“Something tells me they don’t do that after Billy Joel shows at Madison Square Garden.”

[MASTERBAKER]

Why Did the NYPD Film People Leaving a Drake Concert?

“Something tells me they don’t do that after Billy Joel shows at Madison Square Garden.”
TD
By Trone Dowd
January 24, 2023, 11:29am

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RAPPER DRAKE PERFORMS ONSTAGE DURING "LIL BABY & FRIENDS BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION CONCERT" AT STATE FARM ARENA ON DECEMBER 9, 2022 IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA. (PRINCE WILLIAMS/WIREIMAGE)/A MEMBER OF THE NYPD FILMS CONCERTGOERS AS THEY LEAVE THE APOLLO THEATER ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2023.
People leaving Drake’s sold-out concert at the Apollo Theater in New York City Saturday night were outraged to be met by an NYPD officer recording them. Footage of the surveillance taken at the historic Black venue soon went viral, with more than 25 million views as of Tuesday morning.

“Are police allowed to do this?” one Twitter user asked.

“Something tells me they don’t do that after Billy Joel shows at [Madison Square Garden],” said another.


The viral video shows a Community Affairs officer with the city’s 28th Precinct recording people on a smartphone as they leave the crowded Harlem theater. The video left New Yorkers concerned about what the footage was being used for, and why a concert featuring one of hip-hop’s biggest acts was where the NYPD wanted to record.

Now, as the police department tries to temper people’s concerns, New Yorkers, social media users, and anti-surveillance advocates are calling it yet another breach of trust between the police and minority communities.

In an email to VICE News, the NYPD’s public information office said the recording was for social media purposes. “The officer was taking video for an upcoming Twitter post that will highlight local community events,” an NYPD spokesperson said. “The video will not be utilized for any other reason.”

But critics say that even if the video is just for social media, putting concertgoers in the NYPD’s social media posts without their knowledge is reason enough for New Yorkers to be upset.

“Ultimately, there is not a single person at that concert who consented to being part of the NYPD’s PR strategy,” Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project told VICE News.

The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project is a nonprofit that litigates to defend the public’s right to privacy from mass surveillance, and advocates against the discriminatory use of surveillance technology. According to Cahn, the NYPD recording people highlights how much of a wild west police-related surveillance has become.

“We’ve all passed those giant signs saying ‘you’re entering a place where you’re being recorded.’ We’ve seen those for film shoots and fashion shoots,” he said. “I don’t understand why the NYPD thinks it wouldn’t have to put the public at notice if their story is true.”

“Even in the best case, this was problematic,” Cahn continued. “When it comes to the NYPD and surveillance, I’m certainly not about to take them at their word.”

There’s precedent for New Yorkers’ skepticism about the cops recording them. Last November, a New Jersey resident was denied entry to a Rockettes show at Radio City Music Hall because the facial recognition technology used by the company that owns the venue put her on a list of people to exclude from the site. In 2020, the NYPD used facial recognition tech to track Black Lives Matter protesters after the police murder of George Floyd.

In 2021, the department even misled the public about their cozy relationship with facial recognition tech company Clearwater AI, initially saying that they only “trialed” the tech, when in actuality they’d been in talks with the company and using their tools for two years.
The NYPD also has a history of targeting and investigating Black people and communities of color within hip-hop, going as far as establishing a specific unit for hip-hop related crimes.
As smartphones have become ubiquitous in the last decade, police departments around the country have been critical of the public’s own use of cellphones, regardless of their own policies on the matter. Several states including Oklahoma, Florida, and Nevada have passed laws limiting when and how a person can film the cops as they carry out their duties.
The NYPD has also been filming the public since well before the age of the cell phone. The department’s Technical Assistance Response Unit was known for attending protests in the city, with officers capturing what was happening on camcorders.

“I remember as a New Yorker growing up, protesting the NYPD and having the TARU unit there with camcorders videotaping everyone who was present at the protest,” Cahn said. “It wasn’t a way to actually solve crime, but was a great way to chill dissent. I don’t think New Yorkers should have to worry that typically going to a show is going to get them put into the NYPD archives or added to some watchlist.”

Today, much of the work of surveillance is done by an elaborate network of street cameras that dot street corners throughout the city. This dense network makes surveillance experts even more skeptical of the NYPD’s activity at the Drake concert.

“The fact that the city is covered in surveillance and yet they felt the need to approach people with a separate camera in their face in a way they couldn’t necessarily avoid adds an extra layer of suspicion,” Jerome Greco, a digital forensics public defender for the Legal Aid Society in New York, told VICE News.

“There’s definitely a lot of problems about how they choose where to put those security cameras around the city, but specifically going to a particular event headlined by an incredibly popular Black hip hop artist is more troubling than usual,” he continued.

Mayor Eric Adams downplayed concerns over the recording at the Apollo, telling reporters at a Monday press conference that comments on social media don’t reflect how real New Yorkers feel.

“Twitter is not real,” Adams said. “Those little people who go back and forth all the time talking to themselves, it’s not about what’s on social media, it’s about those on social security.” he said. “You have those who are sitting at home, in the corner of their rooms, trying to find a reason to divide NYPD from everyday New Yorkers. [...] That’s not reality, let them keep complaining.”

