NYPD Finally Comes Up With A Body Camera Policy, And It's Terrible

from the more-tech,-less-transparency dept

Nearly four years after the NYPD was ordered by a federal judge to implement body cameras, the department is finally getting around to finalizing its rule set for deployment. Part of the delay is due to the NYPD seeking input from the public -- input it has apparently decided to ignore.

As Scott Greenfield notes, the NYPD gets everything wrong about its policies, applying guidelines that directly contradict the responses received from everyone in New York City not wearing a blue uniform.

The first “big” question is when will cops be required to turn their body cams on, since having them doesn’t actually serve much of a purpose if they’re turned off.

Notice anything peculiar? Like the public wants them on a lot, and the cops, not so much? But this belies the problem: if body cams must be on for “use of force,” will cops call a “time out” when a situation develops where they decide to tune up a guy who isn’t sufficiently compliant so he can flip the switch? Sure. Who doesn’t honor the sacred “time out”?

But then, the “it depends” on witness interviews is somewhat disconcerting. After all, why record witness interviews, since they might say something inconsistent with the cop’s recollection or their testimony in court? That could be unpleasant.

The public also wants expansive footage release policies. Unsurprisingly, NYPD officers do not. From the NYPD's body-worn camera report [PDF]:

Officers and the public were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement: “If a person has an interaction with an officer wearing a  body-worn camera, the NYPD should be required to show that person the footage upon request.” Here is how they responded:

Here are the responses for a similar question, but involving third parties like journalists and advocacy groups making requests for footage:

The split is obvious. The public wants access. The NYPD wants sole control. The "compromise" is this:

[T]he NYPD is refusing to take this step. Instead, it will require footage requesters go through the slow and ill-suited Freedom of Information Law public records process — the same one you’d have to use to get, say, the mayor’s travel records.

To date, when people have used the FOIL process to request footage from the tiny number of body cameras already deployed in an experiment, the NYPD has stood in the way, charging the public exorbitant fees and claiming broad exemptions.

When it comes to New York's open records law, approaching the NYPD for documents is an exercise in futility. The department has been called "worse than the FBI, CIA, and NSA" when it comes to responding to records requests. FOIL lawsuits are minimally effective, as the NYPD is as comfortable with slowly bleeding plaintiffs dry as it is ignoring their requests entirely.

The other twist is this: if you're facing criminal charges and want access to footage of your arrest, etc., you're not going to get any preferential treatment. You also will be forbidden from joining the FOIL line and hearing your request will be ignored in the order it's received. Scott Greenfield breaks this down:

But certainly the defendant is entitled to the video, right?

"There is an important exception with respect to release of body-worn camera footage: if a person is arrested and has a pending criminal case, and seeks body camera footage related to his or her arrest, he or she may not come to the NYPD to circumvent the standard discovery process between the prosecution and the defense. Discovery is governed by New York State Criminal Procedure Law. Criminal defendants are entitled to these recordings under the law, but such requests are handled by prosecutors in accordance with existing criminal discovery practices and procedures."

Discovery? That same criminal procedure process that has been the target of reform for decades because it’s nearly useless?

Unbelievably, the NYPD camera policy gets even worse, and even further away from the public's preferences. Here are the responses given to the question of when officers should be given access to body camera footage. Note that the largest split involves the viewing of camera footage before writing reports.

The NYPD policy sides with the 91% of officers who stated they should be given access before writing reports or issuing statements. The explanation of its decision to run contrary to public opinion cites two things:

1. Plenty of other law enforcement agencies have similarly bad camera policies.

The NYPD body-worn-camera working group has reviewed the body-worn camera policies of nearly 30 police departments. All of them allow officers, without restriction, to review body-worn camera video prior to filling reports when there has not been a significant use of force.

2. NYPD internal investigations are probably the most thorough, serious investigations in the history of internal investigations.

The propriety of this approach requires some understanding of how serious use-of-force investigations proceed in New York City… [two pages of Complicated Hypothetical Situation…]

So, the NYPD will join the 21st century, already in progress, with 1,000 cameras and policies that benefit no one but the officers wearing them. The presumption for footage will be nondisclosure and the only people guaranteed to see the footage will be those who can tailor their narratives to recordings after the fact. The NYPD believes it's the best police force in the nation, if not the world. But it's still far behind several smaller agencies, both in terms of tech adoption, as well as transparency and accountability.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, new york, nypd, transparency

Oversight Board Spares NYPD's Feelings By Softening Language In Taser Complaint Report

from the say-a-prayer-for-the-people-in-power dept

The NYPD's estranged relationship with its oversight continues. The Civilian Complaint Review Board -- put into place after it became apparent the NYPD wasn't interested in policing itself -- has noticed the department is vocally supportive of better policing, but has no interest in actually making any changes to the way it disciplines its officers.

The NYPD has yet to see a civilian complaint it can't make disappear and has almost always recommended a lesser punishment for misconduct than the Board has recommended. In controversial "chokehold" cases, the Board found the NYPD was completely uninterested in doing anything about officers' use of a tactic it has outlawed.

