Secretive NYPD surveillance tech purchases made public
/
The Legal Aid Society released hundreds of pages of documents detailing NYPD contracts with surveillance technology and defense contract companies that were previously secret. Photo by Jonathan McIntosh/Flickr
By Noah Powelson
Hundreds of pages detailing secretive contracts the NYPD held with surveillance technology firms were released for the first time this week, five years after the City Council passed a law requiring the department to report their use of the tech.
The Legal Aid Society published hundreds of NYPD documents detailing the millions of dollars of police purchases of surveillance and facial recognition technology the agency made through the opaque “special expense budget.” LAS put the documents on a new publicly accessible webpage on Thursday, months after the courts ruled the NYPD must provide the thousands of pages of records the nonprofit had requested through the Freedom of Information Law.
The first batch of records, which amounts to 470 pages of NYPD contracts with defense contractors and information surveillance companies, was released to the LAS in August. Purchases by the NYPD include devices and maintenance for cellphone tracking, facial recognition and iris scanning technology.
As part of the agreement, the NYPD will continue to release documents on a rolling basis every three months as they are reviewed and prepped for publication.
“After more than a decade of the NYPD evading any oversight or accountability for its acquisition of surveillance capabilities, the launch of this webpage is a vital step toward the transparency New Yorkers deserve,” Jerome Greco, director of the Digital Forensics Unit at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement. “For years, the NYPD exploited the SPEX budget to conceal its purchases of invasive technologies, cutting the public out of critical debates about privacy and civil liberties.”
While certain names, items, prices, purchase quantities and other information have been redacted from the published documents, the first batch of documents shows that the NYPD has spent hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of dollars, on individual contracts with suppliers.
The documents show that in 2009, the NYPD spent $610,791 on cellular tracking technology and maintenance from defense contractor and information technology services provider the Harris Corporation. The NYPD later added onto this order in 2011, bringing the total sale to $697,180.
The NYPD made another purchase from Harris again in 2013, again for cellular tracking systems, upgrades and maintenance, this time for over $1.2 million.
Alongside Harris, documents detailed records between the NYPD and the companies ComnetiX, DataWorks Plus and MorphoTrak.
For decades, the purchases the NYPD made with these technology suppliers have remained secret. Previously purchased with a “special expense” fund, or the SPEX program, these contracts were recorded entirely on paper and stored within specific locations hidden from the public.
LAS made FOIL requests for purchases made by the NYPD from these and other companies from 2008 to 2020. Including the 470 pages already published, the NYPD will have to review, redact and hand over 165,000 hard copy pages in total, according to court filings.
A spokesperson for the NYPD said they would continue releasing the documents required by the courts.
“The NYPD is complying with the court order. These documents include both sensitive and proprietary information about how the NYPD protects New Yorkers from terrorism and violent crime,” the NYPD spokesperson said in a statement on Thursday. “This process, which is time consuming, requires a specialized staff with the knowledge and expertise to sift through thousands of pages of documents to ensure sensitive information is not released, consistent with the law.”
LAS said they would continue to update the webpage as more documents are received.
Obtaining the purchase records has been a five-year legal battle between LAS and the NYPD that had only reached a breakthrough point earlier this year.
LAS first attempted to submit FOIL requests in 2020, after the City Council passed the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology – otherwise known as the POST Act – into law. The act required the reporting and evaluation of surveillance technologies used by the NYPD, and the city comptroller’s office terminated the SPEX program.
The NYPD has to give over 165,000 pages of surveillance technology purchases made between 2008 and 2020.Eagle file photo by Torba K. Hopper
Through FOIL requests, LAS demanded all SPEX program records from March 27, 2007 to October 28, 2020.
The NYPD denied the FOIL request, saying the requested documents amounted to over a hundred thousand physical files, arguing they could not reasonably conduct a search without taking vital NYPD staff off their regular duties. LAS filed a petition, arguing the NYPD’s denial violated FOIL.
Litigation over the matter made its way through the courts for over two years, until eventually New York Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank in October 2023 ruled in favor of LAS, saying the high burden did not give the NYPD grounds to deny the FOIL request.
“The very purpose of FOIL is to provide a mechanism for the public to obtain information about the inner workings of its system of government,” Frank ruled in his decision. “That the SPEX contracts were special contracts outside of the typical government contracting process and thus had to be kept offline with detailed records, emphasizes that they are of public importance, and thus the very information FOIL intended to give the public access to when it would no longer compromise public safety to reveal.”
It was during this ruling that the Supreme Court decided documents could be issued on a rolling basis to address NYPD’s argument of burden.
But production of the files was again delayed when the NYPD appealed the decision, arguing again the task was unduly burdensome and that publicly disclosing the contracts would pose a risk to public safety by revealing police investigation techniques.
After hearing oral arguments in 2024, an appellate court again sided with LAS in February, ruling that the NYPD did not show redacting the documents would be unduly burdensome and that the rolling basis is more than sufficient to address any issues.
On the court’s orders, the NYPD agreed to make rolling productions of files starting on August 1.
