Isn't necessary.
Nothing makes Labor Day barbecue more fun than a police drone flying overhead.
That's exactly what some New York City residents will be dealing with
this weekend.
NYPD announcing they'll be using surveillance drones to monitor outdoor
gatherings, even if those gatherings are private, private residences.
That's a police state, right?
The decision was announced during security briefing focused on an annual Caribbean
festival marking the end of slavery that brings thousands of people to Brooklyn,
and this is when they're choosing to do it.
Here's Kaz Dartry, the Assistant NYPD commissioner explaining this new plan.
>> Speaker 2: Utilizing technology, we're gonna be utilizing drones for
this juvet weekend.
The drones are gonna be responding to non priority calls and priority calls.
For example, if we have any 311 calls for our non emergency line where if a caller
states, there's a large crowd, large party in the backyards.
We're gonna be utilizing our assets to go up to go check on the party to make sure
if the call is founded or not.
And we'll be able to determine how many resources we need to
send to that location for this weekend.
So we will have our drone teams out there starting tonight,
all the way into Monday morning.
>> Speaker 1: You see, it's necessary.
They've got the toys, they're gonna use them.
So if someone calls with concerns about a backyard get together, Uve,
the Caribbean Holiday Festival, cops might literally fly a drone overhead and
watch what you're doing, zoom in, maybe see.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams expressed interest in using drone technology of
course he did, in his city's policing during a visit to Israel last week.
Adams, former police captain, said he instructed New York Police Department
officials to look into adopting aspects of Israeli drone technology and
crowd control tactics.
But shied away from endorsing other Israeli security methods during an online
briefing with reporters on Wednesday evening,
Times of Israel with the reporting there.
I've been leaning into how we could appropriately use drones, and
they had great technology on using drones for early detection.
So many police forces, forces rather, across the globe,
they use various methods that are not suitable in our city.
And we're not gonna use any methods that do not conform with other rights and
the laws of our country.
Again, the Times of Israel, what do you think Mayor Adams is referring to?
Profiling big complaints about that in Israel.
Cenk. >> I don't really particularly want to use
anything that Israel uses to oppress the Palestinian people and brags about.
And if that's what Eric Adams thinks is so awesome, well, watch out,
citizens of New York, they might start treating you like Palestinians.
And that is not a fate that anybody in America,
unfortunately, should look forward to.
So look, guys, in the old days, you needed a warrant to search someone's house to go
into their backyard and see what was going on.
This is just an end run around that now they're gonna just snoop in on all of us.
And so it begins.
This is exactly what we were worried about the minute that drones became possible and
they became obviously the first thing that cops looked at and
thought we could spying in on people using.
So this is a terrible, terrible development.
Look, there's plenty of crime in New York.
Most of it is street crime and this isn't gonna help that at all,
that happens in public view.
This is just a spying on people.
And if they don't abuse it on day one, which I guarantee to you they will,
and the very fact of using it is abusing it because you need to get a warrant
normally to search someone's house.
And they're just gonna search people's house and take a look at what you're
doing, and God knows if they're gonna listen in on you, etc.
It should all be totally illegal, meaning unconstitutional.
We'll see how judges rule on it eventually.
But think about local cops where there isn't a lot of supervision.
You think they're not gonna use this to spy in on other people's wives and
other things going on in backyards?
If you think they're not, you don't know cops and you don't know guys.
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly the point I was gonna make.
It's not so much how they're gonna use it in response to 311 calls this weekend.
It's going forward now that they have this whole drone unit,
how they're gonna use it, because like most local police departments,
they have very lax security or oversight or accountability.
And I really want to remind viewers this drone unit that they've
introduced comes at a time where obviously NYPD's budget has increased.
But the education budget in New York City is continuing to suffer from cuts,
this is not a priority.
On the surveillance point we really need to think about how we let police
operate in our societies.
Baltimore has been just one of the worst examples for years.
Flying surveillance planes over the city, spying on people.
The use of stingrays, which mimic cell phone towers so
people's phones will automatically connect to a police controlled
entity that allows them to surveil phones and text messages.
This technology, the proliferation of this technology without a real understanding
and especially no accountability.
Has allowed local police departments to essentially operate without
any repercussions, without any oversight, with very little transparency,
all in the name of keeping you safe.
How do surveillance drones flying over your backyard party keep you or
anyone safe?
