The Syracuse Common Council on Monday voted unanimously to ban biometric surveillance in most businesses in the city, earning applause from a handful of residents attending the afternoon voting session.
The local lawmakers became some of the first in the state to prohibit such surveillance in grocery stores and other retail settings, though financial institutions are exempted from the new local law.
Biometric data includes identifying characteristics of an individual’s body, including their face, eye color, retinas, fingerprints, voice and other features.
Local and state officials have discussed legislation regulating or banning biometric surveillance since January, when The Gothamist reported on new signage affixed outside Wegmans grocery stores in New York City disclosing biometric surveillance use inside. The practice is not new — Rite Aid, Home Depot and Lowes each faced lawsuits for their use of such surveillance within their stores in the 2010s — but its use within businesses is becoming more common as the necessary tools become more accessible.
In a statement ahead of the vote, Councilor Corey Williams said the biometric ban was the culmination of work that began in the winter.
“Biometric surveillance can create very tangible harm for our residents,” Williams said. “During the unrest this winter in Minnesota and Maine, we witnessed the collection of biometric data being used as a tactic of intimidation against citizens. This demonstrates the power of this technology.
Biometric surveillance has become a component of the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants. Agents from U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies have reportedly been scanning people’s faces during street encounters.
DHS says it is using a phone application called Mobile Fortify — which compiles data from sources including U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s database of images of individuals taken when entering or exiting the country — to verify an individual’s citizenship. DHS agents, though, are reportedly also using biometric data collection to intimidate legal protesters.
In January, During President Donald Trump’s “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine, an American citizen legally observing DHS agents asked one of the masked agents why he had taken his phone out to film her.
“Cause we have a nice little database,” the anonymous agent replied. “Now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
Video footage shows the agent scanning the license plates of nearby vehicles, then directing his camera toward the legal observer. Elsewhere in the nation, agents have similarly invoked federal surveillance systems to intimidate citizens who are either protesting or legally observing the agents’ anti-immigration operations.
Research has found the technology is notoriously biased against non-white and non-male people.
Councilors scorned those built-in discrepancies during a committee meeting last week, and Williams again referenced the biases in biometric surveillance when describing the urgency of the local ban.
“We know that algorithms used to identify individuals have a hard time with people who are young, people who are old, persons of color, members of the LGBTQ community. In many ways, these are descriptors of our city,” Williams said. “The misindentification of these individuals opens them up to greater levels of harm.”
Despite those flaws, biometric data collection is spreading throughout commercial establishments and beyond, including in venues like Madison Square Garden.
Macy’s and Whole Foods are among the national brands known to currently employ biometric surveillance systems within stores, though the full extent of biometric surveillance in places of business remains opaque.
The council’s legislation comes on the heels of a biometric disclosure law that the Onondaga County Legislature recently passed. The county’s provision emulates the New York City disclosure law that required Wegmans to post the signage which kicked off the statewide scramble to regulate the technology. That law carries penalties for businesses that fail to comply. The county law, though, lacks an enforcement mechanism, and looks to the state for enforcement.
In Albany, State Senator Rachel May is sponsoring multiple bills aimed at prohibiting and regulating surveillance, including a ban on biometric surveillance and a ban on algorithmic pricing. The latter, also sponsored by State Senator Chris Ryan, passed the state senate last week, and awaits a vote in the state assembly.
The council also approved a resolution urging state lawmakers to enact the statewide legislation related to biometric surveillance. Williams and other councilors have said they hope the Syracuse legislation can help boost May’s bills in Albany.
Syracuse’s new local law follows months of mounting interest in the structures of surveillance that have come to surround most aspects of public life in the city.
Residents at the start of the year called on the council to “melt” the city’s contracts with companies that are supporting and profiting from the Trump administration’s detention and deportation operations.
The council in response enacted a local law that added a new step to the city’s contracting process, which requires companies to disclose other business partners, and the nature of those external relationships, before finalizing a contract with Syracuse.
The council also effectively terminated the city’s relationship to Flock Safety, the license plate reader vendor through which the Syracuse Police Department exposed Syracuse drivers’ sensitive data to federal immigration agents. Some activists protested the council’s decision to pivot from Flock Safety to rival Axon Enterprise to provide the SPD with license plate readers — expressing concerns with the tools themselves, rather than the provider — though nonetheless praised the council for showing Flock the door.
Resident Manuel Rodriguez attended the meeting and cheered the council after it approved the biometric ban. After the meeting, Rodriguez said he was concerned that biometric surveillance has already harmed innocent, misidentified individuals, and said the council had taken an “important step” toward preventing that harm from recurring in the future.
“With the rise of third-party companies introducing systems that we really don’t have much control over, to surveil us, not only that but the processing of that data overseas, in ways that we just can’t hold them accountable for in any way,” Rodriguez said. “… Before that becomes a bigger issue, I like the idea that we’re putting the brakes on that.”
Rodriguez said he would “absolutely” support the council codifying into local law former Mayor Ben Walsh’s executive order banning biometric surveillance and facial recognition in the City of Syracuse.
Walsh in 2020 issued an executive order on surveillance technology that broadly prohibited the city government from implementing biometric surveillance and facial recognition technology. That order remains active, but a similar executive order from a successive mayor could undo the ban blocking the city from using biometrics and facial recognition technology.
Councilor Helen Hudson on Thursday told Central Current the council needs to discuss making that ban permanent. Williams said he isn’t sure whether the council’s next step is discussing codifying Walsh’s order, but said he believes a bigger-picture discussion on surveillance in Syracuse is necessary.
“I think that we need to have a larger conversation around surveillance technologies and their place in our city,” Williams said. “I hope this piece is not the end of our action on AI and on surveillance technologies, so it will likely end up part of that conversation.”
