Nashville Businesses and Metro Gov't: Don't Take My Word on Fusus. Ask A Lawyer, Like Adam Shoop.
Nashville Resident and Former Legal Director of the Civil Action Practice at the Bronx Defenders Office Has Been Providing Testimony
I am not a lawyer.
Which is to the chagrin of the three other attorneys in my immediate family (though likely to the relief of my other family members).
However, Adam Shoop is a lawyer. And he has much more robust, and let’s face it, concise things to say about Fusus than me.
Adam Shoop is the former Legal Director of the Civil Action Practice at the Bronx Defenders Office in NYC, and now calls Nashville his home.
Here he is speaking to Metro Council on March 4th about his initial concerns on the proposed Fusus system.
And here he is today, one week later, having done even more homework on Axon’s Fusus, as well as the broader federal surveillance state that Fusus would integrate Nashville into in a new, and potentially very dangerous, way.
Statements coming from the highest levels of Metro leadership like “these cameras already exist, what does it matter?” and “our phones are tracking us all the time anyway” are examples of what the Elecontric Frontier Foundation (EFF) calls data privacy nihilism. But EFF and its long time advocates want us to maintain hope.
Google tracking your phone’s location, or tools to help MNPD more easily assess emergencies and deploy resources, is not the same thing as encouraging Metro businesses to pay money to give their private camera data directly to a $50B weapons and surveillance company with tens of millions of dollars of contracts with: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI.
Whatever rules are placed on MNPD apply to MNPD. It’s not clear yet what, if any, rules can be applied to what Axon does with Nashville business data and who they can give it to or why. Metro Council is awaiting answers from Metro Legal and Axon, but thus far, it’s been crickets.
I consider myself a gadfly, and my writing is meant to arouse, reproach, and persuade our social consciousness to think harder and do better.
Adam’s writing is more like, well, a lawyer. He’s a straight shooter. He’s organized, succinct, and argues his case beyond a reasonable doubt.
I turn it over to him to talk, with much more knowledge and precision than I ever could, about some of the risks of Axon’s Fusus systems, risks that do not primarily have to do with MNPD’s use of that data.
Click here to give Adam’s latest article a read, and give him a “subscribe” to get his insights. If you like what I write about Nashville, but wish I could keep a lid on my word count and has actually been to law school, Adam’s your guy.
Text reproduced below.
Metro Council 2025: Fusus and MNPD Surveillance Explainer, Pt. 4: Federal & State Overreach
On 3/4, the Council passed an amended guardrails bill, now it goes to a final vote 3/18. In Part 4, I look at how Fusus could be exploited to carry out Trump's mass deportation plans.
Mar 11, 2025
Our current historical moment demands a radical reimagining of how we address various harms. The levers of power are currently in the hands of an administration that is openly hostile to the most marginalized in our society (Black people, Native people, the poor, LGBTQ people, immigrant communities, and more). While we protect ourselves from their consistent and regular blows, we must also fight for a vision of the world we want to inhabit.
- Mariame Kaba & Kelly Hayes, “A Jailbreak of the Imagination: Seeing Prisons for What They Are and Demanding Transformation,” Truthout (May 3, 2018).1
Earlier in this series, I examined Nashville’s interest in Fusus and its existing surveillance ordinance (Part 1), the genesis of the Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) model that Nashville borrowed from the ACLU and its flaws (Part 2), and then looked at the mechanics of the guardrails as applied to the MNPD and the likelihood of police abusing the technology (Part 3). In Part 4, I look at how—guardrails be damned—Fusus could still feed surveillance to ICE.
When Fusus failed to pass last December, the Mayor expressed disappointment that the proposed guardrails did not assuage concerns about state and federal overreach:
As it relates to the possibility of being exploited by federal authorities, there are two guardrails that the Mayor and others point to as sufficient. One is the restriction that MNPD can only share donor camera footage with other entities in cases of a public health or safety emergency (discussed in Part 3, essentially any time there is a service call to the police). The other is the so-called “kill switch” which allows Metro to end the contract “if outside actors seek to use it” in ways the MNPD, Law Department or Council object to. Although the Mayor’s office reluctantly acquiesced to these guardrails, they made sure to tell the public they are not even necessary because “Fusus would be an impractical tool to achieve what critics warn it could be used for”:
“Fusus would be a terribly ineffective way of doing terrible things,” [mayoral Director of Legislative Affairs, Dave] Rosenberg said. “It can be tempting to attach to Fusus all of the unrelated possibilities out there, but that’s not what this product is. The products that were being described in public hearing were terrifying, and I’m thankful that those are not Fusus.”
