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This article was published in partnership with The Intercept<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n In January, when New York City Mayor Eric Adams released his <\/span>highly publicized<\/span><\/a> inaugural \u201c<\/span>blueprint<\/span><\/a>\u201d to <\/span>combat gun violence<\/span><\/a>, it set the stage for political commotion. His plans for ramped up policing \u2014 including new gun detection technology, increased patrols, and the redeployment of a <\/span>notorious plainclothes unit<\/span><\/a> \u2014 have drawn condemnation from advocates and activists, and praise from mainstream pundits, fueling the ongoing debate over cops\u2019 role in communities.<\/span><\/p>\n Around the same time Adams released his plan, New York\u2019s governor, Kathy Hochul, unveiled details of her own policing initiatives to crack down on gun crime \u2014 but hardly anyone seemed to noticebut to virtually no controversy. Embedded within the dozen bills and hundreds of line items that make up her plan for next year\u2019s state budget, Hochul\u2019s administration has proposed tens of millions of dollars and several new initiatives to expand state policing and investigative power, including agencies\u2019 ability to surveil New Yorkers and gather intelligence on people not yet suspected of breaking the law.<\/span><\/p>\n Among Hochul\u2019s proposals are a new statewide system of police intelligence gathering centers, which would engage in mass surveillance, and whose model hinges on the use of unproven forensic science. Other proposals include funds for new law enforcement social media surveillance personnel, the expansion of existing police intelligence gathering and sharing efforts, and most likely technology that downloads the full contents of people\u2019s cellphones, on top of millions of dollars for more street policing.<\/span><\/p>\n Several of the initiatives would be housed under New York state\u2019s primary fusion center \u2014 one of <\/span>at least 80<\/span><\/a> secretive intelligence hubs created during the post-September 11, 2001, expansion of domestic surveillance \u2014 as well as other similarly opaque police intelligence bodies. Those entities fall under the purview of two state agencies, but they would work in close conjunction with federal, state, and local law enforcement.<\/span><\/p>\n Budget negotiations have <\/span>turned chaotic<\/span><\/a> due to Hochul\u2019s last-minute push to roll back New York\u2019s bail reform statute \u2014 drawing one state legislator to <\/span>compare her<\/span><\/a> to the <\/span>bullish former<\/span><\/a> Gov. Andrew Cuomo and another to go on a <\/span>hunger strike<\/span><\/a>. The budget is supposed to pass by April 1, but the legislature could still hold it up as a way to kill the bail reform rollbacks or include programs the governor <\/span>wants to leave unfunded<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Yet Hochul\u2019s proposals for increased surveillance \u2014 many of which directly mirror points in Adams\u2019s plan \u2014 have been met with seemingly no resistance from the state legislature.<\/span><\/p>\n In their own budget proposals released earlier this month, which <\/span>deviated from the governor\u2019s<\/span><\/a> on several key issues, the state Senate and Assembly adopted Hochul\u2019s police intelligence and analysis line items, allotting at least as much funding as Hochul requested.<\/span><\/p>\n Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani said that he was unaware of the surveillance provisions before New York Focus and The Intercept contacted him, and that he hasn\u2019t heard of any budget negotiations about them. \u201cI think this is a problem with the process at large, where everything is so rushed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a race against time to figure out what has been put in here and how to counter it,\u201d and lower-dollar items get lost in the more than $200 billion bigger picture.<\/span><\/p>\n In response to a list of questions, Avi Small, a spokesperson for the governor, provided a <\/span>generic statement<\/span><\/a> that the governor\u2019s <\/span>office<\/span><\/a> has <\/span>sent<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>several<\/span><\/a> other <\/span>news outlets<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>including New York Focus,<\/span><\/a> referring to Hochul\u2019s \u201cbold initiatives to embrace this once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in our future.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Neither Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins nor Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie replied to emailed questions from New York Focus and The Intercept, nor did four other legislators\u2019 offices, including progressives and those on relevant committees. Three others declined to comment, expressing that they were unfamiliar with the details of the budget items.<\/span><\/p>\n At the heart\u00a0of Hochul\u2019s plans to combat gun crime is information sharing, which the governor has<\/span> touted<\/span><\/a> as a part of a \u201cholistic and proactive approach to regional law enforcement.