Seattle Shield, an intelligence-sharing network operated by the Seattle police

https://prismreports.org/2026/05/20/seattle-shield-private-companies-surveillance/

by root-parent • 2 months ago

492 196 2 months ago

prismreports.org

ensen• 2 months ago

archive that won't hijack your back button https://archive.is/Td9AR

PcChip• 2 months ago

Why do our browsers even allow that?

sheept• 2 months ago

For websites like Gmail when you open an email

herpdyderp• 2 months ago

When done properly you don't even notice! It is very beneficial when needed. But, as we know, very awful when done improperly.

hkt• 2 months ago

To enable JavaScript crapware

Cider9986• 2 months ago

Huh, it seems to try to take my back button and it pretends that there is history if I open it in a new tab, but if I click on it from HN it lets me go back. But I can also see it trying to create history. Maybe it's a Brave feature idk.

andrybak• 2 months ago

archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog. This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidan...

arcanemachiner• 2 months ago

Complaining about bad people is fun, don't get me wrong... but your post doesn't contain an alternative archive link. You're just siphoning people into your soapbox.

ninjagoo• 2 months ago

archive.is is one of the domains of archive.today, which used its end users for a DDOS attack on a blog.

Please provide evidence for your claim. The wiki rfc [5] that you linked doesn't provide any DDOS evidence at all, which is odd for wikipedia.

This caused English Wikipedia to deprecate it with the end goal of blacklisting

This appears to be a concerted effort to blacklist archive.today by unknown actors. There were at least 3 attempts with odd efforts to sway the vote [1][2][3] (the notes in the sidebars at those Wiki RFCs document these actions by bots and others), and a successful attempt to undo the blacklist [4], and then yet another attempt [5].

I'm curious as to why you did not include this very relevant background information in your comment?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment...

markus_zhang• 2 months ago

Ah the new dark pool. Does anyone remember those from the trading? I still remember ARCA (good rebate back in the day), ECN (very fluid and very cheap), and a few dark pools that I used to get out of a trade quickly.

root-parent• 2 months ago

https://globalshieldnetwork.com/team/erin-nicholson/

acidhousemcnab4• 2 months ago

What in the decomposed-dissident gang-stalked tarnation is this?

aliasxneo• 2 months ago

For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.

That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.

giancarlostoro3• 2 months ago

4chan validated in their protests against Scientology was not in my bingo card.

marcosdumay• 2 months ago

At this point I'm waiting for the aliens appearance in the Epstein files.

errendgame• 2 months ago

For people like me who had no idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology

QuercusMax2• 2 months ago

Scientologists being involved with intelligence agencies doesn't surprise me even a bit, it makes a lot of sense as a CIA cutout.

futuraperdita• 2 months ago

Infiltration of government institutions has been doctrine for the group since the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

acidhousemcnab4• 2 months ago

Any belief system or club that validates sociopathy as a "higher" state of evolution or enlightenment will worm it's way into intelligence agencies.

Deprogrammer9• 2 months ago

Those weirdos followed me around Ybor near Tampa when I said something negative about them online in public. IT WAS WEIRD! But I gave no Fs

joe_the_user• 2 months ago

It seems likely that every tightly clique is trying to infiltrate every other such clique - it's endless battle between mafias, political parties, cults (Tulsi Gabard's connections to Krishna cult), intelligence agencies and so-forth, each trying to use the other.

But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).

coliveira• 2 months ago

Scientology is essentially a scheme to get private/incriminating information from very important people. Why the surprise?

colechristensen2• 2 months ago

Scientology is what happens when a science fiction writer acts out a dystopian plot in real life instead of writing a novel.

Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.

sysguest2• 2 months ago

damn I wonder how many scientology believers in intel actually believe in scientology...

I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?

bigbuppo2• 2 months ago

So what you're saying is that everyone that works at Amazon and Facebook are now at grave risk because the bad guys now think they're informants?

GolfPopper• 2 months ago

Not any more than the average citizen of East Germany.

erxam2• 2 months ago

You've got the good guys and the bad guys mixed up. No Meta "engineer" knows what morals or ethics even are, much less actually apply them in real life.

srameshc• 2 months ago

I love this comment, I just couldn't ever frame it so well :)

bigbuppo2• 2 months ago

Come to think about it, the one person I know that works at Meta is the absolute worst person I know.

kgwxd• 2 months ago

It's bad guys all the way down.

zombot2• 2 months ago

They are the bad guys.

shermantanktop2• 2 months ago

Looks like a nothingburger? It's unfunded. An email describes a protest without giving a framing that the site would prefer. Then it turns out that nobody knows what it does, but it might do something bad.

