Brooklyn Defender Services recommended that the New York City Council take steps to rein in biometric surveillance and pass bills that would limit the use of facial recognition and other biometric data collection in residential buildings and places of public accommodation. In testimony before the Council’s Committee on Technology, Talia Kamran, Staff Attorney & Fellow, Seizure and Surveillance Defense Project, Criminal Defense Practice, warned that these systems do not make New Yorkers safer. They expose people to privacy violations, discriminatory targeting, false arrests, and government access to deeply personal data, with the heaviest burden falling on Black, brown, and heavily policed communities. BDS also argued that the Council must go further by confronting the city’s own use of surveillance tools, from jail voiceprint databases to the NYPD gang database, which can deepen criminalization and family separation, "There is no way to build a humane surveillance state."

Read the full testimony here.