NYPD Refuses to Disclose Information About Its Face Recognition Program, So Privacy Researchers Are Suing

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NYPD Refuses to Disclose Information About Its Face Recognition Program, So Privacy Researchers Are Suing

May 3rd, 2017

Awake Goy

Researchers at Georgetown University law school filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the New York City Police Department today for the agency’s refusal to disclose documents about its longstanding use of face recognition technology. The NYPD’s face recognition system, which has operated in the department’s Real Time Crime Center since at least 2011, allows officers to identify a suspect by searching against databases of stored facial photos.

Records pertaining to the NYPD’s program were requested in January 2016 by researchers at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology as part of The Perpetual Line-Up, a year-long study on law enforcement uses of facial recognition technology. After receiving public records from more than 90 agencies across the country, the study found that one in every two American adults is enrolled in a criminal face recognition network and that “few agencies have instituted meaningful protections to prevent the misuse of the technology.”

Despite the fact that numerous agencies disclosed similar information about policies, procedures, training, audits, contracts, and agreements relating to their use of facial recognition technology, the NYPD determined in January 2017 that it was unable to find any records responsive to the Center’s detailed records requests.

Instead, the NYPD sent the researchers a single memo outlining how officers should use the results of a facial recognition search, which confirms that the department has a specific unit, staffed with analysts, actively conducting facial recognition searches. The department also acknowledged that it located records relating to the purchase of facial recognition technology, but it denied access to those records in their entirety, according to the lawsuit filed today.

Clare Garvie, one of the co-authors of Georgetown’s report and an expert on face recognition technology, described the NYPD’s lack of transparency as a “very worrying prospect” given the technology’s potential for invasive surveillance, including in real time. Georgetown’s research, among others, has shown that the technology can make mistakes, meaning that innocent people may be investigated and charged for crimes they did not commit. In 2015, a spokesperson for the NYPD said that the technology had “misidentified” five people.