A walking tour of surveillance infrastructure in Seattle (2020)
Walking guide identifying surveillance infrastructure in downtown Seattle, including cameras, license plate readers, and Wi-Fi tracking devices.
A 2019 workshop-turned-guide catalogs surveillance technologies visible in Seattle's downtown corridor. It documents stationary and mobile automated license plate readers (ALPRs) operated by the Department of Transportation (99 devices) and Seattle Police (19 vehicles), which photograph every passing vehicle and retain data for up to 90 days. The guide also covers surveillance cameras at intersections and businesses, Amazon Go's overhead tracking, Acyclica devices that intercept smartphone probe packets to track MAC addresses across the city, and the Washington State Fusion Center, a 15-30 person intelligence hub linking local police, county sheriff, state investigators, and FBI resources. The guide notes regulatory gaps: ALPR data sharing lacks national standards, data scope creep is common, and city agencies have limited transparency about retention and sharing practices.
What HN community is saying
Commenters identified factual inaccuracies about Acyclica's Wi-Fi tracking. Most modern devices (iOS since 2014, Android and Linux by 2017, Windows by 2009) no longer broadcast preferred network lists, and many now randomize MAC addresses, making the article's privacy concern somewhat outdated. Separate criticism targeted the guide's academic language (references to "gazes" and "encoding ways of seeing") as obscuring straightforward points and appearing condescending to general readers with overly simplified explanations. A few noted the piece itself appears to date from 2019-2020 and reflects older data.