u/jonathan4pf

Forgive me, this is a long one, but I want to be completely open and direct about what is going on, what the issues are, and how two other Councilmembers and I are trying to change how the city operates and protects its residents.

Edit: Pflugerville's Flock contract is up for renewal next month, so it will be included on the agenda for one of the Council meetings then. You can make your voice heard anytime by filling out this form to send your comments or concerns to the Mayor and Council (city staff also see these): https://pflugervilletx-city-manager.form.transform.civicplus.com/45145

Edit 2: The Mayor has now posted on his Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Av89szjvR/

With the answer up front, my position remains that Pflugerville should adopt practical, enforceable rules now:

• No city use of facial recognition technology.
• Human review of AI-generated work products or decisions before the city relies on them.
• City control over city-generated data, including images, video, license plate reads, metadata, and search history.
• No outside agency access to Pflugerville data without a court order or a written agreement.
• A public inventory of AI, surveillance, and data-sharing technologies, including contracts, order forms, purpose, retention rules, and access permissions.
• No renewal or expansion of high-risk technology contracts until basic privacy, transparency, and data-control rules are in place.

Today, Council finally had the long-awaited lunch-and-learn with city staff on AI, surveillance, data sharing, and civil liberties. This came after I proposed several months ago to establish basic guardrails and oversight for Pflugerville's use of emerging surveillance and AI technologies.

At the time, the Mayor, at the City Manager's advice, chose not to move forward with that proposal and instead asked for this staff presentation so staff could specify which rules they believed were reasonable.

I’m glad we had the discussion. It was productive. I’m also frustrated.

Pflugerville residents deserve public safety that does not infringe on their civil liberties through undisclosed surveillance systems, broad outside access to resident data, facial recognition tools, and third-party data practices that the public has never had a real chance to examine.

We should not allow third parties to retain our residents’ images, videos, license plate reads, metadata, or location patterns indefinitely for training AI models we do not control. And residents should not have to drag basic facts into the daylight to learn what surveillance technology their own city is using.

Here is what stood out to me today.

Pflugerville does not just have license plate readers. We learned today that the city has roughly 28 Flock license plate readers and more than 70 video surveillance cameras across the city feeding into FlockOS's AI systems.

Council and residents had been led to believe there were only a handful of AI-powered video cameras in places like Moose Park and 1849 Park, following specific vandalism and damage at those locations. That was not the full picture. The city has a much larger AI-enabled surveillance footprint than residents and Council had been led to understand. It was also disclosed today that two new surveillance cameras are being installed at Lake Pflugerville this week.

To be direct about it, city staff and the Chief of Police could not tell us today how many surveillance cameras there are, where they are located, or what technology they use. In previous Councilmember and public information requests, the city did not disclose this larger system or provide copies of the contracts and order forms when requested. We were told there were no such documents.

That is unacceptable.

Multiple times over the last several months, I have requested that city leadership and staff update the “public safety cameras” page on the city website to reflect that we do have surveillance cameras, AI-powered capabilities, and related technology in use. None of our public transparency pages or portals reflect that reality yet.

At the time, none of us realized just how pervasive the system was. Nor did we know, except for what appears to have been an accidental reference in the Police Department’s annual report to Council, that the city has a subscription to Clearview AI. Clearview is a facial recognition company that allows police to search for individuals using images, including full and partial faces, based on a massive database built from online images, including social media profiles. That technology was not proactively disclosed to Council or the public.

As we have known for a while, 80+ other law enforcement entities have access to search Pflugerville-generated data from the Flock system. We also learned that several local HOAs and retailers have granted the Pflugerville Police Department access to their license plate readers and cameras. That is not inherently bad. But none of this has been clearly disclosed to Council or the public. It remains unclear which entities have access to our data, which entities provide us with access on a 1-way basis, what rules govern that access, and why those relationships are not listed on the city’s transparency portal.

Some of the outside agencies with access are well outside our city limits. I do not believe Pflugerville residents’ movements, vehicles, images, faces, or travel patterns should be available to outside entities without clear rules, a written agreement, or a court order. Today, those rules and agreements do not exist.

Yes, searches and results from outside agencies are auditable. That does not answer the more basic question of why agencies outside Pflugerville, including private or special-purpose police and security departments without direct accountability to Pflugerville residents (or any publicly elected entity), should have access to our residents’ data, images, and locations in the first place. I have to wonder why Methodist Hospital PD in Houston needs to be able to search license plates as they pass through 685 in Pflugerville?

Our PD leadership appears to believe that because Pflugerville has a contract with a surveillance vendor, and other agencies have contracts with the same surveillance vendor, that is enough. It is not. A vendor relationship is not a public oversight policy. A shared platform is not a city-approved data-sharing agreement.

And an audit log after the fact is not the same thing as requiring clear rules before access is granted. This is not about being anti-police. I ran on public safety. I want our police officers to have strong tools to solve crimes, find suspects, and keep people safe. But public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive. We can catch criminals without giving nearly a hundred outside agencies broad access to Pflugerville residents’ data.