Greco said the Mayor's efforts to quell concerns were half-baked.

“The mayor’s words are an attempt to paint anybody who has a problem with this as not being a ‘real New Yorker,’” Greco said. “That’s problematic because it's meant to discourage anybody from pointing out abuses by the police, abuses of surveillance, and being able to speak up about it as if their opinion doesn't matter as much as somebody who defends the police no matter what.”

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies
MSG Entertainment, the owner of the arena and Radio City Music Hall, has put lawyers who represent people suing it on an “exclusion list” to keep them out of concerts and sporting events.

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MSG Entertainment officials called facial recognition technology a useful and widely used safety tool. Credit...Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

By Kashmir Hill and Corey Kilgannon
Published Dec. 22, 2022Updated Jan. 3, 2023
Over Thanksgiving weekend, Kelly Conlon, 44, a personal injury lawyer from Bergen County, N.J., was chaperoning her 9-year-old daughter’s Girl Scout troop on a trip into Manhattan to see the “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall.
Before she could even glimpse the Rockettes, however, security guards pulled Ms. Conlon aside and her New York jaunt took an Orwellian turn.

 

[MASTERBAKER]

NYPD used facial recognition to track down Black Lives Matter activist
/ Mayor Bill de Blasio says standards need to be “reassessed”
By JAMES VINCENT
Aug 18, 2020, 5:26 AM EDT|0 Comments / 0 New
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Black Lives Matter activist Derrick Ingram (above) was targeted by the police for alleged assault. Photo by Ira L. Black - Corbis/Getty Images
The New York City Police Department used facial recognition software to track down a Black Lives Matter activist accused of assault after allegedly shouting into a police officer’s ear with a bullhorn. The mayor’s office says it will “reassess” standards for using facial recognition after criticism that the case shows the technology being used indiscriminately.
On August 7th, the police department sent dozens of officers, including some in riot gear, to the home of 28-year-old activist Derrick Ingram. A stand-off followed, live-streamed by Ingram on Instagram, during which he repeatedly asked officers to produce a search warrant. They refused to do so. After protestors supporting Ingram flocked to the street, the NYPD stood down and Ingram turned himself into the police the next day.

Dozens of police officers were sent to arrest Ingram earlier this month
The NYPD has been criticized for the disproportionate show of force in pursuing Ingram, and now also for its use of facial recognition software to track him down. Video of the August 7th standoff captured by FreedomNewsTV shows officers outside Ingram’s home examining a document titled “Facial Identification Section Informational Lead Report,” which includes what appears to be a photo of Ingram taken from his Instagram.
The NYPD confirmed to Gothamist that it used facial recognition during the investigation. “The NYPD uses facial recognition as a limited investigative tool, comparing a still image from a surveillance video to a pool of lawfully possessed arrest photos,” said a spokesperson. But it’s unclear if the photo of Ingram taken from social media was part of this search. If so it would constitute a breach of the NYPD’s own policies, as it’s neither a still image from a surveillance video nor an arrest photo.

Video from the August 7th stand-off shows police with a facial recognition “lead report.” Image: FreedomNewsTV

In response to the report, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio told Gothamist that his office would reexamine the standards for police use of facial recognition. “We have to be very careful and very limited with our use of anything involving facial recognition,” said de Blasio. “Those standards need to be reassessed. It’s something I will do with my team and with the NYPD.”
The NYPD has been using facial recognition software to identify suspects since 2011, with official statistics stating that the department processed 9,850 requests using the software in 2019 leading to 2,510 “possible matches.” However, official figures may be misleading. A BuzzFeed report from February found that the NYPD had run more than 11,000 facial recognition searches using technology from controversial firm Clearview AI, despite denying having any official contract with the company.
Mayor de Blasio said this week that the NYPD is “sparing” in its use of facial recognition, and never uses the technology to “undermine or affect public expression or public protest.” In Ingram’s case, the activist is accused of yelling into an officer’s ear with a bullhorn during a protest in June, which the NYPD says caused “pain and protracted impairment of hearing.”
Manhattan State Senator Brad Hoylman, who has proposed legislation to ban the use of facial recognition by NYPD, said the case was “further proof that allowing [the police] to set their own policy results in no meaningful protections for New Yorkers.”
Ingram himself told Gothamist that activists were being “specifically targeted with this technology because of what we’re protesting and because we’re trying to deconstruct a system that they’re a part of.” He added: “It’s a waste of taxpayer money and dollars that could be reallocated to people struggling throughout this city.”

