Traffic passes beneath Syracuse police's COPS cameras corner of Erie Boulevard East and Teall Avenue. SPD has also installed 13 license plate readers in Syracuse. Critics are concerned about data sharing and potential misuse of personal information. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Two years ago, Mayor Ben Walsh’s handpicked team of technology experts instructed the Syracuse Police Department to not share with other law enforcement the data collected by its new license plate readers.

But over the last year, the department did just that. 

The department “inadvertently” opted into sharing drivers’ license plate and driving data with thousands of police departments across the country, said department spokesperson Kieran Coffey.

Police officers across the country have searched Syracuse’s data nearly 4.4 million times since June 2024, Coffey told Central Current. 

The department made the discovery after reporting by Central Current found the department had searched an Illinois police department’s data — which experts said could only happen if SPD had first agreed to allow other departments to search its own database.

“Our contract with Flock explicitly stated that SPD’s data was not to be shared outside of SPD, but SPD opted into sharing inadvertently,” Coffey said. 

The exposure of Syracuse drivers’ data reinforced advocates’ concerns about the technology. They first expressed those concerns when the department in 2023 proposed installing license plate readers in Syracuse. The readers record drivers’ license plate numbers and other identifying information about the cars, which are then logged in a database. 

Experts on the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group warned the department then how, if shared, the data could be abused to track down immigrants, abortion-seekers, protesters and others.

Police officers around the nation have used Flock license plate readers for each of those purposes: Los Angeles Police Department officers recently used Flock license plate readers to surveil protesters; an officer in Texas searched the Flock network for a woman who had an abortion; and officers around the nation are regularly conducting searches of Flock’s network on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Central Current on June 18 first reported the possibility that other police departments were able to search Syracuse police’s license plate reader data. The report prompted multiple meetings by the department to confirm that it had shared its data against the recommendations of the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group. 

As a result of Syracuse police’s subsequent discovery, department officials have contacted Flock Safety, their license plate reader provider, to stop sharing data outside New York, Coffey said. The department is legally bound to share its data with the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, Coffey said.

The police department did not immediately return a request for comment on why the department is required to share data with the state, but DCJS spokesperson Aaron Cagwin confirmed the requirement in a statement.

“The sharing of data is a condition of the law enforcement technology funding award, which applies not just to Syracuse, but to all 378 police departments and sheriffs’ offices that received funding,” Cagwin said. “The condition requires any relevant data or information generated by technology or equipment procured with the funds to be shared with the Crime Analysis Center Network to enable them to support investigations more fully.”

‘There’s nothing nefarious here’

The police department first announced its intention to install 26 AI-powered readers on frequently-traveled city intersections in 2023. 

Chief Joe Cecile invoked the victims of fatal shootings — including 11-year-old Brexialee Torres-Ortiz — to advocate the necessity of the license plate readers.

The department arrested three suspects 10 days after the shooting, but Cecile said the readers would have helped the department more quickly locate Torres-Ortiz’s killers. The license plate readers would be useful in investigating robberies, burglaries, and stolen cars, Cecile told a syracuse.com | Post Standard reporter at the time.

The Syracuse police chief also pledged to conduct frequent audits on the data.

“There’s nothing nefarious here,” Cecile told the reporter in 2023.

The Surveillance Technology Working Group, which was established by an executive order issued in 2020 by Mayor Ben Walsh, recommended Walsh approve of license plate readers — under certain conditions. 

One of those conditions included that the department should require outside law enforcement to file a written request to make each individual inquiry of the license plate reader data. 

The working group approved the technology over the objections of two of the technology experts on the body. 

Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, voted against the license plate readers.

Data analyst Mark King voted against the readers and wrote a dissenting opinion. King worried about potential for misuse and mismanagement the program presented, and alerted City Hall to his concerns.

He wrote that the group shouldn’t approve license plate readers until the group knew who the police department’s vendor was set to be.  

“I do not believe that a decision on this technology can be made without knowing which vendor will be selected to provide the ALPR system. As one example, Flock Safety – a major supplier of this technology to many cities across the country – has received unflattering scrutiny for their willingness to permit data sharing across jurisdictions,” King wrote in his dissent.

About a year after King’s dissent, the city police department bought Flock Safety’s license plate reader technology with approval from the city’s Common Council and mayor. 

Traffic passes beneath Syracuse police’s COPS cameras corner of Hiawatha Boulevard and Park Street. SPD has also installed 13 license plate readers in Syracuse. Critics are concerned about data sharing and potential misuse of personal information. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Syracuse data subject to 4.4 million searches

Department officials have now moved to honor the conditions under which they agreed to buy the license plate readers, Coffey said.

