NYC police officers and critics describe the NYPD's growing use of post-9/11 digital surveillance tools, initially used for counterterrorism, in minor cases
because of 9/11, because of other terrorist attacks and things that have happened — unquestionable, unchecked power."https://www.nytimes.com/ ... Arthur Holland Michel / @writearthur : Crazy tidbit here. Of all NYPD's spying tools, the one that provides evidence for the most criminal charges is the Domain Awareness System. That's how insanely powerful surveillance fusion is, and also how dangerous. And nobody's talking about it. https://www.nytimes.com/... Chelsea Komlo / @chelseakomlo : Surveillance technology like this always starts in settings where it is hardest to argue against, and then slowly makes its way into the general population. Case in point: https://www.nytimes.com/... Thanks to the @EFF for calling attention to new surveillance tech as it is emerging https://twitter.com/... @nytanon : Cameras, Drones and X-Ray Vans: How 9/11 Transformed the N.Y.P.D. Forever https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... NewYorkistanian / @fawzianaqvi1 : White extremists have always been the biggest threat to America. And yet... this is what abuse of power looks like. Cameras, Drones and X-Ray Vans: How 9/11 Transformed the N.Y.P.D. Forever https://www.nytimes.com/... Dan Hinkel / @dhinkel : NYPD contends it has not just the right but the obligation to repurpose its post-9/11 counterterror surveillance tools for more mundane street crimes because, “It's what everybody would want us to be doing.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Karen Zraick / @karenzraick : “Government funding developed these tools for war and then they get repurposed for policing...And that's a real issue.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @ashleyattimes : “It is almost impossible to overstate how profoundly the attacks changed American policing — perhaps most acutely in New York, which lost 23 of its own officers that day, and hundreds more from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since.” https://www.nytimes.com/... by @AliWatkins Chris Martin / @chrismartin17 : Just a creepy story, detailing how NYC is using anti-terror tech since 9/11 to nab all kinds of people for much less serious “offenses.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... David Schatsky / @dschatsky : “The police had identified Mr. Ingram using facial recognition tools they applied to his Instagram profile, intercepted his phone calls and used drones to peer inside his apartment. Dozens of officers descended.” For participating in a protest. https://www.nytimes.com/... Jenn Burrill / @jennburrill : NYPD's budget for intelligence & counterterrorism has more than quadrupled, spending more than $3 billion since 2006, and more through funding streams that are difficult to quantify, including federal grants and the secretive Police Foundation https://www.nytimes.com/... Thomas Hegghammer / @hegghammer : “a vast network of license plate readers, thousands of surveillance cameras, mobile X-ray vans and digital tools that are used to scrub social media profiles [...]. Much of the resulting data can be collected and stored without a warrant.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @onevenusthrow : How the #NYPD. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday #NewYorkers “Police officials say they are obligated to use every tool at their disposal to fight crime. But critics say the massive #surveillance dragnet is ensnaring everyday New Yorkers.” https://www.nytimes.com/... #NYC Oliver Darcy / @oliverdarcy : “New Yorkers simply going about their daily lives routinely encounter post-9/11 digital surveillance tools like facial recognition software, license plate readers or mobile X-ray vans that can see through car doors...” https://www.nytimes.com/... @aclumn : Organizer Derrick Ingram was accused of speaking into a bullhorn near a police officer during a protest. The laser sight of an armed police officer would later appear in his bedroom as his home was raided. https://www.nytimes.com/... Michael Scott Moore / @michaelsctmoore : Harrowing piece about the mis- & overuse of counterterrorism powers against petty thieves and protesters by the NYPD: https://www.nytimes.com/... Bruno J. Navarro / @bruno_j_navarro : “We've created a monster that's kind of always existed within America, but we've given that monster — because of 9/11, because of other terrorist attacks and things that have happened — unquestionable, unchecked power.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York TimesAli Watkins
Context & Ripple Effects
Two decades after 9/11, the NYPD's intelligence and counterterrorism apparatus — a budget that has more than quadrupled past $3 billion since 2006 — is being pointed at ordinary street crime rather than terrorism. Per the reporting, much of the data feeding it can be gathered without a warrant, and the camera-fusion model at the heart of the Domain Awareness System now supplies evidence in more criminal charges than any other NYPD tool.
New Yorkers named as suspects in low-level cases now face evidence drawn from a counterterrorism-grade fusion platform whose data collection requires no warrant, shifting the practical burden onto defendants rather than police.
Protest policing changes character: the Ingram operation demonstrates that the same tools can identify, track, and locate individuals from their online activity before any physical encounter.
Vendors of fusion platforms see a proven municipal sales pitch: if the nation's largest force runs its charge volume through integrated public-and-private cameras, smaller departments have a template to buy rather than build.
Third-order effects
Mission creep is becoming the default lifecycle of security technology: tools justified by terrorism migrate to everyday enforcement, and warrant thresholds written for targeted investigation never catch up to fused, always-on collection.
If local ordinances remain the only check, expect the battleground to move to courts and statehouses over whether bulk-collected surveillance data is admissible at all — a question the Ingram raid and the New Orleans violations both hand litigators.
