Sign-On Letter to the New York Office of the Attorney General to Investigate Funding of Audio Surveillance Technology in U.S. Prisons and Jails
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Letitia James, New York Attorney General
New York Office of the Attorney General
The Capitol
Albany, N.Y. 12224-0341
Via U.S.P.S. & Email
Re: Audio Surveillance in N.Y. Prisons and Jails
Dear Madame Attorney General:
The undersigned civil rights and privacy organizations call on the New York Office of the Attorney
General (“the OAG”) to investigate state and local procurement of unproven, invasive, and biased
audio surveillance technology in N.Y. prisons and jails.
In 2020, New York City jails and prisons recorded thousands of phone calls, including 1,500 between
attorneys and their incarcerated clients.[1] This was not an isolated problem. Records reveal that the
City’s phone provider, Securus, recorded tens of thousands of attorney-client privileged calls across
the United States, communications that are protected from surveillance under the Sixth Amendment
of the U.S. Constitution and the Federal Wiretap Act.[2] Securus and similar providers have been
committing these violations for years. They represent a longstanding and systemic practice of
recording privileged communications, and in many cases, turning these communications over to law
enforcement and prosecutors.
This attack on New Yorkers’ right to counsel is compounded by prisons and jails’ deployment of new
artificial intelligence surveillance tools. In addition to illegally surveilling privileged attorney-client
communications, jails and prisons have used these tools for other illegitimate and presumably
unapproved purposes, including the discrimination of people of color and restriction of speech related
to COVID-19.[3]
A recent case in Suffolk County, New York, illustrates the critical nature and mass scale of this issue
that call for urgent action. According to recent reporting, the United States Department of Justice’s
Office of Justice Programs made a $700,000 grant to the county for the procurement of Verus, a
phone call transcription and search tool manufactured by LEO Technologies.[4] Corrections officials
in New York and six other states use Verus to automate and expand audio surveillance, including the
illegal surveillance of privileged attorney-client communications.[5] In Suffolk County alone, officials used Verus to surveil over 2.5 million phone calls between April 2019 and May 2019.[6]
Suffolk County officials searched communications for “mara,” an often-benign Spanish word that can
refer simply to a group of friends.7 This technology appears poised to falsely accuse Spanish-speaking
New Yorkers of gang membership, putting them at risk of arrest, administrative punishment, and
deportation.
Even absent discrimination, Verus and similar technologies exceed prisons and jails’ lawful
surveillance powers.[8] Suffolk County officials also targeted people for discussing abuse or COVID-19
dangers, fueling cover-ups that prevent critical media and accountability. These types of restrictions
on speech do not serve any legitimate penological goal.
Ultimately, this surveillance infringes the rights of incarcerated Americans, many of whom have not
been convicted and are still working on their defenses, as well as those of their families, friends, and
loved ones trying to stay connected and supportive, including minor children.
Such abuses call for urgent intervention by the OAG. Accordingly, we ask your office to investigate
the acquisition and use of audio surveillance technologies to monitor phone calls in prisons and jails
in New York State and urge action on all civil rights violations.
We look forward to working with your staff on this matter. Please contact Surveillance Technology Oversight Project Executive Director Albert Fox Cahn and Worth Rises Executive Director Bianca Tylek with any questions, comments, or concerns.
Sincerely,
1. S.T.O.P. - Surveillance Technology
Oversight Project
2. Worth Rises
3. A Little Piece Of Light
4. Access Now
5. Advocacy for Principled Action in
Government
6. Alameda County Public Defenders Office
7. Aspiration
8. Boston Chapter of Democratic Socialists
of America
9. Color of change
10. Defending Rights & Dissent
11. Demand Progress
12. DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
13. Electronic Frontier Foundation
14. Electronic Privacy Information Center
(EPIC)
15. Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
16. Empire State Indivisible
17. Ethics in Technology
18. Fight for the Future
19. Freedom To Thrive
20. Housing = Health
21. ICNA Council for Social Justice
22. Immigrant Defense Project
23. JustLeadershipUSA
24. LatinoJustice PRLDEF
25. Legal Aid Society of NYC
26. Mothers Against Wrongful Convictions
27. Mijente
28. Movement for Family Power
29. Neighborhood Defender Service of
Harlem
30. NYU Center on Race, Inequality, and the
Law
31. Ohio Justice and Policy Center
32. PDX Privacy
33. Policing and Social Justice Project
34. Represent Justice
35. Restore The Fourth
36. South Asian Americans Leading Together
(SAALT)
37. The Bronx Defenders
38. The Healing Project
39. Voqal
40. WE GOT US NOW
41. Whistleblower & Source Protection
Program (WHISPeR)
42. X-Lab
[1] Chelsea Rose Marcius, Over 1,500 Private Phone Calls Between NYC Jail Inmates and Legal Advisers Wrongly
Recorded, Audits Show, New York Daily News, March 20, 2021, https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyrikers-jail-phone-records-lawyers-inmates-20210320-rdfb2lmuevgsdg5npad4egoqai-story.html.
[2] Ella Fassler, “Prison Phone Companies Are Recording Attorney-Client Calls Across the US,” Vice,
December 13, 2021, https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kbbey/prison-phone-companies-are-recordingattorney-client-calls-across-the-us.
[3] Avi Asher-Schapiro & David Sherfinski, AI Surveillance Takes U.S. Prisons by Storm, Thomson Reuters
Foundation, Nov. 16, 2021, https://news.trust.org/item/20211115095808-kq7gx.
[4] Services - Verus, LEO Technologies, https://leotechnologies.com/services/verus.
[5] Asher-Schapiro & Sherfinski, supra note 3.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987) (“[W]hen a prison regulation impinges on inmates’ constitutional
rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.”)