Atlantic Plaza Towers is a 718-unit apartment complex in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville, which is largely African American. Tenants there are fighting the landlord’s plans to install facial recognition technology in their building.
The landlord, Nelson Management Group, filed an application to install the tech with New York State Homes & Community Renewal (NYSHCR)—which can approve or deny the request.
This is the first time a property manager filed an application for facial recognition technology with NYSHCR according to The Brooklyn Eagle.
The tenants, who normally use a key fob to access the building, are claiming the plans for facial recognition are problematic for several reasons.
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First, as with other inner-city areas in Brooklyn such as Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick—once largely African American communities—Brownsville is undergoing gentrification. Nearby the East New York section of Brooklyn, the area has close proximity to Manhattan and relatively low rental fees.
The tenants say the facial recognition technology is a way to increase gentrification in the area and attract more outsiders
Second—there are data privacy concerns. “Residents should not have to live in fear that landlords are tracking their comings and goings and amassing sensitive data on tenants and their guests,” the New York Civil Liberties Union stated in a letter, according to The Brooklyn Eagle.
Lastly, there are issues with facial recognition technology’s ability to scan darker skin.
The proposed technology is made by StoneLock. In an emailed statement from the StoneLock CEO¸Colleen Dunlap, to BLACK ENTERPRISE, she addressed some of the concerns:
“Unlike surveillance systems that captures photographs of the general public, StoneLock only interacts with enrolled users and does not perform surveillance on the user once access to the premises is authorized.
In order to maintain an optimized system, user data (even the 5% of the user profile) never leaves the system, always existing either on a Gateway or pushed to a GO within the control of the customer. StoneLock does not have access to any user data and cannot provide any user data in response to government or third-party inquiry.”
BLACK ENTERPRISE also reached out to the New York City Mayor’s Office, Nelson Management Group, and the NYSHCR for comment and will update this article when received.
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