SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Onondaga County has 5.2 million records showing where drivers have been over the past year. But if you'd like to know what the county has on your travels, you're out of luck.

Police cars throughout the county are outfitted with special cameras -- license plate readers -- that take hundreds of pictures of license plates a minute. Those records, showing the plate and where it was photographed, are warehoused in the county's database and held for a year.

Onondaga County denied a Freedom of Information Law request from me for all records they had on my license plate.

The reason: Turning over those records would "reveal criminal investigative procedures and techniques."

The Onondaga County Sheriff's Office referred comment to the Onondaga County Attorney's Office. Onondaga County Attorney Gordon Cuffy declined comment. I have filed an appeal.

Earlier this year, the sheriff's office set up two ride-alongs for Syracuse.com so we could see how license plate readers were used and explain the process to our readers.

There were several stories about the license plate readers on Syracuse.com and a video of Onondaga County Sheriff's Deputy Rob Bechtel using a license plate reader.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, said the county's reason for denial doesn't hold up.

"It seems to me that this technique has become 'routine,'" Freeman wrote in an email. "...I would conjecture that the technique is well-known."

The use of license plate readers is both widespread and controversial. The technology, often federally funded, is banned in the state of New Hampshire. There are few states with laws that dictate how the mounds of data - collected mostly on law-abiding citizens - should be stored and used.

New York is one of the states with no law, leaving departments to come up with their own policies. The result is a patchwork of rules that makes it hard for the average citizen to know how data on them is being kept or used.

New York earlier this month announced it would dole out $550,270 for police departments across the state to purchase 27 more license plate readers.

Contact Marnie Eisenstadt at meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 315-470-2246.