New York City's Surveillance Battle Offers National Lessons

In January, when New York's Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act went into effect, the City of New York Police Department was suddenly forced to detail the tools it had long kept from public view. But instead of giving New Yorkers transparency, the NYPD gave error-filled, boilerplate statements that hide almost everything of value. Almost none of the policies list specific vendors, surveillance tool models, or information-sharing practices. The department's facial recognition policy says it can share data "pursuant to on-going criminal investigations, civil litigation, and disciplinary proceedings," a standard so broad it's largely meaningless. This marks the greatest test yet of Community Control of Police Surveillance (CCOPS), a growing effort to ensure that the public can take back control over the decisions of how communities are surveilled, deciding whether tools like facial recognition, drones, and predictive policing are acceptable for their neighborhoods.