Microgrant: S.T.O.P. Surveillance Technology Oversight Project: Ban the Scan Campaign

We are excited to continue our partnership with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) by making them one of our recipients of our Regional & Local Privacy Microgrants! We previously supported S.T.O.P. through our Microgrant project to support their work in publishing reports on the New York Police Department's compliance with privacy policies under the new POST Act, and on the implementation and impact of Community Control of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) legislation around the country. S.T.O.P. is a non-profit advocacy organization and legal services provider fighting to abolish local governments’ systems of mass surveillance.

S.T.O.P. uses a combination of education, advocacy, and litigation to research, expose, and abolish mass surveillance and support privacy. Their work focuses on the disproportionate and negative outcomes surveillance has on Muslim Americans, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, Indigenous peoples, and communities of color. For example, S.T.O.P. started the Ban the Scan Campaign in 2021, which highlighted the discriminatory and violent use of facial recognition on communities of color in NYC. Facial recognition has already led to the arrest of several innocent Black men. These arrests highlight facial recognition’s biased, flawed, and discriminatory use.

This grant will support S.T.O.P.'s expansion of the Ban the Scan Campaign - a campaign to abolish the use of facial recognition technology in NYC. The campaign will include media engagement and community outreach via written materials, trainings and forums to educate community members on the use and harms of facial recognition. S.T.O.P. will also use its litigation and legislation experience to support three bills to ban facial recognition use by the local government, workplaces, and residential buildings.

For info on S.T.O.P.: https://www.stopspying.org/
For info on Ban the Scan: https://www.stopspying.org/ban-the-scan
For info on our Regional & Local Privacy Microgrants Fund: https://calyxinstitute.org/projects/regional-and-local-microgrant-fund