\u201d A major part of the effort is New York\u2019s main <\/span>fusion center<\/span><\/a>, where the governor intends to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars, adding to new gun intelligence efforts she has <\/span>already set in motion<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Fusion centers have come under fire over the past decade for lack of oversight and wanton and ineffective use of surveillance. A U.S. <\/span>Senate investigation<\/span><\/a> in 2012 found that fusion centers had disseminated shoddy intelligence and likely violated privacy laws. In 2020, a <\/span>massive hack<\/span><\/a> of fusion center data revealed that cops had used the hubs to <\/span>monitor protesters<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>surveil journalists<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>propagate false intelligence<\/span><\/a>, and discuss measures like <\/span>facial recognition technology<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>social media monitoring<\/span><\/a>, and <\/span>private security camera access<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Elected officials in other states have <\/span>debated pulling funding<\/span><\/a> for regional fusion centers. But with this year\u2019s state budget, Hochul is hoping to beef up New York\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n Her budget would <\/span>allocate $215,000<\/span><\/a> to the New York State Intelligence Center, or NYSIC \u2014 New York\u2019s primary fusion center, which is overseen by the State Police \u2014 to hire a new team of analysts focused on guns.<\/span><\/p>\n Fusion center analysts incorporate intelligence from a slew of departments and databases and disseminate it among law enforcement agencies at every jurisdictional level. They have access to dozens of government and private sector information systems \u2014 including <\/span>gang databases<\/span><\/a>, to which NYSIC <\/span>can add names<\/span><\/a>. And NYSIC has had <\/span>information sharing relationships<\/span><\/a> with local police and prosecutors and over a dozen state and federal agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/span><\/p>\n Critics point to this extensive integration to argue that investment in intelligence hubs is never limited to the crimes lawmakers claim.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cClearly New Yorkers are concerned about the rise in gun violence,\u201d said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. But \u201cwe\u2019ve seen a pattern of intelligence fusion centers being expanded with the justification that they would target whatever crime was most in the news, only to see those resources fuel the same broken patterns of mass incarceration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s budget proposals would also <\/span>allocate $527,000<\/span><\/a> to NYSIC to hire a new social media analysis team. That team would \u201cperform daily analysis of publicly available social media activity related to school violence threats, gang activity, and illegal firearms,\u201d according to <\/span>materials<\/span><\/a> the governor published with her budget proposal \u2014 a prospect civil liberties advocates find especially alarming.<\/span><\/p>\n With social media policing, \u201cthis is not just pulling up a person\u2019s account,\u201d said MK Kaishian, a civil rights lawyer and member of the New York City-based GANGS coalition, which organizes against police surveillance. \u201cThey use <\/span>mass data scraping tools<\/span><\/a> \u2026 that really create dragnets over the information of especially young people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Victor Dempsey, a community organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a GANGS coalition member, pointed to how police in New York have used seemingly innocuous social media posts or \u201clikes\u201d to falsely <\/span>label youth as gang members<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>accuse them of planning violence<\/span><\/a>. Creating units to surveil social media for signs of gun crime is a recipe for those errors, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSocial media analysis is performed to support criminal investigations, including gun trafficking,\u201d the New York State Police said in a statement to New York Focus and The Intercept. \u201cThe investigative resources and expertise of NYSIC are of critical importance when investigating trafficking networks bringing illegal guns into New York State.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In addition to social media surveillance, Hochul has also proposed <\/span>spending $5.3 million<\/span><\/a> to \u201cmodernize forensic examination by linking digital devices to crimes.\u201d <\/span>Among the most common systems<\/span><\/a> for digital forensic analysis are mobile device forensic tools, or MDFTs, which police and prosecutors frequently use to download full, searchable copies of a cellphone\u2019s data. Several police departments and district attorneys in New York, including the NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office, already use MDFTs.<\/span><\/p>\n When asked whether this budget provision is a reference to MDFTs, a spokesperson for the state Division of the Budget only said that the funding \u201cwill support personal service costs and various non-personal service costs including equipment, software, and computers.\u201d The State Police said that the department \u201conly performs a forensic examination of mobile digital devices when legally authorized to do so,\u201d and that it \u201cis aware of privacy concerns and takes steps to protect personal information in accordance with the law.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s budget would also increase funding to other fusion center-like police intelligence hubs. If passed as proposed, it would <\/span>allocate nearly $15 million<\/span><\/a> in part to create a network of \u201ccrime gun intelligence centers\u201d across the state.