A new report from the Department of Investigation’s Office of the Inspector General for the New York City Police Department (OIG-NYPD) confirms that the Adams Administration violated the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act.

The POST Act increases transparency and oversight over the NYPD’s use of new surveillance technologies and information-sharing networks by requiring the department to disclose basic information about these tools and the safeguards in place to protect the privacy and civil liberties of New Yorkers.

The Legal Aid Society had called on OIG to investigate the NYPD’s rollout of new technology in response to its ongoing violation of the law.

“Today’s report makes clear that the NYPD continues to violate the POST Act, depriving New
Yorkers of transparency and limiting their ability to provide feedback on the invasive technologies that City Hall continues to deploy in careless, rapid succession,” said Jerome Greco, Supervising Attorney of Legal Aid’s Digital Forensics Unit. “This is the second time that the OIG-NYPD has cited the Adams Administration for circumventing this duly enacted law by grouping together different technologies to avoid issuing new policies, and by providing insufficient and inaccurate information.”

“New Yorkers didn’t sign up to serve as guinea pigs for City Hall’s experiments with problematic
and invasive technology,” he continued. “There are plenty of other solutions available to address root causes and advance public safety that do not foolishly rely on technology like the DigiDog as some sort of public policy panacea.”