A RESOLUTION affirming the human right to privacy and expressing a desire that the policies and products of the City’s privacy initiative be consistent with the right to privacy as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the applicable international human rights framework.
Agenda item three. Resolution 31598. Affirming the human right to privacy and expressing a desire that the policies and products of the Cities Privacy Initiative be consistent with the right to privacy, as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the applicable international human rights framework. The committee recommends a resolution be adopted as amended. Thank you, Councilmember Harrell. Thank you, President Burgess. So this resolution affirms the human right to privacy as described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and expressed and expresses the City Council's desire that any policies or products of the Privacy Initiative be consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to Privacy. Now, let me describe a little bit about about that conceptual framework. So you know what I'm talking about. I don't assume that all of you have read the Declaration of Human Rights, quote, No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his or her privacy, family harm or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his or her honor and reputation. Everyone has a right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. And the reason why this policy work becomes critically important is because, you know, we as a as a city come into contact with a lot of personal information through our surveillance, through the bills that you pay, through your interface with the city . And how we treat that information on our private citizens becomes critically important. And we formed an internal departmental team on looking at what we do with this information. So we thought as a committee and as a council that it was prudent to look at the universal laws, the declarations. The policy statement said, in fact, this country has adopted to be the sort of the framework on how we move forward. A little background on what we're trying to do with privacy. In 2012, we adopted Resolution 31420, which proclaims the Seattle to be a human rights city. And we endorsed human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. You should know that many major cities in this country have not adopted this. We are one of these cities that have adopted this. In 2014, we began a privacy initiative, and this is intended to strengthen the city's privacy practice and again, in how we treat your sensitive and personal and private information. In February of 2015, we passed Resolution 31570, adopting six privacy principles, guiding the actions that the city will take when collecting and using information from the public. And on August 2015, in the future, we will report back on the privacy statement, the privacy tool kit, which will establish actionable privacy standards to enable our departments to comply with our privacy principles. So to many, this becomes critically, critically important as we move forward as a city and as the advances of technology gives the government access to technology that decades ago people would not even imagine. I'd like to thank the Seattle Human Rights Commission and the Seattle Privacy Coalition. We incorporated much of their feedback into these policy statements. The committee recommends full adoption of this resolution. Thank you. Questions or comments? Council members. I want to. Thank you, Councilmember her, for your comments. I support the human right to privacy and will be voting yes on this resolution to affirm that. I think we should also follow up on this resolution by taking concrete steps to actually protect the privacy of Seattleites. A couple of times a year, the council votes on supplemental budgets that accept federal money from the Department of Homeland Security and to fund so-called fusion centers in Seattle. According to new documents leaked by Edward Snowden. These fusion centers are used just to help the NSA spy on every man, woman and child in Seattle and in the country. So I will vote yes on this resolution, and I will encourage my colleagues to join me in putting this resolution into practice and voting against funding the fusion centers. The next supplemental budget. Thank you. Other comments? All in favor of adopting resolution 31598 vote. I oppose vote no. The resolution is unanimously adopted and the chair will sign it. Please read item for.