We hope you can join us on Monday, June 10th at 9:00 AM ET for a press conference and rally on the City Hall steps (City Hall Park, New York, NY 10007) to call on the New York City Council to ban facial recognition and other biometric surveillance. The rally will be held before a City Council hearing at 10 AM to discuss two bills banning the use of facial recognition by landlords and businesses. Let's demand the City Council pass not only these limits on facial recognition, but a full ban on its use by police and government!

RSVP Here

Sponsored by: S.T.O.P, Fight For The Future, The Legal Aid Society, Center On Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law, and New York City Council Members Shahana Hanif and Carlina Rivera.

Join us for a night of laughs to support S.T.O.P.'s mission of dismantling mass surveillance!

Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/stop-stand-up-fundraiser-tickets-910826766377

S.T.O.P.'s stand-up fundraiser will feature sets from five comedians that might even make Big Brother crack a smile. All ticket sales will go right back into funding our work, which you can snoop on at stopspying.org.

Meet the comics:
Nathan Habib has 2 specials on YouTube is featured on Sirius XM. He's a regular at New York Comedy Club and performed at the New York Comedy Festival.

Robert Punchur is a staple of the NYC comedy scene, hosting & performing on nightly shows at top clubs and pop-up venues. His brand Very Good Comedy is highly regarded as a favorite for comics & audiences alike.

David Roth is the author of LOL 101: A Kid's Guide to Writing Jokes, which won a Good Housekeeping 2023 Kid's Book Award and was featured on The Today Show with Hoda & Jenna. He's a stand-up comedian and acclaimed advertising creative director who's written two Super Bowl commercials. His 2022 music video, "Interracial Couple in a Cheerios Ad" won 15 film festivals globally. In 2024, David will star in the film he wrote, "The Fun in Funny," directed by Christine Lakin and produced by Fujifilm.

Naomi Karavani is a comedian and writer based in New York City who’s known for her sardonic wit and captivating stories. She was a writer and cast member of the political satire show "Redacted Tonight" for five years. Her hour-long solo show “Dominant” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival received rave reviews. She’s also participated in Brooklyn Comedy Fest, NY Comedy Fest, Limestone Fest, Edinburgh Fringe Fest, Asheville, Cape Fear, Women in Comedy, and Bentzen Ball. She’s appeared on Comedy Central’s Night Out, NPR, Huffington Post, Las Culturistas, and Time Out NY.

Vince Chuang is a stand-up comedian originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, now based in New York City. With a style that blends sharp observational humor and relatable storytelling, Vince has become a favorite at some of the Bay Area’s top comedy clubs, including the Punch Line, Cobb's Comedy Club, and Rooster T Feathers.

REGISTER HERE

In the rapidly advancing realm of artificial intelligence (AI) within business operations, the legal ramifications from a human rights and international law perspective have become paramount. The event, "Litigation Cases Against AI Business: A Human Rights and International Law Perspective," aims to elucidate the profound legal challenges arising at the nexus of AI and business, emphasizing the impact on human rights and the broader international legal framework.

The event's significance lies in its unique focus on the ethical and legal dimensions of AI through the lens of human rights. As AI technologies continue to shape global business practices, the event seeks to provide a platform for experts, legal scholars, and professionals to delve into litigation cases that specifically address issues such as privacy infringements, discriminatory algorithms, and the broader societal implications of AI integration.

The event will set the stage for in-depth panel discussions, featuring up to four distinguished panelists, each with expertise in human rights and IA law, technology ethics, and international legal frameworks. Panel topics will encompass the intersectionality of AI, business, and human rights, fostering a comprehensive dialogue on how legal systems can effectively navigate and regulate AI practices while upholding human rights.

City & State's summit, in collaboration with Equality New York, invites you to a critical dialogue on pressing LGBTQ+ issues across New York and the nation. This event will serve as a platform to explore the unique challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in this digital age, examine the approaches of state and city officials in these transformative times, and discuss prospective legislative responses.

