Q&A
NYPD's compliance with POST Act and IUP grouping practices
2:17:17
ยท
4 min
Council Member Yusef Salaam questions the NYPD's compliance with the POST Act, particularly regarding the grouping of surveillance technologies under existing Impact and Use Policies (IUPs). Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber explains the department's interpretation of the Act and their plans for improvement.
- Gerber clarifies the NYPD's approach to grouping technologies under existing IUPs versus creating new ones
- The department commits to creating a separate IUP for DigiDog and rethinking their approach to IUP scoping
- Gerber acknowledges the need to break up some IUPs and separate certain technologies, which will take time
- The NYPD plans to align more closely with the Department of Investigation's (DOI) recommendations on IUP grouping in the future
Yusef Salaam
2:17:17
Compliance with the poster act.
2:17:19
The OIG NYPD report criticized the NYPD's overly broad grouping of surveillance technologies under existing IUPs.
2:17:28
The OIG found that the grouping of technologies like DigiDog under existing IUPs was overly expansive.
2:17:37
Why does the department continue to group new technologies under old policies instead of issuing separate detailed IUPs?
2:17:45
Right.
2:17:46
So
Michael Gerber
2:17:49
there's this talk about grouping.
2:17:52
It's not it's not a grouping issue, least not not from my vantage point.
2:17:55
There is a disagreement with DOI and let me explain.
2:18:00
A new surveillance technology requires its own IUP.
2:18:04
Everyone agrees on that.
2:18:07
It's also clear from the statute, this is in the post act, that if you have an enhancement to a surveillance technology or you use surveillance technology for a new purpose or in a new manner, you just update the old you update the old IUP.
2:18:23
You don't do a new IUP.
2:18:24
So if it's if it's new, it gets a separate IUP.
2:18:27
But if it's an enhancement or new purpose or new manner, you use the old IUP.
2:18:32
And the question is, right, where do you draw that line between what's new versus what's an enhancement?
2:18:41
What's new versus what's a new a different purpose or a different manner?
2:18:45
The way we've thought about this, is you have a certain surveillance technology.
2:18:50
It then gets deployed in different hardware, in different forms, it, for different purposes and in different manners, and that all goes within one IUP.
2:19:01
That's how we have read the statute.
2:19:04
DOI, has had and has a different reading of the statute, and its view is that basically at a certain point, the hardware is sufficiently different and the sort of deployment is sufficiently different that it requires its own IUP.
2:19:22
I think actually both of those are possible readings of the statute.
2:19:25
Right?
2:19:26
I I understand what DOI is saying.
2:19:28
I think, I mean, DOI as its view, I think they understand what we're saying too.
2:19:32
But that said, you know, we've already committed, as the DOI commissioner said earlier, we've already committed to doing a separate IUP for DigiDog.
2:19:42
That's about to happen.
2:19:44
We've already committed to really rethinking how we do the scope of the IUPs, right?
2:19:52
We've already committed to that.
2:19:55
I say that we're never going to have a disagreement again with DOI about, you know, what's the scope of a surveillance technology?
2:20:00
No, I can't say that, of course.
2:20:01
But I think at this point, the gap between how we're going to do this going forward and how DOI is doing this is actually very, very small.
2:20:13
We do have some work to do in terms of breaking up some of the IUPs and taking some things and sort of separating them out.
2:20:21
And we have to do that.
2:20:22
And that's going to take some time.
2:20:24
It's not going to happen overnight.
2:20:25
But we've already agreed to do that.
Yusef Salaam
2:20:29
The OIG recommended that in in the future the NYPD should only group substantially similar technologies together.
2:20:36
How will the NYPD assess whether technologies are substantially similar and will this result in more detailed IUPs for distinct technologies?
Michael Gerber
2:20:46
Right.
2:20:46
So I guess there's two issues, right?
2:20:48
There's the level of detail and then there are separate IUPs.
2:20:50
Those are really separate things.
2:20:51
As I said before, you know, in terms of level of detail, DOI sort of critiques our IUPs.
2:20:58
Often we agree in terms of level of detail question.
2:21:00
Sometimes we disagree, but often there's agreement.
2:21:04
I think this is going result in more IUPs, 100%.
2:21:07
And we are planningand again, this is not new.
2:21:09
This is not new.
2:21:10
We already committed to this that we're going to be looking at our IUPs and, to some extent, breaking some of them up.
2:21:15
DigiDawg is one example.
2:21:17
It's already referenced in situational awareness IUP, but now it's going get its own separate IUP.
2:21:21
And there are other examples like that.
2:21:24
There is, by definition, there's always gonna be some line drawing.
2:21:29
That that that is inescapable.
2:21:31
Right?
2:21:34
And and there there are judgment calls.
2:21:35
That is also inescapable.
2:21:37
There's no there's no getting away from that entirely.
2:21:40
But I I do think what you're gonna see going forward is, I think, a a much closer alignment, frankly, between how we're viewing this and how DOI is viewing this.