 

[MASTERBAKER]

The NYPD used a controversial facial recognition tool. Here’s what you need to know.
Newly-released emails show New York police have been widely using the controversial Clearview AI facial recognition system—and making misleading statements about it.
By

• Tate Ryan-Mosleyarchive page

April 9, 2021

GETTY



It’s been a busy week for Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition company that uses 3 billion photos scraped from the web to power a search engine for faces. On April 6, Buzzfeed News published a database of over 1,800 entities—including state and local police and other taxpayer-funded agencies such as health-care systems and public schools—that it says have used the company’s controversial products. Many of those agencies replied to the accusations by saying they had only trialed the technology and had no formal contract with the company.
But the day before, the definition of a “trial” with Clearview was detailed when nonprofit news site Muckrock released emails between the New York Police Department and the company. The documents, obtained through freedom of information requests by the Legal Aid Society and journalist Rachel Richards, track a friendly two-year relationship between the department and the tech company during which time NYPD tested the technology many times, and used facial recognition in live investigations.
Related Story

There is a crisis of face recognition and policing in the US
The deeply flawed technology is in wide use, largely out of the public eye
The NYPD has previously downplayed its relationship with Clearview AI and its use of the company’s technology. But the emails show that the relationship between them was well developed, with a large number of police officers conducting a high volume of searches with the app and using them in real investigations. The NYPD has run over 5,100 searches with Clearview AI.
This is particularly problematic because stated policies limit the NYPD from creating an unsupervised repository of photos that facial recognition systems can reference, and restrict the use of facial recognition technology to a specific team. Both policies seem to have been circumvented with Clearview AI. The emails reveal that the NYPD gave many officers outside the facial recognition team access to the system, which relies on a huge library of public photos from social media. The emails also show how NYPD officers downloaded the app onto their personal devices, in contravention of stated policy, and used the powerful and biased technology in a casual fashion.

Clearview AI runs a powerful neural network that processes photographs of faces and compares their precise measurement and symmetry with a massive database of pictures to suggest possible matches. It’s unclear just how accurate the technology is, but it’s widely used by police departments and other government agencies. Clearview AI has been heavily criticized for its use of personally identifiable information, its decision to violate people’s privacy by scraping photographs from the internet without their permission, and its choice of clientele.
The emails span a period from October 2018 through February 2020, beginning when Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That was introduced to NYPD deputy inspector Chris Flanagan. After initial meetings, Clearview AI entered into a vendor contract with NYPD in December 2018 on a trial basis that lasted until the following March.

The documents show that many individuals at NYPD had access to Clearview during and after this time, from department leadership to junior officers. Throughout the exchanges, Clearview AI encouraged more use of its services. (“See if you can reach 100 searches,” its onboarding instructions urged officers.) The emails show that trial accounts for the NYPD were created as late as February 2020, almost a year after the trial period was said to have ended.
We reviewed the emails, and talked to top surveillance and legal experts about their contents. Here’s what you need to know.
NYPD lied about the extent of its relationship with Clearview AI and the use of its facial recognition technology
The NYPD told BuzzFeed News and the New York Post previously that it had “no institutional relationship” with Clearview AI, “formally or informally.” The department did disclose that it had trialed Clearview AI, but the emails show that the technology was used over a sustained time period by a large number of people who completed a high volume of searches in real investigations.
In one exchange, a detective working in the department’s facial recognition unit said, “App is working great.” In another, an officer on the NYPD’s identity theft squad said that “we continue to receive positive results” and have “gone on to make arrests.” (We have removed full names and email addresses from these images; other personal details were redacted in the original documents.)

Albert Fox Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit that advocates for the abolition of police use of facial recognition technology in New York City, says the records clearly contradict NYPD’s previous public statements on its use of Clearview AI.
“Here we have a pattern of officers getting Clearview accounts—not for weeks or months, but over the course of years,” he says. “We have evidence of meetings with officials at the highest level of the NYPD, including the facial identification section. This isn’t a few officers who decide to go off and get a trial account. This was a systematic adoption of Clearview’s facial recognition technology to target New Yorkers.”
Further, NYPD’s description of its facial recognition use, which is required under a recently passed law, says that “investigators compare probe images obtained during investigations with a controlled and limited group of photographs already within possession of the NYPD.” Clearview AI is known for its database of over 3 billion photos scraped from the web.
NYPD is working closely with immigration enforcement, and officers referred Clearview AI to ICE
The documents contain multiple emails from the NYPD that appear to be referrals to aid Clearview in selling its technology to the Department of Homeland Security. Two police officers had both NYPD and Homeland Security affiliations in their email signature, while another officer identified as a member of a Homeland Security task force.

“There just seems to be so much communication, maybe data sharing, and so much unregulated use of technology.”

New York is designated as a sanctuary city, meaning that local law enforcement limits its cooperation with federal immigration agencies. In fact, NYPD’s facial recognition policy statement says that “information is not shared in furtherance of immigration enforcement” and “access will not be given to other agencies for purposes of furthering immigration enforcement.”
“I think one of the big takeaways is just how lawless and unregulated the interactions and surveillance and data sharing landscape is between local police, federal law enforcement, immigration enforcement,” says Matthew Guariglia, an analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There just seems to be so much communication, maybe data sharing, and so much unregulated use of technology.”
Cahn says the emails immediately ring alarm bells, particularly since a great deal of law enforcement information funnels through central systems known as fusion centers.
“You can claim you’re a sanctuary city all you want, but as long as you continue to have these DHS task forces, as long as you continue to have information fusion centers that allow real-time data exchange with DHS, you’re making that promise into a lie.”
Many officers asked to use Clearview AI on their personal devices or through their personal email accounts
At least four officers asked for access to Clearview’s app on their personal devices or through personal emails. Department devices are closely regulated, and it can be difficult to download applications to official NYPD mobile phones. Some officers clearly opted to use their personal devices when department phones were too restrictive.

