Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
QUESTION
What are the concerns regarding the rise in shoplifting and crimes, and the effectiveness of biometric surveillance in improving public safety for businesses?
2:32:34
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Albert Fox Cahn explains that there is a fabricated sense of fear built on bad crime statistics, which surveillance companies exploit to sell their products despite a lack of evidence that they work.
- He states that retail federations provided inaccurate data claiming a massive surge in organized shoplifting, which fueled public fear.
- The cameras, facial recognition, and mass deployment of CCTV have been proven ineffective in preventing crimes over several decades.
- While these measures give an illusion of safety, they rarely keep anyone safe and pose a threat to the people who enter those businesses.
UNKNOWN
2:32:34
And can you
Shahana K. Hanif
2:32:36
respond to just the the climate of fear that we've seen both the last time this was heard and now.
2:32:48
That there's a rise in shoplifting.
2:32:51
There's just a rise in in crimes.
2:32:55
How do you respond to that when it comes to biometric surveillance and just public safety in general as we try to protect our city's businesses?
Albert Fox Cahn
2:33:07
Yeah.
2:33:08
I mean, it's a really frustrating situation to be in because we keep seeing this pattern that a convincing story is far more powerful than the truth.
2:33:19
In many cases, we because that what we saw over the last few years was bad data being put out there by retail federations that were claiming there was this massive surge in organized shoplifting.
2:33:33
And it got all this coverage, and we saw, like, news reports on it.
2:33:36
Front page stories, we saw all these evening news clips, and then it turned out it was wrong, that they screwed up the data, that there wasn't an increase, but you couldn't unbake that cake.
2:33:48
You couldn't make people unseen all of those stories they had seen.
2:33:53
And because of that bad data, we had this just sense that there had been a just awful reality unfolding, not what we saw personally because it didn't exist, but one around us that maybe it was impacting our neighbors, maybe it was the store down the street.
2:34:08
And so you have this fabricated sense of fear built on bad crime stats creep being just creamed this, like, fertile ground for the surveillance salesman to come in and say, oh, if you have this tracking tool, the if you collect this data, you'll be safe.
2:34:29
Do we have data to prove it?
2:34:31
No.
2:34:31
Do we have evidence to support it?
2:34:32
No.
2:34:33
Has it been disproven over and over again?
2:34:35
Sure.
2:34:35
But don't look at the facts.
2:34:38
Just you have that sense of safety.
2:34:40
And so for the people who are working at businesses, who own businesses, who are afraid, who are trying to keep their staff safe.
2:34:48
My heart goes out to them because I know that's not easy.
2:34:51
I know there are real things that you can do to improve the safe of your store.
2:34:57
But the truth is they're getting sold a bill of goods.
2:35:00
The cameras don't work.
2:35:01
The facial recognition doesn't work.
2:35:03
They don't reduce They don't do the things that they've been that we've heard over and over again, they're helpful for.
2:35:10
And and Quite frankly, we have several decades of evidence that mass deployment of CCTV cameras is one of the least effective ways of preventing crimes.
2:35:22
This goes back to London's mass deployment of CCTV during the eighties nineties.
2:35:28
And but people feel safe so they invest in it.
2:35:32
And so what I just wanna say is, it it feels good.
2:35:37
For some people to have that camera, they have that illusion of safety, but the reality is it's a threat to a lot of the people who walk into that store.
2:35:48
And the reality is it's very rarely if ever going to keep anyone safe.