In those cases where CCRB substantiated chokeholds, recommended Administrative Charges, and DAO became involved, none of the substantiated cases ever went to trial before a NYPD Trial Commissioner. Instead, DAO departed from CCRB’s recommendation every time. Rather than pursue the more serious Administrative Charges, DAO recommended lesser penalties or no discipline whatsoever.

Despite being shown no respect by the NYPD, the CCRB has decided to protect the badged-and-armed delicate flower of the department by softening the language in its Taser use report before publication.

In the spring, an oversight agency for the New York Police Department circulated a draft report on the use of Taser stun guns. The report highlighted “troubling” findings and issued stern recommendations: The police should create an annual report on the use of Tasers and prohibit their use on handcuffed suspects.

But the latter recommendation was removed from the final version of the report, quietly released in October by the agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, with no formal announcement. The other was removed from the executive summary and relegated to the report’s final page.

The agency also removed language highlighting what police reform advocates and civil liberties groups later said was the board’s central finding: In most Taser encounters reviewed, officers used the stun guns on people who were unarmed.

What the CCRB found wasn't encouraging. The NYPD already has a troubled history of Taser misuse. Not much is made of it because Taser deployment in the force is severely limited. But the NYPD's ability to make even a small number of civilian complaints vanish into the ether remains unchanged. The New York Times highlights the report's findings, which are disturbing and have remained unaltered.

Over the period studied in the report, from 2014 through 2015, the board’s investigators conducted full investigations of 51 of the 153 complaints filed and substantiated only three of them.

The other 102 fell by the wayside because the complainants failed to cooperate with the investigation. Perhaps some of them felt the outcome would be no different than the 94% that did make it all the way through the process. Perhaps some had outstanding warrants, unpaid tickets, a general disinterest in interacting with law enforcement, or whatever. But with only six percent of complaints being substantiated, the outcome of the NYPD's internal efforts are par for the course: lots of complaints, almost zero repercussions.

But just as disheartening is the fact that the CCRB edited its report to ensure the NYPD wouldn't even feel the weight of PRINTED WORDS.

The alterations to the report run throughout and appear to play down the findings — which remain unchanged — and remove language that could be considered charged or critical of the Police Department.

This is an organization with an inordinate amount of power -- both over the people it serves as well as the politicians that ostensibly control its budget and activities. Specific edits were made to turn the report into something as proactively exonerative as statements made by the NYPD itself in the wake of excessive force allegations. Police brass say things like "the officer's gun discharged." The CCRB -- post-editing -- says things like this:

[T]he draft report found that “there is also evidence” that Tasers were being used in response to unruly or obstinate behavior by suspects. That phrase was changed in the final version to say that “there is concern.”

Also excised was the Board's "troubling" finding that Taser deployment often occurred when suspects were already in custody. The stat -- 30% of the time -- remains. The word "troubling" is nowhere to be found. Another sentence was removed completely, apparently out of concern the NYPD might react badly to it.

"[A] review of several of the police custody complaints supports the perception that the Tasing may have occurred unnecessarily."

The NYPD needs to be subjected to strong language that draws attention unavoidably to its use of excessive force. This is the sort of thing the NYPD finds to be "appropriate" Taser use.

Mr. Sells said in an interview that during the discovery phase of the lawsuit, he learned that two separate officers used Tasers on Mr. Paul, striking him a total of 13 times — six by one officer; seven by the other — over the course of 41 seconds.

Anthony Paul is dead. He was 29 years old when he died in NYPD custody. The NYPD brushed off accusations of excessive force with the above "appropriate" statement, as well as the excuse that the Tasers failed to deliver even more electricity to the eventual corpse of Mr. Paul.

"...not all of the “activations” resulted “in actual electrical circuit charge transmissions.”

A government entity that has the power to kill civilians who do not immediately subject themselves to an arrest is apparently too weak to handle direct criticism of its actions. The Board has wiped any implications from its findings, leaving the stats to speak for themselves. The facts aren't pretty, but the NYPD has no problem ignoring hard numbers and incontrovertible facts. But it must be protected from any insinuations that its use of force is sometimes too much… or occasionally unjustifiable.

Filed Under: abuse, ccrb, nypd, oversight, police, taser

NYPD Officers Search Wrong Home; Post Photos Of Handcuffed Family To Snapchat

from the to-serve-and-humiliate dept

Police professionalism is on display again, this time by New York's finest -- which may as well be the nation's finest, as far as the NYPD is concerned. The police department that thinks so highly of itself it portrays itself as an intelligence agency when working with federal agencies and ships officers to crime scenes (uninvited) all over the world to lend a helping intruding hand is catching heat for an officer's decision to memorialize warrant service with some Snapchat posts.

A family in Brooklyn is outraged after NYPD officers raided their home, put everyone in handcuffs and then posted a picture of them on social media with the caption "Merry Christmas Its NYPD." The ordeal led to the suspension of an officer.

The Brownsville residents were so upset that not only did they file a report, but they also called 911.

The 911 call probably wasn't warranted (although it might have been the only way to get the NYPD's attention), but the anger is. The photos showed an entire family in handcuffs, their morning interrupted by the NYPD's search for someone who didn't even reside at this address.