The trend: Surveillance systems built for counterterrorism are being absorbed into routine municipal policing faster than warrant requirements or local ordinances can constrain them.
“The department's (#NYPD's) budget for intelligence and counterterrorism has more than quadrupled, spending more than $3 billion since 2006, and more...” https://www.nytimes.com/...
What crap. Police refuse to use these surveillance tools to find hit and run drivers on a daily basis, except for fatal/near-fatal crashes. Due to laziness. Cameras, Drones and X-Ray Vans: How 9/11 Transformed the N.Y.P.D. Forever https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/.…
‘How the NYPD Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday New Yorkers’ https://www.nytimes.com/... “Police had identified Ingram using facial recognition tools they applied to his Instagram profile, intercepted his phone calls and used drones to peer inside his apartment...” #surveillan…
read Ingram's section on #uncheckedpower : “Officers were seeking him in connection with his participation in a protest, where they said he spoke through a bullhorn near the ear of a patrolwoman, causing her temporary hearing loss.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
‘...A recent analysis by @amnesty [showed] a person attending a protest march between Washington Square Park and Sixth Avenue is likely surveilled by police cameras for 80 percent of their march.’ CC. @sophiecdyer @zhi_keng @AmnestyTech @amnestyusa https://www.nytimes.com/...
NYPD used face surveillance to identify a speaker at a protest for Black lives, then sent dozens of armed officers to arrest him at his home. Police must stop using face surveillance. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Fabulous article outlining one of the surveillance legacies of 9/11: pervasive monitoring of everyday life, especially in big cities, including of protests. https://www.nytimes.com/... 1/5
“The theory was, police officers around the country would run across little bits of information that would potentially reveal terrorist plots in the making,” said @FaizaPatelBCJ. “In order to do that, they lowered the threshold for information collection.” https://www.nytimes.com…
20 years since 9/11, I looked at how the moment fundamentally changed policing in America. Cameras, drones, license plate readers are now ubiquitous parts of city life. For 20 years, the slippery slope slid, and now, it's fueling a crisis of public trust. https://www.nytimes.com/…
“We've created a monster that's kind of always existed within America, but we've given that monster — because of 9/11, because of other terrorist attacks and things that have happened — unquestionable, unchecked power."https://www.nytimes.com/ ...
Crazy tidbit here. Of all NYPD's spying tools, the one that provides evidence for the most criminal charges is the Domain Awareness System. That's how insanely powerful surveillance fusion is, and also how dangerous. And nobody's talking about it. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Surveillance technology like this always starts in settings where it is hardest to argue against, and then slowly makes its way into the general population. Case in point: https://www.nytimes.com/... Thanks to the @EFF for calling attention to new surveillance tech as it is emerg…
White extremists have always been the biggest threat to America. And yet... this is what abuse of power looks like. Cameras, Drones and X-Ray Vans: How 9/11 Transformed the N.Y.P.D. Forever https://www.nytimes.com/...
NYPD contends it has not just the right but the obligation to repurpose its post-9/11 counterterror surveillance tools for more mundane street crimes because, “It's what everybody would want us to be doing.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
“It is almost impossible to overstate how profoundly the attacks changed American policing — perhaps most acutely in New York, which lost 23 of its own officers that day, and hundreds more from 9/11-related illnesses in the years since.” https://www.nytimes.com/... by @AliWatkins
Just a creepy story, detailing how NYC is using anti-terror tech since 9/11 to nab all kinds of people for much less serious “offenses.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
“The police had identified Mr. Ingram using facial recognition tools they applied to his Instagram profile, intercepted his phone calls and used drones to peer inside his apartment. Dozens of officers descended.” For participating in a protest. https://www.nytimes.com/...
NYPD's budget for intelligence & counterterrorism has more than quadrupled, spending more than $3 billion since 2006, and more through funding streams that are difficult to quantify, including federal grants and the secretive Police Foundation https://www.nytimes.com/...
“a vast network of license plate readers, thousands of surveillance cameras, mobile X-ray vans and digital tools that are used to scrub social media profiles [...]. Much of the resulting data can be collected and stored without a warrant.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
How the #NYPD. Is Using Post-9/11 Tools on Everyday #NewYorkers “Police officials say they are obligated to use every tool at their disposal to fight crime. But critics say the massive #surveillance dragnet is ensnaring everyday New Yorkers.” https://www.nytimes.com/... #NYC
“New Yorkers simply going about their daily lives routinely encounter post-9/11 digital surveillance tools like facial recognition software, license plate readers or mobile X-ray vans that can see through car doors...” https://www.nytimes.com/...
Organizer Derrick Ingram was accused of speaking into a bullhorn near a police officer during a protest. The laser sight of an armed police officer would later appear in his bedroom as his home was raided. https://www.nytimes.com/...
“We've created a monster that's kind of always existed within America, but we've given that monster — because of 9/11, because of other terrorist attacks and things that have happened — unquestionable, unchecked power.” https://www.nytimes.com/...