FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Civil Rights Groups, Elected Officials Hold Rally Opposing Surveillance Technology, Launch ‘Stop Surveillance Summer’
(New York, NY, 6/7/2022) - Today, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), elected officials, civil rights groups, and Democratic clubs held a rally on the steps of New York City Hall against surveillance technology. Participants condemned the use of facial recognition, geofence warrants, subway metal detectors, and other forms of surveillance and their disproportionate impact on BIPOC, Muslim, immigrant, and LGBTQ+ New Yorkers. The rally came after the introduction of a new state bill that would ban fake police accounts on social media in New York and renewed pressure on the state legislature to ban geofence warrants. The event also kicked off “Stop Surveillance Summer,” a month-long hybrid event series organized by S.T.O.P. opposing NYPD surveillance.
SEE: Livestream Of Rally
https://twitter.com/ninaloshkajian/status/1534163870251724800
STOP SURVEILLANCE SUMMER EVENTS Page
https://www.stopspying.org/stop-surveillance-summer
“The NYPD has lied to New Yorkers about surveillance for far too long, and it’s time we face the facts,” said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn. “NYPD surveillance is biased, broken, and a distraction from real safety. Rather than spending millions more on error-prone metal detectors and defective gunshot scanners, we should be investing in communities. We don’t need racist facial recognition software that wrongly arrests Black and Latinx New Yorkers, we need a ban. We don’t need geofence warrants that turn our phones into ankle monitors, we need a ban. We don’t need fake police social media accounts tricking New Yorkers out of their constitutional rights, we need a ban. And above all, we need action from city and state lawmakers to finally hold the NYPD accountable and show New Yorkers how our communities are really tracked.”
“All New Yorkers want is to be safe, and it is tempting to believe that somehow a magical technology will keep us safe while respecting our civil liberties,” said New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “And yet time and time again, when those new surveillance technologies are put out there, what we see is just the opposite. They creep into our civil liberties, they wind up discriminating against folks who were already discriminated against, and they don’t make us safer. We learn that over and over and over again.”
“During my time at CUNY, I witnessed firsthand unjust abuses of power by the NYPD. They spied on and entrapped fellow Muslim classmates out of unfounded racist suspicions. Granting this police force expanded surveillance authority is a terrible mistake,” said Council Member Shahana Hanif. “We must take action to ensure facial surveillance technology is banned, that the NYPD is restricted in its use of drone technology, and that we finally get an admission from the NYPD about their unjust post-9/11 Muslim surveillance program. We have seen the NYPD lie to our Council time and time again, giving us no reason to believe they have deviated in any way from their history of abusing power. I’m proud to stand with allied elected officials and S.T.O.P. advocates to demand accountability and oversight for the NYPD.”
“I have the privilege and the honor of representing Astoria in Queens,” said New York State Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani. “When we think about the demographics unit that was launched in Michael Bloomberg’s New York City, in Michael Bloomberg’s NYPD, it made Astoria one of the focuses for its surveillance apparatus. We had NYPD agents going to our mosques, to our hookah bars, to our barbershops, to our cafes, to our travel agencies, even going to Astoria Park to write down when Muslims would play soccer. This is the extent of the surveillance apparatus.”
“Surveillance is not the solution. Police continue to advance the idea that if you just give up a bit more of your rights, you will be safer, but as your privacy and right to speak freely are chipped away, they will push for increased surveillance and police funding. Facial recognition, geofence searches, and social media monitoring, are only a few of the flawed technologies targeting the LGBTQ+ community, people of color, and the Muslim community,” said The Legal Aid Society Digital Forensics Supervising Attorney Jerome D. Greco. “Instead of properly funding necessary resources, money is allocated to surveillance companies, each promising to be the answer to crime and each failing to keep its promise. New Yorkers can no longer wait for the harms of surveillance to be addressed by our city and state legislatures.”
“The shooter almost always posts his plan online. In Buffalo he had a whole manifesto, and he streamed his terror on Twitch,” said National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee Co-Chair Erica Johnson. “And yet, not one mass shooting was prevented using surveillance, which begs the question: who are they surveilling? What chat rooms are they monitoring? Who are they following? It can’t be the racists, it can’t be the white supremacists. No, it’s the Muslims, it’s the immigrants, it’s the Black folks. The Martin Luther Kings who are killed for trying to bring change for their people.”