The NYPD continues to claim the warrant was valid. Perhaps it was, but plenty of "valid" warrants result in homes being cracked open, but with no criminals, drugs, or anything else ever found. It's not uncommon for warrants to cite uncorroborated anonymous tips or information gathered months before the warrant is obtained. Waking up a family at 6:30 am to search for someone who isn't there is more than an inconvenience. Topping it off by celebrating a non-bust with a photo of a handcuffed family is just a disgusting display of misused power.

The officer involved has been suspended, but unlike the family outed by his Snapchat post, his name and face remain unpublicized. It took the officers three hours to determine the person they were looking for wasn't in the residence -- time one officer used to make jokes at the expense of a family that says it doesn't even know the person the NYPD was looking for.

The NYPD isn't particularly adept when it comes to social media. If it isn't officers taking photos of homeless people in a police union-backed attempt to bite at Mayor Bill De Blasio's ankles, it's the NYPD's official Twitter account going up in flames in the wake of a massively-ill advised hashtag campaign.

The suspended officer will likely return to work once the investigation concludes, but this sort of thing should always result in firing. There's no way the officer who posted this thought anyone would think it was acceptable. But he chose to do it anyway, most likely because the worst case scenario is what he's experiencing now: an Internal Affairs investigation and a suspension. If he truly thought he'd lose his job, he likely would have shown more restraint.

Police departments can't build relationships with communities while allowing officers to get away with this sort of behavior. There's little that's more intrusive than a search of your home by law enforcement officers. It completely strips away the privacy of the people involved. That's why warrants are required. Publicly posting photos during a search massively expands the boundaries of the intrusion. Turning this massive intrusion into a punchline shows the officer has no respect for the public he serves or the Constitution he's supposed to uphold.

Filed Under: nypd, raid, social media
Companies: snapchat

Rutgers Lecturer Forcibly Sent For Psych Evaluation By NYPD For Some Tweets About The Election

from the reprogramming-in-effect dept

As you may have noticed, a lot of people have opinions on the election that just happened. And, many people are using social media to express those opinions, for good or for bad. Some people are excited, some people are angry. And no matter which side you fall on, you should recognize that expressing opinions on social media is protected (and should be encouraged as part of a healthy political process involving public discussion and debate). Kevin Allred, a lecturer at Rutgers University, is definitely on the side of folks who aren't happy with the results of the election. And, like many, he's been tweeting about his opinions on the matter. Having read through his Twitter feed, it doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary from stuff that I've seen from others. In fact, I'd argue that it actually seems fairly tame.

Either way, last night he Tweeted that the NYPD had come to his house because the police at Rutgers believed he was "a threat" based on some of his tweets. There were two tweets in particular. One was about burning a flag in protest and the other was a rhetorical question about the 2nd Amendment. To be clear: flag burning is perfectly legal and protected expression, as per the US Supreme Court. But here, Allred wasn't even burning a flag. He was talking about burning a flag, which is, obviously, also protected expression. Ditto on the random rhetorical on the 2nd Amendment. No matter what you think of Allred's position on the election, flag burning OR the 2nd Amendment, you should recognize that the 1st Amendment protects that expression. Update: It also appears that Allred deleted the original tweet on the second point which was certainly noticeably different than the way he describes it above. It wasn't just a question in the nature stated, but rather a more direct question of what would happen when he went out and started to shoot white people. That's still protected speech, but at least there's slightly more of an explanation for why law enforcement wanted to go visit him. But it's still not necessarily a reason to detain him.

The Rutgers police and NYPD apparently disagreed. They forced him to go to a psychiatric hospital to be evaluated. Allred blames Trump for this -- and while we've made it clear that we've got lots of concerns about Trump's views on free speech, Trump isn't exactly directing police to pick up people for various tweets. But the whole situation is extremely disturbing nonetheless. It's frightening how little law enforcement seems to recognize or care about the First Amendment.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 2nd amendment, election, flag burning, free speech, kevin allred, nypd, rutgers
Companies: rutgers

Judge Says NYPD 'Accustomed To Disregarding' Court Orders, Sends Surveillance Settlement Back For Fixes

from the belated-bench-slaps dept

A settlement reached this earlier this year over the NYPD's pervasive (and useless) surveillance of Muslims is being sent back for retooling. Normally when this sort of thing happens, it's because the the NYPD is convinced any reform efforts put in place are too restrictive and will result in the city being plunged into the nightmarish dystopian hell it's often been portrayed as in popular culture.

Fortunately, this isn't one of those times. The judge presiding over the settlement agreement actually feels the proposed reforms (and there are a lot of them) don't go far enough.

[Judge] Charles S. Haight Jr., in an opinion published on Monday, said the settlement did not go far enough for an agency that had become “accustomed to disregarding” court orders.

“The proposed role and powers of the civilian representative,” Judge Haight wrote, “do not furnish sufficient protection from potential violations of the constitutional rights of those law-abiding Muslims and believers in Islam who live, move and have their being in this city.”

Playing into the judge's decision is a recent NYPD Inspector General's report -- one that found the department routinely violated another agreement it had in place, one that ALSO resulted from pervasive, unconstitutional surveillance.

