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NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester
- reverendsteveii 1y ago>bypassed ban Broke the law is the phrase we want here. They did an illegal thing. They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights.
- maeil 1y agoWanna go bypass some burglary laws to take expensive things out of people's houses? Assuming you're a cop of course, otherwise we'll go to jail.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoI'm not a cop. I'm a politician though, so while we're there lets murder them and traffick their kids. I love being a member of a class to whom the law very blatantly just does not apply.
- gruez 1y ago>They didn't just scoot past a barrier, they violated people's rights. Claiming that an administrative policy against using facial recognition as a "right" seems like a stretch.
- elashri 1y ago> Claiming that an administrative policy against using facial recognition as a "right" seems like a stretch. This is such strange way to describe "right for privacy".
- gruez 1y agoBut it's not really a "right". The next police commissioner/mayor could conceivably overturn it if they wanted to. That's not the same as most other "rights", free speech for instance. More importantly to this case, because the police only violated a policy and not a constitutional right, the defense can't apply to have the evidence tossed under the exclusionary rule.
- johnisgood 1y agoI remember a case (in Eastern Europe) where someone who took a video of their colleagues sleeping during a night shift got in trouble for the usage of phone (which is known to be used BTW), and nothing happened to the ones sleeping through the night shift. We are talking about a facility full of people with dementia and are known to go back and forth the hospital for serious falls and all that (at night, too). So backwards.
- tetromino_ 1y agoWhich is in some ways similar to the case in this article. The police violated department policy to identify the student who hurled a rock at another student. And the article is somehow painting the rock-throwing attacker as a victim, even talking about the attacker's complaints that they were identified and are now receiving hate mail.
- actionfromafar 1y agoYes?
- FireBeyond 1y agoYes? The person hit by the rock is a victim of whomever threw it, be this person or another. And this person is the victim of the police department's policy violation. These things can coexist.
- zimpenfish 1y ago> The police violated department policy to identify the student who hurled a rock at another student. Allegedly. The article doesn't mention any evidence that he actually did. > "Per the record before this court, there is no additional evidence connecting the defendant to the alleged incident — no surveillance video to and from his home, no independent identification by others in attendance." No evidence. > "This case is premised on the complainant's word that he was the target of criminal actions by another person, and that other person was the defendant." Weak evidence (with potential bias.) > "The NYPD digitally altered the defendant's DMV photograph [...] never sought the metadata which would clearly indicate how, when, and perhaps by whom the photo was doctored." Manufactured evidence. > "That statement alone renders these medical records discoverable as possible impeachment material, necessitating their disclosure [...] Yet the People [...] have articulated no efforts to obtain these records" Withholding evidence from the defence. All in all, utter bullshit from the prosecution.
- kazinator 1y agoHurling a rock at someone is privacy now?
- elashri 1y agoThis is the classical problem of do the police have the right to violate rules and law in order to bring case or not? The problem is that this open the box of abuse of power and rights of people to become the norm.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoIt's really fortunate that no one is arguing that because you're right, it would be a pretty absurd stance to take. What we're saying is that not doing anything wrong entitles you to privacy and until you're tried and convicted you didn't do anything wrong. I dare say the fact that the case was dismissed with prejudice goes pretty strongly in our favor on this one.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kazinator 1y agoThis idea about it being a privacy issue is completely false. Firstly, if the police have probable cause, then your privacy can be invaded in order to search for evidence. For instance, Hans Reiser was not convicted at the time his Honda Civic was searched. Secondly, it is admissible to have an eyewitness identify you. Someone who knows you can testify that you were at a certain time and certain public place. Someone who doesn't know you can testify that someone who looks exactly like you was at a certain time and place. This is not a privacy violation. Public pictures are not private information. The reason we don't necessarily want police being able to match faces across databases of public images has nothing to do with privacy concerns. It's the concern that the ability gives too much power to the state, risking the rise of a surveillance state, which can use the technique to identify members of targeted groups. In other aspects it is a very good technique that can help bring wrongdoers to justice. In other words, it's about managing unintended consequences, not about privacy principles.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoIf the police aren't bound by policies they create themselves and voluntarily agree as an organization to be bound by, what are they bound by?
