Fears about surveillance and artificial intelligence led county officials last week to move to rein in such uses of technology by county government. How much that can do in the face of Big Tech's global tsunami of digitalization is questionable. Which is not to say it's not worth doing.

Legislators and County Executive Jen Metzger first jumped on the issue in the aftermath of “Cameragate,” the late August discovery that County Comptroller March Gallagher had used a personal camera to record comings and goings outside the offices of Ulster County Area Transit, part of an investigation, Gallagher said, of (possible) employee time theft.

Though not illegal, Metzger's office said the comptroller's action violated protocol and that “any surveillance conducted without [employee] knowledge or consent is unacceptable.” At the Sept. 10 meeting of the Legislature's Laws Rules and Government Committee, Gallagher was slammed by leaders of both parties.

Legislators moved on from grousing to drafting at the committee's Oct. 15 meeting, voting unanimously to repeal and replace the county's 2018 surveillance policy with a newly updated and more restrictive one.

“This resolution before you today does not prohibit recordings, and it does not present prevent legitimate uses for public safety, security, training, or investigations, rather, it just sets the rules for how those recordings can be used,” said Legislator Jason Kovacs (R-Towns of Kingston, Ulster and Saugerties), principal author of the new rules. “The resolution requires a documented government purpose and written authorization ... to identify what will be recorded, who may access the recordings, how long the system will be used, and how the records will be secured.”

The new policy went before the full Legislature at its Oct. 20 meeting where, without debate, it passed unanimously.

While Cameragate unfolded a parallel set of events went down around the question of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), beginning with the Oct. 9 announcement of a $794,000 federal grant to the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office for a “next-generation 911 and phone system” including “camera and automated license please reader infrastructure, and AI-supported report drafting.”

Sheriff Juan Figueroa initially defended use of the products, noting his office's ALPRs were of a brand different from those of Flock Safety, the company which dominates the field and use of which in Dutchess County has drawn so many complaints that officials withdrew the cameras from use there.

The sheriff's position was unchanged through this week, including an Oct. 20 interview with the Daily Freeman, in which he said, “License plate readers are just a tool — it doesn’t convict anyone.”

That position was countered the following day by County Executive Jen Metzger, in an executive order banning the use of Flock Safety cameras specifically and “'AI Assisted-Technology,'...

employing machine learning, generative artificial intelligence, or comparable automated inference to assist searches, identification, tracking, analysis, prediction, summarization, recommendations or decisions.”

Exempt from Metzger's order – as is the comptroller’s office – Figueroa signed on it with this promise: I will be issuing a separate statement outlining our department’s approach to surveillance technologies to ensure transparency and clarity moving forward.”

In a series of emails and phone calls with Figueroa's office, it was learned that one additional tech/privacy matter has been foreclosed.

For some time now the sheriff's office’s proposed contract for AI with Axon Enterprises (formerly Taser International) for report-writing has included Fusus, which, according to the company, can “combine all real-time video and data sources” by “fusing all a community's video assets into a single platform. Whether it’s a drone, a traffic camera, a private cell phone video, a building security camera or a bomb disposal robot, Fusus can extract the live video feed and send it to your emergency operations center and officers in the field” and “create a unified public safety ecosystem.”

The Axon contract was adopted by the Law Enforcement and Public Safety Committee and by Ways and Means (with virtually no substantive discussion) but for Majority Leader Abe Uchitelle's “no” vote in Ways and Means. When it came before the full Legislature May 19, Uchitelle moved to refer it back to committee, which was done on a 15-7 vote. It has languished there since.

“[The] sheriff’s office does not intend to purchase Axon Community Link, and it will not be included in any final contract we move forward with,” Undersheriff James Mullen said. “The original proposal included a broad range of Axon’s available applications for consideration. Community Link was among those listed, but it is not a product we intend to pursue. It would also require the Fusus platform, which our agency does not have.”

Assurances aside, Uchitelle (D-King plans to further pursue privacy/AI questions. “Legislation that I intend for the legislature to review and am currently working on with my colleagues would require a full review of all surveillance tools being used with the county and with regard to not only Flock but other types of license plate readers,” he said.

“So while some of my colleagues want the legislation to narrowly focus on one single vendor, I think that we need to go much more broad,” he continued. “We need to look at Motorola. We need to look at Axon, and we need to get a full account of the surveillance apparatus in use in Ulster County.”