I'm all for transparency and accountability but my assumption is that the bad things being done by LEO and intelligence are far worse than this.

Shalomboy• 2 months ago

My take away from the article was that this likely isn't the only public-private intelligence network propped up by local PDs; that was pretty alarming to me.

erxam2• 2 months ago

I think this is a good point: this is what they're letting us on.

lacewing• 2 months ago

Would it shock your conscience to learn that Microsoft security operations probably have contacts with the Redmond PD and that they occasionally discuss concerns?

The existence of a mailing list or something of that sort isn't particularly worrying. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a firewall between police departments and local businesses any more that it would be reasonable to expect one between PDs and local residents.

I would be alarmed if it turned out that Amazon was giving the Seattle PD direct, warrantless access to data about their consumers, or something like that. But there's no evidence presented here of anything particularly sketchy going on.

whimsicalism5• 2 months ago

Yes, large businesses have contacts with local PD in the area. This is what BIDs basically are as well

kube-system• 2 months ago

Most large businesses do this for hundreds if not thousands of years. Large open source projects do it too.

Basically any organization that does any attempt to analyze threats of any sort will have a need to collaborate with law enforcement.

Walmart does it for theft rings. Canonical does it for hacking threats targeting Ubuntu. Your bank does it for people trying to steal money.

LoganDark• 2 months ago

Do you mean unfounded?

1234letshaveatw2• 2 months ago

Unfunded. It's in the article

acidhousemcnab4• 2 months ago

There were a lot of articles describing Snowdon / Manning and Wikileaks releases as exactly "nothing burgers", in those journals of note that people read to tell them what to think about matters - but I'm not sure what a "nothing burger" means - pulverised cattle flesh flattened into an oval, that doesn't exist?

shermantanktop2• 2 months ago

The validity of the term should be separate from the pernicious use by people who would like you to stop paying attention to things that matter.

I think there’s lots of stuff in this space that is worth paying attention to, including for example just how complete a profile companies like Experian have assembled on US citizens, or Flock and LPR generally.

This just seems a lot of fluff with nothing substantial, hence a nothingburger.

pc863• 2 months ago

Is there a term for this weird autistic pseudo-nerd-sniping where someone pretends not to understand a very common expression and takes it absurdly literally to try to prove a point?

kittikitti• 2 months ago

As an American, I genuinely trust my data with China more than I do with the United States.

organsnyder• 2 months ago

That's actually a very logical stance: China is much less interested in what you're doing as an individual citizen—and much less able to act on what they know—than the United States is. For the same reason, Chinese citizens should trust the United States with their data more than China.

codezero• 2 months ago

Have a look at your local branch here: https://globalshieldnetwork.com/programs-2/

sidcool• 2 months ago

I'm convinced Meta is a cult with Total control. It will go to any lengths to make money.

booleandilemma• 2 months ago

Having a coalition of mega corporations all allied with each other isn't any better than having a strong government. Both are dangerous to personal liberties. I think we're due for a break up of these companies. No more Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. We the people need to start taking power back.

verdverm2• 2 months ago

No one is going to save us. I've recently been moved to direct action and started participating in a local indivisible.org group. It's had untold positive impacts on my personal mental state being with people trying to make things better, or at least slow the damage for now. Much of that is from going out and talking to random people on the street, handing out information and having conversations. Also quitting social media at the same time, save one exception for HN.

https://indivisible.org/get-involved/find-a-group/

pc863• 2 months ago

This just seems like a progressive PAC. Which, okay that's fine, but not exactly giving "weaker government" vibes, just "we want our team in charge for a bit" vibes. Happy to be proven wrong, though.

rc_kas• 2 months ago

Where is the "I did that" sticker with trump pointing at this article.

