Encode Justice New York

Encode Justice New York (EJ-NY) is the New York City chapter of Encode Justice, the youth-led international AI-policy advocacy organization operating as a network of student chapters across more than 40 U.S. states and roughly 30 countries. Based in New York City, EJ-NY has built its identity around two interlocking civil-liberties issues: facial recognition technology in schools, through a national ban campaign it runs from its New York base, and surveillance transparency at the New York Police Department, pursued in partnership with the NYCLU and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). Its chapter website is at encodejusticeny.carrd.co.

Chapter leadership

Jia Michel served as the chapter's director of political advocacy and later as Chapter Director, building the chapter's partnerships with the NYCLU and the Justice Education Project and organizing public events on AI implicit bias. Mira Schubert served as Director of Advocacy, leading the chapter's NYPD transparency work with the NYCLU and S.T.O.P. Both are recorded in the corpus as Person entries.

Focus areas

Facial recognition in schools. EJ-NY leads a "Ban Facial Recognition in High Schools Nationally Campaign", conducting student surveys on FRT in both high-school and college populations and mounting a letter writing day of action on September 27, 2024 paired with get-out-the-vote activity. The campaign operates against the backdrop of New York's position as an early flashpoint in the national FRT debate: in 2020 New York became the first state to enact a moratorium on biometric surveillance tools in schools, halting a facial recognition system deployed by the Lockport City School District, and the chapter's ongoing campaign builds pressure for stronger and more durable restrictions.

NYPD surveillance transparency. The chapter has collaborated with the NYCLU and S.T.O.P. to advocate for transparency about the New York Police Department's surveillance technologies — an active and contested terrain in New York City where S.T.O.P. has documented NYPD facial recognition spending and policing-technology abuses, and where the landmark 2020 POST Act (Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act) remains incompletely enforced.

Programs and partnerships

EJ-NY pursues its work through educational workshops on AI ethics, panels with speakers from major media outlets, op-ed publishing, and drafting of model bills for the New York State Legislature. Its documented institutional partners include the Justice Education Project, the New York Times, the DAIR Institute, and the NYCLU.

In July 2023 the chapter hosted the Encode Justice NY Hackathon at the Brooklyn Public Library — a full-day algorithmic justice event open to high school students aged 13–18, with no prior AI-ethics experience required. Participants developed research projects proposing solutions to biases in artificial intelligence; the day ran workshops, collaborative working sessions, group presentations, and an awards ceremony over approximately six hours.

Position in the Encode network

EJ-NY is New York City's anchor in the national Encode Justice chapter network. Unlike the North Carolina, Oregon, and Georgia chapters, EJ-NY is not affiliated with the Electronic Frontier Alliance — it operates as a standalone chapter within the Encode network. New York City's density of civil-liberties organizations and the sustained local debate over NYPD surveillance and facial recognition in public schools have oriented the chapter more sharply toward city- and state-specific accountability campaigns than toward the EFA's multi-issue digital-rights organizing model.