A top Syracuse police official told lawmakers Tuesday the department inadvertently shared license plate reader data with departments around the country with a simple click.
The Syracuse Police Department received messages from departments around the country that asked if SPD wanted access to their license plate reader data, said Deputy Chief Richard Shoff.
“If you say yes,” Shoff said, “you are automatically opted in.”
The simple action, opting into accessing other departments’ driving data at the program’s infancy, opened for a year Syracuse drivers’ data to thousands of police departments around the country. Syracuse drivers’ data appeared in 4.4 million searches of Flock’s national network of license plate reader databases.
The department only learned it had shared the data when Central Current reached out to the department about a log of searches that showed Syracuse police searching databases of departments around the country, Shoff said.
Shoff’s revelation came Tuesday as he tried to explain to the Common Council’s Public Safety Committee how the department opted into sharing its data.
Councilor Chol Majok, who chairs the committee, called the meeting after Central Current revealed in June that Syracuse police had opted into a data-sharing agreement with its license plate reader vendor, Flock Safety.
The city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group had recommended — prior to the department buying the license plate readers — that the department not share its data.
Shoff took responsibility on Tuesday for the data sharing snafu.
“We did not lock that process down,” Shoff said.
The police department has since closed out-of-state law enforcement’s access to its database, which is stored in Flock’s cloud, Shoff and other department members told the Common Council. The city owns its data and Flock, the vendor, cannot access that information, Shoff and other department personnel told the Common Council.
Because the department has a pre-existing memorandum of understanding to share data with several local law enforcement agencies through the Onondaga County Crime Analysis Center, license plate reader data may continue to flow to other in-state law enforcement, according to Shoff.
That could include Madison County, which just signed an agreement to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement with its deportation efforts.
Councilor Jimmy Monto pressed the department on whether Syracuse could store data in its own physical servers, as the department does for its COPS cameras.
“The leap here is, we’re trusting this company to hold that data for a year, and we have a federal government that has thrown due process out the window, so that’s my biggest concern,” Monto said. “Can we not keep the data ourselves?”
Syracuse Police Department Sgt. Shannon Einbeck told Monto the City doesn’t have the capacity to cost effectively store the LPR data itself.
“It’s an abundance of data,” Einbeck said. “It’s more cost efficient to keep it in the cloud through Flock.”
The police department’s answers didn’t satisfy Monto’s concerns, he said.
“I can’t speak for my colleagues,” Monto said, “but I still have major concerns about privacy and keeping everyone safe.”
When Mayor Ben Walsh last year granted qualified approval to the department to use mounted license plate readers, he did so with the understanding that the police department would follow the recommendations of the mayor’s Surveillance Technology Working Group.
That oversight body — which includes city personnel and community stakeholders with expertise in surveillance technology and ethics) — called on the Syracuse Police Department to publish its license plate reader system use policy and privacy policy, publish annual reports outlining their use, and publish the locations of its readers.
So far, the department has not followed those recommendations. Shoff on Tuesday committed to correcting that. The deputy chief said that the police department is in process of rewriting its rules and regulations, policies, and procedures.
Shoff expects the department will complete its new policy in the coming weeks. The department will also include data on its license plate reader use in its annual reports, according to Shoff.
The department has not published an annual report on its website since 2022. Department spokesperson Keiran Coffey did not answer a Central Current reporter’s multiple inquiries regarding the absence of recent annual reports, and did not respond to questions about why the license plate reader policy had not been posted a year after the mayor’s experts instructed for it to be published.
Nationwide, local governments are reckoning with their contracts with Flock Safety for its license plate readers, as privacy experts and civil rights advocates sound the alarm about the company.
The Austin, Texas City Council recently terminated its contract with Flock Safety, citing privacy and data-sharing concerns.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Monto said it would be helpful in the future if the Surveillance Technology Working Group’s members informed the Common Council if and when the group’s recommendations weren’t met — but also acknowledged the council’s role as an oversight body.
“It’s incumbent upon the council to make sure that we’re holding people accountable to do what they’re supposed to be doing,” Monto said. I certainly think I will have more questions.”
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