<\/span><\/p>\n First established in 2016<\/span><\/a>, crime gun intelligence centers are a U.S. Department of Justice initiative to provide federal funding and guidance for investigative partnerships between local law enforcement and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, or ATF. They rely heavily on two databases, which supposedly allow them to trace guns\u2019 use across jurisdictional lines \u2014 something Hochul has touted as crucial to combating gun violence.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLinking data across the state would enable law enforcement to pursue more cases against irresponsible gun dealers and straw purchasers,\u201d the <\/span>governor\u2019s office wrote<\/span><\/a> in materials accompanying her State of the State address in January. The databases \u201cwill ensure the State Police\u201d can \u201cdisrupt interstate trafficking of illegal firearms.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n One of the ATF databases<\/span><\/a> uses a hotly contested forensics method known as ballistics imaging to track guns. In 2016 \u2014 the same year the Justice Department launched the crime gun intelligence center initiative \u2014 a White House advisory council <\/span>issued a report<\/span><\/a> sounding the alarm on the method\u2019s uncertain accuracy, noting a dearth of peer-reviewed studies on the science behind it, and the lack of quality studies on it, and several courts have since <\/span>limited the admissibility<\/span><\/a> of evidence using gunshot forensics. The Justice Department has <\/span>repeatedly<\/span><\/a> ignored<\/span><\/a> the concerns, however, as have proponents of the centers.<\/span><\/p>\n According to the State Police, the firearms forensic method \u201cis a presumptive test to find similarities in ballistic evidence that has been recovered at crime scenes and can be used as an investigative tool.\u201d The science \u201cbehind it has been validated by multiple national studies,\u201d the police statement said, though it did not cite any specific examples.<\/span><\/p>\n Though the centers focus on gun tracing, their investigative work is all-encompassing, and includes the use of surveillance technology. <\/span>According<\/span><\/a> to the National Crime Gun Intelligence Governing Board, they are <\/span>responsible<\/span><\/a> for gathering information from cell phone data; gunshot detection systems, like the <\/span>notoriously inaccurate<\/span><\/a> ShotSpotter; automatic license plate readers, which are <\/span>prolific in New York state<\/span><\/a> and capable of tracking the movements of <\/span>virtually anyone with a car<\/span><\/a>; social media; and confidential informants, among other sources.<\/span><\/p>\n Because intelligence hubs share information across law enforcement agencies \u2014 and largely do so in secret \u2014 it\u2019s difficult to know who has access to that information and how they\u2019re able to use it, leading to concerns over civil rights abuses. In 2018, for instance, the Justice Department attempted to insert a line into its crime gun intelligence center grant agreement with the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, that would compel the city to share information on residents\u2019 immigration status with federal agencies, <\/span>according to a federal lawsuit<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAll we\u2019ve seen from this type of information sharing is not any kind of reduction in crime or increased safety,\u201d said Elizabeth Daniel Vasquez, director of the Science and Surveillance Project at Brooklyn Defender Services, \u201cbut instead an overarching cataloging of our Black and brown communities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s statewide series of crime gun intelligence centers would build on an effort launched last year by former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Under his administration, the New York City Police Department <\/span>established such a center<\/span><\/a> with the ATF, which John Miller, NYPD deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, called \u201can incredible partnership that allows a seamless flow of information that we haven\u2019t seen before.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n At a press conference last June, Miller laid it out bluntly: \u201cYou can just turn to the ATF agents next to you \u2026 and say, \u2018Hey, this is my question, can you run that data right now?\u2019\u201d (Also stationed at the same hub is another intelligence body, <\/span>like a fusion center<\/span><\/a> but focused on drug trafficking, which funneled federal money to the NYPD\u2019s post-9\/11 Muslim surveillance program, as the Associated Press<\/span> revealed<\/span><\/a> in 2012.)<\/span><\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s plan would <\/span>scale up<\/span><\/a> the crime gun intelligence center initiative, which is active in <\/span>more than 30 cities<\/span><\/a>, by establishing one in each of New York state\u2019s 10 regions. The state centers would be under the purview of another state-level, fusion center-modeled system known as the Crime Analysis Center Network, which is overseen by the Division of Criminal Justice Services, a multifunction state agency that straddles the line between administration and law enforcement.<\/span><\/p>\n Using <\/span>high-volume analytics software<\/span><\/a> developed by the weapons manufacturer Raytheon, New York\u2019s crime analysis centers capture and analyze intelligence, which they disseminate among partner state and local police agencies. According to a <\/span>case study from Raytheon<\/span><\/a>, in 2014, the software used by the Crime Analysis Center Network accessed over 200 data sources, disseminated over a billion records to 166 police agencies per day, and processed more than 1.7 million automatic license plate reader records daily.<\/span><\/p>\nFusion Centers<\/h4>\n
Tracing Guns<\/h4>\n
Crime Gun Intelligence Centers<\/h4>\n