surveillance software that uses artificial intelligence to detect fare evaders has been quietly rolled out in some of New York City’s subway stations and is set to be introduced to more later this year, according to public documents and government contracts obtained by NBC News.
The system, which the city and its transit authority have not previously recognized by name, uses third-party software that its maker has touted as a way to engage law enforcement to help crack down on fare evasion.
The system was in use at seven metro stations in May, according to a report on fee evasion posted online by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees public transportation in New York City. The MTA expects that by the end of the year, the system will be expanded by «approximately two dozen more stations, with more to follow,» the report says. The report also found that the MTA lost $690 million to fee evasion in 2022.
Joana Flores, a spokeswoman for the MTA, said the artificial intelligence system does not flag fare evaders to the NYPD, but declined to comment on whether that policy could change. A police spokesman declined to comment.
Tim Minton, the MTA’s director of communications, said the system tracks fare evasion to determine how much money the subway isn’t collecting.
“We are essentially using it as a counting tool,” Minton said. «The objective is to determine how many people are evading the passage and how they are doing it.»
Minton said the videos are stored on the MTA’s servers and are kept «for a limited period.» Office of New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced last year that the city’s transit systems had more than 10,000 surveillance cameras.
The use of the software adds to what some privacy advocates see as a growing surveillance apparatus being developed in New York City.
“This is a time when movement around the city has never been more closely watched,” said Albert Fox Cahn, director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit legal group that defends privacy rights in New York City.
“We are already seeing the proliferation of automatic license plate readers. We have seen data collection in Uber and Lyft stories We see tens of thousands of cameras accessible to the NYPD when people walk in public,” Cahn said. «So it’s becoming more and more of a city where there’s no way to navigate privately.»
The software was created by the Spanish company AWAAIT, confirmed Flores. AWAAIT declined to comment.
TO promotional video for AWAAIT fare evasion software, created by a Spanish company that operates the Barcelona metro trains, describes a system in which an AWAAIT system was initially used to scan passengers passing through the metro system and send photos of people it determined to be fare evaders to the smartphones of nearby station agents.
The MTA’s assurances that the software would not be used to aid law enforcement have done little to encourage some privacy and civil rights advocates, who were already alarmed by earlier efforts to crack down on fare evasion. .
In 2019, the city police patrol officers they were instructed to fine most fare evaders rather than arrest them if they could be identified and cleared through the police department’s Domain Awareness System, a central crime monitoring and information center overseen by the NYPD Bureau of Counterterrorism.
New York has increased the number of police officers stationed in subway stations since last year, and arrests have steadily increased, also. Historically, the police department has arrested Black and Latino passengers for fare evasion in faraway locations. higher rates than those of other races, prompting accusations of racism.
Molly Griffard, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, a law firm that advocates for social justice, said that enforcing fee evasion often ends up targeting the poor.
“It’s really unfortunate that instead of thinking about how the city and state can make these services more available, more accessible to the public, they’re spending all this time and money on enforcement mechanisms to try to get money from the most low income. New Yorkers,” Griffard said.
A very redacted ATM contract for the July 2022 AI system, which Cahn acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request and shared with NBC News, shows the system was first tested in New York City in 2020, and more stations added in 2021. The exact number of stations is redacted. GovSpend, a database of government spending records, shows that the MTA made two purchases in 2021 for «AWAAIT Video Analytics Fee Avoidance Software,» for a combined amount of $35,335. Figures for 2022 were not available.
Cahn said the use of technology to try to track fee evasion illustrated the wrong priorities.
“We continue to see this constant criminalization of fee evasion even though it doesn’t hurt anyone,” he said. “And this really feels like politics is driving bad technology and bad policy.”