Both this comment and the legislative guardrails, however, demonstrate a lack of understanding of the risks involved with any extensive system of data collection.
MNPD and DCSO Currently Share Info With ICE on a Regular Basis
There is a dangerous misunderstanding that MNPD and the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office do not share information with ICE, sometimes attributed to the fact that Nashville dropped out of the 287(g) immigration enforcement program in 2012. This is false. Every time someone goes through arrest-and-booking procedures in Nashville, their biometric information is transmitted to ICE. Period. As recently reported by the Nashville Banner, ICE enforcement is up 400% in Nashville jails for February 2025.
This includes the recent ICE detention of a pregnant, single mother whose criminal case was going to be dismissed but instead she was picked up by ICE and taken to an immigration detention facility in Louisiana. Why there? The ICE Field Office in New Orleans routinely falls below ICE’s own minimal standards of care, and violates federal and international human rights law. According to an August 2024 report by a coalition in immigrant rights groups:
The abuses documented range from the use of restrictive five-point shackles and prolonged solitary confinement to cockroach-infested food and lack of access to feminine hygiene products. Detained individuals also reported physical assault, sexual abuse, and denial of prescribed medications for epilepsy and diabetes.
And by the way, for the Democrats wringing their hands, this arrest-information sharing process dates back to 2008 and continued through both the Obama and Biden administrations.2 But last year, a new Tennessee effective July 1, 2024 (SB 2576/HB 2124) “requires, rather than authorizes” agencies like MNPD and DCSO to “report an individual’s immigration status — or, more accurately, lack of it — to federal authorities.” This is codified at TCA § 7-68-105.
To the extent there is confusion about this—and at this point I really think it is willful ignorance—it is because all of this is automated, it doesn’t require anyone at MNPD to affirmatively make a phone call to ICE. As Patsy Montesinos at News Channel 5 explained just the other day:
The trend that the state legislature will preempt local governments on matters like this is only going to continue in Tennessee. The state just created a “centralized immigration enforcement division,” during special session. To name but two more currently pending proposals: “the Tennessee Illegal Immigration Act” (HB 0010/SB 0006) would require local law enforcement to affirmatively request detainers from ICE for people suspected of being undocumented, rather than waiting to hear from ICE after their arrest-and-booking information is transmitted, per the above. It’s scheduled for a hearing in the Senate Departments & Agencies Subcommittee today 3/11. Another bill would require law enforcement agencies, including MNPD, to report monthly on every interaction with undocumented people (HB 0833/SB 0750) will be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on 3/18.
ICE Doesn’t Need a Warrant to Get Data Through Private Data Brokers, Emergency Legal Requests and 1509 Summons
On a public relations tour offering demonstrations of Fusus, MNPD Deputy Chief of Crime Control Strategies Bureau, Greg Blair tried to alleviate fears about how Fusus could be used to support Trump’s deportation agenda:
“The feds don’t need our help to go do whatever their mission is,” Blair said. “They just don’t. We’ve been here for two years and no federal partners [have] called down here whatsoever.”
Similarly, last November, during a Metro Council public health and safety meeting:
“If ICE were to knock on MNPD’s door and say, give us access to the data room where Fusus are housed would you be required to comply?” [Council member Sandra] Sepulveda asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” [MNPD Deputy Chief, of Executive Services Bureau, Chris] Gilder said. “So search warrants under both state and federal rules of criminal procedure require you to have probable cause to be that there is evidence contained in a specific time.”
Very cute and quaint understanding of ICE complying with the Fourth Amendment!
