Civil liberties audit urges seattle to increase transparency and adopt safeguards for real-time crime center
The Policing Project at NYU School of Law released its findings after a review of Seattle’s Real Time Crime Center, highlighting the need for warrants in certain investigations and strict policies around data sharing, among 19 recommendations.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 9, 2026
Media Contact: Patrick Egan, Policing Project at NYU School of Law, press@policingproject.org, 718-551-6603
Seattle, WA — The Policing Project at New York University School of Law today released a report detailing the findings of its civil rights, civil liberties, and governance audit of Seattle’s Real Time Crime Center (RTCC). RTCCs are centralized hubs that bring together surveillance systems, data, and dedicated personnel to better coordinate the use of law enforcement technologies.
In 2026, the City of Seattle asked the Policing Project to conduct an audit of the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) RTCC, which had been established the previous year. The audit did not address cybersecurity or the RTCC’s effectiveness, nor did it address whether the RTCC should be expanded beyond its current size. Rather, the focus was on the potential risks to civil rights and civil liberties, and how those risks might be mitigated.
“By centralizing surveillance technologies and data, real-time crime centers raise significant concerns around privacy, accountability, and oversight,” said Max Isaacs, the Director of Technology Law & Policy at the Policing Project. “Although SPD has implemented meaningful safeguards, our review identified important policy gaps that city officials should act promptly to address.”
Many existing safeguards, such as a five-day retention limit for CCTV footage, are matters of informal practice rather than policy. Moreover, the existing policy framework does not adequately account for the ways in which RTCCs can enable particularly intrusive forms of surveillance, such as the reconstruction of individuals’ movements over time.
To address these and other issues, the report offers 19 recommendations to SPD and city officials, addressing when and how the RTCC may be used, how long data should be retained, restrictions on data sharing, public transparency, and other aspects of RTCC governance.
Seattle’s RTCC is one of approximately 300 operating in cities across the country. When agencies combine individual technologies through an RTCC, they create a system that is far more powerful than the sum of its parts. Whether to deploy such a system is a decision for communities to make — but where they are used, strong governance is imperative to ensure the protection of individual rights.
“Real Time Crime Centers can help law enforcement dealing in real time with emergencies and crises. But today those same tools are being used in non-emergency criminal investigations, often without policies, adequate safeguards, or democratic accountability,” said Barry Friedman, founder and faculty director of the Policing Project at NYU Law. “The value of RTCCs should be preserved, but they should be regulated like any other powerful surveillance tool.”
You can read the entire report and find more details here.
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About the NYU Policing Project
The Policing Project at NYU School of Law promotes public safety through transparency, equity, and democratic engagement. Learn more about the Policing Project at www.policingproject.org.