About two years ago, an Oneonta Police Department request to accept a roughly $140,000 state grant for new automatic license plate readers sailed through the Common Council, with one follow-up question and a unanimous approval vote. A similar unanimous vote to approve placing some of the cameras occurred last summer.
Some city officials and residents want to revisit the technology’s use amidst nationwide scrutiny this summer — and sabotage in places throughout New York like Troy and on Long Island — of the mass surveillance technology that takes photos of every vehicle which passes by and stores license plate information in a searchable database.
In recent weeks, some members of the Common Council have asked for information about OPD’s use of ALPRs. The inquiries followed social media posts criticizing the cameras as an invasion of privacy and at times incorrectly stating the cameras were from Flock Safety, the most well-known ALPR maker.
Oneonta Police Department Lt. Eric Berger said Friday, Aug. 14 that the department has six fixed Motorola ALPR cameras at points of ingress and egress to the city which take photos of every car which passes by. He said they do not have video capability.
Some of those Motorola cameras are at the corner of Chestnut Street and West End Avenue; facing either direction on James F. Lettis Highway; and on River Street, The Daily Star observed Monday, Aug. 17.
The data is maintained for 90 days until automatic deletion, Berger said. Berger said five OPD patrol vehicles have Axon ALPRs as well, and that their data retention period is 30 days.
He said that all the police department’s officers, 911 dispatchers and some records staff can access the ALPR data, but must have a case number to do so.
OPD maintains control of the searchable data created by the cameras, he said. Berger added that a couple of other law enforcement agencies that have memoranda of understanding with OPD can access the data, and that at least one of those agencies was New York State Police. He said he was not sure off the top of his head what the other agreements might be; he said Monday he was off and could not see because he was not logged into OPD’s system.
Using the data for personal reasons is against department policy, he said Friday.
There are a couple of auditors “in the department that can to see what’s being run and to make sure that everything’s being done properly. And I can proudly say that we’ve never had any issues with officers abusing it here,” Berger said.
He said the cameras have been utilized “to aid us in existing investigations” like hit-and-runs. He said it could be used in burglaries, robberies “or even another violent crime of some sort.” He said the cameras can assist police with finding vehicles.
Berger said that OPD had two ALPRs capable of taking photos of all passing vehicles and creating searchable data when he joined the department in 2008.
“They are used the same, but the data is more up to date and accurate with today’s technology,” he said of more recent uses.
Daniel Schwarz, a senior privacy and technology strategist for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that the ALPR cameras in Oneonta pose a major threat to privacy and can be abused with limited ability for the public to know how. He said ALPRs’ technological development has made them a greater threat to privacy.
Schwarz said the 90 day retention window was “extremely long” and enabled tracking people’s daily routines.
“You can learn a whole lot about a person’s behaviors, associations, whether they attended the protest,” he said. Schwarz added that it is “concerning” that a list of agencies with access was not immediately available, and that the biggest issue with ALPR technology is the potential for unrestricted or unjustified use by other law enforcement agencies than the ones collecting the data.
Schwarz said the requirement for a case number does not necessarily prevent abuse.
“It would be trivial to just insert an arbitrary number, and it is quite hard to verify whether an officer used the system as intended, or used it for personal purposes, or to surveil someone they shouldn’t be surveilling,” he said.
Schwarz said that if the community in Oneonta is looking to audit the system, it is “absolutely critical to get answers in the statistics of the systems, in seeing the policy, in auditing how data is queried, how it has been shared, how it has been analyzed,” all “independently audited by an independent entity.”
He said depending on how it is set up, a civilian review board could be such an entity.
“I think also the local lawmakers could take action” and create parameters for the technology’s use, Schwarz said.
The city’s volunteer, advisory Community Police Board meets quarterly and according to city code has the power and duty to “collect and analyze police activity data (arrests, tickets) to understand local demographic trends and provide policy recommendations to the Common Council.”
Common Council member Elayne Mosher Campoli, D-First Ward, who voted for the cameras in 2024 and 2025, said Friday that she wants to revisit the issue and learn more now that she has heard concerns from residents.
She said she wants to know more about the technology before she decides “whether or not the technology belongs in Oneonta.” She added that “I definitely think if we have this technology, we need to have as many safeguards on it as possible.”
At the Aug. 11 Community, Legislation, Infrastructure and Public Safety Committee meeting, Kaytee Lipari Shue, D-Fourth Ward, who also voted for both pieces of ALPR legislation, said that she would like to see OPD issue a statement similar to one issued by the Delhi Police Department on about its own use of ALPRs, clarifying that they are not from Flock Safety to address misinformation online.
Mosher Campoli said that she and Carolyn Marks, D-Seventh Ward, had sent questions about ALPR use to City Administrator Greg Mattice already.
Mattice said his intention was to “talk with the police chief and lieutenant, and put together a memo to council and mayor.”