By Eleni Manis, PHD and Albert Fox Cahn, Esq

In this report, S.T.O.P. documents the New York City Police Department (NYPD)’s repeated failures to comply with New York City’s Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act (POST Act). Enacted in 2020, the POST Act is the first law to oversee the NYPD’s use of surveillance technology. A first attempt to regulate NYPD’s surveillance tools, the law only requires NYPD disclose its surveillance tools. As this report establishes, NYPD falls far short of the reporting norms set by other police departments subject to similar surveillance technology oversight laws. The report concludes by calling on the New York City Council to use its oversight authority to ensure that the bill is not ignored. S.T.O.P. also recommends that individual lawmakers and civil society organizations continue to evaluate potential litigation, seeking judicial intervention to compel the NYPD to comply with the POST Act.

By S.T.O.P

In this first annual surveillance census, S.T.O.P. sought to map out all of the internet-enabled cameras operating in New York City. Even as many companies hide the location of their surveillance equipment, the Chinese-based firm Hikvision still allows their devices to be located…and the results are shocking. We identified 16,692 cameras in New Yorker City alone. This page details where Hikvision cameras across the five boroughs. While the numbers are extraordinarily high, please remember that for every one Hikvision camera we have mapped, there are dozens, possibly hundreds of other camera systems whose location remains hidden.

By S.T.O.P.

Our review of the 146 individuals who plead guilty in connection with the January 6th insurrection shows that facial recognition and other surveillance technology is not needed to properly identify suspects. Department of Justice data documents only 3 cases that used facial recognition. In contrast, the vast majority of cases used low-tech and less-invasive techniques, with 104 cases using tips from the public.

By Eleni Manis, Annie Dorsen, Evan Enzer, Owen May, Gabriella Papper, Derek Smith, Andy Ratto, Reagan Razon, Sophia Wright, Jimin Yoo, and Corinne Worthington

Billions in surveillance technology is sold annually with completely unsubstantiated, outlandish marketing claims.

These endemic practices frequently appear to constitute deceptive advertising, violating federal and state consumer protections.

Regulators are beginning to take action against some of the worst offenders, but many surveillance firms appear to make marketing claims with impunity.

A growing body of independent analysis documents surveillance systems’ ineffectiveness, errors, and bias.

By Eleni Manis, Fatima Ladha, Nina Loshkajian, Aiden McKay, and Corinne Worthington

Though data is essential to understanding public safety, police data is rarely reliable.

Surveillance technology distorts crime statistics, giving the illusion that crime is concentrated in predominantly BIPOC and low-income neighborhoods that are already over-policed.

Independent audits and data verification can help produce a more accurate picture of what crime looks like and where it happens.

By Christopher Slobogin and Sarah Brayne

This review focuses on government use of technology to observe, collect, or record potential criminal activity in real-time, as contrasted with “transaction surveillance” that involves government efforts to access already-existing records and exploit Big Data, topics that have been the focus of previous reviews (Brayne 2018, Ridgeway 2018). Even so limited, surveillance technologies come in many guises, including closed-circuit television, automated license plate and facial readers, aerial cameras, and GPS tracking. Also classifiable as surveillance technology are devices such as thermal and electromagnetic imagers that can “see” through walls and clothing. Finally, surveillance includes wiretapping and other forms of communication interception. The following discussion briefly examines the limited evidence we have about the prevalence and effectiveness of these technologies and then describes the law governing surveillance, focusing principally on constitutional doctrine, and how it might—and might not—limit use of these technologies in the future.

  Annual Review of Criminology,  2023. 6:219–40 

By Michael Geist.

Years of surveillance-related leaks from US whistleblower Edward Snowden have fuelled an international debate over privacy, spying, and Internet surveillance. Much of the focus has centered on the role of the US National Security Agency, yet there is an important Canadian side to the story. The Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian counterpart to the NSA, has played an active role in surveillance activities both at home and abroad, raising a host of challenging legal and policy questions. With contributions by leading experts in the field, Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era is the right book at the right time: From the effectiveness of accountability and oversight programs to the legal issues raised by metadata collection to the privacy challenges surrounding new technologies, this book explores current issues torn from the headlines with a uniquely Canadian perspective.

Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2015. 298p.

Edited by Hans-W. Micklitz, Oreste Pollicino , Amnon Reichman, Andrea Simoncini , Giovanni Sartor, and Giovanni de Gregorio.

“ the rise of the bureaucratic state, the technologies for infringing liberty or equality were thought to be containable by the exercise of concrete judicial review… . In recent years, however, the rise of the algorithmic society has led to a paradigmatic change where the public power is no longer the only source of concern for the respect of fundamental rights and the protection of democracy, where jurisdictional boundaries are in flux, and where doctrines and procedures developed in the pre-cybernetic age do not necessarily capture rights violations in a relevant time frame.”

Cambridge University Press. (2021) 300 pages.

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By Joe Tomlinson.

Assessing the next revolution in administrative justice. This short book examines three very different ways in which the UK’s administrative justice system is changing due to the influence of technology: the increase in crowdfunded judicial reviews; the digitalisation of tribunals; and the adoption of ‘agile’ methodologies by civil servants tasked with building the administrative justice system…ensuring justice in the digital state is a task that requires us to both study closely the empirical consequences of technology and revisit, and maybe even abandon, existing frameworks for understanding how administrative justice operates.

Bristol University Press.. (2019) 114 pages.