The Handschu Agreement -- put in place in 1985 and modified in 2002 -- was supposed to stop the NYPD from engaging in surveillance of First Amendment-protected activity. Of course, it ignored this agreement and placed entire mosques under surveillance with its "Demographics Unit" and used copy-pasted boilerplate to excuse its actions.

So, when Judge Haight says the NYPD is "accustomed to disregarding" court orders, he not making stuff up. More recent agreements -- like the changes made to stop-and-frisk as the result of court decision -- have also been ignored, with NYPD brass making very minimal effort to ensure officers were following the new rules meant to make the stops more Constitutional.

Perhaps Judge Haight is belatedly trying to make amends. Haight is the reason the NYPD's rights-violating "Demographics Unit" even existed. In the wake of the 2001 attacks, the NYPD decided to put a couple of former CIA officers in charge of its counterterrorism activities, and it was Judge Haight who approved the post-9/11 rewrite of the Handschu Agreement, allowing the NYPD to engage in surveillance predicated on little else other than citizens' religious affiliations.

Fifteen years of watching the NYPD shrug off oversight, settlement agreements, and consent decrees has finally gotten to Judge Haight, apparently. While the NYPD somehow portrays the August Inspector General's report as exonerating, Haight calls it something else.

Judge Haight said it was evidence of “near-systemic failure.” He chastised the department for highlighting favorable aspects of the report but not addressing repeated problems.

There's not much of a sample size to pull from, but it's heartening to see that some judges are tiring of the self-serving BS served up by law enforcement agencies. Deference is usually extended because cops are the "good guys." The deference that has historically been extended is starting to be rolled back. Transparency and accountability -- forced on agencies by activists and citizens armed with recording devices -- has made it clear many officers and agencies haven't earned the respect that's been shown to them. Haight's refusal to be swayed by the same department that leveraged terrorism fears to undercut the civil rights New York's residents is a positive step in the right direction, if perhaps a bit late in arriving.

Filed Under: court order, muslims, new york, nypd, reforms, surveillance

NYPD Says Software Built To Track Seized Property Can't Actually Do The One Thing It's Supposed To Do

from the planned-obsolescence-hurried-along-by-planned-opacity dept

It's not like the NYPD's earned enough trust to be given the benefit of a doubt, but it's latest excuse as to why it can't come up with requested data sounds about as believable as a soaking wet teen's explanation as to why the family car is currently lying at the bottom of the backyard pool isn't his fault.

The New York City Police Department takes in millions of dollars in cash each year as evidence, often keeping the money through a procedure called civil forfeiture. But as New York City lawmakers pressed for greater transparency into how much was being seized and from whom, a department official claimed providing that information would be nearly impossible—because querying the 4-year old computer system that tracks evidence and property for the data would "lead to system crashes."

The system that "tracks" this information (apparently by tossing input into a pile of unsearchable bits) was considered top of the line in 2012. Sure, technology moves fast but certainly not fast enough to turn something the NYPD claimed would "revolutionize" evidence/property tracking into a hulking pile of sullen, un-queryable data four years later. As Sean Gallagher of Ars Technica points out, the system was submitted for consideration for the 2012 Computerworld Honors, which hands out awards to leaps forward in information technology.

NYPD officials, responding to city's Public Safety Committee, explained that the top-dollar tracking system wasn't actually a system at all.

NYPD's Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Messner told the New York City Council's Public Safety Committee that the department had no idea how much money it took in as evidence, nor did it have a way of reporting how much was seized through civil forfeiture proceedings—where property and money is taken from people suspected of involvement in a crime through a civil filing, and the individuals whom it is seized from are put in the position of proving that the property was not involved in the crime of which they were accused.

Where accountability is needed most, it almost always seems to go missing. Asset forfeiture -- in multiple, mostly-nefarious forms -- is a law enforcement tool seemingly handcrafted for abuse and exploitation. When the NYPD isn't seizing cash and cars simply because Officer Smith thought he spotted a fleck of marijuana somewhere in a three-mile radius, it's taking ownership of people's personal belongings (phones, cash, etc.) simply because they happened to be in their pockets when they were arrested.

The NYPD's inability to quantify its sketchy takings isn't surprising. There's nothing to be gained from keeping a tracking system like this in working order. The more data the NYPD can provide to overseers, FOIL-wielding citizens, and meddling defense lawyers, the more likely it is that someone will uncover abuse of the forfeiture process.

The NYPD isn't satisfied with simply being a closed book -- it's actively engaged in removing pages. At some point, someone on the inside must have needed some information and found the tracking system unworkable. But the cost of fixing it -- both in terms of the money paid to contractors and the potential "harm" done to a very profitable program -- was likely considered too much of an expense to bear. So, when faced with demands for data, the NYPD excuses its lack of info production with "the database ate our homework."

What data has been pried loose from the unwilling NYPD already shows it willingly lies to city officials about its asset forfeitures, as the Village Voice reports.

The NYPD's testimony was also disingenuous: As part of a FOIL request filed by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD had already compiled and released figures that show the staggering amounts that it has seized.

