The New York City Police Department has spent over $159 million on surveillance systems and maintenance since 2007 without public oversight, according to newly released documents. The Legal Aid Society (LAS) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) obtained the documents from the NYPD, which include contracts with vendors. They show that the NYPD has spent millions on facial recognition, predictive policing tech and other surveillance systems.

The NYPD made the purchases through a Special Expenses Fund. It didn’t need to gain the approval of the NYC Council or other city officials before signing the contracts, as Wired reports. 

STOP and other privacy groups lobbied for the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which passed last year and requires the NYPD to disclose details about its public surveillance infrastructure. The Special Expenses Fund was shut down after the legislation passed. LAS and STOP threatened legal action if the NYPD didn’t detail its surveillance practices. 

Among the documents are contracts for Palantir, American Science and Engineering (which provides x-ray vans that can detect weapons in vehicles 1,500 feet away) and Idemia Solutions, which provides biometric services such as facial recognition.

The NYPD also signed a contract with KeyW Corporation for Stingray cell tower simulators. Stingrays, also known as international mobile subscriber identity catchers, spoof cell towers to lure mobile phones into connecting to them. The devices can then collect data sent by a phone, such as its location. The NYPD previously admitted it used Stingrays on more than a thousand occasions between 2008 and 2015.

“For years, the NYPD has hidden its surveillance slush fund from the public, not to protect us, but to protect its bottom line,” STOP executive director Albert Fox Cahn said in a statement. “These technologies are expensive, invasive, and just don’t work. But the NYPD isn’t just wasting millions on unproven technologies, it’s putting Black and Brown communities at risk. High tech errors are often just the first step to false arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and being torn away from your family because of a faulty algorithm.”

“No police department or federal agency has gone to the level of depth and transparency on law enforcement tools used in the field that the NYPD did in its POST Act disclosures,” an NYPD spokesperson told Wired in a statement.

Source: Engadget – NYPD secretly spent 9 million on surveillance tech

Twitch has announced that it will offer slightly more detail to users when it hands down suspensions for violating its content rules. As The Verge notes, the Amazon-owned platform can still be frustratingly vague when justifying why a users account has been suspended. The new update will see users informed of the name of the offending stream, the date that it aired, and the rule that it broke, but nothing more.

Opaque moderation has been a problem for Twitch before, and as we reported last year, the site still has a problem with context. In 2020, the platform suspended a professional Valorant player when their young child appeared on the stream while the player was answering the door. There are common-sense reasons to ban minors from streaming, but this was clearly an accident rather than intentional.

A similar incident took place when Twitch, without warning, suddenly demonetized a number of high-profile accounts during the Hot Tub Meta. At the time, it said that it should have “alerted affected streamers to this change before it happened — it was a mistake not to do so.” As we wrote in 2020 the site needs to make much more of an effort to explain why it’s doing what it’s doing or else see the relationship with its community deteriorate even further.

Source: Engadget – Twitch offers slightly more information about suspensions

Wondering what to do with your Bitcoin stash now that you can’t buy a Tesla? It might be time to catch a big-screen flick. According to CNN, AMC has announced that it plans to accept Bitcoin as payment for tickets and snacks at all US theaters by the end of 2021. Company chief Adam Aron didn’t say how you’d make those payments, but he did hint that AMC was also researching other ways it could join the “burgeoning cryptocurrency universe.”

American theaters should also support Apple Pay and Google Pay for online purchases by the end of the year, Aron said.

The executive explained the decision as a result of his stint on the board of Centricus Acquisition Corp, a contractor for the blockchain company Arquit. And yes, the Reddit meme stock frenzy played a role —Aron is aware that many of AMC’s recently added shareholders are “quite enthusiastic” about cryptocurrencies. He’s hoping the tech enthusiasts who pumped up his company’s stock value will be frequent customers, to put it another way.

Whether or not this is a sustainable idea is another matter. Gizmodonotes that crypto transaction fees can be steep, and you might pay a premium for that already expensive soda. The volatility of cryptocurrency remains a problem, too. The Bitcoin you spend on tickets one day could be worth enough to rent a whole theater just a few months later. AMC would have to figure out how to ride that uncertainty without damaging its bottom line.

Source: Engadget – AMC theaters will start accepting Bitcoin this year