The department’s data should now not be searchable by out-of-state police departments, Coffey said.

Over the last year, the department’s license plate reader data has been subject to nearly 4.4 million searches. The majority of those searches involved a police officer searching many license plate reader databases, not just Syracuse’s. Law enforcement searched only Syracuse’s database fewer than 500 times. Of the 4.4 million searches of Syracuse’s data, 2,097 were labeled as immigration-related. 

Syracuse police are not currently aware of any requests from any federal immigration officials for Syracuse’s license plate reader data, Coffey said. 

Syracuse police officers have been able to search Flock’s network of databases nearly 15,000 times. Coffey said the license plate readers have helped police solve cases but did not provide details including how many cases or any other metrics to support the utility of the readers. Department officials said the officers who made those inquiries did not specifically label any of them as immigration-specific. 

The department’s claim could be confirmed through an organization audit, a document created by Flock and provided to the department. The document has been treated as public record in other municipalities.

Central Current filed a public records request for the audit but hasn’t received an acknowledgment letter from the city’s lawyers since filing the request on June 6. 

The department has not published any such audit, despite Chief Cecile’s commitment to do so.

404 Media, a digital publication covering technology, revealed in its reporting on Flock that while the audit logs the reasons for a search, officers can obscure the true purpose of their searches by logging vague labels.

The Surveillance Technology Working Group members explicitly instructed the department to regularly publish such audits, as well as an annual report detailing how the city’s license plate readers have been used.

The department has not published any audits from its Flock license plate readers, and has not published an annual report since 2022. 

Walsh endorsed his team of technology experts’ recommendation that the police department publish its official policy for its Flock Safety license plate readers. The department has not published the policy, and provide the policy when asked for it by a Central Current reporter.

‘The technology is ahead of the policymakers’

Technology experts have criticized Syracuse police violating the working group’s and Walsh’s stipulations.

Will Owen, the communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, thinks any contracts between local police departments and Flock are inherently suspect. STOP is an advocacy group fighting the rapid expansion of surveillance technology used by law enforcement agencies in New York.

Owen and STOP believe that powerful police-oriented technology, such as Flock Safety’s license plate readers, establish a surveillance infrastructure ripe for abuse by bad faith actors.

“The uses are too opaque, too shadowy, and when every turn we take is tracked, it creates a really potent tool for law enforcement to target political activists, religious groups, immigrants, anyone seeking reproductive or gender affirming health care,” Owen said. 

Schwarz and Owen maintain that Syracuse residents cannot trust the police department’s promises that its data is not aiding ICE deportation operations.

While Syracuse police now only have to share license plate reader data with DCJS, that organization has reportedly been feeding its database on suspected gang members directly to ICE.

New York State lawmakers could have protected data statewide from federal agencies conducting deportation operations. 

Lawmakers considered the New York For All Act, a bill aimed at broadly preventing state and local officers from assisting ICE operations through enforcement and data sharing. The state legislature did not approve the New York For All bill before the close of its legislative session.

If it had, New York likely would have joined three other states in being removed from Flock’s national network.

In the aftermath of 404 Media’s investigative story revealing how Flock’s network was the conduit for data to flow from Illinois to ICE agents — despite Illinois state laws prohibiting such sharing — Flock removed Illinois, Virginia, and California from its national network of searchable databases.

Schwarz thinks Syracuse police’s data-sharing developments validate the concerns that the local community and advocacy organizations have expressed since the LPR program was first considered two years ago.

The lack of any publicly posted policies and audits outlining SPD’s use of its license plate readers — and the storage of the data they collect — leaves the community “in the dark,” Schwarz said.

“I think it raises an important question, and it would be great to see community pushback here,”  Schwarz said. “I think that the police department has to ask themselves whether that is a technology that is appropriate for its use in Syracuse.”

In June, Austin Common Councilors voted to discontinue a contract with Flock Safety for license plate readers, after significant community pushback led the Austin City Council to reconsider the city’s pilot LPR program. 

One Austin Common Councilor who voted against continuing the pilot LPR program reportedly said, “The technology is ahead of the policymakers.”

If the department is to continue with its license plate reader program, Schwarz wants the city to enshrine privacy protections and guardrails into law.

“We’ve long called for codifying those protections,” Schwarz said. “We don’t think any affirmations by police departments are enough, because they can change at any moment.”

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include information provided to Central Current by Aaron Cagwin, spokesperson for the New York State Division of Crime and Justice Services. Cagwin explained that the Syracuse Police Department is required to share its license plate reader data with the DCJS because the department procured the readers using state funding.

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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...