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Cities are planning to sue the Federal Communications Commission over its decision to preempt local rules on deployment of 5G wireless equipment. From a report: Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and City Attorney Pete Holmes yesterday said their city intends to appeal the FCC order in federal court. Seattle will be coordinating with other cities on a lawsuit, they said. "In coordination with the overwhelming majority of local jurisdictions that oppose this unprecedented federal intrusion by the FCC, we will be appealing this order, challenging the FCC's authority and its misguided interpretations of federal law," they said in a press release.

The FCC says its order will save carriers $2 billion, less than one percent of the estimated $275 billion it will take to deploy 5G across the country. In Oregon, the Portland City Council voted Tuesday to approve a lawsuit against the FCC, The Oregonian reported, saying the move "added Portland to a growing list of cities, primarily on the West Coast, that are preparing to fight" the FCC order. East Coast cities including New York City and Boston have also objected to the FCC decision. As we've previously reported, the FCC order drew opposition from rural municipalities as well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The practice of "swatting," or calling in fake threats to activate an aggressive police response to an unwitting home or business, has unfortunately lingered for the past few years. Starting this week, one police department in the United States is rolling out a system targeted directly at this illegal hoax practice. On its official "swatting" resource site, the Seattle Police Department acknowledges how swatting works, along with the fact that citizens have requested a way to submit their own concerns or worries about being a potential victim. "To our knowledge, no solution to this problem existed, so we engineered one," SPD's site reads. The site claims that swatting victims are "typically associated with the tech industry, video game industry, and/or the online broadcasting community."

SPD's process asks citizens to create a profile on a third-party data-management service called Rave Facility (run by the company Smart911). Though this service is advertised for public locations and businesses, it supports private residences as well, and SPD offers steps to input data and add a "swatting concerns" tab to your profile. With that information in hand, SPD says that any police or 911 operator who receives a particularly troubling emergency report and matches it to a location that has already been flagged with a "swatting concerns" notice, will share that information "with first responders to inform and improve their police response to the incident." The report notes that "all calls" will still receive standard police response, whether or not any swatting concerns are filed. "Nothing about this solution is designed to minimize or slow emergency services," the site reads. "At the same time, if information is available, it is more useful for responding officers to have it than to not."

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Seattle police caught an alleged car thief by enlisting the help of car maker BMW to both track and then remotely lock the luckless criminal in the very car he was trying to steal... Turns out if you're inside a stolen car, it's perhaps not the best time to take a nap. "A car thief awoke from a sound slumber Sunday morning (November 27) to find he had been remotely locked inside a stolen BMW, just as Seattle police officers were bearing down on him," wrote Jonah Spangenthal-Lee [deputy director of communications for the Seattle Police Department].

The suspect found a key fob mistakenly left inside the BMW by a friend who'd borrowed the car from the owner and the alleged crime was on. But technology triumphed. When the owner, who'd just gotten married a day earlier, discovered the theft, the police contacted BMW corporate, who tracked the car to Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood.
The 38-year-old inside was then booked for both auto theft and possession of methamphetamine.

reifman writes: Amazon announced that it will commit one of its buildings to housing 200 Seattle homeless people for the next year, allowing a nonprofit organization to oversee the facilities... With more than 4,505 living on the streets, Seattle's mayor recently declared a homelessness emergency... More than 45 people died on the streets in 2015, heroin related deaths in King County are at a 20-year high, and neighborhoods are up in arms about homeless drug use, crime and people living in cars.
The Seattle Times notes that Amazon's construction on the lot isn't scheduled until 2017, so they reached out to the homelessness nonprofit to temporarily offer its use, hoping to later offer the group a second site. (The nonprofit will pay the site's utility bills).

An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle City Council announced on Monday that it has unanimously approved a $15 per hour minimum wage mandate. The new rate will go into effect starting April 1, 2015 in a tiered, gradual manner that depends on employer size. In the first year of implementation, hourly minimum wage will be raised to either $10 or $11 according to the employer size category. By 2021, hourly minimum wage across the board should be at or above $15. Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners."

An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle City Council announced on Monday that it has unanimously approved a $15 per hour minimum wage mandate. The new rate will go into effect starting April 1, 2015 in a tiered, gradual manner that depends on employer size. In the first year of implementation, hourly minimum wage will be raised to either $10 or $11 according to the employer size category. By 2021, hourly minimum wage across the board should be at or above $15. Seattle is the first city to implement a living wage for its lowest earners."

New submitter xanadu113 writes "I help out with a large outdoor festival each year (Seattle Hempfest), and we use 4G hotspots on-site for our internet needs. Due to being at the bottom of the hill (in Myrtle Edwards park in downtown Seattle, WA right on the sound), we have problems with loss of signal, bandwidth switching (going between 4G/3G/2G, etc.). As wireless internet is our only option on site, we need to do something about improving the signals. What would be the best way to do a site survey of the 4G signals to select the best locations for hotspots, as well as the best carrier to use? We need potentially up to 10 devices per hotspot, and up to 10 hotspots or so. Also, would putting up a 4G repeater be a good option to solve this problem?"

newscloud writes "Seattle will soon shut down its popular phonebook opt-out website as a result of a costly settlement with Yellow Pages publishers. Going forward, the only way to stop unwanted phonebook deliveries will be to visit the industry's opt out site and provide them with your personal information. They will share it with their clients, most of whom are direct marketing agencies, who in turn commit not to use it improperly. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled in October that The Yellow Pages represent protected free speech of corporations (including Canada's Yellow Media Inc.); defending and settling the lawsuit cost Seattle taxpayers $781,503. The city said the program's popularity led to a reduction of 2 million pounds of paper waste annually."

symbolset writes "Enthusiasm about Google's Kansas City fiber project is overwhelming. But in the Emerald City, the government doesn't want to wait. They have been stringing fiber throughout the city for years, and today announced a deal with company Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to serve fiber to 55,000 Seattle homes and businesses with speeds up to a gigabit. The city will lease out the unused fiber, but will not have ownership in the provider nor a relationship with the end customers. The service rollout is planned to complete in 2014. It is the first of 6 planned university area network projects currently planned by Gigabit Squared."