The Legal Aid Society has filed an Article 78 petition against the New York City Police Department (NYPD) seeking documents relating to their special expense budget (SPEX), as reported by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Despite the passage of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, the NYPD’s history of opaqueness surrounding its surveillance capabilities and funding continues. The filing comes after a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request by Legal Aid for copies of SPEX contracts was denied by the NYPD.

The intention of the FOIL request was to bring transparency and greater public understanding to the murky landscape of electronic surveillance technologies that the NYPD has disproportionately used against Black and brown communities.

“New Yorkers have a right to know how their tax dollars are used by the NYPD to purchase invasive surveillance technology,” said Benjamin Burger, a staff attorney in The Legal Aid Society’s Digital Forensics Unit. “These records are public documents and the NYPD should follow the law and disclose them.”