The NYPD is required by the city’s Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act to publish an “Impact and Use Policy” for new surveillance devices 90 days before deployment
The NYPD failed to comply with a public disclosure law when introducing new high-tech surveillance tools like its robot dog and the robot deployed in the Times Square subway station, according to a new report by the city’s Department of Investigation (DOI).
The NYPD is required by the city’s Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act to publish an “Impact and Use Policy” for new surveillance devices 90 days before deployment. This policy should detail how the technology will be used and allow for public comment.
Instead, the police department amended existing policy documents to include information about the new devices, which also included a phone-based GPS tracking system, a digital fingerprint device, and a tool that links location photos to NYPD databases. The DOI report found these amendments lacked key details required by the POST Act.
DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber noted that similar findings were made in 2022. “Individual technologies could be shielded from public scrutiny and oversight,” the 2022 review found.
“This report reiterates a significant finding from our 2022 analysis — that grouping surveillance technologies within a single Impact and Use Policy (IUP) can limit the public transparency that the POST Act seeks to ensure,” Strauber said.
A police spokesperson responded, “Protecting public safety is this administration’s top priority, and a key part of that mission is using technology to help keep New Yorkers safe. We are committed to doing so consistent with the law. We will carefully review DOI’s conclusions and recommendations.”
Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project emphasized that the report shows the NYPD continues to violate parts of the POST Act. “Once again, (DOI) is clear that the NYPD is hiding crucial data with boilerplate policies that hide more details than they reveal,” he said. “You should have a new policy with a new comment period for each technology. But the other issue is that these amendments are so opaque that they don’t tell us anything meaningful.”