- 93po 1y agoYou have a right to due process, which means operating within their defined laws and systems That policy exists as a scape-goat to there not getting actual laws passed that would make it flatly illegal. This way they can prevent the real law, still break the rules, and get away with it
- polarbear67 1y ago[flagged]
- jen20 1y agoA secondary question: what rights do you have when someone else does that? What rights _should_ you have in that situation?
- sokoloff 1y agoYou should have the same rights as the underlying situation. If I photograph you in public, where you have no reasonable expectations of privacy, you should have no expectations of privacy over the photograph’s contents nor over my commentary about it. If I photograph you in a private setting, you should expect that privacy extends to the photographic record of it as well.
- gruez 1y ago>A city fire marshal used FDNY’s access to a facial recognition software to help NYPD detectives identify a pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University, circumventing policies that tightly restrict the Police Department’s use of the technology. Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?
- dmix 1y agoThe cop emailed the Fire Marshal who technically does investigations for stuff like arson. Maybe that's the justification for it, not sure.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoSame operating model of law enforcement laundering their data requests on the Flock Safety/Group ALPR platform through adjacent agencies who have access. My hot take is this should be a termination and criminal offense in public employment (as a cybersecurity/risk mgmt practitioner).
- dmix 1y agoOr Five Eyes doing data sharing between themselves which 'incidentally' bypasses domestic surveillance laws https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-deal-surveillance-personal-data https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/us-uk-secret-d...
- geodel 1y agoThis sounds great. Have your clients or employers followed this advice?
- toomuchtodo 1y agoYes, and in some cases, I was the person who had to sign off on the termination after providing a packet from the incident response case (which feels about as terrible as having to lay someone off, having had to do that before too).
- pbiggar 1y agoCan we talk about the fact that such a tool exists? A private company is able to take a photo and identify you. Scary shit!
- ge96 1y ago[flagged]
- moomin 1y agoTry taking a photo of your partner first thing in the morning and posting it online. You’ll probably figure out the distinction.
- soulofmischief 1y agoIt doesn't matter what I do if friends or family are posting me online as well.
- tantalor 1y ago> take a photo and identify you Actually neither happened. The article says they were not able to find any identifiable information online. They had to use drivers license instead. > the fire marshal sent links to Clearview AI face search results, an archive of school play photos and another to an archive of high school formal photos. He said he couldn’t find associated social media but offered to get a driver’s license photo for the detective. “We have access to that,” he wrote. I read the sequence as, 1. They started with a protest video 2. Clearview provided public images of the same person, but no name. It was certainly more identifiable (e.g., their high school). 3. Then somehow they get the driver's license photo. Do they use the original protest video, or the Clearview images? How does this search even work? Nobody knows. Lazy journalism. As readers, we have no idea if the Clearview search was actually important, or a dead end.
- 542354234235 1y agoI think it might be an error in the article, specifically >A minute later, the detective sent the fire marshal Ahmed’s name, date of birth and driver’s license number. Within five minutes, the fire marshal replied, “Bingo.” I believe that is supposed to say that the fire marshal sent the detective the license information. The Fire Marshal was clearly able to find identifiable information online, in the form of multiple high school photos, but was unsuccessful getting a match to any social media accounts. So the facial recognition worked and found matches in Clearview AI’s database of scraped school photos, but not their database of scraped social media photos. Then the Fire Marshal offered to get a driver’s license photo, and says he has access [presumably to the DMV database]. The fact the about a minute later, license information was passed, sounds like a search was run by the Fire Marshal, a match popped up, and he sent it to the detective. But it could be that the detective used high school photos (being higher quality and full front facing) to run a search against the DMV records (which the police have access to with “permission from supervisors”) but according to other articles about the NYPD in general, it doesn't seem like that are able to run facial recognition on DMV records. Either way, I think the ID came directly from the information the Fire Marshal passed and the Judge said as much. >The NYPD would not have identified Ahmed but for the FDNY’s Clearview AI search and accessing the DMV photo, the judge indicated in her ruling
- atoav 1y agoSo while we are making funny euphemisms I hope I can "bypass ownership laws" to relieve the author of the money on their bank account. The state of journalism in 2025 is such they can't even call a spade a spade.
