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United States Privacy

NYC Passes POST Act, Requiring Police Department To Reveal Surveillance Technologies (venturebeat.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
New York City Council this week voted 44-6 in favor of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, a bill that requires the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to disclose their use of surveillance technologies. From a report: The POST Act also mandates that the NYPD develop policies on how it deploys those tools, as well as establish oversight of the department's surveillance programs to ensure they remain compliant. The passage of the POST Act, a three-year-old piece of legislation written with input from local activist organization Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), comes as cities around the country reexamine law enforcement policies following widespread demonstrations against abuse. Residents and activists on Tuesday urged the Detroit City Council to reject a contract that would extend the city police's use of facial recognition technology. On Wednesday, racial justice and civil liberties groups called on members of the U.S. Congress to end funding for surveillance technology law enforcement is using to spy on demonstrators.
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NYC Passes POST Act, Requiring Police Department To Reveal Surveillance Technologies More

NYC Passes POST Act, Requiring Police Department To Reveal Surveillance Technologies

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  • Surveillance State Neutered (Score:3)

    by nevermindme ( 912672 ) on Friday June 19, 2020 @10:48AM (#60202328)
    The NYPD was due for a house cleaning. Not that the city police will not jiust hand the keys to the mesh to NY state police.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      "We, the NYPD, are going to put any sort of cameras we want anywhere and use the data for whatever purpose and there's nothing you can do about it!"

      There, that fits the requirement...

    • Re:Surveillance State Neutered (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Friday June 19, 2020 @10:59AM (#60202370) Journal

      This makes a lot of sense from a "sunlight is a good disinfectant" point of view, even if you support the police. Government spending should be as open as is practical. The public should know what their money is spent on, including what specific technologies, even surveillance technologies. This is a city, we're not talking national defense secrets here. Are they buying useful stuff, or some fake technology sold buy somebody's brother-in-law? It the gear they're using fundamentally compliant with Constitutional protections?

      • Well said. I wish more people had this point of view, and I wish more people demanded this of their elected officials.

  • Joseph C. Borelli
    Chaim M. Deutsch
    Robert F. Holden
    Eric A. Ulrich
    Kalman Yeger

    • Good luck with that. There are unfortunately a lot people who are A-OKAY with police surveillance because they are of the mindset that if you do nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. Their life is an open book because they live such wonderful perfect lives.

      And they are also A-OKAY with it if it catches the BAD GUYS.

      • Well by that logic if the police aren't doing anything wrong with the money we are giving them, they have nothing to fear in us finding out what it is.

  • Heck there is so many or them, if they added one more the council couldn't meet together for a vote!

    • New York City is about 8.1 million residents, so that's 160,000 residents per councilman. For reference, LA has 19 members for their 730,000 (81K/rep) and Chicago has 50 aldermen for their 2.7M residents (54K/rep). US HoR is 435 members for 330M (758K/rep) and the Senate averages 3.3M per rep (CA = ~20M/senator, WY = 290K/senator).

  • Why wouldn't they tell? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Friday June 19, 2020 @11:13AM (#60202418)

    People put stickers on their windows to say there is video surveillance of a property....sometimes when there isn't any...to dissuade burglaries.

    When I drove a truck, the industry papers would quote the highway patrol saying something along the lines of, "We like it when truckers report our speed traps over the CBs. Everyone slows down, and the reports go on long after we've stopped our enforcement project." The highway patrol will also park a car with a manequin at the steering wheel to make it look like they are going to stop speeders.

    The commonality is that they are telling people they are being watched, and people behave when they are being watched. Why wouldn't the police show up and say, "We are going to be flying a drone over this protest. Anyone committing a crime, will be found, arrested and charged accordingly." Why would you try to hide the surveillance to "capture" a crook, when you could advertise the surveillance and stop the crook from being a crook in the first place?

    • Re:Why wouldn't they tell? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday June 19, 2020 @11:25AM (#60202472)
      They reason they wouldn't tell is because people who do legitimately bad things like, I dunno, a child prostitution ring, try to avoid detection by not doing things they know the police will see. The presumption being that if criminals know the cops are monitoring some means of communication for example, they won't stop committing crimes, they'll just resort to some other means of communication.

    • I don't think that's what their trying to do. It looks like they're trying to do is force the police to disclose new technical means of performing surveillance. For example I think they're much more interested in things like how does the technology works for a stingray used in intercepting call phone calls. Right now contracts with vendors prevent the agencies from disclosing how their technology works.

      If this passes the department will lose access to a lot of existing and pretty much any new technology - w

      • contracts with vendors prevent the agencies from disclosing how their technology works.

        What I'd like to know is why a contract can be used a shield when the inquiry is coming from the city council in charge of managing the police (and other city agencies).

        • Because the company will not sell or license their technology without it. Once you release the details in a single jurisdiction those details are out worldwide.

          Since law enforcement cares more about catching criminals than they do with helping people evade capture they are quite willing to sign those contracts. If New York gets the new proposed standard they will lose access to a whole range of tools. I strongly suspect that is the entire point of the proposal. Without question this will result in a lawsuit

          • I feel like that's yet another example of a company saying, "well our policy trumps the law." This isn't a thing that should be happening to begin with.

            The government law enforcement officers have a duty to report to their government superiors on the city council. You don't just refuse to answer your employer's job-related questions and expect to remain employed, do you? That should be a legally binding request, particularly as it's occuring inside the government. The LEOs should be required to comply with

  • Unless it includes criminal penalties for ignoring it, it won't do any good.

    • I think there is some hope because this is not really about individual actions, but the use of technology, which requires things like obtaining approvals and making procurements. I.e. bureaucracy. Bureaucracies are actually good at creating a job environment in which compliance counts for more than effectiveness. (I should know, I work in one.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      You left out "enforceable". There are lots of laws to promote desirable official behavior which are not, and often cannot be, enforced.

  • It takes a law for this to happen? Can't the Mayor just order it?

    The police should be under the control of elected political leaders and oversight boards. Yet, time and time again, they show that they are not.

  • ... the Feds? In my town, most of the surveillance is run by the FBI. ANPR cameras, Stingrays, facial recognition, etc. They just review the data and enter interesting bits into the NCIC [wikipedia.org]. Local cops just do the muscle work.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That's going to be a bit inconvenient for the PD if they have to reveal the illegal methods they have been using. I has previously been alleged about some law enforcement that illegal -- i.e. inadmissible in court -- methods are used to find suspects, then legal methods are used to build a case, and no mention is later made of the illegal methods.

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