A Flock Safety license plate reader, located on East Adams Street, is pictured here. Syracuse lawmakers finalized a decision to get rid of Flock Safety's license plate readers in favor of Axon Enterprise's LPRs. Credit: Patrick McCarthy | Central Current

Three advocacy groups say Mayor Sharon Owens should open meetings of the Surveillance Technology Working Group to the public following reporting by Central Current.

In March, a state agency that guides local governments on transparency standards issued an opinion to Central Current outlining how the working group has violated state transparency laws. 

The Syracuse Peace Council, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and Syracuse’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America called on Owens to allow members of the public to attend discussions that affect their privacy.

Genevieve Garcia Kendrick, an organizer with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, since January has been pushing for greater accountability in City Hall on surveillance issues. 

Kendrick said that by depriving citizens from understanding how and why the city is making decisions on surveillance technology — and who they are allowing into the room to color those decisions — Syracuse officials are eroding their constituents’ trust.

“We cannot trust that the city is using public funds towards public good if we don’t see their decision-making process,” Kendrick said.

That process is the crux of the controversy surrounding City Hall’s technology experts.

The Committee on Open Government, a state advisory body that issues unenforceable guidance to municipalities on government transparency regulations, found that the Syracuse’s Surveillance Technology Working Group’s private meetings have violated state law. 

The group since 2021 has discussed, evaluated, and issued recommendations on proposed surveillance technologies before the city proceeds with purchasing and implementing such tools. The group in 2023 also performed an audit of the city’s existing surveillance tools that predated the group’s creation.

The city has maintained that the group is an advisory body, a form of governmental body that is exempt from state open meetings laws. 

Though the city characterizes its technology group as an advisory body, Committee on Open Government attorney Christen Smith wrote in her opinion that the Surveillance Technology Working Group is a necessary component of the city’s legislative process. 

That means, Smith wrote, that the group is a public body, not an advisory body, and is subject to the state’s Open Meetings Law.

“If STWG does, in fact, perform the tasks described in the executive order, we respectfully disagree with the City of Syracuse’s opinion regarding the STWG,” Smith said in an email to Central Current.

Several public bodies in Syracuse have appeared to violate or abuse loopholes in the state’s open meetings laws in the last year. Central Current’s investigative reporting revealed the Syracuse Common Council were using caucus meetings to discuss the city’s budget in closed-door deliberations. Local journalists also uncovered potential Open Meetings Law violations at the Syracuse Housing Authority and the Syracuse City School Board.

Andy Mager with the Syracuse Peace Council, said that demonstrating commitments to transparency has become more crucial in the current national political climate. 

Syracuse officials also need to recognize that the federal government has demonstrated an appetite and ability to acquire data collected by local municipalities’ surveillance systems, Mager said.

“We’re fighting the imposition of fascism,” Mager said. “It’s particularly important for our local officials to be protecting us.”

The Syracuse Peace Council acknowledged that Mayor Sharon Owens may not have established the working group’s procedures that are now under scrutiny, Mager said. He and his colleagues, however, are urging the mayor to use her new administration to establish a greater commitment to transparency in Syracuse government.

Owens has an opportunity to fundamentally prioritize transparency and openness to ensure citizens are informed participants in self-governance, Mager said. 

Mager believes Owens has in the past demonstrated a penchant for hearing people and reconsidering approaches, and said he hopes the mayor is willing to discuss the issue of public attendance in Surveillance Technology Working Group meetings.

“We’re in a moment nationally where there’s decreasing transparency and increasing corruption, and those who condemn the Trump’s Administration’s efforts, in this regard, have an additional responsibility to raise the bar and really seek openness, transparency, and to enable citizen engagement,” Mager said.

Kendrick, the local DSA organizer, agreed with Mager that Owens has an opportunity to set an example for government transparency in Syracuse.

The city’s response to the Committee on Open Government’s opinion and guidance, Kendrick said, feels “hypocritical and counter-intuitive,” given that the working group discusses surveillance privacy.

Regardless of the technical classification of the Surveillance Technology Working Group, Kendrick said that the city should strive to exceed mandatory transparency efforts, and will be proceeding in “very bad faith” if it continues to exclude the public from the group’s meetings.

“You don’t want the city to rely on a technicality in order to follow the guidelines or criteria of state law,” Kendrick said. “You want the city to have an overabundance of caution when it comes to ensuring that they’re complying with the law, and also complying with the wants of their citizens.”

Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Communications Director Will Owen in a statement to Central Current condemned the Syracuse surveillance group’s private meetings, and the city’s refusal to adhere to state law and state guidance. 

Owen criticized the working group for excluding Syracuse residents from decisions that impacted their lives and implemented surveillance tools that are now undergirding the Trump administration’s agenda.

STOP is a New York City-based advocacy group tracking police surveillance initiatives and defending individual privacy. The organization has engaged with Syracuse’s surveillance group in the past. STOP submitted an eight-page report during the city’s public comment period on the police department’s proposed Drone as First Responder program.

That report examined real-world examples from the New York Police Department’s own deployment of a similar drone program.

“By evading public accountability, the STWG has enabled the vast expansion of these technologies in Syracuse,” Owen wrote. “Now more than ever, New Yorkers need local leadership to stand up for their civil rights — not make reckless decisions in secret.”

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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...