MNPD is right—for the wrong reasons—that ICE doesn’t necessarily need their direct assistance. Where Blair and I would disagree is as to the reason. Blair said it’s because “he is skeptical that outside law enforcement could figure out what footage to look for.” I would say it’s because the federal government is able to seek data from sources that don’t require a warrant and private companies are only too willing to provide information for the right price. In fact, as it collects one of the “largest known troves of bulk data being deployed by law enforcement” in the country, ICE “appears to be on firm legal footing because the government buys access to it from a commercial vendor, just as a private company could.”
Under the current Trump administration, ICE is already “swiftly expanding its sprawling surveillance apparatus.” Just days after the inauguration, ICE posted procurement notices for both its Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) division—responsible for detaining and deporting noncitizens—and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)—responsible for criminal investigations on transnational crimes and threats—to ”enlarge, transform, and modernize the agency’s ability to track, monitor, and surveil noncitizens.” In particular, the procurement notices seek data brokers because, as advocates have warned, “they help federal agencies bypass privacy safeguards and violate the Fourth Amendment.”
A two-year investigation by Georgetown Law published in 2022 found that ICE has “quietly built a system that lets it peer into and track the personal lives of all Americans on a never-before-seen scale,” effectively operating as a domestic spy agency through contracts with “a dizzying array of data brokers, from DMVs and credit-reporting agencies to utility companies.” For example, ICE has a $22 million contract with LexisNexis for its “Risk Solutions” through 2028:
Its tools not only track immigrants, but also ensnare U.S. residents. LexisNexis boasts generating reports on 282 million unique identities tied to individuals, and its dossiers reveal Social Security numbers and other personal information, including addresses, phone numbers, current and previous workplaces, social media accounts, data from phone apps, and similar identifying information for relatives and associates.
Another example is ICE contracts for geolocation data with Venntel and Babel Street. In Venntel marketing materials to ICE obtained through FOIA, it boasted that, “over the course of a day, it swept up more than 15 billion location points from more than 250 million mobile devices.” We all know that a massive amount of information about ourselves is being collected through the apps we use, the websites we visit, the social media posts we like, the purchases we make. There are thousands of data points and all of it is “meticulously harvested, packaged, and sold for profit.” And ICE is buying as much of it as it can.
Information from data brokers is just one input source for the new $6.158 billion “next-wave biometric database” that the Department of Homeland Security is constructing. As explained in a comprehensive report by Mijente, Just Futures Law and the Immigrant Defense Project, it will rely on inputs from a variety of sources:
Powered by military-grade technologies, HART is an unprecedented step forward in DHS’ surveillance capabilities. HART is a massive surveillance tool that will aggregate, link, and compare biometrics data, including facial recognition images, DNA profiles, iris scans, digital fingerprints, and voice prints on unique profiles of more than 270 million people, including juveniles. HART’s purpose is to collect, organize, and share invasive personal data from federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Defense, as well as from local and state law enforcement, and from dozens of foreign governments and international agencies.
It should not be hard to imagine how taking one small piece of information that may not mean much by itself—showing up on surveillance footage or a photograph of a license plate from an ALPR, for example—and adding it to all of the other information ICE collects could have the effect of fueling more deportations.
To avoid traditional the kinds of warrants that Deputy Chief Gilder is talking about, ICE also employs “emergency legal requests” and “1509 summonses,” the names of which give them a fig leaf of legal legitimacy that they do not deserve.
Emergency legal requests, although sometimes referred to as subpoenas, are not signed by a judge and are only supposed to be used in “instances of imminent danger.” But that has not stopped companies such as Apple, Google, Meta and other tech giants from routinely complying in ordinary cases. In fact, Apple and Meta even admitted that they provided information in response to forged emergency data requests sent by hackers who impersonated law enforcement agencies through compromised email systems. It has become so bad that the FBI issued a warning last August:
Cyber-criminals are likely gaining access to compromised US and foreign government email addresses and using them to conduct fraudulent emergency data requests to US based companies, exposing the personal information of customers to further use for criminal purposes.
Another warrantless method utilized by ICE is an administrative subpoena also known as a “1509 summons,” an obscure legal tool intended for criminal investigations about illegal imports or unpaid customs duties that ICE has converted into a tool in its deportation machine. Analyzing a database they obtained through FOIA, WIRED found that ICE agents issued 1509 summonses more than 170,000 times from 2016 to mid-August 2022:
The primary recipients of 1509s include telecommunications companies, major tech firms, money transfer services, airlines, and even utility companies.