1234letshaveatw2• 2 months ago

established and operating since 2009- "Why did Trump do this?"

jp_sc• 2 months ago

Established in 2009. Who started as president that year?

whimsicalism5• 2 months ago

Edited title to be more sensationalist - this is a Seattle local thing

The Seattle Shield website states that its mission “is to provide a collaborative and information-sharing environment between the Seattle Police Department and public/private partners in the Seattle area. Seattle Shield members assist Seattle Police Department efforts to identify, deter, defeat or mitigate potential acts of terrorism by reporting suspicious activity in a timely manner.”

jedahan5• 2 months ago

That network is shared with police departments in cities outside Seattle per the article.

whimsicalism5• 2 months ago

I encourage people imagining this as some high-scale surveillance dragnet to look at the Seattle Shield website and form their opinions https://seattleshield.org/default.aspx?MenuItemID=53&MenuGro...

saghm14• 2 months ago

Good thing that ICE has such a stellar reputation of not pushing the agenda of the national government into local affairs!

shevy-java• 2 months ago

Not so surprising - we kind of suspected this. Anyone remembers Snowden or Assange?

We have to accept the fact that presently all democracies are merely simulation of a democracy. At the least in the USA; other countries may be a bit better, e. g. Switzerland or the scandinavian countries are somewhat better (though also not to be trusted - see how Sweden pursued Assange).

Perhaps this is how things always end? Democracies are kind of like an obsolete model when you compare it to authoritarianism (assuming the USA would still be a democracy rather than a tech-corporate-fascist country run by a corrupt elite of superrich).

pc863• 2 months ago

Authoritarianism didn't work in the past because it was too hard to control that many people. You simply didn't have the scale unless you were willing to roll tanks down city streets, and even then all it did was buy you an extra couple years, maybe a decade or two. Eventually, someone always got close enough to end you and then it started falling apart.

Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.

ethagnawl• 2 months ago

Please tell me they're using Workplace.

jedahan5• 2 months ago

Reminder if you work for any of these companies (not unlikely on this site) you are actively enabling this. If your first reaction is doubt, deflection, rationalization or discomfort, there are ways out.

6thbit• 2 months ago

If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?

If your retirement fund owns stocks of the s&p 500, does that make you an enabler?

Are there really ways out?

croes• 2 months ago

Yes

Maybe

pamcake• 2 months ago

Are those things you are personally struggling with (if you are considering quitting open source contribitions wholesale: don't let this make you) or is this a showcase of rationalization?

Barbing• 2 months ago

Are there really ways out?

Not with that attitude

jedahan5• 2 months ago

Its very personal and situation dependent, but I truly believe that if you work at Amazon or Facebook and do not want to support this, you can.

saghm14• 2 months ago

If you make open source used by any of this companies for this network, would you also characterize it as actively enabling this?

That's a pretty strange conflation. It's pretty commonly discussed exactly how rare it is for people to make open source to get compensated by companies that use their projects. I find it hard to imagine that you genuinely think that there isn't an obvious distinction that most observers would draw between that and direct employment.

keybored2• 2 months ago

Yes.

Manuel_D7• 2 months ago

Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?

This is functionally no different than sharing your encounters with disruptive people on NextDoor.

KennyBlanken• 2 months ago

Or perhaps when Amazon facilities security encounters someone doing destructive or harmful things, then sharing that information with other companies in the city is a perfectly reasonable measure?

If only there were a way to address people doing destructive or harmful things.

We could even make it reachable using a telephone, with a very convenient to dial, short, easily remembered number sequence.

I don't know about you, but in my area, NextDoor is mostly "I saw non-white errrrr I mean, uh, 'someone who doesn't look like they belong here' person in my neighborhood" and general witch-hunting any time it's mentioned someone gets arrested for

Also, we have concepts like "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law" for a reason. Corporatizing law enforcement is not a good thing.

If Amazon wants to work with the PD they can show up to a community relations meeting like everyone else?

saghm14• 2 months ago

Depends on what they consider "destructive", and it's not like there isn't already a way for contacting law enforcement when the circumstances warrant it.

The Nextdoor analogy is even more apt because it's kind of notorious for being used by people to complain about all sorts of ridiculous things that don't deserve attention

stronglikedan2• 2 months ago

If you work for any company, you're actively enabling injustices against someone, so just make a living and don't worry so much.

jedahan5• 2 months ago

This is the kind of rationalization I am referring to.

ozozozd• 2 months ago

So work for mercenaries, and tell people “it’s just a job?”

