Palo Alto officials often tout the virtues of high-tech life.

On Tuesday night, they focused on the downside: the difficulty of retaining privacy in a world of drones, body cameras and license-plate readers.

To address concerns about new technology, the City Council last year kicked off the process of creating an ordinance that governs how the city uses "surveillance technology" -- a broad and somewhat nebulous category that includes both existing devices and those that haven't yet been invented.

Councilman Cory Wolbach, who now chairs the Policy and Services Committee, has been leading the charge on the issue. In April 2016, he co-wrote a memo with former Councilman Marc Berman and Mayor Greg Scharff calling for a surveillance policy to "maintain public trust, ensure protection of privacy and provide clarity for city staff."

Wolbach and committee colleagues Liz Kniss and Lydia Kou voted 3-0 Tuesday to move ahead with an ordinance that aims to add some transparency to City Hall's usage of surveillance. Under the new law, the City Council will publicly vet and approve purchases of any surveillance equipment and any grant applications aimed at funding such technology. The council will also receive an annual report identifying every department's use of surveillance technology, including the frequency of use, the purpose and the outcome.

"Members of the public have concerns about privacy in the modern era from many sources," Wolbach said. "The question is: How do we ensure there is transparency for the public and the city utilizes best practices in considering, utilizing and adopting technology in order to ensure personally identifiable information is acquired and disseminated in the most responsible way?"

The proposed law is modeled after a surveillance ordinance that the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors adopted in June 2016. Championed by Supervisor Joe Simitian, the county ordinance requires county staff who want to acquire surveillance technology to analyze its privacy implications; come up with "use policies" before the technology is used; and report back annually with results.

Palo Alto's effort to craft its own ordinance won praise Tuesday from civil-liberties advocates. Paul George, director of Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, said the law would make Palo Alto a leader among area cities. Adam Schwartz, attorney with the civil-liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, also lauded the city for moving ahead with the ordinance. He also suggested that the ordinance consider technologies that were not intended to be used for surveillance but were later repurposed for that use.

"We think it's important that surveillance technology be defined to include a technology that is used to gather information about the public, whether or not it was intended to be so used," Schwartz said.

While the city's definition of "surveillance technology" calls out a few specific examples -- closed-circuit cameras, cell-site simulators, biometrics-identification technology and facial-recognition technology -- the law intends to also cover equipment not yet in existence. The proposed policy defines the term as "any device or system primarily designed and actually used or intended to be used to collect and retain audio, electronic, visual, location, or similar information associated with any specific individual or group of specific individuals, for the purpose of tracking, monitoring or analysis associated with that individual or group of individuals."

The committee's unanimous vote means the ordinance will be going to the City Council for adoption later this year. Even as they supported the policy, both Wolbach and City Manager James Keene acknowledged its limitations in addressing public anxieties about technology and privacy.

"We should be much more frightened about deployment of these devices in the private sector or by individuals," Keene said. "And we haven't even started talking about artificial intelligence."