Williamson County to limit online public information due to rising AI scams
Certain information — including contract details, project backgrounds and contact info — will not be available as part of future online Williamson Commissioners Court agenda packets in an effort to fight Artificial Intelligence scams that impersonate county entities.
During the January 13 meeting, County Commissioners adopted the new policy impacting online agendas. If residents want to see details on dealings and contracts, they now must submit a formal public information request with the county.
“None of us like the fact that we have to do this, because that's not what open government is about,” Commissioner Valerie Covey said. “We feel like, if we don’t do something extreme like this, the risk to the county is great. That’s why we’re doing it, not that we’re trying to hide anything.”
Director of IT Richard Semple explained that Williamson County is facing a large amount of Artificial Intelligence-led attacks, where — within seconds — an AI program can help scammers craft elaborate schemes to try to either distort money from the county, to try to steal equipment, to try to steal or change payment information and gain illicit funds from taxpayers.
He said that recently, details from contracts and some background information from agenda packets have been targets of AI, which are used to sort and scrape information and then impersonate a contracted supplier through email, phone calls, and even false video calls with AI-generated participants.
“In order to combat against some of those, especially AI-powered tech, the recommendation from the staff is that contracts be not attached to the agenda directly, and that they are available through the public information process,” he said. “It is a step we don’t take lightly, but we feel it’s in the best interest of the community to not have that information be available to AI tools, but be available to anyone that wants to see it.”
Mr. Semple said these scams are not a theoretical threat, it’s real. He said the county faces these issues on a daily basis. Wilco suppliers get calls claiming to be certain staff members and trying to reroute equipment, trying to change licensing information, or calling county staff pretending to be the vendor trying to change banking information.
“We’ve been very fortunate that the diligence of our staff has not allowed us to fall victim to that,” he said. “However, it does take a lot of staff time. It does take a lot of expertise to figure some of these things out, and it’s a cost to the taxpayers to help us do that.”
Going forward, the agenda will still contain information on who the county is contracting with and the amounts being contracted for. However, contract details like contact names, equipment lists, product quantity and other information will be withheld from online access to the public.
If residents want to see the contracts, they must fill out a Public Information Request and submit it to the County Attorney's office either in a physical letter that can be hand delivered or mailed in, or over email at piarequest@wilco.org.
More information on Wilco’s Public Information Request can be found at www.wilcotx.gov/220/Public-Information-Request.
Mr. Semple said Wilco will continue to explore options for how the county can protect itself, while making as much information available to residents as it can.
“This is certainly not the end of the discussion, and there’s hopefully some other things we can continue to do to try to provide this,” he said.
Williamson County Commissioners Court agendas go live online on Wednesdays by 5 p.m.
“We’re not against the information being out in any form of fashion,” Commissioner Russ Boles said. “If we’re going to be scammed, we at least want to take the extra effort of calling and asking for document, and we think that will get most of our scammers to move someplace else.”