GREEN BAY, Wisconsin – The City of Green Bay’s attorney is denying there is anything improper about adding audio surveillance to an existing video security system within governmental buildings including City Hall, but the Wisconsin State Senate is threatening legal action.
“The City’s security system is lawful and commonplace,” city attorney Joanne Bungert wrote in a Feb. 14 letter. “Accordingly, the City will not be complying with the deadlines imposed in your letter.”
Bungert was responding to correspondence in which Attorney Ryan Walsh, who represents the Wisconsin State Senate, requested that the city of Green Bay dismantle the audio recording program or face litigation.
"Cities in Wisconsin don't have inherent powers," he said. "They get their powers from the constitution to a degree, but mostly from statutes. So, they are creatures of the legislature. For everything they do, they have to be able to point to a statute passed by the legislature that empowers them to do what they're doing."
However, lawmakers did not approve legislation that would allow audio monitoring and the city doesn't have the authority to have implemented such a program, according to Walsh.
"I wonder if the Aldermen, the city attorney's office, and the mayor's office have considered the possibility that if there is litigation, they will be essentially taxing the citizens of Green Bay to pay for the defense of their city surveilling them without a warrant," he said.
This week after media coverage of the situation, city officials placed signage at entrances as well as other places in the building alerting visitors of the surveillance equipment. The city told a local television station the signage was "to provide additional notice" of audio and video recordings "in the interest of transparency."
Under the Wisconsin Electronic Surveillance Control Law, intentionally intercepting oral conversations is a Class H felony where persons have a reasonable expectation of privacy and have not consented to be recorded.
“The city keeps saying they're going to post signs but as of the close of business yesterday, I saw they had not yet posted signs,” Walsh told Legal Newsline.
In his Feb. 13 letter to the mayor of Green Bay, Walsh demanded that audio recording devices deployed anywhere within City Hall be dismantled immediately.
"We also demand that you destroy all illegally obtained audio recordings," Walsh wrote. "We ask that you please provide adequate assurances by 5:00 PM on Tuesday, February 14, that all audio surveillance in City Hall has ceased. We also ask that all illicitly obtained recordings be destroyed by 3:00 PM on Friday, February 17.”
The audio recording system also violates the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution not to be unreasonably searched or seized.
Walsh advises Green Bay residents to raise their concerns with their locally elected officials.
“People often expect to be seen in public places and therefore video monitored perhaps, but audio monitoring is something entirely different,” he said. "Courts have long understood a search to encompass audio surveillance."
City Hall, located at 100 North Jefferson Street, is where the city clerk’s office is located and absentee ballots are collected. The municipal court building is located nearby at 330 South Jefferson.
“You have to proceed as though somebody is listening to your every word,” Walsh added. "If the government is listening to the advice that lawyers might give their clients, that totally changes how you behave. If you're on government property, who's to say they're not monitoring you outside as well."