We can use modern technology without individual, personally identifiable facial recognition and tracking of our residents. We can support our police department while still requiring transparency, data controls, human review, and public oversight.

Council has received dozens of emails on this issue. Residents have shown up during public comment. In my time on Council, I have not seen another issue draw this much sustained concern and scrutiny. Not even our water emergency this year had this many people make comments on the official record.

And it is worth noting: many residents are not asking for guardrails. They are asking for these systems to be shut down entirely. That is also what other cities and counties in Central Texas and across the country have done.

I also want to recognize Councilmember David Rogers and Councilmember Melody Ryan.

None of us agrees on everything politically. That is not a secret. But on this issue, we agree that basic privacy, data control, and transparency are not partisan ideas and that we need to be proactive. I appreciate their support and their agreement that Pflugerville needs to protect residents’ data, especially given that the rest of the council has not publicly stated their opinions on this topic.

Pflugerville residents deserve public safety. They also deserve a city government that tells the truth about what technology it uses, who has access to residents' data, which rules apply, and how residents’ civil liberties are protected. That is what I am going to keep pushing for.

-Councilmember Jonathan Coffman

A few months ago, I brought forward a resolution to put clearer guardrails, oversight, and transparency requirements around the city’s use of AI, facial recognition, surveillance cameras, and related technologies.

Council has not yet taken action on that proposal.

Instead, the next step is a Council “lunch and learn” this month (May), where staff will walk us through how the city currently uses AI. That was the Mayor’s suggested alternative to moving forward with my proposal at the time. I still think we need actual policies, not just a briefing, but I’ll see how that discussion goes and participate in good faith.

There are a few reasons I continue to believe this needs more urgency.

The city’s public “Safety Cameras” page is still out of date. It lists 28 ALPRs (which was true in 2022), even though the city now has close to 90 (as far as I’m aware, more than any other city in central Texas, including our much more populous neighbors). I requested a couple of months ago that staff update the page with the current map and device inventory; that has not happened. 

The city also has several Flock video cameras in parks (Moose Park being the prime example). These are not ALPRs, but they are still AI-enabled video surveillance cameras made by Flock. As far as I can tell, the city website and transparency portal still do not clearly disclose their existence, nor is there any publicly posted policy or audit trail on their usage. As far as I'm aware, there are no written staff policies related to the video surveillance cameras, only the ALPRs.

More people have been showing up to Council meetings to speak during public comment, and more have emailed the mayor and full council about these issues than about anything else in recent memory.

There has been an expansion of surveillance technology

The city also uses Clearview AI, an identity-based facial recognition technology built on a large database of scraped online images (it basically pulls in millions of people's social media profiles to 'identify' suspects). That was not proactively disclosed to the public, or as far as I'm aware, to Council. It came up by accident during the Police Department’s recent annual report, when an officer mentioned that other agencies know we have that software and call to ask to run searches on it. It's unclear whether PfPd responds to those requests; they should not be doing so. However, unlike the Flock ALPRs, there is no evidence that we have a written staff policy regarding Clearview's use.

Recently, a resident filed a Public Information Act request asking for more information about Clearview AI and its use. City staff engaged outside counsel, who initially sent the request to the Attorney General, claiming that the requested data was confidential law enforcement information and therefore shouldn't be disclosed publicly. The resident reached out to me; I intervened, and the city ultimately provided the requested information and canceled the request to the state AG. In my view, that information should not have been withheld in the first place, and you’ll find no other public mentions of our PD using identity-based facial recognition AI.

The larger issue on that one is that residents should not have to file public records requests, catch a detail in an annual report, or ask a council member to intervene directly just to know what surveillance technology the city is using.

There is one positive recent development, though.

Sam Aly ( u/MooseContent8525), who ran against me in the election and now serves on the Charter Review Commission, spearheaded a separate proposal to require the city to adopt protections for AI and surveillance technology in our 'constitution'. The Commission approved it! I thank him for his support of this cause.

The proposed charter language reads:

Ҥ 2.03. Artificial Intelligence Protections.

The City Council shall adopt protections governing the collection, use, retention, and oversight of data, facial recognition, and surveillance technologies; establish transparent approval processes for such technologies; require a responsible AI framework; ensuring this information is used locally for legitimate basis laid down by law.”

Because the Charter Review Commission approved the proposal, I expect it will appear on this November’s ballot. My understanding from the City Attorney is that Council can “add” items to the Charter Commission’s approved amendments to our city’s constitution, but cannot “remove” items. 

My preference is still for Council to act before then. We shouldn’t have to wait for a voter-approved charter amendment to force our hand to do the basic work of public transparency, approval processes, retention rules, oversight, and civil liberties protections.

But if the Council doesn’t act and voters approve the amendment in November, the Council will be required to implement it then. 

I’ll keep pushing on this topic because AI and surveillance tools are already here. Our Police department should have access to modern, effective tools to keep us safe and solve crimes BUT those tools need to have rules, oversight, and not infringe on residents’ civil liberties. 

-Councilmember Coffman