After a council discussion with staff, my position is the same: Pflugerville should adopt practical, enforceable rules for AI, surveillance technology, resident data, and outside agency access.
Council recently had a long-awaited discussion with city staff on AI, surveillance, data sharing, and civil liberties. I am glad we had the conversation. It was productive in some ways. But it also made clear that Pflugerville still needs practical, enforceable rules.
My position remains straightforward:
This is not about being anti-technology or anti-police. I want our police officers and city staff to have useful tools that help them do their jobs well. But public safety and civil liberties are not mutually exclusive.
Pflugerville residents deserve public safety. They also deserve to know what technology their city uses, who has access to resident data, what rules apply, and how civil liberties are protected.
One of the clearest lessons from this process is that vendor contracts are not a substitute for public policy. A shared platform is not the same thing as a city-approved data-sharing agreement. An audit log after the fact is not the same thing as requiring clear rules before access is granted.
That distinction matters. If the city generates data about residents' movements, vehicles, images, or locations, then the city should set the rules for how that data is used, retained, shared, audited, and deleted.
I also appreciate Councilmembers David Rogers and Melody Ryan for engaging seriously on this issue. We do not agree on everything politically, but basic privacy, data control, and transparency should not be partisan ideas.
Pflugerville can use modern tools and still protect residents. That is the standard I am going to keep pushing for.
Related: read the earlier post on AI governance policy, the post on Flock camera data, or send a question about city technology use.
I kept pushing for enforceable guardrails after the staff discussion on AI, surveillance, data sharing, and civil liberties. My focus was practical: no city use of facial recognition, human review before relying on AI-generated work or decisions, city control over city-generated data, clear limits on outside agency access, a public inventory of surveillance and AI systems, and no expansion of high-risk contracts until basic rules are in place.
Reach out directly or keep reading the council updates for the bigger picture.