On March 13, Leqaa Kordia can have spent a yr in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, regardless of a choose twice ordering her launch. The New York Police Division arrested Kordia at a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024, however shortly dropped the costs and sealed the information. These information ought to by no means have seen the sunshine of day once more. As an alternative, NYPD shared them with ICE, who used them to provoke deportation proceedings.
This isn’t a one-off leak. It’s the predictable consequence of New York Metropolis’s out-of-control surveillance infrastructure, which is designed to make knowledge sharing between town and different companies frictionless — really easy that leaks and abuse are virtually inevitable. The Division of Correction information all calls into and out of jails, together with privileged attorney-client calls, and shares them with prosecutors, and there may be proof that ICE can also have entry to these name recordings.
NYPD makes use of its discredited gang database to associate with ICE in arresting dozens of New Yorkers on inflated fees. The Hearth Division of New York shares its controversial facial recognition instrument with NYPD, letting NYPD circumvent its personal ban on the know-how. And if that doesn’t work, NYPD borrows the identical instrument from the U.S. Marshals. The checklist of abuses goes on. Surveillance knowledge will get round. That’s what it’s designed to do.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has condemned these practices in his personal phrases. To withstand ICE’s deportation marketing campaign, he pledged to “protect all personal data from [being shared with] other jurisdictions.” He blasted facial recognition for “criminaliz[ing] just existing.” He denounced NYPD’s gang database for concentrating on youth primarily based on “whether they go out late, photos they put on social media, so much of the facts of life of being a young New Yorker.”
However eight weeks into his administration, Mamdani has but to behave. The Division of Corrections nonetheless pays its know-how vendor to file all calls into and out of NYC jails. NYPD nonetheless makes use of facial recognition instruments, whilst its officers manipulate pictures earlier than submitting them for evaluation and misuse the know-how to jail harmless New Yorkers—simply because the software program tells them to. The gang database nonetheless enrolls hundreds of just about solely Black and Latino New Yorkers who’ve achieved nothing improper, with no oversight.
It’s time for somebody to take motion, and that’s why the Surveillance Know-how Oversight Venture (STOP), New York’s personal surveillance watchdog, has produced the roadmap that Mamdani ought to be following. In our new report we offer the mayor with the concrete steps he ought to be following to finish surveillance packages and knowledge sharing that endanger New Yorkers — steps the mayor can take proper now, although the powers vested in his workplace, to guard us.
Included within the report are particular actions Mamdani can take to dam collaboration with ICE; dump the gang database and the unlawful Suspect Index; finish police abuse of facial recognition and social media monitoring instruments; cease unlawful protest surveillance; and extra.
In February, Leqaa Kordia suffered seizures in ICE custody. She was chained to a mattress whereas she recovered, then returned to detention. None of this needed to occur. She can be dwelling proper now — would by no means have left dwelling — had NYPD not shared her sealed information with ICE.
Each New Yorker ought to know that the dangers of runaway surveillance know-how and uncontrolled knowledge leaks lengthen far past her case. The Trump administration has made clear that federal companies ought to assist themselves to native police instruments, knowledge, and sources. The Division of Homeland Safety and different federal companies are conditioning federal funding on data-sharing agreements.
On this context, each surveillance instrument and database isn’t only a hazard to the immigrants that ICE targets immediately, they’re a transparent and current hazard to each New Yorker the federal authorities could goal tomorrow: scientists researching disfavored matters like local weather change; folks searching for abortions or gender-affirming care and their healthcare suppliers; protestors and the journalists who cowl them; organizations pursuing variety initiatives; attorneys and judges difficult federal overreach; and on, and on. We’ve already seen the sobering reality that federal brokers are constructing surveillance databases on protestors — and killing individuals who watch them again.
Mr. Mayor, STOP and all New Yorkers who care about civil liberties and the rule of legislation name on you to take motion now. Earlier than extra peculiar residents get caught up within the net of misused surveillance knowledge and earlier than extra harmless folks lose their lives.
We name on you to learn our new report, and act now. Dismantle New York Metropolis’s surveillance state.
Eleni Manis is analysis director on the Surveillance Know-how Oversight Venture (STOP). Michelle Dahl is government director at STOP.
