The New York Supreme Court has ordered the police department to release recordings of law enforcement officers using facial recognition technology against Black Lives Matter protesters. Amnesty International writes about it.

According to the court order, police are required to provide 2700 documents and emails between March 1, 2020 and September 1, 2020 regarding the acquisition and use of surveillance systems.

According to human rights activists, this will allow for a thorough investigation of the purchase and use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement in New York.

“It was wrong for the NYPD to monitor the BLM protesters and it was wrong for the NYPD to cover up the evidence,” said STOP CEO Albert Fox Kahn.

According to him, the retention of records is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. Kan hopes the police will quickly implement the court order.

“These records can help us prevent new abuses in the future,” said the human rights activist.

Amnesty International and STOP had previously requested NYPD registrations under the Freedom of Information Act regarding the use of facial recognition tools and surveillance of activists.

The police turned down the request. They argued that the request covered more than 30 million documents and that their enforcement would be “unreasonably burdensome”.

Human rights activists went to court, demanding that the police disclose the tapes. Since the lawsuit was filed, the number of documents requested has dropped to 2,700.

Recall that in February, activists discovered 25,000 security cameras with facial recognition in New York.

In June 2021, Amnesty International counted more than 15,000 monitoring devices in three areas of the metropolitan area.

In January, human rights activists demanded an end to the use of facial recognition in public places. Amnesty International believes that biometric identification of people using street security cameras is a major intrusion into citizens’ privacy.

At the same time, the organization launched the Block Browsing global campaign, which aims to ban facial recognition technologies worldwide.