The Legal Aid Society criticized the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for its use of drones manufactured by Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), a Chinese company that the United States Department of Defense (DOD) has labeled as a potential threat to national security, as reported by The Intercept.

Additionally, in 2017, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that it had “moderate confidence” that DJI was “providing U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government.”

“You have the NYPD on one hand, who use the excuse of national security and city security to consistently expand their surveillance technology, and yet you have the U.S. military and U.S. agencies who are charged with that security, saying that they don’t trust this tool that the NYPD is using,” said Jerome D. Greco, Supervising Attorney of the Digital Forensics Unit at The Legal Aid Society.

“It would seem unusual to me, considering how deeply connected the NYPD are to federal law enforcement agencies, especially after 9/11, for them to not have received some sort of warning,” he continued.