- AlexandrB 1y agoAnother funny one: "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester" when they mean "Assault Suspect". I don't get why they're trying to associate pro Palestinian protesters with the actions of a few violent actors.
- mattnewton 1y agoThis one I'm not so sure is clearer - the charges were dismissed, and the fact that he was protesting for Palestine was interesting enough to the police to investigate as a potential hate crime, and may have motivated the police to break the facial ID law here, so it seems relevant enough to put in the title.
- atoav 1y agoYes, but when a white guy with a swastika tattoo kills a black guy media speculates about the reasons. What could it be?
- polarbear67 1y agoThe company used, Clearview AI, collects publicly available imagery. It would be different if the government was providing it. Here's an idea: maybe don't post your photos on social media. Still scary nonetheless.
- actionfromafar 1y ago[flagged]
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago“Don’t post your photos on social media” is precisely describing a chilling effect on people’s expression, i.e. the exact thing the First Amendment is designed to protect against.
- polarbear67 1y agoIf a user is willingly uploading their photos to a private company to be publicly shared, how does 1A apply?
- kopecs 1y agoI think the suggestion is that the government use of that public data could be such as to create a chilling effect. That is, the upload and interaction of the user with the private company is almost irrelevant: it is just part of the antecedent to the government's conduct. If you believe the government would only use that data for just purposes then you probably wouldn't then believe that there is a 1A issue. But if you think the government would use it to identify persons at a protest and then take adverse actions against them on the basis of their presence alone (which to be clear, seems distinguished from the immediate instance) you would probably think there is a 1A issue.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoYou can go do some reading on Third Party Doctrine if you'd like. SCOTUS ruled there are some instances where private use of a service is 1) effectively necessary for modern life and 2) leaks a huge amount of information about the person, then the government cannot utilize it without a warrant even if handed over or sold willingly by the third party. I am suggesting that we likely need to expand Third Party Doctrine to things beyond cell tower data because 1) we don't have absolute control over how/where our images are used and associated with our names, and 2) the technology to later affiliate our always-on/always-visible identities (like faces, gaits, or fingerprints) with our names is getting better and better. You're right that today this is not illegal, but I am pointing out that your argument for "what to do instead" is literally the precise argument for why it should be: it chills protected expression.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- redwood 1y agoWe all got excited and threw a rock once or twice in our youth
- femiagbabiaka 1y agoHow many rights will we be asked to give up in order to squash anti-war sentiment?
- hopelite 1y agoConsidering our government’s practices that most people are not even aware of leading up to WWI and WWI, in addition to the ones people are a bit more aware of regarding the anti-war, pro-peace movements leading up to Vietnam, not to mention what we were forced and willingly gave up following 9/11; most likely the government will abuse us and destroy the very few rights we have in theory. I am 100% sure of this because the government has been 100% consistent and 100% abusive about this, 100% of the time. Even the Civil War was clearly orchestrated and the people were abused and not just rights, but the very core Constitution was essentially destroyed and nullified, and what we’ve had since is nothing more than an abusive invalidated social contract upheld my sheer force, delusion, and bribing. The delusion and bribery part being what keeps people from realizing that.
- one-note 1y agoQuite a lot. The #1 right, for instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theater https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_t... Curious why this is downvoted?
- gr_norm 1y agoI've noticed many right-leaning tech types give quite a lot of lip service to free speech when it's about someone getting banned from a mailing list for being an asshole, and not so much when it's the government quashing protest against genocide. I'll personally always defend the idea of free speech, no matter the side.
- rangestransform 1y agoEverybody feels the need to defend government overreach when it’s in their favour. The most famous example is any non-libertarian political leaning with free speech, but it was the same deal with the “left” complaining about Chevron v. USA being overturned when their guy was in power.
- neuroelectron 1y agoWow, NYPD is full of people who support Israel?
