we'll just go to back to our meeting. Basic or basic five. Thank you very much for attending. Thanks, Chief Nelson. So. Thank you, bye-bye. Can you move me back into the attendee? Sure, see if I can figure out how to do that. All right, so suggestions from, let's see what, let's have a time check here. Okay, it's 8.37, it would be nice to have a little bit of time to approve our minutes and talk a little bit about our next meeting. But part of that will be this discussion anyway. So thoughts about next steps. Looks like Paul is going to be providing some written memo about what their comments were plus all of the minutes that we'll have from this meeting. And I'm guessing that Mandy, Joe and Pat are going to take to heart some of our comments and suggestions and we'll come up with some form of new draft or another, that they'll wanna be talking to us again about changes in the definitions and so on different suggestions that people made at this meeting. So I'm kind of assuming that we will want to have another discussion with Pat and Mandy, Joe. I'd like to hear from people about whether they think there are other stakeholders that we should be hearing from. We just heard from the town and who are the other people that maybe will wanna be heard from on this issue. Dorothy? A question and a comment. Do you want to have some discussion of what we have heard now? And second, my question is, well, my statement, I really think it's time for a very brief break. No? Yeah. I think we only have about 20 more minutes in the meeting, but... I have a hard cut off at nine, so. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know what to tell you about that. That's fine. Alyssa? Just as we get used to our process, are we within step three? Is step three is not deliberation. I don't think we're in deliberation yet. No, step three is the formal presentation. Oh, yes. That's what we're doing. We just haven't... I mean, I just asked from the packet. Yes, we had formal presentation. Right, we had the formal presentation. And then looking at step four, it says has determined that it has sufficient information. It shall proceed to deliberation. But I feel like I'm kind of torn here. I appreciate what you said about the time check in terms of I want to hear what George had to say that he didn't want to put in at the other part of the meeting. And I want to hear kind of what everybody's thinking, because you heard some of what I was thinking. You might have heard some of what Evan was thinking. I want to hear what you're thinking, Darcy. Before we hear back from Mandy Jo and Pat again, in terms of figuring out what to do next, I'd like to hear, even though I know the way it's written here makes it almost sound like we wouldn't deliberate yet, but I kind of feel like we need to deliberate to figure out what we're doing next. That's... George, do you want to weigh in? Well, I think Alyssa's right. We really do need to talk about what we just heard. And now's the best time. And then figure out what we want to do next. Do we want to, in a sense, continue the formal hearing? Do we want Mandy and Pat to come back with answers to more questions? I'm leaning somewhat, and if I understand Alyssa correctly, I'm leaning in a somewhat different direction, which would be to suggest that, as she suggested, that they think seriously about, I mean, it's their bylaw in the end, but they think seriously of focusing on facial recognition, and then the rest of this, given the order of complexity, given the so many issues it raises, I don't really think that there's anything they can do in the next week or two that's gonna come back and solve all these problems. This is a really complicated and complex bylaw. And we don't have staff, we don't have rights, so, but I think there is a sense that facial recognition is something we can take a stand on. And that would be something that I think the Council could act on fairly quickly. So, I mean, my notes are basically, look, we've got a staff that's completely confused by this, we're confused by it, the sponsors are confused by it, it's not because anybody's stupid, it's complicated. And I think also there's a tension between tool and intent. I can use my iPhone and Surveill-11, right? So we're gonna ban iPhones, you know, you can use a lot of tools for bad purposes. And what we're hearing tonight are a whole lot of tools that are used for good purposes, but now seem to fall under this bylaw. And maybe that's what we want, but that seems to, I'm worried about creating undue burden on staff, I'm worried about, you know, suddenly we're not gonna be using tools that we really could use because people are worried about some, you know, connection to surveillance. There just seem to be a lot of issues here. And I'm not hearing a lot of bad stuff, I'm not hearing a lot of things about, you know, big brother is everywhere. It is so, I would suggest my comment would be, go back, focus on facial recognition, short and sweet. And then the rest of this is something that we have to have the town, the community, the council, maybe this committee as well. You need to have a lot more conversation about is my feeling right off the bat. I'm just worried about the complexity of this far beyond our capacity to manage, let alone staff to comprehend, causing more harm than good. I just wonder what KP law would do with this if we just headed to them as it is, you know. So that my thought is, let's, my suggestion, facial recognition, focus