In the final Surveillance And The City episode of the season, hosts Albert Fox Cahn, Liz O'Sullivan, and Ali Winston  do a deep dive into all of the surveillance technologies that have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. While non-Western (especially East Asian) countries have received the harshest criticism for invasive and authoritarian measures to contain the virus, how have government responses in the U.K. and here in the U.S., for instance, expanded surveillance in the name of public health? To what extent do apps, wearables, vaccine passports, and other surveillance tech measures ..read more

This week on Surveillance And The City, hosts Albert Fox Cahn, Liz O'Sullivan, and Ali Winston discuss NYPD's so-called "gang database" and its systematic, unconstitutional criminalization of New Yorkers of color. Driven by social media monitoring and other surveillance technology software, NYPD's "gang database" is often described as a new digital form of stop-and-frisk policing, exploiting a highly broad definition of "gang" to justify surveillance of (primarily) Black and Latinx neighborhoods. What criteria are used in identifying alleged gang members? What's the historical context of "gang ..read more

This week on Surveillance And The City, hosts Albert Fox Cahn, Rashida Richardson, and Liz O'Sullivan discuss NYPD's use of a robotic dog in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Robotics design company, Boston Dynamics, began selling "Spot" back in June mainly to utility, energy, and construction companies, as well as healthcare workers, to reach spaces deemed too dangerous for humans. What are the implications of the robotic dog's purchase and (mis)use by NYPD? What does this mean in terms of the surveillance of Black and Brown New Yorkers? We then discuss recent predictive policing tech rebranding attemp ..read more

This week on Surveillance And The City, we discuss the history of FBI surveillance under COINTELPRO (the Counterintelligence Program) and its legacies in "counterterrorism" and the surveillance of anti-racist movements today. How did anticommunist hysteria during the 1950s expand to include the surveillance and incarceration of Civil Rights leaders during the 1960s and 1970s, namely those part of the Black Panther Party (BPP)? What connections can we draw between COINTELPRO and the contemporary surveillance of Muslim Americans after 9/11 and so-called "Black identity extremists" throughout the ..read more

This week on Surveillance And The City, we briefly chat about Facebook's tech war with Australia before diving deep into New York’s growing effort to ban facial recognition. How close are we to a historic win, who’s standing in the way, and how can you help? Hosts Albert Fox Cahn, Liz O'Sullivan, and Ali Winston unpack the issues.  To find out more about the effort to ban facial recognition in NYC or "Ban the Scan," go to: https://www.stopspying.org/ban-the-scan To comment, ask questions, or suggest show topics please email: pod@stopspying.org Suggested reading in this episode: Neil Gaima ..read more

This week on Surveillance and the City: will Minneapolis be the latest city to ban facial recognition? Then, we take a deep dive into the latest reporting on how algorithmic decision making and tech giants are making even more of a mess of the vaccine roll-out. I’m your host, Albert Fox Cahn. With me today is journalist Ali Winston.  For a bit of reading on today's subject we looked at Where do Vaccine Doses Go, and Who Gets Them? The Algorithms Decide by Natasha Singer.    ..read more

This week on Surveillance and the City, we look at the long-awaited release of the POST Act, last year’s groundbreaking NYPD surveillance oversight law.  Will this be a new day for law enforcement transparency, or just the latest NYPD effort to ignore the law.  Then, we’re joined by The Economist’s US Digital editor, Jon Fasman, for a dive into his new book: We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance.  On Stranger Than Science Fiction we all talk about a piece of popular culture that caught our attention this week.  Your hosts this week are: Albe ..read more

This week on Surveillance and the City, we look at the ominous threat of expanded “domestic terrorism” laws in the aftermath of this month’s attack on the Capitol. Will lawmakers learn from the mistakes of the USA PATRIOT Act and other rushed legislation, or are we about the repeat the same mistake all over again?  Albert Fox Cahn, AI activist Liz O’Sullivan and journalist Ali Winston unpack the dense history of domestic terrorism, violent extremism, and white paramilitarism, as well as the issues with the law enforcement  combating it.  Then for 'Stranger Than Science Fiction ..read more

This week on Surveillance and the City, we start by going through incoming President Biden's nominations and appointments, specifically focusing on the Office of Science and Technology, and attempting to divine what we can expect from the new administration.   Next, we examine the consequences of Microsoft's entry into the law enforcement and prison 'markets', Iron Cage, profiled in this piece by Michael Kwet in Al Jazeera.   For 'Stranger Than Science Fiction', we revisit 1981's 'Escape From New York'.   ..read more

This week on Surveillance and the City, we look at the smoldering wreckage of last week’s attack on the capitol, as police boosters use the attack as an excuse to further-expand surveillance. Then we take a hard look at Leticia James and the NYPD oversight inquiry.  Finally, for Stranger Than Science Fiction, we examine 'It Can't Happen Here,' the 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, a dystopia in which fascism is able to prevail in America ..read more