New city law compels NYPD to explain surveillance tools and strategies
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Mayor Bill de Blasio signed several police reform bills into law next to a Black Lives Matter street mural in the Bronx Wednesday. Photo by Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography
By David Brand
A new city law signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday will compel the NYPD to explain how it uses facial recognition and other surveillance technologies to track New Yorkers.
De Blasio signed the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology, or POST, Act into law during a special ceremony at a Black Lives Matter mural in the Bronx. The new law was first introduced in March 2017 and picked up 38 council sponsors before being brought to a vote last month.
It was one of several police reform bills the city enacted Wednesday. Other measures include criminalizing the use of banned police chokeholds and forcing officers to display their names and badge numbers while on duty.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has been at the forefront of change in New York City and across our nation. I’m proud to sign these sweeping reforms into law and honor the work they’ve done,” said de Blasio, who previously resisted some of the measures, including the chokehold ban.
The POST Act will require the NYPD to report it surveillance technologies, while compelling the department to create a “surveillance impact and use policy.”
The bill gained traction in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, which touched off weeks of demonstrations against police violence, secrecy and surveillance in New York City.
“New Yorkers deserve to know the type of surveillance that the NYPD uses and its impacts on communities,” Speaker Corey Johnson said in June. “Thanks to the POST Act, the department will finally begin disclosing information that has long been kept from the public.”
The bill would not curb the use of facial recognition technology and other forms of surveillance, but privacy activists and civil rights groups say the legislation will foster transparency and enable the public to see the extent of NYPD surveillance techniques.
“The POST Act is a crucial first step in dismantling the mass surveillance in New York City,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “Without the POST Act, New Yorkers had no idea what tools our city was using to spy on our families and neighbors, and if you can’t see a threat, you can’t fight it.”
The NYPD has employed increasingly sophisticated technologies to track New Yorkers and identify potential criminal suspects in recent years, including drones, license plate readers and cell-site simulators that identify the source of a call or text. The artificial intelligence, created and operated by people, has been plagued by the same racial biases that affect human investigations.
Facial recognition technology has been shown to routinely misidentify people of color, especially women. Police have also uploaded thousands of arrest photos of children — including kids as young as 11 — into the city’s facial recognition database even though the technology is often inaccurate when dealing with young people, The New York Times reported last year.
The NYPD says its processes were approved by its legal department and told the Times that officers do not make arrests based solely on a facial recognition match.
Councilmember Donovan Richards, chair of the Public Safety Committee, told the Eagle last year that navigating privacy concerns with counterterrorism efforts is a “delicate balance that has to strike the right tone” to stop attacks while “preventing our city from becoming a surveillance state.”
“New Yorkers should not have to give up their Constitutional protections in order to feel safe, which is why our Committee is ready to hear the Post Act and work with advocates and the NYPD to find that balance while shedding light on the department’s use of surveillance technologies,” he added.
