Throughout his two terms, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh has said the city will only collaborate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on violent crime investigations. But the city’s data practices and how its employees — particularly police officers — store and use data may underm ine Walsh’s position, at least one expert believes. Over the last two decades, the Syracuse Police Department has amassed a number of tools that can be used for surveillance: drones, license plate readers, street cameras and more. The department added many of those technologies even after Walsh instituted an executive order in 2020 to curtail their use. These tools collect countless data points on Syracuse residents every day.Some of that data ends up at the Central New York Crime Analysis Center, where many of the region’s law enforcement shares data. It has been overseen by the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services since 2008. It is staffed by Syracuse police officers and data analysts and is located in police department headquarters. Its own director Ron Rockwood, a former Syracuse police officer, doubted the city’s ability to prevent the flow of sensitive data to ICE.“I don’t know how a police department is going to be so uncooperative to another law enforcement agency, it just doesn’t make sense,” Rockwood said. “You’re going to tell them, you’ll work with them on this, but don’t ask me a question about that?”The city’s data sharing now has outsized importance. As president Donald Trump’s administration ramps up deportation efforts against undocumented people around the nation, ICE is leveraging local law enforcement tools and data to target undocumented people. In Westchester County, ICE accessed license plate reader data, The Guardian reported March 11. Five New York law enforcement agencies agreed to cooperate with ICE, according to reporting from the Albany Times-Union. Right now, Syracuse lawmakers are also contemplating adding surveillance technology — a “drone as first response” program that could respond to 911 calls and collect significant footage of Syracuse residents. One police lieutenant compared the drones to mobile street cameras. Daniel Schwarz, a member of the city’s Surveillance Technology Working Group and a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the city’s data policies are concerning for undocumented people and advocates. Syracuse’s past status as a sanctuary city under then-Mayor Stephanie Miner has also heightened concerns the city could be targeted by ICE. Walsh has since shied away from the term, instead calling Syracuse a “welcoming city.”Despite Schwarz’s concerns, Rockwood said the crime analysis center has so far has not received any direct requests from ICE and has never shared its data with the organization.Janine Kava, a spokesperson for DCJS, said that ICE has made 36 requests last year to the state’s 11 crime analysis centers. They represent a small fraction of requests for information the state Crime Analysis Center Network has received. Last year, they received 130,928 requests. Kava said that ICE is one of 550 law enforcement agencies that have agreements with the state DCJS permitting data access, but said the crime analysis centers play no role in immigration law enforcement.For Schwarz, any such connection or agreement with ICE is alarming, opening the door for future collaboration.“We have also problematic infrastructure where DHS and ICE are already … partnering with local and state agencies,” Schwarz said.Why Syracuse’s data practices worry one expert Schwarz believes the city could protect residents from ICE by better restricting access to its data. The Syracuse Police Department uses several surveillance technologies to collect data on residents every day. This tech includes dozens of license plate readers that log the movements of thousands of drivers, and hundreds of ever-recording street cameras deployed throughout the city.These technologies collect data sets that are then stored in databases for predetermined durations before eventual deletion. The private and secure storage of that data, Schwarz said, is a critical guardrail against potential overreach.To secure that data, Walsh would have to do more than just adopt a position of not proactively helping ICE – he’d have to ensure the city was not passively helping ICE, either, Schwarz said. That’s because the Syracuse Police Department shares data with other police departments around the region and state. Some of that data is shared by request. Some of it is shared proactively and automatically with the crime analysis center and sometimes with the company who sold the city the technology, Rockwood said. When Syracuse license plate readers collect data on residents, that is stored and held by Flock Safety. Flock sold the readers and software to the police department. Though Flock stores the Syracuse police department’s data in its cloud, the department has sole ownership over the data.Flock, though, markets itself on its ability to combine data from license plate readers throughout the nation to create a supersized database for law enforcement agencies.“The risk here is really that data is leaving jurisdictional bounds,” Schwarz said. “It would leave the city of Syracuse’s hands. It would allow access by the vendor or by out of state entities.” Both the mayor and the Common Council can create protections to keep data safe in Syracuse, Schwarz said. He recommended that Syracuse enact policies that grant Syracuse agencies full control over any data they collect. Schwarz believes that should go beyond police department surveillance technology and could include any data the city collects. Schwarz also said city leaders should: Ensure Syracuse agencies that collect data have full control over that data. Ensure city databases are not held by third-party contractors. If and when data is held in a cloud, ensure that data is encrypted and inaccessible to the vendor holding that data. Minimize or cease data collection where threats of data misuse outweigh the benefits of collection.Schwarz advised against holding data with a cloud service company – such as Flock. The company markets its ability to create data supersets from billions of movement records aggregated from law enforcement agencies around the nation.“So that’s really something we want to avoid,” Schwarz said. “Because then, local agencies and local communities don’t have control over the data once it is shared out.”If the mayor chooses to continue allowing such a practice, Schwarz recommends a “bring your own keys” approach. This would mean the city and the contracting company agreed that all data held by the company is encrypted and only accessible to the city, which would own the encryption key.The mayor could issue an executive order to immediately enact these changes, Schwarz said, but the strongest protection would be in the form of legislation from the Common Council. That way, Walsh’s successor couldn’t walk back the mayor’s executive order the way Walsh eased back mayor Miner’s “sanctuary city” declaration, Schwarz said. How police data flows to crime analysis centersDuring a recent meeting about the police department’s drones, department officials told the council the data collected from the drones wouldn’t be shared with ICE. But when a Central Current reporter asked Deputy Chief Richard Shoff whether the footage could be shared through the city’s agreement with the crime analysis center, Shoff said the department “didn’t think about that.”“I don’t know what they would get out of that,” Shoff said.The state’s crime analysis centers were created in 2008 to better share data between police departments in certain regions of the state. The New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services coordinates 11 crime analysis centers throughout the state, including the Central New York Crime Analysis Center.It is one place where Schwarz worries the inability to silo data could put undocumented residents and others at risk. The Syracuse Police Department has a standing memorandum of understanding with several local, county, and state law enforcement agencies, in which all participants regularly pool their data together into the crime analysis center, modeled after so-called “fusion centers.” “Fusion centers” were created as a place for federal, state and local law enforcement to pool intelligence after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The state’s Crime Analysis Center Network was created in 2008. According to Rockwood, the local center’s director, participating agencies share some data automatically, and some data only by request.But Kava, the spokesperson for the DCJS, said that police departments can withhold data. Agencies also remain in custody and control of the data they share, Kava said, and can determine the duration that the information is shared.“An agency can decide to opt out of its data sharing agreement with the centers as it sees fit,” Kava said.Several types of data collected by the department are shared in different ways:Data gathered by the Flock license plate readers in Syracuse is “shared through the network,” Rockwood said, referring to all the agencies connected throughout the Crime Analysis Center. Footage from the city’s street cameras is not automatically shared, Rockwood said.“That’s kind of a closed system where the Syracuse Police Department employs their own members for the cameras,” Rockwood said.That closed system is the model that Schwarz, the technology and privacy expert, wants to see Syracuse adopt for all data collection.If the city does not close its loops on data, Schwarz fears that the data which Syracuse officials have pledged not to share with ICE will wind up in ICE’s hands anyway. Kava pushed back on the notion that ICE could leverage data at the Crime Analysis Center Network. “The crime analysis centers have no role in civil enforcement activities, including civil immigration enforcement,” Kava said. read more of central current’s coverage Common Council pushes back on Syracuse police’s press for unpopular drone program Lawmakers held a Public Safety Committee meeting meant to answer the council’s questions on the proposed drone program. 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