S.T.O.P.’s Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn will be part of the Censorship and Social Media Legislation panel. This focused discussion examines the balance between regulating social media and protecting free expression. Highlighting recent legislative efforts across the nation, we explore who is driving these initiatives, their impact on digital freedoms, and the broader implications for marginalized groups, including the LGBTQ+ community. Panelists will provide insights into the challenges and consequences of social media legislation, offering perspectives on maintaining an inclusive and open digital space.

REGISTER HERE

A virtual discussion on January 19th, 5 - 6 pm EST between Nicholas Fesette (Emory University) and Kat Phan (S.T.O.P.) examining the surveillance, intimidation, & criminalization tactics used against Stop Cop City organizers, activists, & allies, centering the digital best practices & resistance strategies adopted to support the movement & protect all those fighting to prevent the deforestation of the Weelaunee Forest & the construction of a police military training facility.

Register here.

Nicholas Fesette is assistant professor of theater at Emory University’s Oxford College. He researches how performances—theatrical and mediatized—can contribute to resistant, liberatory, and abolitionist movements—such as #StopCopCity—and also how performance has historically served to support and circulate carceral logics by appealing to the white imagination. His writing is published in the volume Race and Performance after Repetition, as well as in a variety of peer-reviewed journals. His current book project, Performance After Policing: Abolition Dramaturgies in Carceral America, examines the carceral state as a performing structure that continually re-stages race and class oppression. In part, this research draws upon five years’ work as a teaching artist in the Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security men’s prison in Upstate New York, where he helped facilitate a collective of incarcerated writers and performers, the Phoenix Players Theatre Group.

Kat Phan is the Advocacy Manager of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). Previously, she led advocacy and research campaigns on various immigrant justice issues at the city, state, and national level. Prior to that, she led policy and research initiatives in San Francisco’s Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs. Kat has also worked as a data scientist on civic integrity algorithms. Kat received her Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Buy Tickets | $11.00 Member | $17.00 Regular | Become a Member

Moderated by S.T.O.P. Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn

S.T.O.P. is a New York City based civil rights nonprofit, litigating and advocating to abolish local governments’ systems of mass surveillance.

Michael Grotenhoff, Filmtank Co-Owner, Interactive Media Foundation, CEO and Creation Lead

Michael Grotenhoff has a degree in theatre, film and television studies, journalism and politics. His main focus has consistently remained on digital advancements; and as a result, most of his films deal with the digitalization of society. He is equally at home with topics relating to the environment, nature and sustainability. Grotenhoff is an internationally sought-after guest lecturer for the development and production of cross-media projects. International jury activities, such as Lovie Award. He is a Fellow of the Cultural and Creative Industries Initiative of the Federal Government. He is a Producer, and director of international multi award-winning transmedia projects and TV documentaries. “Netwars/ out of CTRL” won the Grimme Online Award, Japan Prize, Prix Italia, SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.

Albert Fox Cahn is the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s ( S.T.O.P.’s) founder and executive director. He is also a Practitioner-in-Residence at N.Y.U Law School’s Information Law Institute and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center For Human Rights Policy, Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Ashoka, and TED.

Calling all NYC community members to join us for a City Hall Park press conference & rally condemning the NYPD’s noncompliance with the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act!

The press conference and rally will occur prior to a joint committee hearing by the Committee on Technology and the Committee on Public Safety about the POST Act, which the NYPD has blatantly disregarded throughout the three years since its passage. The POST Act was an essential first step in gaining greater transparency over the state of surveillance in New York City, but let's demand the City Council go further by banning police use of broken, biased spyware like facial recognition, geofence warrants, the so-called ‘gang database,’ and other tools.

Sponsored by: Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), The Legal Aid Society, Brennan Center for Justice, New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés, New York Civil Liberties Union, Encode Justice, Project on Government Oversight, Policing & Social Justice Project, and the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU Law

RSVP here.