[...]

At the hearing, the NYPD claimed that it only legally forfeited $11,653 in currency last year — that is, gone to court and actually made a case as to why the NYPD should be taking this money.

[...]

In the accounting summaries which the Bronx Defenders submitted as part of its testimony, the NYPD reports that as of December 2013, its property clerk had almost $69 million in seized cash on hand. This amount had been carried over from previous years, showing an annual accumulation of seized cash that has reached an enormous amount. The documents also show that each month, the five property clerk’s offices across the city took in tens of thousands of dollars in cash, ultimately generating over $6 million in revenue for the department.

And where did the Bronx Defenders get its numbers? The same software the NYPD claims can't produce these numbers.

The report that the NYPD released appears to have been generated through the same use of their database that the department now claims is technologically impossible.

At the point of the database's inception, the NYPD claimed it would provide "cradle-to-grave" tracking of seized property. Apparently "cradle-to-grave" is about as meaningless a phrase as "unlimited data:" both terminate far sooner than their descriptors would indicate.

It may be the software can't handle complex queries encompassing the entirety of its seizure records, but that's not an acceptable excuse. The problem should have been caught and fixed by this point. I'm pretty sure the NYPD has some way of tracking seized assets since it seems to have few concerns about bouncing checks when spending the proceeds. But it's sure as hell not going to turn this over to opponents of its sketchy seizure programs without a fight. So when it became apparent the database would provide next to nothing in terms of accountability, the NYPD considered that a feature, rather than a bug.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, computer systems, nypd, software

NYPD Says Releasing Basic Stingray Contract Info Will Result In A Supercriminal Apocalypse

from the some-prime-ass-talking-going-on-here dept

Secrecy still continues to shroud law enforcement Stingray use, in large part because courts have been far too receptive to the government's insistence that the release of any details at all would result in the expensive tech being rendered instantly useless.

The NYPD has decided to go past the usual "law enforcement means and methods" obfuscatory tactics and push a rather novel narrative about why it would be "dangerous" for IMSI catcher info to make its way into the public domain. (I mean more so… I guess.)

Joseph Cox of Motherboard reports the NYPD's latest opacity play involves hoodie-wearing males operating laptops in underlit rooms and comic book supervillain-esque levels of coordinated criminal activity.

In a recent case, the New York Police Department (NYPD) introduced a novel argument for keeping mum on the subject: Asked about the tools it uses, it argued that revealing the different models of IMSI catchers the force owned would make the devices more vulnerable to hacking.

In the words [PDF] of the NYPD's Gregory Antonsen, hackers would be able to crack open Stingrays like OPM records if the department were to turn over Harris Corp. contract info and nondisclosure agreements to the New York branch of the ACLU in response to its FOIL request. Also: terrorism.

The purpose of this affidavit is to explain the reasons that disclosing the Withheld Records would cause grave damage to counterterrorism and law enforcement operations, and so could endanger the lives or safety of New Yorkers.

Additionally, disclosing the Withheld Records would reveal confidential and non-routine criminal investigative techniques, which would hamper ability to conduct operations and would permit perpetrators to evade detection. Moreover, disclosure of the Withheld Records would jeopardize the ability of NYPD to secure its information technology assets.

After detailing the use of Stingrays to perform a variety of heartwarming investigations (tracking down a missing elderly person, rescuing someone from sex trafficking, etc.), Antonsen gets down to business. According to the NYPD's theory, any information released about the NYPD's IMSI catcher contracts could be "scrutinized" by bad guys who would be able to infer from extremely limited information the extent of the department's cellphone-tracking capabilities. It's basically the mosaic theory, but without the mosaic.

But the far stupider assertion is the one made without any supportive citations -- just a far-fetched hypothetical.

The CSS technologies are also critical and essential information technology assets. As such, all CSS technologies require periodic software updates. Public disclosure of the specifications of the CSS technologies in the NYPD's possession from the Withheld Records would make the software vulnerable to hacking and would jeopardize ability to keep the technologies secure. Of great concern is that a highly sophisticated hacker could use the knowledge of CSS technologies to invade the CSS software undetected, thus creating a situation in which law enforcement personnel are lured into a situation based on a misleading cell-phone location and are then trapped and ambushed.

The ACLU's Chris Soghoian has responded [PDF] to the NYPD's assertions. As to the claims that providing contract information would somehow result in sophisticated criminals finding ways to route around this surveillance, Soghoian points out that every Stingray device -- no matter its capabilities -- can be defeated by even the dumbest thug… and all without having to scour a redacted invoice for clues.

The most effective countermeasure, which can be used by anyone at no cost is to simply turn off a phone or put it into airplane mode. This will thwart tracking by any model of Stingray. Knowing the models of Stingrays that the NYPD uses does not make this countermeasure more or less effective. It is 100% effective regardless of which models of Stingrays the NYPD uses.

Soghoian went easy on the "but criminals will beat our IMSI catchers" argument. The "but we'll be hacked" argument is treated with all the respect it deserves: none.

It would be a serious problem if the costly surveillance devices purchased by the NYPD without public competitive bidding are so woefully insecure that the only thing protecting them from hackers is the secrecy surrounding their model names.

