How surveillance crept up on us

SPEAKER_A

I did not know I was being watched on practically every street, every corner, in every store, on every subway.

SPEAKER_B

And it acts essentially as a search engine.

SPEAKER_B

80,000 plus cameras across the city.

SPEAKER_C

So I thought a good way to cut down stops, just film everybody instead.

SPEAKER_A

And if the federal government couldn't tell the city what was coming, then the NYPD was like, look, we have to protect ourselves, we need to see what's coming at us and stop it before it does.

SPEAKER_C

you could put up a camera, it's we used to call it a double bang for your buck, you put up a camera to try to stop terrorism and you're also you'll have enough surveillance for local disorder and crime problems.

SPEAKER_F

We currently have two billion license plate reads.

SPEAKER_F

Let me emphasize, every day we have more than 10,000 cops using the analytics in DAS to inform their decision making.

SPEAKER_A

That they didn't want to make public for security reasons, they could classify it as a special expense.

SPEAKER_G

they would come in, they would brief us about what they wanted to do, and in the old agreement was like, okay, wink, wink, nod, nod, security, we understand.

SPEAKER_H

We had a client who had a one night stand at the NYPD was looking for him and found him at that woman's apartment and we're like, he has no connection to this woman before this night, tell us how you found him and crickets.

SPEAKER_A

So, Jerome from Legal Aid, he is still on a mission to make sure his team of public defenders has the tech they need to counter what the NYPD is using.

SPEAKER_A

Those are the contracts the NYPD says exist only on paper in 22 filing cabinet drawers.

SPEAKER_C

Law enforcement needs a bright line rule.

SPEAKER_A

But once you start using AI to say, look through the hours of footage and look for unusual behavior, surveillance just got that much easier.