On Thursday, September 28th, at 5:00 PM, there will be an online discussion critiquing the techno-solutionist responses to the worsening conditions inside Rikers Island Jail, centering the state of detainees' health and safety as Mayor Eric Adams and DOC Commissioner Louis Molina implement automated corrections technology and slash re-entry services and oversight measures.

It will be joined by Chaplain Dr. Victoria Philips (Visionary V) and Janos Marton (Dream.Org), and Kat Phan (S.T.O.P.) will moderate.

Register here.

Advocates have been fighting facial recognition for years, and the New York City Council is finally holding a hearing on banning its use by landlords and businesses on Wednesday, May 3rd.

Join us in City Hall Park for a press conference and rally on Wednesday, May 3rd at 11:30 AM ET to demand the New York City Council pass not only these limits on facial recognition, but a full ban on its use by police and government. Please RSVP to join the press conference and rally here.

Sponsored by: Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), Ban The Scan Coalition, Amnesty International USA, NYCLU, Fight For The Future, National Action Network, Main Street Alliance, and Council Members Shahana Hanif, Pierina Sanchez, Carlina Rivera, Nantasha Williams, Farah Louis, and Christopher Marte.

RSVP here.

S.T.O.P. is joined by Lydia X.Z. Brown, James Kilgore, and Justin Sherman for a discussion examining the development of surveillance tools utilized by medical, wellness, and health-crisis services, and the impact these tools have on individuals marginalized by systemic ableism.

People with neurodivergences and disabilities have long been subjected to surveillance, alongside other coercive “care” practices that contribute to the disproportionate criminalization and dehumanization of their communities. In this session, we will explore how these ableist practices have evolved in the digital age. We will also discuss the Disability-led movement to provide peer-to-peer, dignity-based care to vulnerable individuals in crisis as a safe alternative form of care.

The panel will be held virtually on April 26th from 5 – 6 pm EST. Moderated by S.T.O.P.’s Communications and Development Fellow, Sarah Roth. Register here.

Lydia X.Z. Brown founded and leads the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, in partnership with the Autistic Women and Nonbinary Network, where they are the Director of Policy, Advocacy, and External Affairs.

Justin Sherman is the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, a Washington, DC-based research and advisory firm; a senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, where he leads its data brokerage research project and lectures on cybersecurity, privacy, and technology policy; and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

James Kilgore is an activist, researcher, and writer based in Urbana, Illinois, where he has lived since paroling from prison in 2009. He is the director of the Challenging E-Carceration project at MediaJustice and the co-director of FirstFollowers Reentry Program in Champaign, Illinois.

Join as we kick-off Participatory budgeting vote week, where we’ll be showcasing our project for surveillance know-your-rights trainings for students in D22!

Learn more at bit.ly/D22PBInfo

The Current and Future Ethical Challenges in Games: XR and the Metaverse

The future of video games will happen online with games already played today, and it will also happen in XR and the metaverse—each bringing their own specific ethics challenges that game developers need to be aware of in order to design safe spaces for players, but also for themselves.

Today, business models and practices related to data collection can be enhanced in connection with devices to interface the metaverse. These future interfaces intended for immersion present augmented risks for privacy, anonymity, and self determination for users and players, which must be acknowledged while designing applications and games that take advantage of these capabilities.

Thinking ahead, incipient neurotechnology applications open the possibility of imagining the future of interfaces in immersive environments, but at the same time, they open even more ethically daunting questions, as in conjunction with design practices and affective computing research, they can be used for invasive, exploitative or manipulative practices.

The panel will explore how the current ethical challenges for game development connect with a possible future, through a set of questions and key points.