- nroets 1y agoThe article says he was suspected of hate crime assault. Then the police has a duty to act. Edit: While I said "duty" I meant that I really hope the that the police investigate all allegations of hate crime assault properly.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neuroelectron 1y agoCertain animals are more equal than others.
- maximinus_thrax 1y agoThe police has absolutely no duty to act whatsoever. See Warren v. District of Columbia.
- g8oz 1y ago"reduced to a misdemeanor of second degree aggravated harassment" so it looks like the charge was exaggerated in the 1st place. The media and authorities tend to portray Zionist provocateurs as the second coming of Anne Frank when they get into trouble. Something similar happened when Israeli soccer hooligans got roughed up in Amsterdam.
- isleyaardvark 1y agoThe ban on NYPD's usage of facial recognition doesn't have exceptions based on the category of suspected crime.
- pbiggar 1y agoYes, the NYPD is genuinely full of cops who support Israel. They have partnerships with Israel, they are trained by Israeli, the NYPD even has an office in Tel Aviv. Check out the training they get: https://jewishcurrents.org/training-nypd-keffiyeh-watermelon-antisemitism-israel-palestine https://jewishcurrents.org/training-nypd-keffiyeh-watermelon...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- game_the0ry 1y agoOnce you give the government access to powerful tools, you can be certain they will abuse to maintain their power over you.
- unethical_ban 1y agoIndeed. The 2nd amendment and the notion that we have physical power over the government is going to be whittled away as facial recognition and omnipresent government spying via data brokers gives them all the info they need to spy on every citizen, all the time. AI means they don't only collect all the data they want for when they need it ala NSA 2008, but they can have a robot army of analysts transcribe photos and phone calls instantly and analyze for sentiment, flag for review. If we don't demand, as a society, that government stay out of the business of the people, and that the military stay out of the business of civil society (ICE/National Guard/Marines), we are in for true evil.
- mistrial9 1y agoat least in government there are paths to discovery; corporate applications on the other hand..
- game_the0ry 1y agoWell, keep in mind, corporate donors own the government.
- andrewla 1y ago[flagged]
- i_love_retros 1y agoJust because the police said he threw a rock doesn't mean he threw a rock.
- deleted 1y ago
- jmyeet 1y agoThere are two takeaways from this: 1. US foreign policy is uniparty. As terrible as this administration is, remember that quashing anti-war protests happened under Biden, too. Columbia, Hind Hall, etc were all under Biden. That being said, moving to deport or denaturalize pro-Palestinian protestors is new; and 2. The state will turn violent to quash anti-imperialist sentiment. Let me give you some examples: 1. The MOVE bombing. In Philadelphia in 1985 there was a black liberation group called MOVE. After a day-long standoff with police, the police dropped a C4 explosive from a helicotper on the house. The resulting fire killed 11; 2. Kent State. In 1970, there was an anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. The Ohio National Guard had been called in. The protestors were unarmed. The National Guard were at least 100 yards from the protestors. Yet at some point the protestors got scared and fired on the protestors, killing 4; and 3. At a pro-Palestinian protest at UCLA, the encampment was attacked by pro-Zionists. The police stood by and did nothing and the next day used that violence as an excuse to violently break up the protest. Facial recognition, mass surveillance, social media checks at ports of entry, weaponized deportation, etc. The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests.
- hearsathought 1y ago> 1. US foreign policy is uniparty. Only in regards to one foreign entity. > Let me give you some examples: 2 of those 3 directly involve the US and US action. The outlier says a lot. > The state simply will not tolerate anti-imperialist protests. The current administration ran on an anti-imperialist platform. You can protest american, russian, french, chinese, british imperialism all you want. You can quote george washington's warning about empires and foreign wars all day long. What you can't protest is israel. Period.
- hersko 1y ago[flagged]
- hearsathought 1y ago> Anyone can protest whatever they want. This is such blatant lie that it exposes you outright. > You don't have the right to throw rocks at people. Who says you have the right to throw rocks at people? Other than god in the torah, I know of no one who supports throwing rocks at anyone. > If you think Israel is controlling the US I don't have to think. The leader of israel literally went on american news and ordered the administration and state leaders to crack down on protests on US college campuses. And it immediately happened all over the country from ny to texas to california. > getting them to arrest peaceful Palestinian protesters Arrest violent palestinian and Israeli protestors. I don't care. But why lie about the crackdown on peaceful protestors?