Clearview replied to this email, “Hi William, you should have a setup email in your inbox shortly.”
Jonathan McCoy is a digital forensics attorney at Legal Aid Society and took part in filing the freedom of information request. He found the use of personal devices particularly troublesome: “My takeaway is that they were actively trying to circumvent NYPD policies and procedures that state that if you’re going to be using facial recognition technology, you have to go through FIS (facial identification section) and they have to use the technology that’s already been approved by the NYPD wholesale.” NYPD does already have a facial recognition system, provided by a company called Dataworks.
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Guariglia says it points to an attitude of carelessness by both the NYPD and Clearview AI. “I would be horrified to learn that police officers were using Clearview on their personal devices to identify people that then contributed to arrests or official NYPD investigations,” he says.
The concerns these emails raise are not just theoretical: they could allow the police to be challenged in court, and even have cases overturned because of failure to adhere to procedure. McCoy says the Legal Aid Society plans to use the evidence from the emails to defend clients who have been arrested as the result of an investigation that used facial recognition.
“We would hopefully have a basis to go into court and say that whatever conviction was obtained through the use of the software was done in a way that was not commensurate with NYPD policies and procedures,” he says. “Since Clearview is an untested and unreliable technology, we could argue that the use of such a technology prejudiced our client's rights.”

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Rhyme and punishment: Inside the NYPD’s secret, sprawling ‘Rap Unit’
By
Ben Feuerherd
May 30, 2019 9:57pm
Updated

Remy MaCharles Sykes/Invision/AP
MORE ON:RAP

• Jordan Coleman—son of NYC Mayor Eric Adams—soon to release first rap album
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• Brooklyn rapper Lil Dee is ready to go viral after praise from hip-hop greats

Remy Ma thrilled the hundreds of fans who packed Irving Plaza last year for a concert that featured surprise cameo appearances by more than a half-dozen other New York rappers.
The parade of guest stars climaxed with an appearance by Grammy winner Lil’ Kim, who joined Ma onstage for a performance of their 2017 collaboration, “Wake Me Up.”
Billboard said Ma more than lived up to her “Bronx Savior” nickname.
But Ma’s devotees weren’t the only ones who showed up for the sold-out March 16, 2018, event.
The NYPD secretly planted an undercover cop inside the venue to keep an eye on the crowd — as two dozen of the officer’s uniformed colleagues patrolled outside the historic, ballroom-style theater near Union Square.




