--- title: "The NYPD Says It’s Going to Spy on Labor Day Parties Using Drones" description: "The NYPD plans to use its drone fleet to surveil large crowds this Labor Day weekend, including those congregating at private backyard events." date: "2023-09-03" modified: "2023-09-03" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/nypd-spy-labor-day-parties-drones" categories: - "Drones" - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "drones" - "nypd" - "surveillance" - "the digest" --- # The NYPD Says It’s Going to Spy on Labor Day Parties Using Drones ![The NYPD plans to use its drone fleet to surveil large crowds this Labor Day weekend, including those congregating at private backyard events.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Uninvited Guest If you're planning to host a Labor Day party in New York City this weekend, you might want to keep one eye on the skies. As [the *Associated Press* reports](), the NYPD plans to use its drone fleet to surveil large crowds this weekend, including those congregating at private backyard events. Per the *AP*, the news was announced during a [press conference]() regarding safety at the Caribbean J'Ouvert celebration and the West Indian American Day parade, two converging events taking place in Brooklyn over the holiday weekend. "If a caller states there's a large crowd, a large party in a backyard," said Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, according to the *AP*, "we're going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party." Barbecue with a side of dystopian surveillance, anyone? ## Pushback The announcement has unsurprisingly been met with swift backlash from civil rights advocates, who argue that the skyborne surveillance action infringes on residents' privacy rights. "It's a troubling announcement and it flies in the face of the POST Act," Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, told the *AP*. (The POST Act, as referenced by Schwarz, is a [city law]() passed in 2020 necessitating that the NYPD makes its surveillance practices public knowledge.) "Deploying drones in this way," he added, "is a sci-fi-inspired scenario." Elsewhere, Schwarz emphasized the fact that the surveillance effort is specifically targeting events celebrating racial minority communities — a detail, he says, that shouldn't go unnoticed. "Deploying surveillance drones over New Yorkers gathering with their friends and families to celebrate J'Ouvert is racialized discrimination and it doesn't make us safer," Schwarz [told *The New York Times*]() in a statement. "As the NYPD keeps deploying these dystopian technologies, we must push for stricter guardrails — especially given the department's lengthy history of surveilling and policing Black and brown communities." The NYPD, for its part, is effectively championing its drone use as a preventative safety measure; last year, the weekend's festivities were blighted by multiple neighborhood shootings, with police seizing 27 guns from the crowd throughout the weekend, according to [*The Washington Post*](). But while safety is obviously important, preemptive, drone-enabled backyard spying, to many, is not just undue, but simply goes way too far into surveillance state territory. "This is really alarming," Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), [told *WaPo*](). "A plan to send drones into people's backyards just for having a barbecue should have never gotten off the ground." "This is incredibly invasive," he added, "and downright creepy." **More on NYC Mayor Eric Adams' deep love for surveillance tech:** [*The NYPD Is Bringing Back Its Widely Hated Robodog*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()