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Posts tagged civil liberties
A People's Handbook of Surveillance New York

Summary

In this handbook, researchers from Morgan State University and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) expose how New York City has become a pervasive surveillance state that tracks residents' every movement through public and private spaces without consent. Rather than enhancing public safety, this vast network of surveillance technologies threatens civil liberties, reinforces racial inequities, and undermines democratic freedoms while operating with minimal oversight or transparency.

Key Findings Include:

  • Pervasive surveillance without consent: New Yorkers are tracked from the moment they leave their homes through an extensive network of CCTV cameras, license plate readers, facial recognition systems, ShotSpotter gunshot detectors, and data collection from transit cards, bike shares, and WiFi kiosks; most without their knowledge or consent.

  • Systematic racial bias and overpolicing: Surveillance technologies are disproportionately deployed in communities of color, creating feedback loops that perpetuate overpolicing.

  • Vulnerable populations face heightened risks: Justice-involved individuals, undocumented immigrants, public housing residents, and those seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care face amplified surveillance threats that can result in re-incarceration, deportation, eviction, or prosecution for accessing legal healthcare.

  • Inaccurate and unaccountable technologies: ShotSpotter alerts result in evidence of actual gunshots only 20% of the time in NYC, yet the city renewed its $21.8 million contract. The NYPD has used facial recognition in 22,000 cases between 2017-2021 despite documented accuracy problems and racial bias.

  • Weak oversight and transparency: New York's POST Act provides limited oversight only over NYPD surveillance, with no enforcement power. Unlike other jurisdictions with comprehensive surveillance ordinances, New York lacks meaningful public input, independent oversight, or restrictions on surveillance technology procurement and use.

  • Threats to democracy and civil liberties: Surveillance of activists and protesters chills free speech and assembly. The technology enables tracking of individuals seeking abortion care, attending religious services, or engaging in political activities; fundamentally threatening democratic participation.

  • Public-private surveillance partnerships: Companies like Amazon (Ring), Cubic (OMNY), and others collect vast amounts of personal data that can be accessed by law enforcement, extending police surveillance capacity through private networks while avoiding public accountability.

In the handbook, we call for comprehensive surveillance oversight ordinances, community engagement in technology decisions, and a fundamental shift toward privacy-protective data collection practices that prioritize civil liberties over mass surveillance.

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Digital Surveillance in Africa: Power, Agency, and Rights

Edited by Tony Roberts and Admire Mare

Media coverage and scholarly research on digital surveillance has focused primarily on the USA and Europe. Everyone knows about Cambridge Analytica’s social media surveillance; Edward Snowden’s revelations of the West’s mass internet and phone surveillance; and Pegasus Spyware’s mobile phone surveillance of activists, journalists, judges, and presidents across the world. Comparatively little is known about the millions of dollars now being spent on digital technologies for use in the illegal and illegitimate surveillance of citizens in Africa. In this open-access third volume of Bloomsbury’s Digital Africa series, a broad range of African and European scholars and practitioners map the development, procurement and (mis)use of the ever-expanding suite of digital surveillance and policing technologies across the continent. Drawing on the empirically rich, theoretically sophisticated research of the African Digital Rights Network, this book examines how public and private actors in Africa use spyware, mobile phone extraction, biometric and face recognition systems, and other technologies for smart-city and other social, and social-control, applications. Eight chapters examine eight African countries, and each of these begins with a thorough political history of the nature of surveillance there under colonial and post-liberation political settlements. This enables new analyses of the socio-cultural, political, and economic drivers and characteristics of contemporary digital surveillance in each country, all of which ultimately leads to concrete policy recommendations at local, national, and international levels. For its empirical richness and breadth, as well as its theoretical sophistication, Digital Surveillance in Africa is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary African studies, and it is of keen interest to anyone concerned with how digital surveillance affects everyday lives across the world. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

London: Zed Books, 2025. 240p.

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Facial Recognition Technology: Current Capabilities, Future Prospects, and Governance.

By National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; etc

Facial recognition technology is increasingly used for identity verification and identification, from aiding law enforcement investigations to identifying potential security threats at large venues. However, advances in this technology have outpaced laws and regulations, raising significant concerns related to equity, privacy, and civil liberties.

This report explores the current capabilities, future possibilities, and necessary governance for facial recognition technology. Facial Recognition Technology discusses legal, societal, and ethical implications of the technology, and recommends ways that federal agencies and others developing and deploying the technology can mitigate potential harms and enact more comprehensive safeguards.

Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2024.

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