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Friend,
All month long, you were more likely to find the S.T.O.P. team in the halls of City government than at our desks. From the courthouse to City Hall, we’ve spent the past few weeks downtown making sure the people in power hear from New Yorkers who refuse to be surveilled.
Last Thursday, I joined our pro-bono co-counsel, Gideon Oliver, in court to demand NYPD comply with public records requests. A judge recently ordered the NYPD to hand over 125,000 previously hidden public records after we won in our FOIL omnibus lawsuit challenging the department’s stonewalling of thirteen of our requests. Those records cover protest surveillance, mobile wiretaps, NYPD’s ties to Palantir and Clearview AI, and the sprawling Domain Awareness System. As Hell Gate reported this week, years of delays and denials could now land Commissioner Tisch in contempt of court. We’ll keep litigating until every last record is produced.
That same day, S.T.O.P. rallied with the City Council’s Progressive Caucus as they unveiled their 2026 legislative priorities, including two bills we’ve long championed. Ban The Scan (Int. 213), sponsored by Council Member Shahana Hanif, would bar stores, arenas, and other public-facing businesses from using facial recognition and biometric surveillance to identify customers. Int. 460, led by the GANGS Coalition and sponsored by Council Member Althea Stevens, would abolish NYPD’s racist gang database for good, outlawing a system that has criminalized young New Yorkers of color simply for who they know and where they live.
At the start of the month, we brought the fight against biased AI to City Hall. On October 5, the City Council held a first-in-the-nation AI oversight hearing, interrogating executives from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic about the dangers their products pose. S.T.O.P. Advocacy & Community Engagement Manager, Corinne Worthington, submitted testimony urging the Council to go further and confront AI’s discriminatory impact in policing, hiring, and other high-risk areas.
Help us keep the momentum going! Take action to support Ban The Scan and get involved in the GANGS Coalition’s fight to erase the database today.
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