Dozens
of advocates rallied outside City Hall on Tuesday to demand the city ban
surveillance technology they claim negatively impacts Black and brown
communities.
Advocates
joined at City Hall to call for an end to the practice of public
surveillance, starting with a ban on facial recognition.
Assembly
Member Zohran Mamdani said he recalled when his community
was under surveillance after 9/11,
saying NYPD agents were in businesses and parks in Queens to monitor the Muslim
community.
Members
of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project want the city to end
the use of surveillance drones, speech recognition, social media phishing
tactics and the upcoming installment of metal detectors in the city’s
transit system.
Advocates
say their concerns are being heard, with Comptroller Brad Lander co-sponsoring
the 2018 Post Act that aims to give the public more transparency of
surveillance technologies purchased and used by the NYPD.
The NYPD provided this statement:
“The NYPD uses facial
recognition as a limited investigative tool, comparing a still image from a
surveillance video to a pool of lawfully possessed arrest photos. This
technology helps bring justice to victims of crimes. Any facial recognition
match is solely an investigative lead and not probable cause for arrest – no
enforcement action is ever taken solely on the basis of a facial recognition
match.”