00:0201:14
A special branch of the department’s Intelligence Division had been secretly keeping tabs on Ma — who had served six years in prison for a 2007 shooting — and a member of her entourage, Jahmeek “Jah” Elliot, according to internal police records exclusively obtained by The Post.
The documents are among hundreds of pages that reveal the inner workings of the NYPD’s Enterprise Operations Unit, also known as the Rap Unit.
An internal memo from the NYPD Intelligence Division regarding a Remy Ma concert at Irving Plaza
Officers assigned to the unit draw up weekly entertainment reports about scheduled hip-hop shows at city clubs, and designate each as posing a low, medium or high risk for violence or other crimes.
That information is passed on to local precinct commanders and intelligence officers in the field, with local cops in turn flagging shootings and other incidents associated with clubs in their precincts.
The records tie the cops assigned to the Rap Unit to a program called the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which uses federal money and resources — including Drug Enforcement Administration agents — to crack down on narcotics production and sales.
At the time of last year’s concert, neither Ma nor Elliot was wanted for a crime, although Ma — whose real name is Reminisce Mackie — was busted earlier this month in an alleged attack on her “Love & Hip Hop New York” co-star Brittney Taylor backstage during a benefit concert at Irving Plaza this past April 16.
Ma, who’s still on parole for the shooting, has pleaded not guilty in the assault case and rejected a plea deal offered by prosecutors last month. Her misdemeanor trial is set for July 12.
But the NYPD documents show cops considered Elliot a “person of interest” due to his suspected gang ties and a rap sheet listing 26 arrests.
In 2012, Elliot was among three reputed leaders of the Bronx-based Dub City drug gang who were indicted in connection with a violent turf war that authorities said involved 15 shootings, including one that killed a Dub City member.
Elliot later served a prison sentence of 2½ years for felony drug possession before being paroled in November 2016, according to state records.
An undated memo written by two NYPD intelligence officers assigned to Manhattan’s 13th Precinct, which covers Irving Plaza, said that before joining Dub City, Elliot had “previously been associated with a known crew known as the ‘Mac Ballas.’ ”
“Intel revealed that Jahmeek’s new crew association has caused tension with the ‘Mac Ballas,’ and there may be possible retaliation against [him],” the memo says.
A phone number in Elliot’s name was no longer working and he couldn’t be reached.
Ma’s lawyer, Dawn Florio, denied any connection between Elliot and her client.
“Remy does not know Jahmeek Elliot. Never heard of him, doesn’t know him,” Florio said.
“She does not travel in an entourage. She travels with her husband and security guards.”
Florio also said she’s “not a fan” of the NYPD’s Rap Unit, which she disparagingly referred to as the “hip-hop police.”
“My impression of the hip-hop police is they’re this shadowy, specialized unit that conducts overly aggressive investigations,” she said. “They’re constantly stalking high-profile rap artists and monitoring their every move.”
Sgt. Jessica McRorie, an NYPD spokeswoman, said, “The Enterprise Operations Unit focuses on venues or entertainers that have been connected with past acts of violence — regardless of musical genre. The primary goal of EOU is to anticipate, based on past incidents, where there is a significant likelihood of violence, and to take steps to prevent people from being hurt, or worse.”
McRorie also credited the unit with aiding “several major prosecutions,” and said it “continues to gather additional intelligence by responding to shootings and assaults that may occur at all kinds of entertainment venues.”
The documents obtained by The Post show the Rap Unit helped plan policing strategies at a since-shuttered nightclub in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where records show Ma hosted an afterparty following the Irving Plaza concert.
Club Lust was a popular spot for big-name rappers, including Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who celebrated his birthday there in 2017.
The former Club Lust nightclub in Sunset ParkWilliam Miller
The previous year, he was scheduled to perform at the club, prompting a sergeant at Patrol Borough Brooklyn South to reach out to several high-ranking officers at the local 72nd Precinct, an email shows.
“Any plan being put into effect for 50 Cent appearing on Thursday at Club Lust?” the sergeant asked.
It’s unclear what police action, if any, the inquiry prompted.
Rainbow-haired rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine — who is locked up and awaiting sentencing on federal racketeering charges — was another Club Lust patron.
He appears in a YouTube video standing in front of a bar piled high with stacks of cash and making it “rain” money by tossing bills at scantily clad dancers.
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine leaves Brooklyn Criminal Court in November.Stephen Yang
Tekashi, born Daniel Hernandez, also made headlines in the rap world by posting an Instagram video shot outside the club that shows him and rapper Casanova “squashing a beef” between them in May 2018.
NYPD records show that months earlier, a New Year’s Day email was circulated among members of the Rap Unit ahead of a scheduled appearance by Tekashi at Club Lust the following night for its “Trap Tuesdays” event.
The email included an image of a promotional flier and noted that both the desk sergeant at the local 72nd Precinct and an unidentified field intelligence officer had been alerted by phone and email, respectively.
Another hip-hop artist who came under scrutiny in connection with Club Lust was Jersey City rapper AlBee Al, real name Albert Robinson.
When Al was slated to appear at Club Lust in July 2016, the Rap Unit compiled a five-page report linking him to “multiple shootings in the New Jersey state area.”
The report said Al was a “known BLOOD member” and had been acquitted of a June 2014 slaying for which his cousin was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
It also said Al was suspected of ordering a May 2016 slaying outside a club in Elizabeth, NJ, leading to a revenge shooting by the victim’s brother in which Al was wounded the following month.
“The EOU will continue to observe for any future events where Albee Al will be in attendance,” the report says.
“In addition, any of these future events that are found will be classified as High Events for future weekly Entertainment Reports.”
Al hung up when The Post called for comment.
In April 2018, records show, a 72nd Precinct lieutenant alerted the Rap Unit to an appearance at Club Lust by up-and-coming East Brooklyn rapper Billy B, real name Jahdira Atkins.
In an email, the lieutenant said the show was “being heavily promoted on Facebook” and said cops were worried about the performer’s reputed gang ties.
“We’re anticipating multiple gang members will be in attendance. The concert is being promoted by Saad Washington. He’s a documented 59 Brim Blood gang member,” the lieutenant wrote.
“Rapper Billy B is scheduled to perform that night. She’s a documented 823 G-Stone Crip.”
But a Rap Unit detective downplayed any potential danger posed by Billy B’s appearance.
“She appears to be an old associate of the CRIPS. But nothing has transpired recently. You should not have any issues,” the detective wrote.
Phone numbers listed for both Billy B and Saad Washington were no longer working, and neither responded to messages sent via Facebook.
Troubled South Florida rapper Kodak Black’s name surfaced in a Feb. 28, 2017, email exchange in which a 72nd Precinct lieutenant said his commanding officer had “some concerns” about a planned performance at Club Lust.
Kodak BlackJordan Strauss/Invision/AP
In response, a Rap Unit detective said, “Theres no need to worry about him.”
“Kodak is a loud mouth knuckle head. However, there have been no issues with him in NYC. In addition, hes on probation. So if he does anything wrong at all, hes going right back to jail and hes aware of that as well as his people around him,” the detective wrote.
The Rap Unit cop also noted that Black “was arrested earlier today for parole violation and is being held without bail in the state of Florida.”
“So it’s possible that and more than likely that we wont even be attending this event at Lust … If itll make your CO feel better, if he does get out of jail (which I doubt) in time to go to this event, I will reach out to him management and speak with them,” the detective wrote.
“But like I said, hes simply a big mouth young kid. He’s actually intimidated of NYC. So he just wants to fulfill his contract, [and] then leave.”
Black’s appearance was ultimately canceled, and the rapper, who was born Dieuson Octave but changed his name to Bill Kapri, is currently locked up in Miami on federal weapons charges.
He also faces sex assault allegations in South Carolina, where he’s accused of raping a high school student in his hotel room following a 2016 concert.
Another email, from August 2016, shows a sergeant assigned to Patrol Borough Brooklyn South alerting the 72nd Precinct to an appearance by a popular disc jockey, DJ Self, who hosts an overnight show on New York’s Power 105.1 radio station.
The sergeant, however, all but dismissed the event’s importance.
“When you have a moment, can you please provide the usual coverage info for Club Lust?” the sergeant wrote.
“It doesn’t seem to be anyone extraordinary, just DJ Self.”
Additional reporting by Bruce Golding