The outlier cases include custom summonses that sought records from a youth soccer league in Texas; surveillance video from a major abortion provider in Illinois; student records from an elementary school in Georgia; health records from a major state university’s student health services; data from three boards of elections or election departments; and data from a Lutheran organization that provides refugees with humanitarian and housing support.
“But The Cameras Already Exist!”
One of the more puzzling rationales for adopting Fusus is these cameras already exist! They’re already eagerly installed by fellow Nashvillians in parking lots or on front doors! Mayor O’Connell recently told the Nashville Scene that Fusus only “takes an existing surveillance resource and merely makes it more available to local law enforcement to resolve crimes.” And if the number of participating cameras grows—as it did in Atlanta where registered and integrated cameras tripled in just a year—well, that’s of no importance. Quoting MNPD Deputy Chief Blair again: “Everyone’s recording everybody at any point in time. It’s a fact of life. […] We’re only looking to build criminal cases.”
To those who fear the dangers of a tightly surveilled society subject to widespread real-time data collection, O’Connell implies that we already live in one.
“ I guess, again, I'm left with, these cameras are already installed,” says O’Connell, glancing out his office window toward the Cumberland. “If you’re worried about that, just throw your phone in the river.”
Aside from the transformation this represents from O’Connell as Council Member to O’Connell as Mayor, this false fait accompli is ignoring one of the central purposes of Fusus: it funnels usually siloed cameras into one central location. Quoting from the 11/2024 Community Review Board informational report:
FUSUS is a surveillance technology platform which allows MNPD to create a “Real-Time Intelligence Ecosystem,” a centralized database which grants access to both public and private cameras across Nashville under a “single pane of glass.” Essentially, community members who wish to participate in the program decide whether to register or fully “integrate” their cameras. Once compiled, MNPD can view the locations of registered cameras and the real-time footage of integrated cameras, all in one place. Most cameras that are part of a wired network can be linked to FUSUS. This includes public cameras (e.g. Metro Government-owned cameras, public school cameras, license plate readers) as well as private cameras (e.g. security cameras or CCTVs).
In addition to centralizing location and access, Fusus is turning all of those “dumb cameras into smart ones.” Even though Axon claims that Fusus does not use facial recognition (which I discussed in Part 3), it does undeniably use object recognition capabilities for items, people, and specific vehicles:
That hardware, called SmartCORE, adds artificial intelligence to ordinary surveillance cameras and then allows them to detect different objects, vehicles, clothing, and “people.” The exact context or object being identified is unclear, but one screenshot included in a Fusus brochure shows a timeline interface with a camera feed and an attached “confidence” rating of 51.46%. The system can also integrate with gunfire detection systems and other internet-of-things sensors, another document reads.
This capability is built into devices attached to the private donor cameras, governed by whatever the capabilities and terms of service are between Axon and the private individual or business, as alluded to in a Fusus promotional video, excerpted below:
If ICE bypasses MNPD and instead asks Axon Fusus for direct access to the private donor cameras in Nashville, who will Axon listen to, Metro or ICE? Presumably, Axon knows who butters their bread. The Fusus contract that Metro failed to pass by a vote of 20-18 in December was estimated at $774,900, but the new one (yet to be publicly released) will have to be substantially less to come in under the $250,000 threshold that triggers a 21-vote requirement in the Metro Code.3 CBP and ICE have contracted with Axon for tasers, body-worn cameras, software and other accessories to the tune of $96 million.
Additionally, it’s not even clear that Axon would be prohibited from sharing donor camera footage or data directly with ICE based on the terms of service between Fusus and individuals or businesses who sign up. Terms of service that, as
Mike Lacy over at {Rich Text} points out, no one has seen:
I first raised my concerns about Axon on March 3rd, noting that Metro was moving toward passage of a contract, but no one seemed to have access to what the business’s side of the T&Cs were going to be.
Metro has not produced any indication about what they think the terms between Axon and residents would be.
Axon hasn’t answered questions on this topic either.
I believe they haven’t answered this because I am, to my knowledge, the first person who asked them this — on an email chain with every member of Metro Council visibly copied.
