No Surveillance Kiosks in Austin!
Who: Austin residents and people concerned about privacy and civil liberties.
What: ITEM 66 on the agenda for the Austin City Council Meeting of March 26, 2025: “Conduct a public hearing and consider an ordinance amending City Code Chapter 25-10 (Sign Regulations) to authorize larger signs in the public right-of-way that include electronic images, light, and off-premises advertising and waiving City Code Section 25-1-501” Essentially, what is proposed are street-level LED touch screens that are supposed to help people find nearby landmarks, find out when the next Austin Metro bus is arriving, etc. The signs are supposed to pay for themselves through corporate ad revenue.
However, the proposed city code amendment contains no language prohibiting the sign vendor from capturing personally identifiable information, such as people’s faces or fingerprints, or using AI to monitor their activities. Until the City amends this item to include such language, we are asking the City Council to vote NOon this item.
When: March 26, 10:00 AM. Speaker registration for the March 26, 2026 Austin City Council Meeting will open Monday, March 23 at 10:00 AM.
Where: Austin City Hall, 301 W. 2nd St.
Why: Our vision is of a community in which people feel free to come and go as they please, associate with whom they wish, exercise their First Amendment right to gather and protest peacefully, etc., without the government or private corporations gathering their personally-identifiable information. When it comes to technology that can potentially surveil the community, we would much rather be safe than sorry.
Deploying these street-level kiosks represents another example of corporate-managed, for-profit advertising, and carries the potential of monitoring ordinary people’s lives. While reasonable arguments can be made about people’s rights to privacy in public settings like city sidewalks, the potential to accumulate data about movements and behavior in those settings raises serious concerns in light of the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution: if a person decides to attend a political rally in front of city hall, or visit an adult-oriented business, or just hang out, the government does not need to keep a record of that. The 4th and 5th Amendments are also implicated: if a person has not been credibly accused of a crime, then the authorities have no right to keep a record of their comings and goings. Normally, law enforcement can obtain a search warrant in response to a specific, reasonable suspicion, not to conduct blanket surveillance of people who use public sidewalks. The Constitution is designed to prevent people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time from being caught up in the criminal legal system.
The concern is that this Code change opens the door to the kinds of digital kiosks that, if paired with cameras, fingerprint readers, or AI capabilities, could harvest our individual data and use it in all the nefarious ways we've been concerned about: locating undocumented folks, tracking abortion-seekers, stalking political dissidents, etc. One of the likely vendors for this project, IKE, has a reported partnership with Placer.ai, a company that uses facial recognition and location tracking to target ads based on our personal profile.
What you can do about it: Contact Mayor Watson, Mayor Pro Tem Vela, and your City Council member. You can find out who represents you on the city council here (just type your address in the box labeled “Find a Council District by address”). Once you find out which district you live in, here’s where you can contact each council member:
Mayor: Kirk Watson
Email:mayor@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2100
District 1:Natasha Harper-Madison
Email: district1@austintexas.gov
Phone: (512) 978-2101
District 2:Vanessa Fuentes
Email:district2@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2102
District 3:José Velásquez
Email: district3@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2103
District 4 (and Mayor Pro Tem):José “Chito” Vela
Email:district4@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2104
District 5:Ryan Alter
Email:district5@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2105
District 6:Krista Laine
Email:district6@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2106
District 7:Mike Siegel
Email:district7@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2107
District 8:Paige Ellis
Email:district8@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2108
District 9:Zohaib "Zo" Qadri
Email:district9@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2109
District 10:Marc Duchen
Email:District10@austintexas.gov
Phone: 512-978-2110
Or, you can email the Mayor and the entire City Council by clicking this link.
Good, old-fashioned snail mail has an impact, too. You can send mail to the Mayor and Council Members at:
Austin City Hall
P. O. Box 1088
Austin, TX 78767
What should you say in your email or phone call? State that you are a resident of Austin, and which council district you live in. State that you are opposed to Item 66 on the agenda at the March 26 Council meeting, unless and until the Council amends the proposed ordinance to prohibit the kiosks from having cameras or other identity-gathering tech. Let them know you don’t want the ordinance adopted until it includes safeguards that prohibit AI and mass surveillance. If you wish, mention how this type of surveillance impacts you directly as a member of a marginalized community, as a person of color, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, etc.
For more information about this action item, please visit grassrootsleadership.org, or email hmaverick@grassrootsleadership.org.
