Appeals court orders NYPD facial recognition contracts made public

An appeals court in New York has ruled that the New York Police Department (NYPD) must disclose all documents relating to surveillance, cell phone tracking and maintenance of its facial recognition database, which have until now been kept confidential.

A report from the New York Daily News says the documents relate to contracts the department entered into between March 2007 and October 2020, totaling an estimated  $3 billion. They’ve been protected from public view under terms of the Special Expenses (SPEX) program for items vital to public safety and defense against terrorism.

SPEX was shut down following the passage of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act in the summer of 2020. Since then, the NYPD has faced allegations of ignoring the POST Act guidelines, which address police use of a variety of surveillance technologies. They say the department is compliant.

In October 2020, the Legal Aid Society filed a Freedom of Information Law request to obtain the SPEX information, but the NYPD refused. Legal Aid took the matter to court and, in 2023, won the case. The NYPD’s appeal sent it to the appeals court – which, in its ruling, castigated the police force for being obstinate and vacuous.

Following the court’s decision, much will come to light, with the force now required to provide a “rolling production every quarter and provide status updates on its compliance.”

Jerome Greco, head of Legal Aid’s digital forensics unit, says he expects to learn “how much is being spent on these different technologies and services and the terms of those contracts – how they’re supposed to be used and what security or privacy measures were included in these contracts.

“We expect that there may be a lot that has been hidden and not previously revealed.”

NYPD officer says facial recognition is dangerous

In what is becoming a reliable pattern of hypocrisy around FRT in law enforcement, the Police Benevolent Association is protesting an online tool that searches a database of thousands of NYPD officers’ records for a biometric facial match.

50-a.org is a tool designed to let people look up NYPD officer misconduct, which supports search by officer name or badge number.

According to the New York Post, the present pushback began when a retired NYPD officer posted on X about a new facial recognition photo-search option on the site, which lets the public upload photos of police to find matches, identifying their name, assignment and disciplinary records.

Ex-Lt. John Macari said the tool was likely to be “weaponized” by anti-cop activists and agitators and – ironically – noted the chance that officers might be misidentified by facial recognition tech.

The Police Benevolent Association, a union organization representing more than 20,000 cops, has sent a cease-and-desist order to 50-a.org. President Patrick Hendry says
“these activists are against any kind of technology that helps catch criminals, but they’ll use those same tools to target police officers.”

The NYPD has used facial recognition for law enforcement since 2011.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  New York City  |  nypd  |  police  |  United States