NYCLU v. New York City Police Department (Seeking access to information on Lower Manhattan Security Initiative under FOIL)

State Supreme Court, New York County, Index No. 112145-08 (direct) This case challenges the NYPD’s refusal to disclose information about its plan to create a massive surveillance network in downtown Manhattan. The plan, called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, would establish a network of 3,000 public and private surveillance cameras to monitor and track vehicles and pedestrians south of Canal Street. The system would allow the Department to maintain a database on the movement and whereabouts of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers. Modeled after London’s often criticized Ring of Steel surveillance network, the system is expected to cost about $100 million. The NYPD developed the surveillance plan without seeking any public input.

In October 2007, the NYCLU served the NYPD with a formal legal request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law to turn over documents pertaining to the planned surveillance system. After months of stalling, the NYPD gave only 91 pages of documents that came nowhere near satisfying the NYCLU’s request. Given the plan’s magnitude, the Department must have thousands of documents that it is withholding from the public. After exhausting its administrative appeals, the NYCLU filed an Article 78 petition in State Supreme Court. The NYCLU is seeking details about: