Humans have been discovering and using tools for most of history. Fire, for example, was one of the very first tools discovered to provide heat and cook food. Fire was a miracle tool that eventually became a requirement for survival.
Fire can also kill you. Ask the brave men and women of the Troy Fire Department.
No one argues that fire isn't useful when used safely, but there are many guardrails in place in today's world between city code, fire code, and having a whole fire department trained and ready if something goes wrong. It is certainly required to have the pilot lit on the hot water heater, but that hot water heater needs proper venting, adequate space, and modern safeguards to prevent the fire from causing an accident.
ALPRs and AI in general are the next iteration of tools in society that have become more necessary but also require guardrails for safe use.
Any time a new regulation starts to take shape, there will be pushback; that's human nature. When HIPAA regulations were released in the late 90s, I can only imagine the grumbling from doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators: "How can we do our jobs if we have to abide by these new rules!" or "I don't have time to do these extra steps!" I imagine were common gripes. But as a society, we determined that health data should be protected because it was and still is incredibly private information. And Doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators adapted so that they could do their jobs while also abiding by the regulations, and now it is less possible for any one of us, or any number of malicious actors, to obtain our private medical data.
Today, we are discussing a different type of data and a different industry, but the same relative steps. As a society, some have already come to the conclusion that the data surrounding our movement, which is controlled by the government, is worth protecting. Regulations have begun to surface at many different levels of government, from right here in Troy, all the way up to Federal legislation. And we are starting to hear grumbling from people in the industry, such as "How can we do our jobs if we have to abide by these new rules?" or "I don't have time to do these extra steps!" And eventually, I hope we will reach the adaptation phase where we have figured out how to honor residents' privacy AND get the job done.
We all get the privilege of living through the "Figuring it out" phase. Thank you to Troy PD for helping us understand how this can affect your work, thank you to the residents who are helping us understand how it is affecting you and the community.
Data auditing is a standard aspect of regulations. The City does an annual audit of the finances, for example, because it's impossible to check your own work. This is the same reason that 3rd-party companies are brought in to conduct audits for ISO and SOC certifications; you can't check your own work. A quarterly report to the Council, with license plate numbers redacted as Albany County does, would serve as the audit check to ensure compliance with internal policy and any active legislation.
To that end, it can also lend to a more air-tight chain of custody for when the data is actually needed in court. I have worked with the FBI on several cyber-related cases and have verified that audits conducted by entities can help law enforcement win cases. There would need to be some additional information exported from the system for this, such as device types and IP addresses at the time of access, but that should be perfectly doable within the system and can show anomalies that would need further checking. While this would not be an immutable log, it would show accountability and transparency to the public.
Some residents mentioned adding technological or AI guardrails to proposed Local Law #3 and while I agree we need to have more guidelines and requirements in that arena, I don't think this is the place for them. Cybersecurity and AI span more than just ALPRs and cameras and I'd like to approach that separately.
I am confident we can continue to work together towards a more secure Troy.
Shikole Struber
Troy City Council District 2