on that. Evan? Yeah, I would actually echo that. I have a lot of concerns about the bylaw and with regard to interpretation, I was interested in this sort of Mandy, who's the sponsor interpreted the definition of surveillance technology very differently from Paul and Alyssa. There's also a moment in there and I can convey this to Mandy directly about one area where her interpretation of fairly plain language is very different from how I interpreted it. And it seems like there's a lot of confusion around this. And so I wouldn't want to make any further steps without seeing the town manager's full notes and staff concerns. It sounds like the sponsors, or at least Mandy since she was here for that, are interested in making some changes to reflect some of those concerns, especially around definitions. But I would actually echo George and Alyssa, I think that the concerns around facial, the facial recognition technology ban, there were fewer of those concerns. They seemed like they were easy to do. It seemed like it was just adding some language to specify I was talking about facial recognition in the context of law enforcement and not like to open my iPhone, although I have an old iPhone, so I don't got that. And also I would be willing to move forward with that. I think that it sounds like the police chief is very skeptical of the bylaw overall, but very supportive of at least that part of it. And I think that I think the town manager was made a good point when he said, there's essentially two issues this is trying to solve. One is the racist problems with facial recognition and the other is sort of the use of data and privacy concerns and in some ways those are different. And so I don't feel like we have to tackle them at the same time or together. And I also feel like in this moment and given the conversations that have been going on, if we can move forward with the facial recognition sooner, I think it's gonna take a while to get through the surveillance bylaw. I wanna see us do it, but it's gonna take a while. I think there's a lot of work to be done. I'd love to be able to get the facial recognition thing done sooner so we could show to the community that we've done that and that we're responsible. And honestly, it's a part of racial profiling and policing. So I think it's a piece of a puzzle of a conversation that's going on right now. And I would hate for that to get bogged down in the much more complicated surveillance part of this. So I would second Alyssa and George's suggestions to the sponsors. I mean, if they don't wanna do that, they don't wanna do that. But that would be my request slash suggestion. Dorothy? So am I clear? Is it true that then it never was sent to KP law because that wasn't made clear? So if it has not been, I don't wanna even discuss this until it has been looked at. It goes to GOL after it goes to us. Maybe there's something wrong with that, but. GOL wants to, sorry, KP law wants to see this when it's fairly close to what we actually, what the sponsors want it to be. And that's part of our job. Right, yeah, but you know, I just feel that some of the questions in terms of really maybe I want them to look at it twice because we could spend weeks arguing over it. And then they say, no, this and the other is not gonna work. I mean, it's just operating in a vacuum. So Alyssa? Sorry, that was the leftover. Oh, okay. So I guess I feel a lot like there was so much covered tonight and there were so many comments and so many back and forth. I feel like it would be fair to the sponsors to allow them to come back to us one more time to see what they come up with as a result of what we said tonight and what they heard from the staff because they heard a lot. And I guess I just feel like that would be fair. And then if we decide we want to do that, we could talk to them about that too. And if we end up dividing it into two sections, I personally feel supportive of the bylaw in general. I think that it may need to be amended in some of the ways that were mentioned tonight. And obviously the staff wants a lot of stuff clarified. And so, but that would be my suggestion just to put them on the agenda for the next meeting and see what they have come up with. Maybe I could ask them to send whatever they have in advance of the meeting so that we'll have more time to look at it. And I'm sure that they will have heard about what some people were suggesting here. And they may be, who knows, they may be just agreeable to put, make it into two parts. I don't know. So are people agreeable that we should just do that? Ask them to come back to the next meeting. And then we can have more of a, we'll have more time for our real deliberation. This subject seems like it requires more than 10 minutes. So I will do that unless other people. You have hands Darcy. George. I certainly think we need to hear back from the sponsors. I think you've heard three members of the committee make a very specific suggestion. So I guess one thing I'd like to hear from them is what they make of that suggestion. I personally, just speaking for myself, am not in any way optimistic that in the next two weeks or three weeks we'll talk in a minute about when our next meeting is but whether it's in two weeks or three weeks that they can resolve all of the issues that have been raised tonight to the satisfaction at least to this committee member. But you're correct if that's what they wanna do. But I think I'm hearing that that's a