Verified Unsurveilled · Organizing
The badge is a target, not a trophy. Find where your community stands against the standard, and get the specific things that would move it.
Coverage is incomplete and we say so. If we hold nothing on your area, you get the records request that would change that.
Of the 5 jurisdictions assessed so far, none meets the standard. That is not a scolding — it is the baseline. Most municipalities have never been asked these questions, so the first four criteria are usually unanswered rather than failed.
Usually unanswered
These are records requests, not political fights. One resident can resolve all four.
Usually requires a vote
These take a council. They are also the ones that survive a change of chief, mayor, or vendor.
All 12 criteria matter. These five are where a small group of residents realistically has leverage, in the order we would attempt them.
Nothing can be debated that is not listed. An inventory ordinance is usually the least controversial thing on this list and it unlocks every other conversation.
Criterion in the standard →Advance public notice, a written impact and use policy, and a vote by the elected body. This is the criterion that governs technologies nobody has invented yet.
Criterion in the standard →Retention is the single field that most changes what a system means. Thirty days is an operational tool; two years is a movement archive. Same hardware.
Criterion in the standard →Sharing is usually configured once, at install, by someone who was not thinking about it. Ask what it is set to now — the answer is frequently the most alarming document in the file.
Criterion in the standard →Every ask above should describe what a system does, never what it is called. This is the difference between a policy and a press release.
Criterion in the standard →Before you can argue about policy you need to know what exists. This is the first records request, written so it captures the whole category rather than one vendor — and so a "we don't use Flock" answer cannot end the conversation.
Open the templates →Most councils give you two or three minutes. That is roughly 300 words. This is how to spend them so the answer cannot be a talking point — and so the record shows a specific question the staff now has to answer in public.
Open the templates →Surveillance contracts are rarely debated. They are renewed on a consent agenda while everyone is waiting for the zoning item. Knowing the renewal date is most of the work, and it is a single records request away.
Open the templates →All 12 criteria, what evidence resolves each one, the status definitions, and the audit workflow. Version 1.0.
Read the rubric →Because the badge is not the point — the rubric is. A city that can satisfy all 12 criteria has, by construction, published what it operates, put new surveillance technology under a public vote, limited retention, controlled sharing, and written its rules against capabilities rather than product names.
Those protections hold whether or not anyone ever puts a seal on a municipal website. The designation exists to give that work a name, a public evidence trail, and something a council member can point at when somebody asks why they bothered.