 

[D24OHA]

This is some bull shit.....

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Your Right to Film the Police Is Under Attack

Republicans in several states have introduced legislation—and in some cases, passed it—that could ultimately punish people for recording the police.
TD
By Trone Dowd
March 25, 2022, 10:51am

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POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY ADVOCATES GATHERED IN THE BRONX ON APRIL 3, 2019 IN SOLIDARITY WITH COPWATCHER JOSE LASALLE. (PHOTO BY ERIK MCGREGOR/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES)
A resident of Gary, Indiana, spent two days in jail after filming a viral video of a local cop arresting a woman at a gas station in 2020. But just weeks later, prosecutors dropped the charges of resisting law enforcement against him, and the officer who arrested him was suspended, investigated, and eventually fired.

While the local police chief publicly said his officers should know they’ll be filmed on the job, not everyone understands that the courts have repeatedly upheld civilians’ First Amendment right to record the cops, with few exceptions. Over the last few months, Republicans in several states have introduced legislation—and in some cases, passed it—that could ultimately punish people for recording or publishing images or video of the police.

Lawmakers told VICE News the bills and laws are meant to protect officers' safety and privacy—not infringe on civilians’ rights. But experts still worry the efforts will be used to crack down on people’s ability to use their cellphones to hold police accountable.
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“The real concern is, whereas these bills are presented as a shield to protect officers' safety, we worry that it's going to be used as a sword against anyone who's got a camera,” Mickey Osterreicher, an attorney for the National Press Photographers Association, told VICE News.

In February, Arizona state Rep. John Kavanagh, a Republican, proposed a bill that would criminalize filming the police from closer than eight feet away and require someone to get the officer’s permission, even if they’re on private property. And even then, an officer could still order that person to stop recording and leave the area.
Violating that proposed law would be a petty offense for most people without a criminal history, punishable by a $300 fine. But for anyone with a prior conviction, the crime would be a Class 3 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.
“This is about preventing violence and misunderstandings, preventing the destruction of evidence, and preventing police officers from harm,” Kavanagh told the Arizona Mirror about the purpose of his legislation.
And Arizona House Bill 2319 has progressed: A month after its introduction, the state House passed it along party lines, with 31 Republicans voting in favor and 28 Democrats against. The state Senate Judiciary Committee has also voted in favor of the bill, which now goes to a full vote in the Senate sometime later this year.

In general, civilians can record the cops as long as they’re not interfering with police business. Over the last 25 years, the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and 11th district U.S. Court of Appeals have all upheld filming the police as a constitutionally protected form of expression, like photography, as it promotes the public’s right to access information about public officials.
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Although earlier cases ruled on a civilian’s right to record in a public place, two cases have become the most frequently cited specifically regarding filming the police. In Smith v. the City of Cumming in 2000, police officers in Cumming, Georgia, prevented a couple, who said the officers were harassing them, from recording their interaction. And in Glik v. Cunniffe in 2011, a Boston man sued police for arresting him for recording them during an arrest that turned violent, and charged him for illegal wiretapping, disturbing the police, and aiding the escape of a prisoner.

“We worry that it's going to be used as a sword against anyone who's got a camera.”

Given the opportunity to rule on filming the police for the first time in 2021, however, the Supreme Court declined to hear Frasier v. Evans—despite 45 organizations, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, petitioning the justices to weigh in. The case involved a man named Levi Frasier who recorded cops battering a suspect and pushing a pregnant woman to the ground. When the cops caught Frasier documenting the encounter, they confiscated his tablet and deleted the video.

While Arizona is still grappling with passing its proposal, laws that could threaten the right to film the police have passed in other states. As of last April, Oklahoma has an “anti-doxing” law to prevent an officer’s personal information, which could include video badge numbers, patrol car license plates, and other identifiable information, from being released to the public. And Florida’s 2021 anti-riot law added “cyber intimidation by publication” as a punishable offense for anyone who publishes an officer’s information online with the intent of harassing them.

