NYC Mayor Adams Wants More Facial Recognition Software for Cops

[Kamaji]

NYC Mayor Adams Wants More Facial Recognition Software for Cops

Facial recognition software can secretly surveil and is subject to error.

By Julian Verdon
February 11, 2022

New York City Mayor Eric Adams wants to expand law enforcement's use of facial recognition software in an effort to combat his city's growing gun violence. Experts say the software can violate privacy and civil liberties with its secret surveillance and propensity for inaccuracy.

"We will…move forward on using the latest technology to identify problems, follow up on leads, and collect evidence. From facial recognition technology to new tools that can spot those carrying weapons, we will use every available method to keep our people safe," said Adams in a press release addressing his plan last month. He also calls for it in his Blueprint to End Gun Violence.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) uses facial recognition software to match photos with those in its mugshot database. The NYPD also uses images scraped from social media. It then uses these images to track someone with its 15,000 cameras placed throughout the city, numbers documented in an Amnesty International report warning about the invasiveness of the program.

Michael Sisitzky, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) in tells Reason that New York's current surveillance operations can already track who goes where and when. He says spying would only be made worse with more facial recognition software, with the surveillance technology likely targeting minorities. He cites the government report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which said most facial recognition software misidentified Asians or African Americans 10 to 100 times more compared to white faces. Sisitzky says that facial recognition software may then misidentify minority suspects, leading police to target innocent people.

"The NYPD already disproportionately targets African Americans, and coupling that with facial recognition software would be bad," says Sisitzky. In Detroit, Robert Williams was arrested after facial recognition software misidentified him as a different man sought for shoplifting watches. The software that the Detroit police "caught" Williams with was provided by DataWorks Plus, the same company that provides facial recognition software to the NYPD.

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Source:  https://reason.com/2022/02/11/nyc-mayor-adams-wants-more-facial-recognition-software-for-cops/

[mountaineer]

This guy is a nutcase.

Mayor Eric Adams rips press, claims white journalists misrepresent him
By Nolan Hicks,
Sam Raskin and Bruce Golding   
February 15, 2022 4:58pm

Mayor Eric Adams unloaded Tuesday in an epic rant in which he threatened to stop fielding “off-topic” questions at his press conferences — and blasted the Big Apple’s news organizations over what he said was their lack of racial diversity.

The scolding, which came before an unrelated press conference on summer youth employment efforts, appeared to be sparked by coverage of his failed bid to get state lawmakers to budge on his anti-crime agenda — although the mayor failed to convey how race factored into that.

One day after meeting with Albany lawmakers in what he all but admitted was a failed attempt to roll back recent criminal-justice reforms, Adams claimed that accounts of his trip, none of which touched on race, were unfairly negative.

“If you want to acknowledge or not, I have been doing a darn good job and we just can’t live in this alternate reality,” a clearly angered Adams said.  ...

NY Post
Facial recognition software is bad for black folks, according to the civil rights lawyer, but Mayor Adams - the most discriminated-against black man in history - is all for it?

[Kamaji]

This guy is a nutcase.NY Post
Facial recognition software is bad for black folks, according to the civil rights lawyer, but Mayor Adams - the most discriminated-against black man in history - is all for it?

Any more so than DeBlasio, or Dinkins?