“In real time, we're seeing many of our leaders lean on fear to justify the dialing up of surveillance policing and tech in schools, in the subways, and online,” said NYCLU Policy Director Lee Rowland. “This year the legislature also failed to advance many key anti-surveillance proposals like law enforcement biometric surveillance bans and geofence warrant bans. We have to call on our leaders to do more. We should never just accept that we must live in a sweeping surveillance state to be safe, and lawmakers need to drive solutions that bring in the voices and needs of communities most impacted by violence and overpolicing. Real public safety comes from investing in our communities, not from omnipresent government surveillance. We have to act on solutions that would best prevent the tragedies our communities are experiencing, from gun regulation to mental health investments.”
“The NYPD doesn’t only falsely put people on the gang database as individuals, but they create gangs out of thin air based on whatever they see on social media,” said The Policing and Social Justice Project Researcher Josmar Trujillo. “This is the power we allow the police to have, to create enemies amongst us and distract us from the real community solutions that we should be doing. Not incarcerating people, not profiling people, not sitting around on their computers watching people’s social media posts.”
“New surveillance technologies used to spy on New Yorkers without any basis for suspicion of a crime violate the privacy of all in our city,” said LatinoJustice PRLDEF Equal Justice Work Fellow Meena Oberdick. “But beyond that, they have been used time and time again to disproportionately surveil, harass, and stigmatize people of color and from disadvantaged groups – Muslim Americans, Black and Latinx people, immigrant, and LGBTQ New Yorkers. Youth of color are particularly vulnerable to this surveillance and harassment in the digital age which is why LatinoJustice PRLDEF opposes the use of tools and practices like reverse warrants, facial recognition, and social media phishing tactics.”
“What we have in New York City, in Harlem, in the communities that my office represents and all over the city, is those communities being targeted, being watched constantly by a plethora of surveillance, video, social media, and cell phone technology that watches every single move that everyone in our neighborhoods makes constantly,” said Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem Forensic Science Attorney Julie Fry. “And there is a toll that that takes. There is a toll that that takes on the people we represent, on the communities that we serve. Everyday.”
“New Yorkers are already living in a house built by decades of over-policing and a runaway surveillance state,” said Brooklyn Defender Services Science and Surveillance Project Director Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez. “The current myopic focus on increases in funding for further policing and surveillance technology is a mistake and will not make New Yorkers safer. A blueprint for the future of this City relies on true investment in its people—in housing, education, and medical and mental health care—and in proven solutions, not the failed policing visions of the mass incarceration era.”
“Today advocates and communities are increasingly having to fight not only a growing policing and punishment apparatus, but also the normalization and rapid expansion of the surveillance state. Tech-fueled surveillance increasingly invades New Yorkers’ daily lives and communities, from the license plate readers’ and facial recognition technology to ‘smart city’ projects like digital IDs in which corporate players tie government services to the commodification of people’s data,” said Immigrant Defense Project Senior Policy Associate Jose Chapa. “The Immigrant Defense Project encourages our city council to protect our communities’ safety and privacy. We condemn the use of facial recognition technology and other forms of surveillance in New York City, which could be used against community members.”
“Tech companies’ practices of mass data collection not only help them line their pockets with billions of dollars in revenue from advertisers, but also directly feed state surveillance and state violence,” said Fight For The Future Campaigner Leila Nashashibi. “In a post-Roe world, when abusive prosecutors will undoubtedly use geofence warrants and other data-driven tools to target people seeking abortions, we need states and companies that care about human rights to take a stand for data privacy. For New York State, that means supporting bills like S296A, which limits the use of geofence warrants. For companies, it means limiting unnecessary retention of location data. We need real action against the infrastructure of surveillance capitalism that endangers us all, not just weak symbolic gestures.”
SEE: Ban The Scan – Campaign Page To Ban Facial Recognition
https://www.stopspying.org/ban-the-scan
NY State Bill A84\S296: Banning Geofence Warrants, Keyword Warrants, And Police Data Purchases
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/S296
NY State Bill A10447/S9247: Banning Fake Police Social Media Accounts
https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/s9247
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project is a non-profit advocacy organization and legal services provider. S.T.O.P. litigates and advocates for privacy, fighting excessive local and state-level surveillance. Our work highlights the discriminatory impact of surveillance on Muslim Americans, immigrants, and communities of color.
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CONTACT: S.T.O.P. Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn.
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