Commissioners discussed a proposed charter amendment that would require the city to adopt protections for the collection, use, retention and oversight of data and surveillance technologies and would create a technology and privacy oversight board. Commissioner Speaker 11 explained the draft would require warrants for certain uses, prohibit vendors from using city-gathered data for model training or resale, and limit facial recognition and other smart surveillance unless narrowly authorized.

The proposal generated two lines of debate. One side argued the charter should set a high-level limit and leave operational detail to city policy because technology evolves quickly; the other said a charter-level statement is needed to preserve civil-liberty protections and to constrain vendor contracts that might otherwise permit data sale or model training. Commissioners noted state law may already cover some uses, but Speaker 11 warned vendor contracts can still permit data uses that civil-liberty advocates oppose: “There’s nothing on the state level that says it's illegal for them to just take our data and use it for training models or whatever else,” Speaker 11 said.

After discussion the commission agreed by voice vote to send the draft language to the city attorney for legal review and redrafting as necessary. The chair said the commission would later consider whether to place the resulting charter amendment on the ballot; the attorney’s review will identify any conflicts with state law.

Representative quote: “We want to make sure that we have a policy in place on how the city is going to look at these issues going forward in a way that…limits the city on violating any basic liberties,” Speaker 11 said.