Yesterday, Council Member Ginny Welsch submitted a post to Council Connect (which operates as a sort of Slack for city lawmakers, available as read-only to the public in order to comply with Tennessee’s open meeting laws) requesting responses to Lacy’s questions from the administration, Metro Legal, Axon and MNPD. The next vote is only a week away.
The Trump Administration Will Apply Legal Pressure to Local Officials Who Stand in the Way
The Justice Department has already issued a memorandum instructing federal prosecutors to investigate state and local officials for possible criminal charges based on “resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply” with Trump’s deportation agenda. The memo also tasks the DOJ’s Civil Division to work alongside the newly created Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group “to identify state and local laws, policies, activities that are inconsistent with the Administration's immigration efforts and, where appropriate, challenge such laws.”
It does not seem like the guardrails proponents have talked to the Law Department recently:
City lawyers working until midnight. Phones ringing as department heads call for legal advice. Meetings twice a week with hundreds of city attorneys across the country trying to keep up with a stream of memos, executive orders and court decisions.
The volatility of President Donald Trump's administration is stretching thin Nashville’s legal department and other city agencies as they navigate a rapidly changing federal policy landscape. […]
[Metro Nashville Law Director Wally] Dietz said Nashville’s legal department of 37 attorneys and about 15 paralegals was already working unsustainable hours before Trump took office. Since Jan. 20, Dietz said, “it feels like it's been a year in terms of the amount of the stress that we’re under.”
Very bad!
Conclusion
All of this brings me back to the question I asked myself when I started this series: why is this city expanding police surveillance powers at precisely the moment Tennessee’s state and federal lawmakers are pledging fealty to their MAGA god-king and running roughshod over legislative and constitutional barriers? I keep thinking of Trina Hewell kicking off the public comment portion of the agenda at the Council’s February 18 meeting, recounted in Nicole Williams’ coverage for the Nashville Scene:
Every so often, the Metro Council is blessed with a barn burner of a public comment. On Tuesday, that came from Trina Hewell, a woman from East Nashville. “Have you seen what a tractor trailer can do to some guardrails?” Hewell asked, speaking against the so-called “Fusus guardrails” bill. In this instance, the state and federal governments are the tractor trailers, and they theoretically don’t give a shit about any pesky municipal guardrails the council may enact. […] “The president said this week, ‘He who saves his country cannot break the law,’ and Democrats ... somehow still support Fusus,” said Hewell, “cheerleading the tractor trailer that will inevitably plow through these guardrails.”
Footnotes
This essay is re-printed in the collection: Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice pp. 18-25 (2021) as part of the wonderful Haymarket Books “Abolitionist Papers” series.
During the Obama administration, ICE launched the Secure Communities program (“S-Comm”). “The keystone of S-Comm is a fingerprint-sharing initiative that automatically sends the fingerprints of any person who is booked by federal, state or local law enforcement to the FBI and ICE. While several states initially resisted enrolling in S-Comm, the Obama administration stated that participation was mandatory. As a result, all 3,181 law enforcement jurisdictions in the country—in all 50 states, the district and five U.S. territories—were enrolled in the program.” S-Comm was subsequently modified in 2014, becoming the Priority Enforcement Program (PEP)—targeting people with serious criminal convictions for deportation—but the fingerprint/biometric sharing component was left intact under PEP. It remained operational through the Biden administration as it is presently under the second Trump administration.
Nina Wang, Allison McDonald, Daniel Bateyko & Emily Tucker, “American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law” (2022).
Normally city contracts are subjected to competitive bids, but a “sole source contract” is one the city has determined there is only one source for the type of service or product it is trying to buy. By law, “no sole source contract for the purchase of goods or services, excluding contracts for economic development initiatives and services, with a total contract amount in excess of two hundred fifty thousand dollars may be entered into unless and until such contract has been approved by resolution duly adopted by the council by twenty-one affirmative votes.” Metro Code § 4.12.060.
Recommend shoop.wtf to your readers
10+ year civil public defender on lawyer hiatus. Nashville resident by way of Ohio > Boston > NYC. Heart of a wheelbarrow. Flunk every opportunity to be interesting.