Maybe there are shades of gray between black and white.

red-iron-pine2• 2 months ago

this is the high quality content that I come to HN for

ishouldstayaway• 2 months ago

...he said, shovelling orphans into the crushing machine

saghm14• 2 months ago

"There are lots of bad things" does not imply "all bad things are equally bad and therefore it's not worthwhile to try to prevent any of them"

honzaik• 2 months ago

this is like arguing that laws are useless because theyre not bulletproof. please stop with this pseudological thinking

keybored2• 2 months ago

“Software is eating the world”, but also “not working on antisocial tech is too difficult aaah”.

Is it though? Finding some ethically neutral Crud gig?

BeetleB3• 2 months ago

Do you feel the same way about the warehouse workers?

zuzululu• 2 months ago

How bad are things in Seattle that they are resorting to this? What the hell happened to my hometown?

pocksuppet5• 2 months ago

BLM protestors set it on fire and it's gone now, just like Portland.

No but really, probably nothing special happened. It's just another case of surveillanceists gonna surveil.

tinix• 2 months ago

All suspicious activity reported must be behavior based. It is important to keep in mind that suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos, is not a criminal act by itself, but may be a precursor to criminal activity.

  the number of times I've been harassed by police for taking photos... even in small towns in the middle of nowhere people are paranoid.

neoCrimeLabs• 2 months ago

I couldn't help but remember when the police talked to David Hobby (aka Strobist) for photographing a tree.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/chronic...

conductr• 2 months ago

Unfortunately we have to live in the reality that any unusual thing is a suspicious thing. There’s a whole entire concept that has been popularized around the concept of “see something, say something” and it would be expected that such vague concepts generate paranoia. I am not in a touristy or scenic area so seeing people out taking photos is unusual here and I could see how at least talking to the photographer isn’t a bad idea from a security standpoint.

Might help to mention I’m American so, you know, random joes blowing stuff/people up is part of my reality.

matheusmoreira• 2 months ago

suspicious behavior, such as taking photographs or videos

What is the logic behind this? Why is it suspicious?

Everybody's got a camera now. People taking puctures is the most normal thing in the world now.

Terr_• 2 months ago

A fictional public service announcement from the classic game Deus Ex (2000), also involving photographs...

[Be Safe: Be Suspicious] How can you tell who might be a terrorist? Look for the following characteristics:
* A stranger or foreigner.
* Argumentative, especially about politics or philosophy.
* Probing questions about your work, particularly high-tech.
* Spends a greater than average amount of time on the Net.
* Interests in chemistry, electronics, or computers.
* Large numbers of mail-order deliveries.
* Taking photographs of major landmarks.
And those are just a few. If you're suspicious, then turn them in to your local law enforcement for a thorough background check. Better safe than sorry. You and your neighbors will sleep more securely knowing that you're watching each other's back.

mrobot• 2 months ago

Interesting they have not contacted me about how they are going to be paying their subscription fee

I hope they dont think im doing all of this for free

sailfast• 2 months ago

I don’t understand. This seems like some version of NextDoor / neighborhood watch but for companies and larger interests in the Seattle area that might have their own security apparatus.

Why are folks jumping to some conclusions that this is some illuminati threat to democracy? Why is the article so breathless?

baddash3• 2 months ago

It might be a purposefully sensationalist framing in order to increase KPIs. It works because a lot of people have strong opinions things without thinking much.

saghm14• 2 months ago

I don't know what neighborhood you live in, but there aren't many billion-dollar corporations hanging out on my block. Given how much shady stuff has come out about some of these companies, I don't think it's really that terrible a presumption that pretty much anything they've invested time and effort into that isn't already public knowledge might have been used for some stuff that we'd be unhappy to find out about.

wesleychen• 2 months ago

The density of these offices in downtown Seattle is super high and it's also an area that has a lot of crime so this implementation makes sense. Probably low ROI in other areas like your neighborhood that don't fit this profile.

baddash3• 2 months ago

My thoughts as someone who doesn't know much about these types of things:

1. Terry Albury calling this list the "Panopticon" could have merit since he's a former FBI agent. However, I'd have to research more into him to figure out how credible he is, and why he is framing it like this.

2. Amazon and Facebook being in the title is most likely clickbait. They're literally only mentioned once in the article and the rest of it has nothing to do with them.

