After months of controversy surrounding Troy’s Flock cameras, some residents are encouraging the City Council to give other technology used by police a second look.
The Troy City Council unanimously approved a nearly $600,000 state grant that included $9,000 for artificial intelligence-integrated investigative software at a Thursday committee meeting — but not before a few city residents asked the council to put restrictions on the program.
The program, known as CLEAR, collates information from pre-existing public records, social media accounts and other sources into one place. The city’s grant proposal said the software helps conduct “semi-automated, keyword-based and AI-driven social media, internet and dark web monitoring of chronic offenders and known associates for evidence of weapons possession and the commission of Type I crimes.”
The grant proposal said the software will be used to solve crimes, aid prosecutions and enable law enforcement to get a “greater and more detailed picture of the local criminal landscape.”
The Troy Police Department has used CLEAR for the past year. Chief Dan DeWolf told the City Council that the department previously used LexisNexis, a similar program. He added that five department employees have access to the system and the department does not upload information to the system.
“You don’t have to go to the county clerk for this and go to, you know, some other place for this, and look here, look here, look here, and look here,” DeWolf said at the meeting. “It’s all there, so it makes it more efficient.”
The two residents who spoke about CLEAR urged the council to put safeguards on the use of the software. One compared the software to the city’s controversial Flock automated licence plate reader cameras, arguing both “aim to increase and improve the surveillance technologies of the Troy PD.”
“I think that without guardrails, where does the web of knowledge end?” said Frances Sweet, a self-described regular attendee of city council meetings, in an interview. “Do we investigate them, their friends, their family, people they work with? Like, how far down the rabbit hole does this go, and where does it stop? Who are you actually following, and what information are you gathering?”
Troy City Council members who spoke to WAMC said they weren’t as worried about CLEAR because the program collates but doesn’t create or share personal data. Council President Sue Steele said that “some of those concerns are not really founded” when asked about the software. Councilmember Shikole Struber said it was worth putting guardrails on the program, but she added that the tool could help police stop gun violence before it occurs by finding posts and online discussions about plans for violence.
“While the Flock system is taking all of our data — our location data, our faces, our cars — all of that is going into a system we don't control, CLEAR is aggregating information that already exists on the internet into one place, and that is very different in my mind,” said Struber, who represents District 2. “Can it be misused? Anything can be misused. Should we have guardrails? Absolutely. But data isn't being put into it, so I don't view it the same way.”
Only $9,000 of the $586,727 state grant will be used to pay for CLEAR. The lion's share of the funding will be used to hire three full-time employees focused on investigating gun crimes and doing community outreach.
“It’s really important that the police be seen as not just a scary thing,” Struber said. “The fact that we have a grant to help police get out into the community, get to know residents, so that people are not afraid of them, maybe more willing to cooperate — I think that’s a great thing to have.”