Much like Rep. Kavanagh in Arizona, lawmakers say these bills are necessary to ensure law enforcement can securely perform their duties without being targeted by those who would harm them or their families or having their attention pulled away by bystanders during potentially dangerous encounters.
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“If you’re videotaping at all, you don’t need a badge number,” Oklahoma State Sen. David Bullard, the Republican who authored HB1643, told VICE News. “If you’re filming something at the time of an incident, a department is going to know what officer is involved with that, not a problem, especially if you capture the officer’s face. There’s no reason to get up close to a vehicle or up to the officer. That’s not required.”
As a former reserve deputy and corrections officer, Bullard knows first-hand how important it is for law enforcement to maintain focus. He said his anti-doxing bill aims to ensure they can while also making sure the families of these officers aren’t threatened by anyone.
“I’m for the people having the right to film, I’m for them making sure everybody is protected, holding everything accountable, and transparency,” he continued.

Florida state Rep. Juan Fernandez-Barquin, the Republican author of Florida’s HB1 anti-riot bill, had a similar motivation for the “cyber intimidation by publication” portion of his bill.

“‘Harass’ has a specific definition that requires the person’s actions to serve no legitimate purpose,” he told VICE News.“To violate the law, a person’s threat or harassment must put the victim in reasonable fear of bodily harm—not just annoy the person. This statute is narrowly tailored to prevent individuals with bad motives from ‘doxing’ someone.”

Regardless of lawmakers’ intention, Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says he’s skeptical of how these laws will be used. The language leaves room for situations where police can challenge a person’s right to record through indirect means.

“For example, an officer can use the new stratagem of not going after the initial recording of a situation but the subsequent publication of it because of what appears in that video,” Schwartz said. “That is highly problematic.”

Even if someone who records a police encounter had no intent of harassing the officer, it doesn’t mean they couldn’t be charged. Much like yelling “Fuck you!” at the cops, which the courts have also ruled is constitutional, people still get arrested.
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Often, however, nothing comes from these arrests. In July 2021, plainclothes NYPD officers beat and pepper-sprayed a man recording an arrest in a subway station before leaving him with a summons. The charge was eventually dropped, according to the New York Daily News. And last year, the Connecticut American Civil Liberties Union helped a man who was arrested for filming a police station file a federal lawsuit accusing officers of violating his First Amendment rights.
The fact that these arrests keep happening shows just how misunderstood people’s right to record the cops is, especially among police themselves. Even in states like New York, where the right to film the cops is established in the district’s court of appeals as well as by state law, top elected officials like NYC Mayor Eric Adams have criticized people filming the cops.

"If your iPhone can't capture that picture with you being at a safe distance, then you need to upgrade your iPhone. Stop being on top of our police officers as they're trying to do their jobs," Adams said. The mayor noted that it’s not what happens all the time, but a majority of the time.

Since they can’t just destroy people’s cameras anymore, cops have also found crafty and subtle ways to avoid being recorded. One of the most recent—and bizarre—attempts involves playing popular songs out loud as people film them in hopes of triggering internet filters focused on copyright violations that would prevent the video from being uploaded to services like Twitter and YouTube, where they can go viral.

“Cops have stood in the sightlines of cameras or shined lights to block what it’s capturing,” Schwartz said.

As for Arizona’s bill, it continues to face opposition, even as it moves closer to Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk. Osterreicher, a former journalist and reserved sheriff’s deputy, wrote a letter earlier this month to the Arizona State Judiciary committee asking that they withdraw HB2319 from consideration. The letter was sent on behalf of two dozen news organizations, including the National Newspaper Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
“It's about protecting the right of the public to be informed about things, and the perfect example of that is Darnella Frazier, who stood as a 17-year-old, silently held her camera and reported the death of George Floyd,” Osterreicher said. “But for that video, we may not have realized what actually happened there.”

 

[MASTERBAKER]

June 3, 2021Surveillance city: NYPD can use more than 15,000 cameras to track people using facial recognition in Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has the ability to track people in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx by running images from 15,280 surveillance cameras into invasive and discriminatory facial recognition software, a new Amnesty International investigation reveals.

Thousands of volunteers from around the world participated in the investigation, tagging 15,280 surveillance cameras at intersections across Manhattan (3,590), Brooklyn (8,220) and the Bronx (3,470). Combined, the three boroughs account for almost half of the intersections (47%) in New York City, constituting a vast surface area of pervasive surveillance.

Surveillance City

Full heat map is available here.

“This sprawling network of cameras can be used by police for invasive facial recognition and risk turning New York into an Orwellian surveillance city,” says Matt Mahmoudi, Artificial Intelligence & Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International.

“You are never anonymous. Whether you’re attending a protest, walking to a particular neighbourhood, or even just grocery shopping – your face can be tracked by facial recognition technology using imagery from thousands of camera points across New York.”

Most surveilled neighbourhood

East New York in Brooklyn, an area that is 54.4% Black, 30% Hispanic and 8.4% White according to the latest census data, was found to be the most surveilled neighbourhood in all three boroughs, with an alarming 577 cameras found at intersections.

The NYPD has used facial recognition technology (FRT) in 22,000 cases since 2017 — half of which were in 2019 alone. When camera imagery is run through FRT, the NYPD is able to track every New Yorker’s face as they move through the city.

FRT works by comparing camera imagery with millions of faces stored in its databases, many scraped from sources including social media without users’ knowledge or consent. The technology is widely recognized as amplifying racially discriminatory policing and can threaten the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and privacy.

