We are constantly being watched: how face recognition cameras are used in New York

We are constantly being watched, and we, most likely, are not even aware of it. Tens of thousands of video cameras are installed throughout New York, and some of them are equipped with facial recognition technology, reports ABC7NY.

Your face can be matched to a thousand others for possible matches to determine who you are and where you have been. Private companies use this technology to track customers, and the police use it to track criminals.

New York has a law requiring customers to be informed about the use of facial recognition technology when it comes to private companies. Private companies must notify customers with a sign at their front doors if they collect biometric information, be it fingerprint, gait, or facial recognition. The law also prohibits companies from sharing or selling this information.

However, it does not apply to government agencies such as the police.

“This puts New Yorkers at risk of being arrested every single day,” said Albert Fox Kahn, who founded the surveillance technology oversight project. “It's not just some privacy issue. The coincidence of the face can be the reason that everyone can be stopped by the police ”. At the same time, the accuracy of face recognition technology is still low.

Critics say the technology is less accurate when it comes to identifying young and old people, as well as African Americans and Latinos.

“He's less capable of recognizing swarthy faces,” Kahn said. "The NYPD have used this system tens of thousands of times, but they refuse to give us any information on how it works."

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Some legislators are trying to make such technologies illegal. They wrote a bill that would completely ban the use of facial recognition technology in New York City.

“We don't want to become a police state,” said Senator Brad Hoilman.

Help in finding criminals

NYPD said it does not scan faces in real time. When a crime is captured by a camera, they use the image from the video surveillance cameras. They are passing this image through a database of people arrested earlier.

For example, it helped the department figure out who stole a scooter from a boy in Brooklyn this summer. And find those who stole $ 4 million worth of jewelry in New York.

“Besides the coincidence in the video, the detective has to do a good detective job,” explained Oleg Chernvavsky, legal assistant to the New York City Police Commissioner.

He said arrests are never made based on facial recognition alone. The photo goes through at least two levels of review after a possible match is found.

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Of all incoming requests for face recognition, the department finds matches in about 25% of cases.

“We are obliged to the victims of crimes to use everything we can to catch the attackers,” said Chernvavsky.

Additionally, NYPD say their facial recognition policy has been in effect for ten years and is publicly posted on their website.