pretty daunting if not nearly impossible challenge. So I'm also, you know, we have other things we need to turn to. So I guess what I'm saying is that we have another to our meeting where, you know, we just go through this line by line with all kinds of more questions and problems and complexities and contradictions and da-da-da-da-da. I'm not sure what we're accomplishing, but. Melissa. Thank you. I move that the TSO recommends that the sponsors present a revised bylaw only banning facial recognition technology. I could second that. Can do too. I'm sorry. Melissa, can you just repeat that again? I didn't catch all of it. You got choppy. I can try. I move that the TSO recommends the sponsors present a revised bylaw only, you know, a revised surveillance technology bylaw that's limited to banning facial recognition technology. Okay, thank you. Does that sound right, George? No. I think you seconded it. I think what we're suggesting that they do and in this motion, it's just what we're suggesting. And they don't have to do it, but that's what we are suggesting in the committee. And so that's the motion. And I'm frozen. Okay, discussion. I agree. Yeah, I strongly disagree, but that's nothing new. So. Can you just briefly say why do you, I guess what you're saying is you feel that they could. I feel like we're just cutting them off at the knees. Here they've come. They've done all this work. They've, you know, the answers that Mandy Joe provided tonight in extensive detail about all the different parts of the surveillance technology bylaw. And now we're just, you know. They're free. They're free to ignore this. They're free to, you know, come back and say, we heard your motion, but this is what, we're still going to go ahead and present to you a revised version of what we presented to you last time that at least three or maybe four of you have said, but anyway, they're free to do that if they want. We're just expressing our thoughts at this moment as a committee and presented as a motion and the vote may be four to one and they can ignore it, I guess. The answers did not clarify things. The answers just revealed that there were more and more layers of complexity. I mean, that was the interesting part of the discussion is that I think we realized that we have this stuff built in everywhere all around us and there's no way out of it. I mean, our stuff comes with it, whether we use it or not. And it's very complicated. And I truly don't think that the kind of work that is necessary to explain it, deal with all of it, have get it so that the staff totally understands it and figures out how they could implement it can be done in a reasonable period of time. So I think that if we do what we follow through with this limited thing that gives them the time to see whether they want to break it up in any other small pieces or whether they want to keep working on it, but it's going to take a lot of time. It's a very complex system. We are in fact being surveilled at every level and some of the stuff Alyssa brought up, I hadn't certainly not been thinking of the parking, but we are, they can place us where you are and we need to talk about our phone tracking. It's very complicated, but the point that this was brought to us or at least it was initiated with one of the sponsors was with the unfair use of facial recognition. So I feel that that's something that we did get, my questions got answered. I understood them. I think we could go forward in suggesting that we do that and then give them more time to work through the more complex thing with the staff as well as with a KP law. Right, I guess I feel like if this motion does not require them to do anything, why are we bothering to make it? If I could just go to them and say, the committee would like you to look at this, separating them out and doing this first and this second. Why do we need a motion? Do you seriously think they could answer all those questions coming back in a couple of weeks? Because why would we need a motion? Yeah. George is saying that it's not, it isn't meaningful anyway. No, I'm not saying it's not meaningful. It's very meaningful. I mean, it's sending a very strong message to them but they're bright individuals and they'll make up their own minds and then they will communicate to you and hopefully they'll have the courtesy to say, this is what we plan to do at the next meeting but we're sending them our best sense at this moment that if you can't convince us, right? So you've got a lot more work to do is our sense at this point. They may disagree and so maybe they'll go forward and come back one more time and do battle with us and that's fine and maybe they'll, but this is just saying at the moment, four of the five members of this committee have voted to ask you to break this into two and focus on what we consider to be the one area that there's agreement on and sharpen that and focus on that and leave the rest for later. So we're not recommending to the council, we're just... No, no, just a TSO. Motions to them. Yeah, yeah. We're not saying anything to the council. Well, we will eventually. Well, in your report, you'll say something, but yeah, we're not, as a committee, we have nothing to say to them at the moment. Okay, so all those in favor of Alyssa's motion, do you wanna say something else Alyssa? There's a plane going overhead. If you wanna go ahead and have the vote, let's do it before my Zoom connection dies again. All right, roll call Alyssa. Yes. Marcy