Register at the link below:

https://gdc.informatech.com/2023/registrations/Attendee?mboxSession=c7eb62de9d2a45119e6789e420157b52&_gl=1*1coivkk*_ga*MTg1ODg4ODU0Ni4xNjc3NDU1NTQ0*_ga_D8JKX60PNS*MTY3ODEyMjg1NS4zLjAuMTY3ODEyMjg1NS4wLjAuMA..&_ga=2.247759303.1106319006.1678122856-1858888546.1677455544

Wiretaps on Wheels: How Cars (and Rideshare Bikes) Track Everywhere We Go

Recent-model cars are surveillance on wheels. Cars collect sensitive passenger data and share it with a range of companies including their manufacturers, insurers, and even Google and Apple. Passengers’ favorite destinations, social contacts, texts—even their weight and voice recordings—all make their way to company servers, where the data is less than a warrant or data breach away from police and hackers. But transportation surveillance is difficult to avoid. Even public transportation, rideshare bikes, and scooters surveil their users. New York City’s bikeshare program, for example, publishes each ride’s start and endpoint and individual riders’ birth years and gender for anyone to see. Panelists will discuss the passenger data that connected vehicles collect and its dangers to overpoliced groups (e.g., protestors; BIPOC people). They’ll explain the legal double standard that protects the privacy of cellphones but allows police to search the same data on vehicles. They’ll show how “geofence warrants” can be used to expose every person who drove their car along a particular route, revealing people traveling to reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare clinics and other sensitive locations. Panelists will invite attendees to become “allies in practice” by sharing questions and insights about their experiences with travel surveillance, with the goal of enriching S.T.O.P.’s ongoing advocacy to stop travel surveillance.

Register at the link below:

https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/tickets/

It's time to break up with surveillance.

In January, S.T.O.P. launched “Banning Big Brother: New York’s Surveillance Sanctuary State Blueprint,” our anti-surveillance legislative campaign for New York State. The dangerous, undemocratic technologies to outlaw include fake police social media accounts, OMNY surveillance, warrantless drone surveillance, mass geolocation tracking, faulty facial recognition software, using DNA pseudoscience to make police sketches, and more.

Join us for a Valentine’s Day of Action and tell NYS legislators to SWIPE LEFT on sketchy surveillance! We’ll be signing anti-Valentine “breakup letters” for our representatives while we sip cocktails, share more about S.T.O.P.’s work, and maybe even swap stories about bad dates. See you there!

Date: Tuesday, Feb 7 at 6PM
Location: Stitch Blues Bar, 247 W 37 St.

RSVP here.

In this virtual session on December 7th, 6PM EST, we’ll examine the mass monitoring tools and policing practices that are bringing surveillance into our homes. From ICE accessing homes’ telephone, cable, gas, electricity and water data through CLEAR to the NYPD partnership with video surveillance system Ring Neighbors, law enforcement agencies and corporations are teaming up to invade the basic sanctuary for our privacy. This mass surveillance targeted at residences disproportionately targets and harms delivery workers and BIPOC and undocumented communities.

Joined by Nina Wang (Center on Privacy & Technology), Jay Stanley (ACLU), and David Shalleck-Klein (Family Justice Law Center), we’ll discuss which devices are monitoring you and your activities in and around your residence and how law enforcement agencies obtain and use this home surveillance.

Moderated by S.T.O.P.'s David Siffert.

Register here!

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

1 PM - 3 PM ET / 10 AM - 12 PM PT

HOSTED BY S.T.O.P. AND EYE ON SURVEILLANCE

As funders aiming to secure safety, self-determination, and joy for all–and particularly for those of us committed to ending the harmful practice of mass incarceration—the issue of surveillance is of utmost importance; one which deeply impacts marginalized communities, as well as those fighting for justice and liberation. Without swift intervention from philanthropy, we can only expect increased and more invasive surveillance in our lifetimes. This year alone:

- The fall of Roe v. Wade and subsequent loss of federal protection for abortion has led to the tracking of reproductive information, putting those seeking and providing abortion at greater risk of facing criminal charges;
- The Biden Administration has proposed to expand a controversial surveillance program, which tracks the location information of over 180,000 immigrants awaiting trial; and
- The Associated Press has uncovered the use of ‘Fog Reveal,’ a tech tool that police have used to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, offering forces “mass surveillance on a budget.”

