Wisconsin City Decides It’s OK To Eavesdrop On Private Conversations In Its City Hall

The city of Green Bay, Wisconsin feels no private conversation in city hall should go unheard. The city feels there's nothing wrong with installing overhead mics to snoop on citizens who might be congregating in the hall's halls.

I think it's pretty customary to have the kind of surveillance systems that we have here," Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich told FOX 11 on Tuesday.

Pretty customary." Huh. This is the first I've heard of this surveillance variety. The same goes for the ACLU, which tends to stay on top of domestic surveillance efforts.

This is the first sort of city hall or political location that I've heard doing something like this," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst for the ACLU in Washington D.C., who has been with the nonprofit since five weeks before 9/11.

Someone with nearly 22 years experience vs. someone who's only been in this position since 2019. There's nothing customary" about this. If there was, we'd have heard of it.

Whether it's normal or abnormal, the city has offered a justification for this desire to eavesdrop. And it's the usual excuse: national city hall security.

City officials say microphones were put on the hallway ceilings on the first and second levels, outside the city clerk's office, the city council chambers, and the mayor's office within the past two years due to threatening interactions involving members of the public and staff.

The statement fails to clarify whether these interactions" involved staff threatening members of the public or vice versa. But let's assume the worst: it was the people threatening their representatives. There are ways of handling this that don't involve listening in on every conversation between members of the public while in the city hall building.

Sure, it's true there's almost no expectation of privacy in public buildings, but the expectation is tied to the word reasonable." If no other city in the nation is doing this, the public would reasonably expect the government isn't installing overhead mics to listen to what they're talking about, especially when what they're discussing likely contains criticism of government officials and/or plans to challenge legislative efforts, etc.

Deploying mics creates a chilling effect where people inside city hall won't feel comfortable airing complaints about city lawmakers and/or organizing efforts to protest proposed laws.

The city issued a memo (received from the state's legal reps) about these unexpected mics late last year. Following questions from Fox reporters, the memo [PDF] appears to have been revised. But it's not clear what has been revised. The only thing pointing to a rewrite is the revised February 7, 2023" clause added to the header.

The memo points out Wisconsin is a one-party state - something that does not require the consent of the recorded. It was written in response to Senator Andre Jaque, who apparently raised questions about the mic installations last October. The city's attorneys say there's no definite answer as to the legality of these recording devices. All of it depends on the reasonable expectation of privacy." The government of Green Bay has one definition. Most likely, the city's residents have their own take on reasonable."

The state's lawyers, despite offering what appears to be a tacit blessing for the city hall mics, are hesitant to completely sign off on the installations.

In a setting like a governmental building, it is possible for a person to engage in a public or private conversation. For example, it is likely that a private conversation meets the factors described in Duchow. and provides the parties with a reasonable expectation of privacy if the conversation is at low volume, away from passersby, and between a small group of people with the expectation that no one will report what was said. In particular,a person is more likely to have a reasonable expectation of privacy if he or she takes steps to maintain privacy but a device is still able to record the conversation. On the other hand, a person engaging in a loud conversation with strangers or a large group of people is unlikely to have a reasonable expectation that the conversation will remain private.

Since the memo does not say everything is in the legal clear, the rep asking for answers understandably believes this should halt the surveillance program until all the facts are in.

I think the memo, the updated memo, that I provided has pretty clear discussion of it," said Jacque, who says he has contacted Brown County's district attorney about the situation. There is certainly the state statute that is cited. At the very least you'd think that would compel some sort of a pause on the recording."

But that's not what's happening. The most recent reporting shows the mayor is continuing to offer his full support for surveillance the state's lawyers have suggested might not be completely in the constitutional clear. And there are more concerning facts leaking out about Green Bay's city hall-focused surveillance efforts.

To start with, it's always on and always monitored.

The city says the police department has access to live feeds of the city hall surveillance system, but city staff does not continuously monitor the feeds.

Second, the city government has been performing this surreptitious surveillance for years.

In its press release, the city also notes there has been an audio recording device inside the lobby of the policy department for about almost a decade and an audio recording device has been in the Metro Transit Lobby since 2009.

At no point has the public been informed about these. The city says it will place signs informing city hall visitors their conversations are being recorded. Fourteen years after the fact, the city will also let people know about the transit lobby mics.

But a lot is still unknown about the mics the city says are completely above board, even if all the details are still submerged under layers of proactive opacity. City residents were never informed the mics would be installed. They never got a chance to publicly discuss the purchase of the system, which was paid for with their tax dollars. And, most surprisingly, many city council members were unaware the system even existed, which shows just how far under the radar this pretty customary" program has flown.

If the city reps in the know can't be honest about what they're imposing on the people they're serving, residents will rightfully have no reason to trust them. This is shady as fuck. And those who do know - now that they've been caught out - are doing a terrible job trying to pretend this isn't a domestic surveillance anomaly.