He also chides the NYPD for making claims the federal government isn't even willing to make.

The Harris Corporation, which in addition to manufacturing Stingrays has been awarded public contracts for securing the President's communications and supplying secure radios used by the U.S. Army, is clearly capable of designing secure products for its government customers that does not rely on keeping secret the mere existence of the devices for their security.

Soghoian also points out that the release of other information would similarly have zero effect on the devices' capabilities. Because they spoof cell towers, it does criminals no good to know how many the NYPD has or even where they tend to deploy them. A cellphone can't tell it's connected to a BS "tower." And just because the NYPD may be more likely to deploy them in certain areas does not guarantee that avoiding those areas will allow criminals to avoid detection.

And this wonderful paragraph snarkily deflates the NYPD's paranoid ravings its tech officers deploy as justification for continued secrecy.

Inspector Antonsen also claims that knowing the number of Stingrays owned by the NYPD may enable an extremely well-resourced criminal group to orchestrate a greater number of simultaneous hostage situations than the number of Stingrays available to the NYPD. Even assuming that such a sophisticated criminal group made the unlikely decision to rely on its knowledge of the number of Stingrays in the possession to use cell phones in executing such a hypothetical event, knowing that number will not help them as it is almost certainly the case that one, if not multiple, federal law enforcement agencies would step in and assist the NYPD with their own cellular surveillance technology. Moreover, this hypothetical is no different from saying that at some point some criminal group may be able to overwhelm the number of police cars that the NYPD owns or the number of police officers on the force.

It's hard to believe law enforcement is still throwing out these tired arguments after nearly a decade of incremental exposure of Stingray information. The NYPD wants publicly-available information (Stingray names, suggested retail prices) to somehow be the first cat successfully stuffed back into the bag. Since it has no legitimate arguments to justify this cat stuffing, tech officers are resorting to hypothetical scenarios even the most-handwavingest of sci-fi writers wouldn't feel comfortable inserting into their speculative fiction.

Filed Under: criminals, foia, hackers, imsi catcher, nypd, stingray, transparency

NYPD Suddenly Stops Making Disciplinary Documents Public; Cites 'Saving Paper,' 40-Year-Old Law

from the New-York-Civil-Code,-Sec.-GFY dept

The NYPD may not have time to update its Muslim surveillance policies or inform its officers of changes to its stop-and-frisk program, but it certainly has time to dig around for policies it can use to keep even more information out of the public's hands.

The New York Daily News reports the NYPD has been paging through old laws and has found something that will be useful in further reducing the department's accountability. (h/t Reason)

Citing a clause in a 40-year-old law, the NYPD has suddenly decided to keep records regarding the discipline of officers under lock and key — and will no longer release the information to the public, the Daily News has learned.

For decades, journalists have had access to "Personnel Orders." The NYPD used to hang these on a clipboard in its public information office. The orders contained information about closed internal investigations of police misconduct -- namely, by detailing promotions withheld, etc. Then, suddenly, the NYPD just stopped posting the orders.

When asked, the NYPD first claimed to be very interested in conserving renewable resources.

The clipboard has not been updated since April, when an order dated March 31 was posted. At the time, the NYPD told The News it was saving paper.

Then, when presumably asked if digital copies were going to be made available, the NYPD changed it story. The real reason is an NYPD lawyer with far too much time on their hands found a clause in a 1976 law that could serve as yet another departmental middle finger in the direction of transparency.

Asked what prompted the shift, Deputy Chief Edward Mullen, a police spokesman, said “somebody” in the department’s Legal Bureau realized that, for years, it had been giving out information it should not have.

Sure enough, the law appears to say what the NYPD says it says.

All personnel records used to evaluate performance toward continued employment or promotion, under the control of any police agency or department of the state… shall be considered confidential and not subject to inspection or review without the express written consent of such police officer, … correction officer or peace officer within the department of corrections and community supervision except as may be mandated by lawful court order.

But why is it doing this now? If it's been handing out this info for "decades," then it's been posting the records publicly since shortly after the law was enacted that says it doesn't have to without being presented with a court order. It appears the NYPD's office is permanently tasked with finding ways to keep any details about officer misconduct away from the public. And the answer's been staring the NYPD in the face since pretty much the moment it started posting personnel records.

The NYPD's unofficial policy on transparency and accountability is to only address either if forced to. And yet, it claims it's so open and transparent it can hardly stand it.

Police officials have argued the NYPD puts out more information than it ever has.

More crime stats and reports are posted online, precincts routinely use Twitter to provide updates and use-of-force reports will soon be provided to the City Council.

When you're releasing only the sort of data that mainly details wrongdoing by others (crime stats, Twitter updates, arrest reports), then it's really easy to be "open" and "transparent." The stuff the NYPD is more reluctant to turn over (use-of-force reports) is still running through additional filters (the city council) before it ends up in the hands of the public.

What's really of public interest now are details on police misconduct and how departments are handling internal investigations. And right at the height of this interest, the NYPD is using a 40-year-old law to cut the public out of the loop.

