Published September 21, 2026 at 4:11 PM EDT

Pittsburgh city government has plenty more to learn when it comes to regulating surveillance technology, according to a panel of national experts who testified before City Council on Monday.

Councilors invited the experts to speak following the release earlier this month of a report inventorying surveillance technologies used by the city. The report detailed tech from drones to automated red-light enforcement cameras to license plate readers and gunshot detection technology. It explained what each initiative is used for, by whom, and how much each initiative costs.

Experts at the meeting said the report was a good first step, but could go further in providing more info.

“I think gathering additional information about the type of data collected, how long it is stored, the conditions for access, and extending this to many Pittsburgh independent authorities who also have considerable infrastructure for surveillance would be a good next step in understanding the privacy and surveillance impact of technology in the city of Pittsburgh, and determining whether further restrictions are needed to ensure that these technologies are not misused or abused,” said Lorrie Cranor, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who focuses on tech privacy and security.

Councilor Deb Gross, who sponsored legislation calling for the report earlier this year, told WESA the city has “some catching up to do” when it comes to surveillance policy.

“We've been very busy policymaking, but this is a policy area I think that we haven't updated for a while,” Gross said.

“There are civil rights obligations, privacy obligations that the city really needs to ensure are protected,” she explained. “We need to really do a lot of learning to understand the technologies and also understand their impacts.”

Clarence Okoh, National Director of Civil Rights and Technology at the advocacy organization TechTonic Justice, described to Council a number of instances in which surveillance technology had crossed lines in other cities. He cited an incident last year in Maryland, in which police handcuffed a 16-year-old after an AI weapon detection system misidentified a bag of Doritos as a gun.

“AI-powered state surveillance represents one of the most urgent civil and human rights crises of our time,” he said. “The array of surveillance technologies held by local law enforcement and other public agencies often more closely resemble a military arsenal than tools of a democratic government.”

He encouraged legislators to be proactive in making policies about surveillance, and to consider creating an “AI Bill of Rights” to ensure people’s rights are protected before adopting new tech.

“Local governments must be more than passive consumers of powerful technologies,” he said. “You must take on the urgent task of defending our collective rights against mass surveillance, systemic discrimination, and automated inequality.”

Mike Siegel, a city councilor from Austin, TexasX, emphasized the importance of keeping an eye on surveillance policy. Austin cancelled its contracts with automated license plate reader companies Flock and Axon last year.

“These are definitely issues of national concern,” he said. “They're issues of constitutional rights, issues of fundamental liberty.”

He cited his city’s Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) Act, which examines surveillance technology before it is acquired.

“The idea is that before any tool is acquired, whether it's purchased or received for free under some grant program, that there be a surveillance impact report that really gets into what this tool will use,” he said. “What type of data is collected? Where is the data held? What are the guardrails on access to that data?”

Councilor Erika Strassburger said she wanted to make sure that conversations about surveillance policy don’t impede all possible uses of the technology. She hopes to define appropriate versus inappropriate uses of surveillance in the future.

“That's what I really wanna try to get to in the future with this discussion, is the differentiation, but also the overarching framework for the way that we make decisions and the way that we can scaffold this decision-making for our various departments in government, so that we're not inadvertently signing up for something that we're not intending to,” she said.

Gross said she wants to ensure current pressing issues of AI, data centers, and surveillance technology are talked about in the same conversation. She says she and other members of council have received questions from constituents on all three topics.

She looks forward to gathering further information on city surveillance technologies, and examining what other cities have done on surveillance regulation.

“We always look at our kind of benchmark cities and other cities that are leading the way, and then we have to kind of take their legislation and see what is applicable or allowable under Pennsylvania statute or under our specific Class 2 powers,” she said. “So that's the work in front of us.”

City Council plans to schedule a public hearing in the coming weeks to discuss the surveillance technology inventory and allow residents to weigh in on uses of the technology.