Ahead of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday movie, its titular supervillain apparently made a stop at Seattle City Council this week to endorse the city’s growing surveillance network.
A man dressed as the Marvel villain spoke Tuesday at the council’s Public Safety Committee meeting, telling the panel that Doom had taken over Axon and was now “watching you.”
Axon is a technology company that specializes in products for law enforcement, making everything from Tasers and body cameras to automatic license plate readers and cloud software.
“Doom has total dominion over the city of Seattle. Doom will be behind the cameras watching those seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care. Doom will be able to find your immigrant neighbors, and Doom will be able to ensure the safety of the women of Seattle alongside officers that stalk their exes,” the man said.
As you may have caught by now, Doctor Doom wasn’t actually trying to sell people on the tech.
404 Media reports that man deressed as Doom is actually Clifford Cawthon, a policy advisor for the Washington State Department of Commerce and a member of the local activist group Community Not Cameras. The group is pushing back against Seattle’s use of surveillance systems from companies like Flock and Axon.
The stunt comes amid growing scrutiny of automatic license plate readers.
Companies like Flock and Axon sell the technology to law enforcement agencies. The systems scan license plates as vehicles pass, collecting vehicle information along with the time and location they were spotted. Police can then search that data during investigations.
Privacy advocates, however, warn that the cameras collect location data on millions of people who are not suspected of crimes, often without a warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion.
The backlash has been particularly intense against Flock. Some cities have cut ties with the company, while protesters elsewhere have taken matters into their own hands by tearing down cameras.
Cawthon told 404 Media that he got the idea to dress as Doctor Doom after seeing another activist dress as Darth Vader at a San Diego City Council meeting last month.
Vader also sarcastically endorsed the surveillance technology, telling council members that “The Emperor is a fan of Flock” and praising the cameras as a way to “follow and surveil the rebel scum.”
Cawthon said he was particularly concerned about Seattle’s Real-Time Crime Center, which uses Axon software to bring information from multiple sources into one place. Axon says the platform can combine CCTV, body camera footage, alerts, dispatch information, officer locations, and automatic license plate reader data in a unified interface.
Cawthon told 404 Media that he recently visited Seattle’s Real-Time Crime Center.
“There is a wall of about nine screens in which they can bring up cameras from around the city at any given time,” Cawthon said. “They can also log in, conceivably, even from their home computers with the right credentials […] I am not reassured by the kind of dazzling scale of this complex communications center.”
While Flock has so far taken the brunt of the backlash against license plate readers, Cawthon’s stunt reminds us it’s not the only surveillance company worth watching.
Axon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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