No, it is purely for surveillance and ultimately population control or
suppression.
This is one last thing.
You have to think about the demographics of who they're gonna use this on.
It's not gonna be flying over on the Upper West Side or on Park Avenue, and
it's not gonna be flying in wealthy white parts of New York and Manhattan.
They are gonna go to some of the more impoverished areas in
boroughs in New York.
That's just how they operate.
They're gonna have basically a drone unit engaging in broken windows, policing.
>> Speaker 1: It's like that robot.
Remember they used to engage that robot?
I guess they still do.
And it would be deployed in certain sections of the cities across America,
really.
I think Mayor Adams has been obnoxiously transparent, actually.
The quote is he wants to see police further embrace
the endless potential of drones.
So, like Cenk said, this is just the beginning.
There are groups who are already pushing back the obvious ones.
After the NYPD's plans to surveil outdoor parties were revealed,
privacy advocates argued adams definitely is impeding on citizens'civil rights.
It seems like an easy one, but it's a troubling announcement, and
it lies in the face of the POST Act, said Daniel Schwartz, privacy and
technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Referring to a 2020 city law that requires the NYPD to disclose its
surveillance tactics.
Deploying drones in this way is a Sci-fi inspired scenario,
ABC with the details there.
Privacy advocates say regulations have not kept up with drone technology,
opening the door to intrusive surveillance that would be illegal if
conducted by a human police officer.
Albert Foxconn,
executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, says.
One of the biggest concerns with the rush to roll out new forms of aerial
surveillance is how few protections we have against seeing these cameras aimed
at our backyards or even our bedrooms.
Like many cities, New York, of course,
increasingly relying on drones for policing purposes.
Data maintained by the city shows the police department has used drones for
public safety or emergency purposes 124 times
this year, that is up from just four in 2022.
This is scary, Cenk, because they're saying the laws don't keep up, but
I don't know what laws these drones are even subjected to.
It's like this murky territory that Jordan laid out for us here.
Where does this end?
When a mayor says endless possibilities?
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, look, I think it's pretty clear.
So when you're talking about, hey, maybe in Baltimore or New York,
they could use this to track drug cartels and that could be useful.
Yes, guys, that's why you get a warrant and you go, okay, those guys, we think,
might be up to something no good.
And it's not hard to get evidence on a drug gang or cartel or
whatever enterprise or a criminal enterprise, just plenty of evidence.
They arrest street criminals all the time.
You get a warrant and then you could do this.
But they're not asking for warrants.
And they're not just doing it to guys that might be guilty,
they're doing it to all of us.
That's why they're saying it's an endless possibility.
No, if I'm a judge, to me this is not a complicated case at all.
You don't have a warrant to look into their backyard,
get the goddamn drones out of the sky.
Totally not legal, totally not constitutional, and not close.
>> Speaker 4: Absolutely Cenk, this effect it's gonna have on people, really,
that's embodied in this police state concept,
because they want you to always feel watched.
They want you to always feel like you're in fear or potentially in view
of one of the officers, a security camera, in this case, a drone.
Together, all of these technologies and capacities, together, they're creating
this panopticon where people always feel like they're being watched or monitored or
surveilled, and that's deeply unhealthy.
Over time, it'll make people snap.
You can't create this system and expect no pushback.
It's just a generally unhealthy way for people to think, for people to live in.
And this is what Israel has done to Palestinians.
That's what the mayor was talking about.
They have created this panopticon where they have this open air prison
that Palestinians live in and between IDF at the gates and
drones overhead, they are always being watched.
So just as they have created a panopticon for
Palestinians, they want to do the same in New York City.
>> Mayor Adams went to Israel just to kind of look around and say, we can't do that.
That wouldn't court with our laws, back home in United States,
it's clear that he is admiring it all, don't you think Cenk?
>> Speaker 4: Yeah, the Israelis are running open camps in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip in the settlements.
When you go look at that, you don't think boy, I'd love to copy this and
bring it home to America or if you do, maybe you're Eric Adams.
But mainly I'm thinking of banning Jordan from the show again,
for using words that I didn't know.
>> Speaker 1: I heard it, too.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, wouldn't even be on an SAT test, let's be honest, okay.
>> Speaker 1: Spell it.
>> Or I'm gonna send a drone over to Jordan's house to find out how
he's getting this fancy words.