PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by David Siffert, Legal Director of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.)
2:44:36
ยท
4 min
David Siffert, Legal Director of S.T.O.P., testified on the implementation of the POST Act and proposed amendments to improve surveillance technology oversight in NYC. He highlighted ongoing concerns about transparency, racial bias in facial recognition technology, and data sharing with federal agencies.
- Emphasized the importance of laws to protect transparency, especially given current political climate and potential misuse of surveillance data
- Criticized NYPD's claim that facial recognition technology doesn't see race, citing evidence of racial bias in error rates
- Suggested potential legislative solutions to prevent NYPD data from being used for civil immigration enforcement through task force participation
David Siffert
2:44:36
Thank you, chair Salam, chair Gutierrez, chair Brewer, council Morkoban, and thank you to the members of committee staff who were in charge to make this hearing happen.
2:44:44
I sent around handed out written testimony, goes through detail of the history of the Post Act and these bills, and how they're potentially going to be amended in a way that hopefully everybody will be happy with.
2:44:55
I won't repeat all that here.
2:44:57
I want to say a couple things.
2:44:58
The first thing I want to say is you might have heard from OIG that the engagement they're getting from NYPD has been better recently, which is reassuring that may also be reflected in our ability to have worked out potential amendments to these bills.
2:45:13
However, I will still note that the IUPs have not been updated to separate out the different surveillance technologies.
2:45:21
New technologies are still being deployed and added to existing IUPs before they're being announced publicly.
2:45:27
I will also say that, you know, department will change their behavior over time, but it's very important to have laws in place to make sure that when things are at their worst, we have laws that protect transparency.
2:45:39
The other thing I want to say is that all of this surveillance is happening in the context of a very grim reality in the federal system.
2:45:46
And also across The United States, you have people being targeted for seeking reproductive health care, people being targeted for seeking gender affirming health care, you have immigrants being targeted, you have protesters being targeted.
2:45:57
This is happening very explicitly.
2:46:01
And the more data that's collected, the more likely it's going to wind up in hands of people who are going use it against vulnerable people.
2:46:09
And when New Yorkers don't know what data is being collected about them, or how it's being collected about them, puts them in a really precarious situation.
2:46:17
And I think people are already quite scared.
2:46:20
The ability of people to understand how they're being surveilled is critical in letting people navigate the next four years and beyond.
2:46:27
I also want to talk about some specific things.
2:46:30
One is facial recognition.
2:46:33
I won't repeat everything that my friend Jerome Greco recently said, but I will say that there was a comment by NYPD that these technologies don't see race.
2:46:46
Which is, I think, silly.
2:46:48
There's a lot of data that these technologies are extremely racially biased.
2:46:53
The error rates depend very directly on the color of your skin.
2:46:58
Whether that's because it sees the color of the skin or it has to do with other facial features is irrelevant.
2:47:03
The fact of the matter is that the people being wrongly arrested are by and large black, and that's not a coincidence.
2:47:10
That is a problem.
2:47:11
The reason that we take no position on Intro two thirty three, as opposed to the other two post act bills that we support, is that we don't believe that law enforcement should be using facial recognition at all.
2:47:21
We take no position because we think adopting policies won't be actively harmful.
2:47:26
But we would urge passage of legislation to ban facial recognition in its entirety, but especially Intros two seventeen and four twenty five, which were already before the council, which would ban it in public accommodations and residences.
2:47:40
If I may, one very short last hopefully short last point.
2:47:43
There was a dialogue that Chair Gutierrez brought out about data sharing with task forces and how this might wind up in the hands of ICE, which is true.
2:47:52
And I think what Deputy Commissioner Gerber said is also true, which is that currently there's a carve out in the law that allows them to share data with these task forces for criminal purposes, and that that data might then wind up in the hands of ICE for civil enforcement purposes.
2:48:05
This is not inevitable.
2:48:07
There are ways potentially around this.
2:48:09
The Council could pass laws that, for example, don't allow NYPD to participate in task forces unless an MOU says that this data can't be used for civil immigration purposes or handed over to ICE, or even more narrowly, can't hand over data that NYPD thinks any likelihood of being used for civil immigration purposes without a similar MOU.
2:48:28
So there are things the Council can do to restrict this.
2:48:31
Right now, these task forces and fusion centers are a big loophole in our sanctuary rules.
Yusef Salaam
2:48:36
Thank you.