No. Dorothy. Yes. George. Yes. Evan. Yes. Okay, so I can convey that to them. And next meeting, we have... Do we want to have Lincoln Avenue on again? Well, that was the understanding that we should be ready based on, I think your excellent model to make a real preliminary presentation in writing. And I would only ask, based on what I've seen on our website, on a SharePoint and so on, the next meeting seems to be set for the 24th. And so I've made a commitment for the 17th, and so has Evan. So, but yes, I think we can go ahead with Lincoln, yes. You're saying on the 24th. That's what I would prefer, but I'm one person. And you just say that there is a meeting on the schedule on the 17th? Not that I've seen written down anywhere. What I saw written down, it's on our SharePoint, I think it's also on the town website, is the, you have a name for it. Work Plan? Work Plan, thank you. And the meeting date is the 24th, and it says Lincoln Parking. And based on that, I assumed that that was, because I have no other schedule for this committee, I assume that was the next meeting date. And so... Like I said, it's on our calendar, I'm looking at it, the 24th. So, yeah, I don't know why I guess that's was coinciding with the town council meetings or something because that's in three weeks. So I don't know why, but I'm sure there was some reason at some point. Okay, so anything else for that meeting? Well, we're going to have the appointments. We'll have plenty to do with those two things plus our appointments. And did you all have a chance to look at the minutes of the August 20th meeting? I did. They were amended. There's a little bit of amending in there. So if anybody would like to move to approve them. I can make a motion to approve the August 20 minutes as amended. Okay, I second it. All those in favor, or Alyssa? Abstain. Garcia, Doris? Yes. Devin? Abstain. George? Yes. Okay, so we got that done. All right, I think that's... I have a question, Doris. I have a question. I know we need to go. If the town manager who was obviously confused about the TSO schedule and what expressed concern about the council only has 14 days to act, from the day he releases his appointments and he's getting really close on health and HR. If he runs into a problem, I guess I would just ask that we quickly tell you what our advice is associated with that. And the only thing I can come up with is that we schedule an additional meeting somehow. If he finds when he deals... So if he finds when he deals with the finalists that they say, you got to decide by X date or I'm out of here, we can't just say, oh, well then, because there was all this miscommunication where he misunderstood when our meeting was. So I guess my thought is that you would tell him that we would find a way to put together a meeting with 49 hours notice to be able to address it. But I get, because that would be apparently for either the town council meeting on the 21st, right? Or this master plan night of Tuesday the 28th, which I know is currently being floated as a master plan forum, but may and therefore normally would not include regular town council business. So I don't know how that's gonna work. I can make a suggestion perhaps, you could put a meeting for the 17th provisional meeting. And if you set it a little bit later than we normally set our meetings, though you don't have to. I mean, because obviously if I have to, I can cancel this and I can just reschedule. I'd like not to, but I could. But if you were to just set the 17th as a meeting, but the only agenda item would be the potential appointments and only if Paul absolutely required it. And if you said it, it's a, again, all you need to weigh in, I would say eight o'clock, which is late, I understand, but the meeting I'm going to is at seven. And we shouldn't be there more than 40 minutes. It's a Zoom meeting, of course. So we can get out fairly quickly, but hopefully we won't need to have that meeting, but it is on a day that we normally do meet. And if we do have to have it, it's there, it's scheduled. It just, I would ask you to make it a little later. I'll actually more than a little later than we usually do. So that's something I think the committee needs to weigh in on. So, Evan, you said you are not available that night. Yeah, the other thing, I mean, that I would just say off the top of my head is if I'm not available, I'm not available. If our quorum is three, if there are three people, I will have the memo, the appointment memo. And if I have questions, comments, or concerns, I could also send them to Darcy and she could share that with a town manager during the meeting and with the committee so that they're included. But as far as I'm concerned, if there's quorum, there's quorum, and if I can't be there, then I have full faith in my committee members to make a decision. I'm fine with setting something on the 17th. Do Dorothy and Alyssa, do you have any problem with setting it at eight? No, I just wish I hadn't whited it out in my book. Well, I'll tell the town manager that we're available if he wants to do it then. Eight PM on the 17th. All right. Oh, well, actually, I should just checking to see if there's public comment, there's someone, there's an attendee, and if that person would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand. Doesn't look like that's going to be a public comment. So, all right, I declare this meeting adjourned at whatever time it is at 9.05. Thank you. Goodnight.