Filed Under: disciplinary documents, foia, nypd, privacy

Inspector General Finds NYPD's Surveillance Of Muslims Routinely Violated Consent Decree Guidelines

from the nypd-blew dept

Following two lawsuits against the NYPD for its pervasive, rights-violating surveillance of the city's Muslims, the department's Inspector General took a look at a sampling of cases from 2010-2015 to see if the Handschu Agreement -- crafted in 1985 and heavily modified in 2002 -- was being followed. The short answer is "No." So is the long answer [PDF].

The guideline was part of a consent decree created in response to pervasive NYPD surveillance of activities protected by the First Amendment, even when no unlawful activity was suspected. The guideline worked for awhile, but the 9/11 attacks changed that. The NYPD brought in two former CIA employees who decided to turn a domestic law enforcement agency into Langley on the Hudson. Former CIA officer David Cohen used terrorism fears to compel a judge to significantly modify the Handschu Agreement.

From that point on, the NYPD steadily abused the revamped agreement. Its "Demographics Unit" designated entire mosques as terrorist entities, placed the city's Muslims under surveillance, and -- best of all -- generated zero leads.

The Inspector General's report points out that the NYPD couldn't even comply with the relaxed, post-9/11 Handschu Agreement. Instead, the Demographics Unit copy-pasted justifications for pervasive surveillance and passed them up the ladder to the rubber stamps handling the approval process.

OIG-NYPD’s investigation found that NYPD, while able to articulate a valid basis for commencing investigations, was often non-compliant with a number of the rules governing the conduct of these investigations. For example, when applying for permission to use an undercover officer or confidential informant, the application must state the particular role of the undercover in that specific investigation, so that the need for this intrusive technique can be evaluated. NYPD almost never included such a fact-specific discussion in its applications, but instead repeatedly used generic, boilerplate text to seek such permission. Tellingly, this boilerplate text was so routine that the same typographical error had been cut and pasted into virtually every application OIG-NYPD reviewed, going back over a decade.

The NYPD's response [PDF] to the report disputes the accusation of using boilerplate permission slips. But that's all it does. It fails to explain how each individual request somehow contained the same typographical error. Repeatedly. For fourteen years.

The NYPD disagrees with the Report’s characterization that the extensions of Preliminary Inquiries contain “boilerplate language.” To the contrary, extension requests include a full and detailed recitation of the key facts justifying investigation, including any new facts/updates learned since the investigation was opened. Often, the added facts learned since the opening of an investigation strengthen the original predicate.

Once an investigation was under way, NYPD supervisors tended to take a very hands-off approach.

Further, among all cases reviewed, NYPD continued its investigations even after legal authorization expired more than half of the time. Often more than a month of unauthorized investigation occurred before NYPD belatedly sought to renew the authorization.

As the IG points out, this is completely unacceptable. The Agreement is there for a reason: to prevent unlawful surveillance. But the NYPD is left alone to ensure its own compliance with the guideline. There's no judicial oversight of these activities -- not like there is with searches, seizures, and stops. Left to police itself, the NYPD proved unworthy of the trust placed in it.

These failures cannot be dismissed or minimized as paperwork or administrative errors. The very reason these rules were established was to mandate rigorous internal controls to ensure that investigations of political activity – which allow NYPD to intrude into the public and private aspects of people’s lives – were limited in time and scope and to ensure that constitutional rights were not threatened.

[...]

As a result, until OIG-NYPD conducted this review, there had never been any routine, independent third-party review to ensure compliance with these rules. NYPD's compliance failures demonstrate the need for ongoing oversight, which OIG-NYPD will now provide.

The NYPD's response admits as much, even as it challenges many of the Inspector General's recommendations. Since February 2002, the NYPD's Demographics Unit has been grading its own papers. A law enforcement hot take, written by a CIA officer and pushed past a local judge, has guided the NYPD for almost 15 years. What it's left behind is a long string of First and Fourth Amendment violations. What it hasn't left behind is a string of successful investigations. Or a coherent paper trail.

This is the NYPD in its own words, arguing with IG about the office's findings.

First, the NYPD didn't implement electronic tracking of its Demographics Unit cases until after it was already on the losing end of two civil rights lawsuits.

The Intelligence Bureau began discussing the development of an electronic case tracking system for Handschu investigations in February 2016 to assist in complying with the proposed modifications to the Handschu Guidelines as part of the settlement in the Handschu and Raza litigations.

It will only now begin thinking about keeping all related investigative documents together in one place.

While the prior history of a case and/or its proposed subject(s) is set forth in the Investigative Statement, the Intelligence Bureau will consider if there is a more effective way to trace the full history of an investigation, including other levels of investigation (i.e., checking of leads, Preliminary Inquiries, etc.) which may have occurred related to its underlying facts.

It will also only now start thinking about documenting the written approval process for deploying new informants or extending the use of existing ones.

The Intelligence Bureau will consider the development of best practices for documenting the written approval of the use of human sources in Handschu investigations by the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence, including name, signature, and date.

Even though the NYPD has been running investigations under the modified Handschu Agreement since 2002, it won't be until later this year that it will finally deliver a comprehensive compilation of baseline policies governing terrorism-focused investigations.

