**Summary: New York City’s Looming Surveillance Battle Under Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani**
As Zohran Mamdani prepares to assume the office of New York City mayor, his tenure is already shaping up to be defined by complex tensions surrounding policing, surveillance, and civil liberties. While Mamdani has campaigned on progressive reforms and ambitious changes to public safety, one area where his approach is causing surprise—and concern among supporters—is his decision to retain current Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. This move signals that, despite his bold agenda, a sweeping overhaul of the New York City Police Department (NYPD), and particularly its vast surveillance apparatus, is not a top priority.
**Divergent Philosophies, Shared Command**
Mamdani and Tisch represent sharply contrasting perspectives. Tisch, who comes from a wealthy and influential family deeply involved in New York’s real estate and philanthropy circles, is a technocrat who has championed the use of high-tech tools in policing. She has also expressed skepticism about progressive reforms, such as New York State’s bail changes, blaming them for spikes in crime—positions that clash with Mamdani’s views. Their differences extend to geopolitical matters; Tisch’s family is prominent in pro-Israel advocacy, while Mamdani is outspokenly pro-Palestinian, a divide that has already played out in the city’s streets during protests.
**The NYPD’s Surveillance State**
One of the most contentious issues between Mamdani and Tisch is the NYPD’s enormous surveillance and intelligence-gathering infrastructure. Over the past two decades, the department has evolved into what some experts describe as a domestic intelligence agency, amassing surveillance powers that rival those of entire nations. This transformation accelerated after 9/11, with the NYPD investing hundreds of millions in anti-terrorism grants to build a surveillance network that now includes tens of thousands of cameras, license plate readers, gunshot detectors, facial recognition systems, and more.
Jessica Tisch has played a central role in this evolution. She was a key architect of the Domain Awareness System (DAS), a $3 billion, Microsoft-partnered initiative that integrates data from surveillance cameras, social media, biometric databases, and other sources across the city. Originally designed to combat terrorism in Manhattan, the system has since expanded citywide and is marketed to other police departments as a for-profit tool. Civil liberties groups, such as the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), have long criticized the DAS for eroding privacy rights and enabling warrantless tracking of individuals based on minor details, like clothing color.
Despite these concerns, oversight remains limited. A 2020 law intended to require disclosure of new surveillance technologies has been largely ignored by the NYPD, leaving the public in the dark about the extent and use of many of the department's most invasive tools, including drones and robotic devices.
**Surveillance and Immigration Enforcement**
The stakes surrounding surveillance have heightened in