Facial Recognition in use by New York Police Department

From Security Vision
Jump to: navigation, search
Facial Recognition in use by New York Police Department
Excluded from graph ,|value|value}}
Deployment Status Ongoing
Deployment Start Date
Deployment End Date
Events
City ,|x|x}}
Country USA
Involved Entities ,|x|x}}
Keywords ,|x|x}}
Technology Deployed ,|x|x}}
Information Certainty Documented
Primary sources ,|x|1}}
Datasets Used ,|x|x}}
Deployment Type ,|x|x}}
runs search software ,|x|x}}
managed by ,|x|x}}
used by ,|x|x}}
Potentially used by
Information Certainty 0
Summary 0

Graph View ↗︎

Information Certainty: Documented


Deployment Purpose: Criminal investigations, Surveillance

Summary
0



Location:
CityNew York City (NY)
Country⠉USA
Loading map...


Description[ ]

Amnesty International found that the New York City Police Department has the potential to use facial recognition software on CCTV streams around the city. Furthermore the presence of the cameras is correlated with higher rates of 'stop-and-frisk' in those areas.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has the ability to track people in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx by running images from 15,280 surveillance cameras into invasive and discriminatory facial recognition software, a new Amnesty International investigation reveals 2

Experts fear that law enforcement will be using face recognition technology on feeds from these cameras, disproportionately targeting people of color in the process. According to documents obtained through public records requests by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), the New York Police Department used facial recognition, including the controversial Clearview AI system, in at least 22,000 cases between 2016 and 2019 3

Following the work of activist and legal aid groups, in 2020 the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act came into force, which requires that the NYPD disclose its contracts with technology firms. From these documents and emails obtained by the Legal Aid Society and first reported in Buzzfeed, it was found that the NYPD maintained relations with Clearview despite its public declarations that its use of the technology had ceased. Officers were also found to have accounts on their personal devices and to have been sharing information with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As of today it remains unclear whether NYPD still uses Clearview AI.

The documents, which include contracts, vendor agreements, bids, maintenance requests, and special memos, are heavily redacted and include no information on potential biases or effectiveness. It's not clear which contracts are still active, whether the older ones were renewed, or if the NYPD simply replaced one vendor with another 4

It’s unclear if NYPD officers are still using Clearview. When reached for comment by BuzzFeed News, an NYPD spokesperson declined to answer specific questions. However, the relationship between Clearview and the NYPD appears to have remained friendly through at least February 2020 5

Approximately 50 members of the NYPD had access to or an account with Clearview AI during the time period the records cover. The ranks of members using or directing others to use Clearview ranges from police officer to deputy commissioner, including an account being created for Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller, at the apparent request of the Deputy Inspector of the FBI New York Joint Terrorism Task Force 6

References

  1. a b  "A new map of NYC’s cameras shows more surveillance in Black and brown neighborhoods". (2022) <https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/14/1045333/map-nyc-cameras-surveillance-bias-facial-recognition/> Accessed: 2022-05-31
  2. a b  "New York is in danger of becoming a total surveillance city". (2021) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/scale-new-york-police-facial-recognition-revealed/> Accessed: 2022-05-31
  3. a b  "NYPD Is Using Controversial Facial Recognition Software". (2021) <https://legalaidnyc.org/news/nypd-using-controversial-facial-recognition-software/> Accessed: 2022-06-01
  4. a b  Fussell, Sidney. The NYPD Had a Secret Fund for Surveillance Tools. , 2021.
  5. a b  "The NYPD Has Misled The Public About Its Use Of Facial Recognition Tool Clearview AI". (2021) <https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinehaskins1/nypd-has-misled-public-about-clearview-ai-use> Accessed: 2022-06-01

Retrieved from "https://www.securityvision.io/wiki/index.php?title=Facial_Recognition_in_use_by_New_York_Police_Department&oldid=24277"