- neilv 1y agoThis seems to be a mixed bag for privacy. You have the judge coming down on the side of privacy, which is good; but the circumstances of the particular case are troubling (allegations of someone throwing a rock at someone else). I'd be happier gaining ground for privacy rights with cases about, e.g., blanket surveillance, using surveillance for political purposes, surveillance capitalism, etc. Then we figure out where the best lines are for when surveillance actually should or can be used. (Edit: And ill-considered downvotes is why I'm not going to bother to try to have a meaningful discussion on HN.)
- beepbooptheory 1y agoMaking a whole big "but" around something that probably happens on a playground everyday feels at best like bad faith here. Just maybe a low bar for "troubling," and is the perfect framing and mindset for allowing exceptions like this to continue to be pushed through.
- neilv 1y ago> feels at best like bad faith here I think accusations of bad faith of other commenters is against HN guidelines.
- necovek 1y agoThe problem with that approach is that it will validate police illegal surveillance, and they'll only do more and more of it.
- rangestransform 1y agoThe ACLU doesn’t defend nazis for free speech because they think nazi opinions should be embraced by society, but because rights need to be defended for the most reprehensible for them to be truly universal. Same deal here
- mattnewton 1y agoWe either have rights to privacy from the police or we don't - if we lose the “rights” at police discretion we don't. The system has tools like warrants for this. It appears to me as just sloppy policework.
- cardassia 1y ago[flagged]
- 542354234235 1y agoOh well, if he did something bad then it is totally ok for the police to do illegal and unconstitutional things to catch him. Thank god we can trust the police to never ever abuse or misuse things like this. “It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.” - Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
- cardassia 1y ago> if he did something bad "something bad" is doing a lot of work there, good job trying to downplay STONING someone
- 542354234235 1y agoThe constitution applies to everyone, even terrible people. I'd say the exact same thing if he was accused of murdering someone. This may surprise you, but the police often deal with people accused of crimes. It isn't downplaying crime to say that police shouldn't violate constitutional rights.
- zimpenfish 1y ago> how this young man literally stoned a person engaging in political demonstration If you read the judgement, there's no evidence that he did.
- hearsathought 1y agoThe perversion is one side is protesting against genocide and another is protesting in favor of genocide. > Sounds like an actual attack on democracy. There is. And it's by the side you are on.
- hersko 1y ago
- fh87z65nf8763 1y ago[flagged]
- focusgroup0 1y ago[flagged]
- andrewla 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago[flagged]
- chowells 1y agoWhy did you call this innocent person a "perp"? Is it because of your pro-police political beliefs?
- jasonlotito 1y ago> This headline is extremely misleading because it leads you to believe that they are IDing this person because they are a "Pro-Palestinian Student Protester". It read like a privacy issue. Then I read your comment, and was confused. > More proper would be "NYPD Bypassed Facial Recognition Ban to ID Rock-Throwing Assailant" This is inaccurate. The charges were dismissed. At best, it's an alleged rock-throwing assailant. > In the end, this is not a free speech issue except tangentially; it is a privacy issue. That's what the original headline suggested to me on first reading. Why did you think the headline was a free speech issue? That being said, the threat of a government disobeying its own rules and policies is a deterrent to free speech.
- andrewla 1y ago[flagged]
- chaps 1y ago"This is right and proper" They literally banned the use of the technology!
- andrewla 1y agoHere I am referring to their desire to find a person who committed what appeared to be a criminal act. I am not excusing their use of the technology, only that the state and specifically the police have a compelling interest to find people who commit crimes. There are lots of limitations on their powers to accomplish this end, but we do want police to investigate crimes.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jgalt212 1y agoWas this person targeted because of protest activity or criminal activity? To me, therein lies the rub. Cops should have access to such systems to investigate crimes.
- commiefornia 1y ago[dead]