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Friend,
In New York, people are being scanned using facial recognition and other biometric surveillance – your face, your eyes, even your voice – before you even pick up a grocery cart. This isn’t a distant threat or fringe experiment. It’s happening now, in everyday places, because surveillance technology has raced ahead of the laws meant to protect our privacy and civil liberties.
Biometric surveillance doesn’t just collect data; it normalizes the idea that our faces themselves are data. These systems are biased and error-prone, routinely misidentifying Black and brown people, women, transgender and non-binary people. They can be used to target protestors, immigrants, and people seeking reproductive and gender-affirming care. And once your biometric data is taken, you can’t change it like a password. If it’s misused or breached, the harm is permanent.
That’s why this week, S.T.O.P. went virtually (given the snow!) to Albany to meet with state lawmakers and push for something simple and urgent: a ban on biometric surveillance in New York. We urged legislators to advance a package of bills that would stop facial recognition and other biometric tracking in law enforcement, housing, schools, and places of public accommodation.
We’re fighting so New Yorkers can move through their lives without being scanned, tracked, and catalogued – but we need you with us.
Take three minutes to contact your state legislators and urge them to pass the Ban the Scan bills.
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