On Wednesday, November 30, Join the panel for a mini teach-in on surveillance. You’ll hear from a panel of activists leading fights on the ground to progress both anti-surveillance and decarceration efforts—and you’ll leave our gathering better able to understand the strategies needed to progress this work before it’s too late.

November 30 at 1 PM EST

Register here!

HOSTED BY S.T.O.P. AND THE NEW YORK IMMIGRATION COALITION

Join us for a conversation between Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director of the NYIC, and Albert Fox Cahn, Esq., Executive Director of S.T.O.P., on the 21st anniversary of the PATRIOT Act.

In the aftermath of 9/11, institutionalized Islamophobia and xenophobia led to the rise of surveillance technology and signalled a backsliding of civil rights for minority communities. On the 21st anniversary of the PATRIOT Act, this conversation will explore how surveillance has been weaponized against immigrant communities in the name of national security and beyond.

October 26th at 6 PM EST

Register at the link below:

nyic.me/surveillance

Hosted by New York State Bar Association

Virtual Participation

Program Faculty

• Joseph Brancato, FAIA, Chairman, Gensler, New York, NY

• Luca CM Melchionna, Esq., Melchionna PLLC, New York, NY

• Albert Fox Cahn, Esq., Executive Director, S.T.O.P. Surveillance Technology

Join the panel hosted by NYSBA on the talks over the framework of privacy and data collection. The technology behind so-called “smart cities” is growing rapidly as sensors and monitors designed to improve the quality of our lives require increasingly more data to function. The panelists will discuss how to strike a regulatory balance between collecting personal information and protecting the privacy and identity of each citizen.

Sponsoring Committee Group

• Committee On Continuing Legal Education

• Technology And Venture Law Committee

• Committee On Technology And The Legal Profession

• Committee On Law Practice Management

• Task Force On Emerging Digital Finance And Currency

• Business Law Section

October 13th at 1 pm EST

Register here!

HOSTED BY THE GANGS COALITION

Join family members, advocates and elected officials on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall as we rally in support of Int 0360-2022, a City Council bill to abolish the NYPD gang database and prevent the creation of a replacement. We will speak out against the police department's racist and unfair gang labeling practices, harmful prosecution practices and highlight the need for community-based solutions to truly ending gun violence. 

September 7th at 1 PM EST

Location details

Brooklyn Borough Hall

209 Joralemon St

By the steps on the north side of Borough Hall, closest to Court/Remsen

S.T.O.P. and the Brooklyn Public Library are inviting a group of youth (ages 16-24) to talk about their experiences and ask questions about police surveillance in NYC. We are doing this as part of a project with an organization called the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) and designer Aishwarya Srivastava.

The project is to create an educational print material that explains how youth and young adults in New York can protect themselves and their data from law enforcement’s surveillance of their smartphone apps. To make the project as useful as possible, we need your help to think about what the project should talk about and how.

We will meet on August 8th, 6-7:30PM, at the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library to hear more about your experiences and also to show and get feedback on some early design ideas.

CUP is paying everyone who takes part $50 for their time. The conversation will be about 1.5 hours long.

We are grateful for your participation and hope you can join us for this conversation!

Register here!

Join the event hosted by Justice Education Project and Encode Justice to learn about the intersection of AI and the criminal justice system!

About this event

Join us to learn about implicit biases in artificial intelligence as they affect criminal justice and spur engaging discussions about the intersection of artificial intelligence and criminal justice. This is a hybrid event, so people are welcome to join over Zoom.

Register for the event here.

For 3 years, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) has been at the forefront of the fight against the ever-expanding surveillance dragnet. From campaigns to outlaw geofence warrants – which allow law enforcement to surveil all active mobile devices or all users within a certain geographic area – to banning the use of facial recognition systems which disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, Muslim, and immigrant communities, S.T.O.P. is fighting the dangerous narrative that surveillance equals safety.

