A civil liberties group maps exactly how the mayor can dismantle the NYPD’s surveillance state without waiting for Albany
A Roadmap Lands on Mamdani’s Desk
Eight weeks into his administration, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing a formal challenge from civil liberties advocates: use the power you already have. The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) released a detailed report this week outlining eight specific steps the mayor can take — without City Council approval or state legislation — to scale back what the group describes as one of the most extensive municipal surveillance apparatuses in the United States. The report, titled “Dear Mamdani: Dismantle NYC’s Surveillance State,” was provided to the administration in advance of its public release. City Hall had not formally responded as of publication.
The Scope of NYPD Surveillance
The scale of the system under scrutiny is worth understanding before evaluating the specific proposals. The NYPD’s Domain Awareness System — largely built during Commissioner Jessica Tisch’s earlier tenure as the department’s head of information technology — integrates data from tens of thousands of cameras, hundreds of license plate readers, social media monitoring platforms, drone footage, and multiple internal databases. The department deploys drones more than 1,000 times per month, at a cost of $2.6 million in new equipment in 2024 alone, with more than 60 reported crashes. It spent approximately $10.6 million on one social media monitoring platform called Voyager. It maintains a gang database listing 8,563 New Yorkers as gang members — despite only 258 crimes in 2025 being attributed to gang activity — in which Black and Latino New Yorkers represent 98% of those listed. It maintains the Suspect Index, an internal DNA database storing profiles from tens of thousands of people, many of whom were never convicted of any crime.
Blocking ICE: The Urgent First Step
S.T.O.P.’s report places immigration enforcement data access at the top of its list. Mamdani has signed an executive order strengthening sanctuary protections and prohibiting ICE from entering city property without a judicial warrant. But advocates argue more is needed. The report calls for a specific audit of whether ICE has direct or indirect access to license plate reader data, a review of data-sharing through federal task forces, an examination of vendor contracts that might create backdoor access to city surveillance systems, and scrutiny of the Department of Corrections’ collaboration with federal immigration authorities. Eleni Manis, S.T.O.P.’s research director, told amNewYork that while she was not prepared to speculate about what ICE currently can access, the history of license plate data sharing and gang database access in other cities creates legitimate concerns. “These glitches and one-offs happen over and over and over again,” she said. “They’re completely predictable when you have unregulated or untransparent databases.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation has documented extensively how surveillance data shared within federal networks can end up in immigration enforcement hands regardless of local sanctuary policies.
The Databases: Race, Data, and Due Process
Several of S.T.O.P.’s most significant recommendations target the NYPD’s internal databases. The Criminal Group Database — the gang database — lists nearly 8,600 New Yorkers, 98% of them Black or Latino. The Gun Recidivist Investigation Program list has a similarly skewed racial profile: 98.8% Black and Latino. The Suspect Index stores DNA profiles from people who were arrested but never convicted, operating outside the state’s authorized DNA databank and without independent oversight. “These aren’t glitches,” the S.T.O.P. report states. “They are predictable consequences of an unregulated database operating without oversight or accountability.” The ACLU’s surveillance project has published research on the civil liberties implications of these kinds of databases and the disproportionate racial impacts of algorithmic and database-driven policing.
Facial Recognition, Drones, and Dragnet Warrants
The report also calls for a complete ban on NYPD use of facial recognition technology. The department spent $2.28 million on its most recent facial recognition contract. Advocates cite documented cases of wrongful arrests tied to facial recognition errors — disproportionately affecting Black individuals, who are misidentified at higher rates by most commercial systems. On drones, S.T.O.P. wants to end routine patrol use, prohibit deployment at protests and community events, shorten footage retention, and bar sharing footage with prosecutors. The report also urges a ban on geofence and cell tower dump warrants — requests to tech companies to identify all devices near a location during a time window, which by definition sweep up innocent bystanders along with any suspects.
What Mamdani Has Said — and What He Has Done
Mamdani coauthored an op-ed as an Assembly Member in 2023 opposing police use of fake social media accounts to monitor young people. He has previously expressed opposition to facial recognition. But in his first press conference with Commissioner Tisch, he stood silent as she defended the gang database as a critical tool. S.T.O.P.’s Manis said she does not question his stated opposition to these tools. “The question is whether he will stick to his guns.” The mayor and commissioner have a cordial but complex relationship, strained most recently by the snowball fight dispute. Whether Mamdani is willing to use his charter authority — which is clear on the chain of command between mayor and commissioner — to direct changes in surveillance policy remains to be seen. The report is, as Manis described it, an invitation. “We want to work with him.”
