Councilor Jimmy Monto is one of the Syracuse lawmakers who wants to ban biometric surveillance in Syracuse. He is pictured here during a Feb. 23 meeting of the Common Council. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Members of the Syracuse Common Council on Thursday identified concerns about unregulated biometric surveillance in a Thursday meeting of the council’s Finance, Taxation and Assessment committee.

Councilors Corey Williams, Jimmy Monto and Chol Majok are sponsoring legislation to ban businesses in Syracuse from collecting, storing or sharing customers’ biometric information.

The collection of biometric information can include:

  • facial features
  • handprints and fingerprints
  • retina and iris scans, voice
  • genetics
  • walking patterns
  • other characteristic movements or gestures.

Along with the bill’s sponsors, Councilors Helen Hudson and Marty Nave attended the committee meeting, which featured a videoconferenced presentation on the potential and actual harm of biometric surveillance from New York Civil Liberties Union senior policy analyst Daniel Schwarz.

Businesses frame the practice as a security measure, but Schwarz outlined how biometric surveillance in the past has harmed innocent people — and how it poses future harm as the implementation of the technology becomes more common, including in law enforcement.

“You hear the argument for safety and security, and I think we all agree, we understand wanting to create as much security and safety in stores as possible,” Schwarz said. “But we also have to understand that surveillance is not safety, especially with those tools that have shown biases and are flawed.”

Since January, biometrics surveillance has featured in local and statewide lawmakers’ discussions on the intersections of security and civil liberties in everyday life. 

After the Rochester-based grocer chain Wegmans posted signage warning of biometric surveillance at locations in New York City, lawmakers around the state have sought legal solutions to the problem of private entities subjecting law-abiding citizens to unregulated surveillance in places of public accommodation, such as retail stores. 

The Onondaga County Legislature recently passed a biometric disclosure law, requiring any business in the county using such surveillance tools to notify their patrons at entrances that the business is subjecting them to biometric surveillance. The new county law lacks an enforcement mechanism.

State Sen. Rachel May is sponsoring several pieces of legislation aimed at curtailing biometric surveillance. May and Sen. Chris Ryan are sponsoring an algorithmic pricing bill that on Tuesday passed the senate.

Several national retail industry leaders such as Whole Foods, Macy’s, and Lowes already use biometric surveillance in stores.

In April, digital publication Wired reported on Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan’s deployment of biometric surveillance against protesters, a transgender person, lawyers, and others.

“I despise this technology, and I don’t think it has any place anywhere,” Monto said. “I think it’s garbage.”

Majok and Hudson expressed concern about biometric surveillance’s lower efficacy rates when trying to identify non-white individuals.

“I think that technology is very dangerous, especially to black and brown people, and that’s where my issue comes in,” Hudson said after the meeting.

Schwarz said throughout his presentation that biometric and facial recognition tools have higher error rates when attempting to identify women and people of color.

The Federal Trade Commission in 2023 found that Rite Aid’s use of facial recognition surveillance in its stores falsely flagged people of color and women as shoplifters at a disproportionate rate. The FTC banned Rite Aid from using facial recognition technology for surveillance for five years.

Hudson said that she is concerned about the growing use of biometric surveillance in the private sector — and said the council should “ absolutely” consider establishing a similar policy for city government.

“We would have to enact some type of policy, because you can’t just willy-nilly go out there and track people,” Hudson said.

Schwarz also sits on the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group as a community stakeholder. He was appointed by former Mayor Ben Walsh. 

In his 2020 executive order establishing the working group, Walsh ordered that “any technologies using biometric, facial recognition, or whole-body gesture analysis” is “effectively banned” and would not be considered by the City of Syracuse for future implementation. 

That order remains in effect today.

A recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union detailed fourteen instances of biometric information used in wrongful arrests, most of which involved people of color.

The councilors’ discussion also explored how biometric data can fuel President Donald Trump’s detention and deportation operations.

Digital investigative outlet 404 Media in June 2025 reported that federal agents in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had begun using a phone app called Mobile Fortify to scan individuals’ faces during street encounters. 

DHS plans to use over $7 million dollars to develop smart glasses for the department’s agents to wear during immigration enforcement operations, aiming to roll out that technology next year.

Schwarz warned that biometric data collection might serve other applications in the future, and encouraged the council to take a “tech-agnostic” approach to policy.

“I think this is a really common-sense approach to say, ‘not here, we don’t want to be surveilled, we don’t want to be harmed when we go for our daily shopping,’ Schwarz said. “I’m very encouraged by the council that you are focused on this issue and that you are moving this forward.”

Read more of Central Current’s coverage

Patrick McCarthy is a staff reporter at Central Current covering government and politics. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Maxwell and Newhouse Schools, McCarthy was born and raised in Syracuse and...