The New York Police Department failed to comply with Freedom of Information Law when showing off its latest high-tech surveillance gadgets, including a robot dog and a robot deployed in a Times Square subway station, a new report from the city’s Bureau of Investigation has found.
Under city postal law, police departments are required to publish documents called “impact and usage policies” detailing how they will use new surveillance devices or technology 90 days before implementation and to consider public input.
But the NYPD included information about the new devices in existing policy documents, including phone-based GPS tracking systems, digital fingerprinting devices and devices that can link photos of locations to information in NYPD databases, the DOI report said.
According to the report, the proposed amendments omit some important details that are required to be disclosed under Postal Law.
NYPD’s High-Tech Police Technology
Barry Williams of the New York Daily News NYPD’s new security technologies, including the DigiDog (center) and K5 autonomous surveillance robots (ASRs), are pictured during a press conference in Times Square on April 11, 2023. (Photo by Barry Williams for New York Daily News)
DOI Chair Jocelyn Strauber noted that the agency released a similar study in 2022. The 2022 review found that “individual technologies may be protected from public scrutiny or oversight.”
“The report reiterates a key finding from the 2022 analysis that bundling surveillance technologies into a single Impact and Use Policy (IUP) could limit the public transparency that Postal Law seeks to ensure,” Strauber said.
A police spokesperson said in a statement: “Public safety is this Administration’s top priority, and a key part of that mission is leveraging technology to keep New Yorkers safe. We are committed to doing so in accordance with the law, and will carefully consider DOI’s conclusions and recommendations.”
Albert Fox Kahn of the Project on Surveillance Technology Oversight said the report highlights how the NYPD continues to violate parts of postal law.
“Once again, it is clear that the NYPD is using boilerplate policy to hide important data and conceal more details than it reveals,” he said.
“There should be new policies with new comment periods for each technology,” he added. “But the other problem is that these changes are so opaque that they don’t tell us anything meaningful.”
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Barry Williams/New York Daily News Mayor Eric Adams watches a robotic device, dubbed “DigiDog,” in action during a NYPD news conference in Times Square on April 11, 2023. (Barry Williams, New York Daily News)
Jerome Greco of the Legal Aid Society added: “New Yorkers did not sign up to be guinea pigs in City Hall’s experiment with problematic invasive technology. There are plenty of other solutions that address root causes and improve public safety, and we need not foolishly rely on technology like DigiDog as a public policy panacea.”
According to the DOI report, the POST Act (Public Oversight of Surveillance Technologies) requires the NYPD to “publicly publish information about its use of surveillance technologies and its policies regarding those technologies.”
The NYPD deployed the five-foot-tall, 400-pound Knightscope K5 in the subway at Times Square in September and removed it in February. DigiDogs have repeatedly drawn criticism from New Yorkers, especially when they were used in NYCHA developments in Manhattan in 2021.
