NYPD Plans Massive Expansion of Real-Time Surveillance in NYCHA Housing

The City Council held an emergency hearing on the NYPD s use of a free internet project to gain real-time access to populace housing cameras in response to New York Focus reporting Anthony Mascia the commanding officer of the NYPD s Information Instrument Bureau right and NYCHA Chief Operating Officer Eva Trimble testified at an exigency oversight hearing on police surveillance in NYCHA on Sept Gerardo Romo NYC Council Media Unit This story originally appeared in New York Focus a nonprofit news publication reviewing power in New York Sign up for their newsletter here On Tuesday the New York City Council held an crisis oversight hearing in response to New York Focus reporting that the police department had covertly used a free internet operation to gain real-time access to video cameras at New York City Housing Authority developments Lawmakers on the system society safety residents housing and oversight and investigations committees grilled officers from the Office of Innovation and Innovation the New York City Police Department and NYCHA Here s what we learned The NYPD plans to dramatically expand its access to NYCHA cameras Internet connections established under Mayor Eric Adams flagship free internet plan for constituents housing residents Big Apple Connect have so far been used to link CCTV cameras at one NYCHA maturation to the police department s citywide surveillance program Anthony Mascia the commanding officer of the NYPD s Information Device Bureau testified By the end of this year the NYPD plans to fold in cameras across more NYCHA properties Mascia announced and by the end of the next phase the department expects to have connected CCTV cameras across NYCHA developments Big Apple Connect allows police to sidestep the time-consuming process of physically retrieving footage Mascia testified Real-time access is an unbelievably valuable tool he stated if someone reports a robbery for example we re able to swiftly log in and without delay see exactly what s going on Maybe we just see two people running away Maybe we still see the robbery in progress Every second counts Mascia commented The sooner we see those videos the sooner we could bring a killer to justice identify a key witness or rule out a suspect The city couldn t explain why it had pursued the initiative in secrecy Despite repeated requests the Office of Innovation and Innovation or OTI never gave the City Council s mechanism committee its contracts for the Big Apple Connect undertaking The committee only received them and New York Focus was only able to assessment on them after a lawsuit compelled OTI to release them to a small telecom provider after delaying the provider s constituents records request times There s no reason why you shouldn t have been provided with the contract Chantal Senatus a deputy commissioner leading OTI s legal office reported lawmakers at the hearing The chair of the machinery committee Jennifer Guti rrez demanded about the contradictory statements that the three agencies provided to New York Focus in the subject of its reporting Brett Sikoff another OTI representative declared he was just here to set the record straight What was announced I apologize for any confusion that may have been caused he added Sikoff approved that OTI never narrated NYCHA residents it was using the free internet operation to facilitate live police surveillance NYCHA Chief Operating Officer Eva Trimble testified that the housing authority was aware that OTI was contemplating using Big Apple Connect to expand NYPD surveillance but that the authority never notified residents Questions remain about how the statistics is used and where it goes The NYPD may share information collected through NYCHA camera feeds with federal immigration enforcement when required by law Mascia disclosed The city cooperates with federal immigration leadership on criminal investigations he declared not to enforce civil infractions The Trump administration has eyed society housing as it seeks to carry out mass deportations ProPublica informed this week that the administration has drafted new rules to revoke federal housing assistance from entire households if a single member lacks legal residency status NYCHA receives billions of dollars in federal subsidies and is under federal monitorship for failure to maintain adequate living conditions Lawmakers also questioned how the police department oversees officers use of the mechanism Mascia stated the department can run internal audits revealing which officers viewed footage and for how long Guti rrez suggested more proactive oversight is needed to prevent suspicionless long-term monitoring of individual residents Mascia committed to a true transparent discussion about what audits should be in place to ensure that there s trust that you trust that we re using it correctly Critics raised legal and privacy concerns Councilmembers defense attorneys and civil liberties advocates raised a host of concerns Numerous zeroed in on the integration of the cameras with the Domain Awareness System an NYPD tool that fuses details from across the city to build dossiers on New Yorkers and help facial recognition analysis predictive policing algorithms and the department s controversial gang database Michal Gross a residents defender at the Neighborhood Defender Facility of Harlem advised the committee that police already use NYCHA CCTV footage for reasons other than responding to crimes The police department she commented has admitted in court to surveilling youth via NYCHA video watching who they spend time with who their friends are and even documenting how they spend time with their own family members Gross testified that one of her clients was labeled a gang member based on interactions with friends and family members observed through live surveillance at a NYCHA rise This is a violation of his First Amendment right of association exclusively based on where he lives Gross stated Lawmakers and advocates also argued that the city had failed to adhere to transparency requirements outlined in the city s Populace Oversight of Surveillance Mechanism Act The NYPD countered that it did not believe the POST Act applied since the initiative only changed the method by which we access the cameras rather than creating a new surveillance innovation Shepherding surveillance through the backdoor of digital equity projects like Big Apple Connect heightens the general s suspicion of regime system projects particular argued It literally ruins our ability to go out and advocate for the freedom to connect stated Noel Hidalgo executive director of BetaNYC a device nonprofit that has advocated for universal broadband access Numerous questions were left unanswered The city didn t have answers on hand to a great number of of the councilmembers questions Among them which NYCHA sites were set for camera integration how they were selected how various times the cameras have helped the NYPD respond to crimes whether the department has statistical evidence showing integration has increased safety or quality of life how often internal audits of the use of cameras are conducted which other agencies have given the department real-time access to their cameras and whether the NYPD has shared footage from the cameras with the federal governing body The post NYPD Plans Massive Expansion of Real-Time Surveillance in NYCHA Housing appeared first on City Limits