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New York City the police bought a number of surveillance tools — including facial recognition software, predictive police software, vans equipped with X-ray detection machines, and cell site “stingray” simulators — without public surveillance, according to documents released Tuesday.
In all, the documents show that the NYPD spent at least $ 159 million through a “Special Expenditure Fund” that had not been known since 2007, which did not require the approval of the council or other city officials. The documents were made public by two civil rights groups, the Legal Aid Association and the Surveillance Technology Supervision Project (STOP), who say the practice was a “surveillance protection fund”.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of STOP, says police still “block other records the public needs to understand how our city is being controlled.”
Contracts are very disruptive, which makes it difficult to understand how any single tool works, let alone how they can work together to create a care basement for the people of New York. Secrecy prevents a better understanding of the relationship between the NYPD, its vendors, and the public.
In 2018, the NYPD provided $ 6.8 million to Idemia Solutions, a company that supplies facial biometric tools, including facial recognition. Details are written, but the company entered the year In 2019 the NYPD learned that children under the age of 18 are accessing the face recognition databases that the company maintains. The 2018 contract ended in 2020, but allowed the NYPD to renew for two years.
In 2014, the NYPD signed a five-year, $ 800,000 contract with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest defense contractor, upgrading and maintaining devices in the city. Specific devices are regenerated in the contract, but provided by Elbit Systems wide range The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol focused on surveillance tools used on the southern border, including cameras and sensors that make up the “virtual border wall”.
In 2016, the NYPD signed a three-year, $ 750,000 contract with American Science and Engineering to supply it mobile radiography vans. Initially improvised explosives were developed for detection in war zones scan vehicles to find weapons Up to 1,500 meters. Health officials have warned that they could be devices risk of cancer in fact, pedestrians can cause unhealthy amounts of radiation. If the NYPD has it he used vans since at least 2012, but it has fight successfully it attempts to disclose where or how often they are used, citing national security.
The document also includes contracts with KeyW Corporation, a former NYPD provider cell site simulators, known as “stingrays.” These devices mimic mobile phone towers by recording the identifying information of any phone that connects to them so that police can track people’s phones.
“Strictly equipped, law enforcement – without any help or permission from mobile phone carriers – can place them in a person’s home, place of worship or doctor’s office, or massively care for people gathered in an area, protest, a conference or a party,” says Daniel Schwarzek, privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
NYCLU 2017 they sued Protesters complained to the NYPD about the use of stingray devices when police complained that police had interrupted their phones in a protest in honor of Eric Garner in 2014 when he was killed by a NYPD official. the devices would form a probe for audiences who do not suspect any crime by engaging in an activity sponsored by the First Amendment. Schwarz says the city should at least get guarantees before using the trash.
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