3. It's concerning that the National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) can potentially cause this network to be used to label protestors as "far-left domestic terrorists", however, that is more of an issue with the NSPM than this network. Understanding the NSPM and the effects of it is probably worthwhile.

4. The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem? Is it typical to have oversight for a program like this, or necessary? What would the program be like?

Overall, the article feels sort of sensationalized. It frames Seattle Shield as suspicious and questionable due to its secrecy and the fact that it performs surveillance. However, there aren't any strong facts or evidence of this program being abused in some Big Brother-type way. Terry Albury framing it in this manner might be the most credible point against it, but I would have to look into that to determine how credible it is.

dakolli2• 2 months ago

I don't want any secretive surveillance, I don't care if you can prove whether its malicious or not.

lstodd2• 2 months ago

It's like you never heard of Snowden.

You don't need to try to force yourself to believe it not being that bad because it has been worse for like 20 years already.

BeetleB3• 2 months ago

Your comment doesn't address any of the issues in the comment, and isn't adding to the conversation.

pocksuppet5• 2 months ago

A significant chunk of today's HN readership were less than 10 years old when Snowden leaked.

josh2600• 2 months ago

The thing is... under the laws as they're written today, if US Gov wants to take a peek at your stuff on FB and friends servers, FB can be barred from informing you that such a request has come in under the National Security Letter (NSL) guidelines.

It's a very complicated thing :/.

jqmccleary• 2 months ago

Unfortunate but true, I feel we could rise up and stop things like this but most people these days are either unaware or are too busy struggling to do so

baddash3• 2 months ago

I don't mean to be some annoying contrarian or something, but couldn't it be the case that if the govt was investing someone who was planning a terrorist attack, then notifying the person being investigated could work against stopping them?

Not saying it wouldn't get abused though, which seems like the primary concern of most people in these discussions..

pyrale3• 2 months ago

The article mentions that there's no oversight program for Seattle Shield. Is that a problem?

Any government body with no oversight program indicates that rule of law is optional.

remarkEon2• 2 months ago

The rule of law is and always has been based on a monopoly of violence. That monopoly is increasingly tenuous, frankly. Even the word "oversight" implies that, if said entity being overseen ventures out of the bounds of the overseer, violence is the mechanism by which compliance is attained.

zombot2• 2 months ago

Secret + surveillance + no oversight : Is that a problem?

You've gotta be shitting me.

dakolli2• 2 months ago

Random Idea:

Make a tool/browser extension that submits suspicious queries to Google, Facebook, Amazon on behalf of the user like "how to make a bomb", "How to make an explosive drone" or whatever. Have it run several times a day and use a lightweight abliterated llm to create unique queries that would match the kind of heuristics these programs are filtering for.

Hopefully 10s of thousands of users use it and poison the ETL of these intelligence gathering operations. This kinda creates a prisoner dilemma for the first set of users, perhaps the tool would only start making queries once there was enough of a user base so that the first few users aren't signing up themselves for unnecessary scrutiny.

travisgriggs• 2 months ago

People are never going to quit doing this. I'm surprised we still get "incensed" by being "watched without consent". There is

No. Way. It's. Going. To. Ever. Get. Stopped.

The only way to level the effects are to radically increase the surveillance so that everyone ends up in a Dark Forest "I know shit about you too" deterrence stand off. And/or flood the sensors with so much input/noise that meaningful signal is tough to suss out.

jazz9k• 2 months ago

With gun rights and the right to defend yourself in many US cities, surveillance is the next step to stop crime.

In places like the UK, where guns are nearly banned, this is the norm.

If I can't stop you from robbing me, I should have the ability to record you and identify you later.

I'm fine if we reduce surveillance, if gun/defense rights are added.

Freedumbs• 2 months ago

Self censored headline to avoid flagging? "Amazon, Facebook, ICE, and the FBI have access to a private intelligence-sharing network operated by Seattle police"

dfbdbdffgn• 2 months ago

Didn't stop me from nearly getting attacked by a homeless junkie hearing voices a few weeks ago on Capitol Hill.

gmerc• 2 months ago

The thing with screaming FIRE as an overreaction is that it’s not an overreaction when everyone is doused in kerosine.

Seattle Shield, an intelligence-sharing network operated by the Seattle police

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