As is evidenced by the Inspector General's findings -- and the NYPD's own admissions -- the department has never been interested in accountability. It's far more interested in pretending it's the DEA, FBI, CIA, and NSA all rolled into one local law enforcement office. And it operates with a level of opacity surpassing the federal agencies it aspires to be. The report finds a pattern of noncompliance and the NYPD defends itself by either pointing out that if there's no requirement to do something, it sure as hell isn't going to do it, or nodding thoughtfully and promising to get right on things it should have addressed more than a decade ago.

Filed Under: handschu agreement, muslims, nypd, surveillance

The NYPD's Third 'Forfeiture' Option: Call Seized Items 'Evidence;' Never Give Them Back

from the the-system-works dept

It's not just asset forfeiture being used by law enforcement to take property away from people. With civil asset forfeiture (as opposed to criminal asset forfeiture), property is deemed "guilty," even if its former possessors are not. Kaveh Waddell of The Atlantic is highlighting another way law enforcement agencies are taking possession of property: by calling it "evidence" and playing keep away with former defendants who've had their cases dismissed or have been acquitted.

Last summer, Kenneth Clavasquin was arrested in front of the Bronx apartment he shared with his mother. While the 23-year-old was being processed, the New York Police Department took his possessions, including his iPhone, and gave him a receipt detailing the items in police custody. That receipt would be his ticket to getting back his stuff after his case ended.

But the ticket is worthless. His case was dismissed but no one involved in the seizure of his items showed any interest in returning them. He brought the court's dismissal to the NYPD to retrieve his iPhone but the property desk claimed it was being held as "arrest evidence" -- even though there were no more criminal charges forthcoming. He was sent to the District Attorney's office to ask for permission to obtain the no longer needed "evidence," but the office was less than interested in helping him reclaim his belongings.

Clavasquin needed to get a release from the district attorney’s office stating that his property would no longer be needed for evidence. Over the following three months, he repeatedly called the assistant district attorney assigned to his case, but he neither got a release nor a written explanation of why he was being denied one.

Then, with the help of an attorney at the Bronx Defenders, a public-defender office that had been representing him since the day after his arrest, Clavasquin sent a formal written request for the district attorney’s release. He got no response.

Clavasquin's iPhone was seized in the summer of 2015. His case was dismissed in December. The phone is still in the possession of the NYPD while Clavasquin has continued making monthly service contract payments for a phone he can't use.

The article points out that this noxious blend of asset seizure and bureaucratic malaise affects "hundreds, if not thousands" of New York City arrestees. The city is now facing a class-action lawsuit over this process, filed by Clavasquin and two others with the help of Brooklyn Defenders. In these cases, neither form of asset forfeiture -- civil or criminal -- is being used. Instead, the NYPD is tying up possessions seized during arrests in miles of red tape, subverting what would appear from the outside to be a straightforward, two-step process: case dismissed, items returned.

Even if someone is able to move heaven, earth, and the District Attorney's office, that's not the end of the frustration. One thing most arrestees carry often disappears into the evidence locker as well, greatly increasing the difficulty of retrieving possessions.

The NYPD property clerk, which actually holds on to the items, requires two forms of ID before releasing any property. Drumming up two forms of ID can be difficult on its own, but it’s made harder still if the person’s wallet, which may contain a driver’s license, is in police custody. (The property clerk won’t count a seized license as a valid form of ID.)

Not only is the process labyrinthine, frustrating, and nonsensical, but there's a clock ticking the whole time. A person has 120 days from the point the criminal case has ended to demand return of their items from the NYPD. If their case has been dismissed, they have 270 days to secure the elusive release form from the DA's office -- something that explains the office's disinterest in answering phone calls, emails or letters asking for this piece of paper. Once the clock runs out, the city is free to auction off the seized property.

If the DA's office wants to put seized items into indefinite limbo, all it has to do is classify them as "investigatory evidence," which means they might be used at some point in future to further a criminal investigation. The DA's office has every reason to put seized items out of reach of their owners and very little compelling it to relinquish control of property that can eventually be used to (indirectly) fund its office. In practical terms, being arrested by the NYPD means losing whatever you had on you permanently -- unless you have the funds to pay an aggressive lawyer to navigate the deliberately daunting retrieval process.

Also of note is the fact that the most common item in NYPD evidence lockers are cellphones. Considering how many of these were seized during run-of-the-mill arrests, one has to question assertions made by district attorneys like Cyrus Vance, who claim there are hundreds of phones prosecutors and investigators can't access because of encryption. Sure, the numbers may be correct (Vance claimed his office was dealing with 175 uncrackable phones), but one has to ask how many of these actually may hold evidentiary value, and how many are simply sitting around waiting for the clock to run out so they can be auctioned.

It's just another form of legal robbery, once you strip away the bureaucratic lingo and law enforcement statements that try to give this a veneer of respectability. When criminal cases are dismissed, seized belonging are "evidence" of nothing and should be released to their owners. Instead, law enforcement agencies and district attorneys offices are working together to keep non-criminals from their rightful belongings.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, evidence, nypd