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NYPD under fire as ‘Orwellian’ surveillance system of 15k facial recognition cameras revealed

Neighbourhoods home to people of colour are particularly closely covered by police monitoring systems

Andrew Naughtie
Friday 04 June 2021 03:28 BST
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Study details extend of NYPD surveillance infrastructure

A new study by Amnesty International has found that the New York Police Department (NYPD) can track people across three of the city’s five boroughs using facial recognition technology combined with a staggering number of surveillance cameras.

The NGO said the scale and power of the police department’s systems give it an “Orwellian” ability to track people across the city – with particularly severe implications for those already targeted by discriminatory policing practices.

At the start of May, Amnesty recruited thousands of volunteers to tag surveillance cameras at intersections across Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx using images from Google Street View. They have so far identified 15,280 cameras across the three boroughs, with certain neighbourhoods particularly heavily surveilled.

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