Amnesty International research has modelled the extensive field of vision of New York’s CCTV network. For example, the intersection of Grand Street and Eldridge Street sits near the border of Chinatown and was near a key location in the Black Lives Matter protests. Our investigation found three NYPD-owned Argus cameras around the site, in addition to four other public cameras and more than 170 private surveillance cameras, which our modelling suggests have the capacity to track faces from as far as 200 metres away (or up to 2 blocks).

Amnesty International
The possible area surveilled by three NYPD Argus cameras in the Lower East Side, close to the site of a Black Lives Matter protest. We also identified four traffic cameras owned by the New York City Department of Transport (DOT), and over 100 private cameras in the area.Supercharging racist policing
In the summer of 2020, facial recognition was likely used to identify and track a participant at a Black Lives Matter protest, Derrick ‘Dwreck’ Ingram, who allegedly shouted into a police officer’s ear. Police officers were unable to produce a search warrant when they arrived at his apartment.


Amnesty International, and coalition partners of the Ban the Scan campaign, submitted numerous Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to the NYPD, requesting more information about the extent of facial recognition usage in light of Dwreck’s case. They were dismissed, along with a subsequent appeal, while some are being litigated.

“There has been a glaring lack of information around the NYPD’s use of facial recognition software – making it impossible for New Yorkers to know if and when their face is being tracked across the city,” says Matt Mahmoudi.

“The NYPD’s issues with systemic racism and discrimination are well-documented – so, too, is the technology’s bias against women and people of colour. Using FRT with images from thousands of cameras across the city risks amplifying racist policing, harassment of protesters, and could even lead to wrongful arrests.”

“Facial recognition can and is being used by states to intentionally target certain individuals or groups of people based on characteristics, including ethnicity, race and gender, without individualized reasonable suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.”


Global effort
More than 5,500 volunteers have participated in the investigation, launched on 4 May 2021 as part of the innovative Amnesty Decoders platform. The project is ongoing to collect data on the remaining two New York boroughs, but already volunteers have analysed 38,831 locations across the city.

It was a global effort – volunteers from 144 countries participated, with the largest group of volunteers (26%) being in the United States. In just three weeks, volunteers contributed an eye-watering 18,841 hours – more than 10 working years for a researcher working full time in the USA. Participants were given Google Street View images of locations around New York City and asked to tag cameras, with each intersection analysed by three volunteers. The total figures include a mix of both public and private cameras, both of which can be used with FRT.

Methodology
Data collection

The data for Decode Surveillance NYC was generated by several thousand digital volunteers. Volunteers participated via the Amnesty Decoders platform, which uses microtasking to help our researchers answer large-scale questions.

For Decode Surveillance NYC volunteers were shown a Google Street View panorama image of an intersection and asked to find surveillance cameras. In addition, we asked volunteers to record what cameras were attached to. Volunteers were presented with three options: 1, street light, traffic signal or pole; 2, building; 3, something else. If they selected “street light, traffic signal or pole”, they were asked to categorize the camera type as: 1, dome or PTZ; 2, bullet; 3, other or unknown.Volunteers were supported throughout by a tutorial video, visual help guide, and moderated forum. On average each volunteer took 1.5 minutes to analyze an intersection.

Data analysis

Information about what the camera was attached to and its type was used as a proxy for public or private ownership. For the purposes of the research it was assumed that cameras attached to buildings were likely to be privately owned. Cameras, such as dome cameras, attached to street lights, traffic signals or roadside poles, were most likely to be owned by a government agency with the permission and access to install them.

Each intersection was evaluated by three volunteers. The data published on 3 June 2021 is the median camera count of these three evaluations per intersection. We chose to use the median as it is least susceptible to outliers and individual errors, leveraging the “wisdom of the crowd”. Counts were normalized by the number of intersections within each administrative unit to account for different surface areas.

Our data science team also used a qualitative review of a subset of intersections by an expert to look for systematic errors or biases, such as volunteers tagging only one of two cameras on NYPD Argus boxes.

This preliminary analysis ensures correct orders of magnitude, sufficient for early conclusions. Finer-grained analysis will follow, including bootstrapped confidence intervals. We will also assess quality metrics such as precision and recall to compare the decoders’ aggregation to expert judgement on a small representative subset of intersections.

3D modelling

3D modelling was used to demonstrate the estimated distance from which an NYPD Argus camera could capture video footage processable by facial recognition software.

In the absence of technical specifications for the NYPD Argus cameras, we researched commercial models. According to historical Google Street View imagery, the camera we modelled was installed between November 2017 and June 2018. Data on commercial cameras available at the time suggest that it is likely to be a Pan, Tilt, and Zoom (PTZ) model containing a 6–134 mm varifocal lens able to film at 4K or 8 megapixel resolution.

The 3D model shows that the camera could potentially monitor neighbouring roads and capture faces in high definition from as little as few metres to up to 200 metres (or two blocks) away.

For more information about the project, log into Decode Surveillance NYC to see the Help Guide. Decode Surveillance NYC was scoped and designed with past camera mapping projects in mind, such as the 1998 and 2006 walking surveys conducted by New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).