The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s Hikvision Camera Census: A Review
Reviewer(s): Hampton Dodd, Marisa Iovino, Kyle Sherman
Digital Project: https://www.stopspying.org/ & https://www.stopspying.org/2021-hikvision
Review Began: March 6th, 2022
Review Concluded: March 9th, 2022
Data and Sources
Their website features an interactive Google Map. In 2021 Stop Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) conducted its first surveillance census. Members of the non-profit organization documented the internet-enabled cameras across New York City. Users can access and explore S.T.O.P's findings by borough. The non-profit also works with Amnesty International. Together, they have identified an additional 15,000 NYPD cameras across N.Y.C. This number does not include the previously indicated Hikvision cameras. Volunteers at Amnesty International actualize this undertaking. These volunteers record N.Y.P.D. cameras in public spaces.
Processing
Chinese-based firm Hikvision allows their surveillance devices to be located, supplying the bulk of the data utilized in constructing S.T.O.P. 's eponymously named Hikvision Camera Census. In New York Alone, 16,692 cameras were located and documented to include IP address, latitude, longitude, zip code, and borough. For each Hikvision camera mapped, S.T.O.P suggests there are likely dozens, potentially hundreds more located in unknown locations across the city.
Along with the Hikvision cameras mapped through the S.T.O.P Camera Census, human rights organization Amnesty International provided an additional 15,000 NYPD cameras attained through a crowdsourcing campaign that relied on volunteers to document NYPD cameras across the five boroughs. Users can easily get involved with S.T.O.P. through internships or volunteer work to continue growing the scope of the organization’s oversight and accountability database.
This accumulated data of the 2021 NYC Hikvision Camera Census is plotted on and hosted by Google’s free map creator My Maps. Through accessing the “Fully Interactive Map” provided, S.T.O.P. allows users to sort through the thousands of surveillance camera locations using an intuitive navigation system that enables the map to be broken down by boroughs and area code.
Presentation
Digital Tools Used to Build It: Stop Technology Oversight Project hosts its website on SquareSpace. The JavaScript framework is stimulus, which is a standard HTML language. Stimulus uses three libraries: YUI, Modernizer, and core-js. The site has an interactive map to showcase their findings. The map is accessible through Google and uses Google Analytics. The search engine, Shodan, was used to combine the various types of data available on the maps.
Languages
The website is only available in English. Since the areas with the most cameras are Brooklyn and Queens, two diverse boroughs, we find this concerning.
Review
Project Overview
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) is a 501(C)(3), non-profit advocacy organization and legal services provider that focuses on exposing discriminatory technology abuses by government entities in New York City and New York state. They also act as an advocacy group for those impacted by surveillance the most, marginalized communities. S.T.O.P. litigates and advocates for privacy and as a committed member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance, they follow the Alliance’s guiding principles of free expression, security, privacy, creativity, and access to knowledge.
Key Members
Its founder and executive directors are Albert Fox Cahn who is a Practitioner-in-Residence at N.Y.U Law School’s Information Law Institute and a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project, Ashoka, and New Profit’s Civic Lab. He started as a technology policy, antitrust law, and consumer privacy consultant for an American international law firm. Eleni Manis is the company research Director where she designs and coordinates the work of the S.T.O.P. research team. She previously worked at the NYC Mayor’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Operations which has provided intimate knowledge of how the local government uses technology. Jackie Singh is the Director of Technology and Operations who previously served as the Lead Incident Response and Threat Analyst for the Biden-Harris Presidential Campaign and has a close association with the hacker/cyberpunk community in New York City. The majority of the other executives and associates are in the legal profession in some capacity which explains the over 16 law firms that are partners with the organization. S.T.O.P. is also partnered with 10 national and local organizations that range from data privacy to immigration reform.
The 2021 HYC Hikvision Camera Census
S.T.O.P. believes in empowering communities most impacted by invasive technologies, such as facial recognition, and our project review focuses on a specific program, the 2021 NYC Hikvision Camera Census. The project’s goal is to map out all of the internet-enabled cameras operating in New York City which is aligned with their advocacy for a full ban on facial recognition in the city and their commitment as a coalition member with 21 other groups that span the United States and are part of the global Ban The Scan Campaign. As many companies do not readily release the location or amount of surveillance cameras that are in public, the 2021 NYC Hikvision Camera Census only focused on the Chinese-based firm, Hickvision. The 16,692 cameras attributed to this single company in New York City alone expose the magnitude of surveillance technology that is ever prevalent, avoids serious scrutiny, and is mostly absent from citizen oversight.
It is challenging to access metadata stored in individual devices as they are typically shielded by the surveillance technology manufacturers from open internet access, which includes their location, so more technical methods were used to collect the data needed. S.T.O.P. Technology and Operations Director Jackie Singh is attributed for compiling and visualizing the datasets collected by using a search engine, Shodan, which crawls the internet to collect metadata on all devices that are connected to the internet. The 2021 NYC Hikvision Camera Census is presented to users through a densely populated and chaotically colorful map that has the potential of initially overwhelming the user but provides the necessary tools to scale back the sheer amount of data presented in order to analyze specific boroughs and area codes.
Project Influences & Successes
By providing visitors of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s website a free and accessible living document that illuminates the webs of surveillance existent right outside of their front door, S.T.O.P.’s Hikvision Camera Census certainly makes exceptional strides towards its initial lofty goal of mapping out each internet-enabled surveillance camera in New York City.
The S.T.O.P. Twitter account has 7,552 followers as of March 2022. S.T.O.P.’s founder Albert Fox Cahn has 13.6K followers and has a history of regularly writing articles and opinion pieces pertaining to surveillance technologies for publications such as the New York Times and WIRED. Jackie Singh, the creator of the Hikvision Camera Census map itself, has an audience of 31.8K followers. Each of these accounts frequently discusses matters and shares material concerning surveillance technologies, in theory drawing large audiences of Twitter users to the STOP landing page, on which the Hikvision Camera Census remains one of the organization’s most recent and successful research campaigns. Presuming that this flow of Twitter engagement is being channeled directly into the project, it seems safe to suggest that an audience has been successfully established and will likely grow as S.T.O.P.’s campaigns continue to expand in scope and outreach.
However, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s YouTube channel, featuring regularly produced webinars and moderated conversations on surveillance issues, has only 72 subscribers, with videos such as the S.T.O.P. x Radtech: Worker Surveillance in the Age of COVID discussion panel drawing a mere 34 views in the 3 months it has been digitally accessible.
Though S.T.O.P. could certainly use improvement in cultivating more active and involved audiences, their upcoming events, such as the online lecture being given by tech policy professional Evan Enzer discussing methods of combating surveillance with local policy advocacy, suggest that S.T.O.P. recognizes this and is committed to expanding the the organization’s reach.
There has not been any significant legislation nor any sign that surveillance technology used by the government has been limited. Given that S.T.O.P. has been in existence for about two years it is not expected to have a significant impact yet. Credit is given for creating a visually engaging and user-friendly format within this short amount of time.