Troy passed the state’s first local law reining in plate-reader cameras. The mayor says veto, and Schumer wants answers from Flock by Thursday.

If you drive into Troy on Route 40, you pass Flock license plate cameras on Oakwood Avenue and Northern Drive, the same two spots where cameras were torn down in July. Those cameras photograph every plate that goes by and store it, and since spring the fight over how long and for whom has run through the Troy City Council, the mayor’s office and a courtroom. In the last two weeks it reached Washington. Here is where things stand.

The council’s law

On Thursday, October 1, the City Council passed a local law regulating the city’s automated license plate readers, by a 6 to 0 vote with one member absent. Coverage has called it the first local law of its kind in New York. Its main terms:

• Data is deleted after 72 hours, instead of the 30 days Flock’s system keeps by default.
• Searches are limited to felony investigations, warrants, stolen vehicles and missing persons, plus parking and secure-access uses.
• No sharing outside city government without a warrant, a court order or a request from the district attorney.
• Annual reports to the council and audit logs kept for three years.

The law takes effect 30 days after passage. Mayor Carmella Mantello has said she will veto it; she maintains the cameras help police solve crimes and that the city’s data is not shared with federal agencies. Overriding a veto takes five of the seven council votes, one fewer than the law got. The council already overrode one Mantello veto in September, on a measure limiting the emergency powers she used in April to keep paying Flock after the council asked the city auditor to pause the payments. The council’s Article 78 lawsuit over that emergency declaration, filed in May in Rensselaer County Supreme Court, is still awaiting a decision.

What the mayor says is already in place

In a statement to the Troy Record, Mantello said her administration put its own guardrails in place about six months ago: searches limited to “interstate only,” annual audits, and the national lookup feature disabled. She said she plans to issue a new request for proposals next year “to determine if a better ALPR company exists.” Council President Sue Steele’s response was that Flock “is sharing data on citizens without their knowledge or control” and that the council’s lawsuit “will hopefully find the mayor’s contract with Flock null and void.”

Schumer’s letter

On Saturday, October 11, Senator Chuck Schumer released a letter to Flock chief executive Garrett Langley asking the company to answer, by Thursday, October 16, questions about its National Lookup Tool, which lets police agencies search plate data collected outside their own jurisdictions; about how much data sits on Flock’s servers and whether any federal agency has reached it, directly or through local police; and about a reported hack. According to the senator’s office, a hacker group last month pulled down a Flock camera, recovered an encryption key stored on the device, and unlocked more than 1.6 million images and 27,000 video clips. Schumer also asked the company to delete personal data not tied to a crime.

Flock, for its part, announced in August that changes it had offered as options will become mandatory for all police customers by January 1: an audit tool that locks out users whose searches look abnormal, a seven-day default retention instead of 30 days, a case number required before every search, and the ability for each city to decide which offense types outside agencies may search its data for, which would let a city block searches tied to immigration enforcement.

Status, October 14. No veto message had been filed with the City Council as of October 14, and the council’s October 15 special meeting agenda carries only the city budget. The charter’s veto window ran from the law’s transmittal after the October 1 vote; whether it has lapsed or a veto is pending was not public as of this update.

Why it matters north of the city line

Troy’s cameras do not stop at Troy’s residents. A plate photographed on Oakwood Avenue at 7:40 on a weekday morning is a Speigletown or Melrose commuter as often as not, and under the current setup that record lives for 30 days in a database that, depending on the settings, agencies far from here can query. The council’s law would cut that to three days and narrow who can look. Whether it survives the veto is the next thing to watch; the council’s next regular meeting is the first chance for an override vote, and we will report it.

Our July story on the vandalized cameras and the safeguards negotiated over the summer is here.

Sources: the Troy Record, October 2 (council vote) and October 11 (Schumer letter, statements from Mayor Mantello and Council President Steele, Flock’s announced changes); WAMC, October 4, for the vote count, the law’s terms and its effective date; the senator’s office press release as quoted by the Record. The description of the cameras’ locations is from our own July reporting.