Most recently, S.T.O.P. led an effort to conduct a ‘census’ of surveillance tech in New York City, finding 17,000 CCTV cameras from one controversial company alone. But surveillance doesn’t just stop at hardware. The mass collection and use of data on our every move online (and off) lays bare the importance of data privacy legislation, which S.T.O.P. has been advocating for since its inception. The overturning of Roe v. Wade underscores the urgency of protecting New Yorkers and everyone’s right to bodily autonomy and privacy.

We invite you to a shared celebration of all that we’ve accomplished so far, where we’ll share all that we can do together to uphold our privacy and fundamental rights. Come and learn more about how you can play a role in pushing back against surveillance and meet like-minded people who are dedicated to freeing New York from these nefarious forces.

Register for the event here.

Even with good password management techniques, passwords are a flawed approach to account security. Many of the world's major tech companies are proposing alternative mechanisms to verify identity and manage access. But what works best—and are there privacy trade-offs?

Speakers:

Thomas Besore, Esq., Blockchain & Crypto Analyst/Consultant

Albert Fox Cahn, Esq., Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, Executive Director

Panel will start at 1:00 PM BST to 1:45 PM.

This panel is part of PrivSec Global, which has long united experts from both privacy and security, providing a forum where professionals from across these fields can listen, learn, and debate. To register, click here.

In this session, we’ll examine the criminalization of reproductive freedoms through digital surveillance of pregnant people today and in a post-Roe America. What digital technologies are already used to track and criminalize abortion seekers, providers, and advocates? How will surveillance escalate without the constitutional right to abortion?

We will also discuss paths forward to reduce the harm of Roe's potential overruling and digital strategies for pregnant people, providers, and advocates to stay safe on the internet.

Joined by reproductive and digital rights activists Hayley Tsukayama (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and Jolynn Dellinger (Duke Law). Moderated by S.T.O.P.'s Albert Fox Cahn.

Hayley Tsukayama is Senior Legislative Activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, focusing on state legislation. Prior to joining EFF, she spent nearly eight years as a consumer technology reporter at The Washington Post writing stories on the industry's largest companies.

Jolynn Dellinger is the Stephen and Janet Bear Visiting Lecturer and a Kenan Senior Fellow at Duke Law's Kenan Institute for Ethics, where she teaches privacy and ethics and does work in the area of ethical tech. In addition to teaching Privacy Law and Policy at Duke Law as a Senior Lecturing Fellow, Dellinger is an Adjunct Professor at UNC School of Law, a member of the Board of Directors for the Triangle Privacy Research Hub, and a member of the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board.

Jun 23, 2022 06:00 PM ET

Register here.

S.T.O.P. and Amnesty International will discuss New York City’s sprawling network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology. Using publicly available data from Amnesty’s Decode NYC Surveillance initiative and S.T.O.P.’s 2021 Surveillance Census, the interactive session will feature demonstrations of both organizations’ public and private surveillance camera mapping projects.

Speakers will share their methodologies and data findings, revealing how the map of NYC surveillance cameras strikingly reflects structural racism, segregation, and the oversurveillance and discriminatory policing of BIPOC communities. S.T.O.P. and Amnesty will also discuss the racial biases and inaccuracy of facial recognition software and the growing national movement against its use.

Register here.

Host institution: Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) | Amnesty International

Learn more: https://www.stopspying.org/2021-hikvision | https://decoders.amnesty.org/projects/decode-surveillance 

Please note: In order to ensure a more interactive, hands-on discussion, there is a cap of 60 participants on this community lab, which will be filled on a first-come, first served basis. The link to enter the waiting room for the session will be made available 5 minutes before the start time, and you will be notified by the technical moderator if you have been admitted. If all the seats are filled, no worries! There are plenty of other sessions and spaces in program for you to explore.