Aug 22, 2026 · 1 hr 48 min · 11 segments
We take a deep dive into New York’s police-surveillance infrastructure, a sprawling leviathan that Mayor Zohran Mamdani was outspoken against during his campaign, but has now inherited and is even…
Edward Ongweso Jr.Host
Jathan SadowskiHost
And I think for this episode, this is a good excuse to get into a topic that we've not talked a whole lot about specifically, right? I mean, we've talked a lot about the police state.
We've talked a lot about the growth of these sprawling, networked, automated ecosystem platforms like the domain awareness system in New York.
Ed, our intrepid, not only co-host, but reporter, you've written a really great piece in New York Magazine that just came out that dives into New York City's surveillance state in particular, which I think we've mentioned it a little bit on the show a long time ago.
We've talked about the domain awareness system, but we've not touched on it in a long time.
And what we've not touched on in the show is Some of the campaign promises by Zahraan Mamdani, which we got a lot of listeners in New York.
So you might be saying, why do we care about Mamdani? I don't live in New York.
There is a growing progressive leftist movement in reaction to the already established and still growing reactionary far-right establishment.
And I think it's really instructive to look at some of these Instances like Mamdani's campaign promises around disassembling the massive surveillance state that exists in New York City, which he talked about on the campaign, these gang databases, these massive sprawling network camera systems.
He talked about the surveillance of New Yorkers on an unprecedented scale through social media surveillance operations.
He warned about the dangers of biometric surveillance, like facial recognition.
He was really... vocal about this in his campaign saying, you know, we need to disassemble this surveillance state that has very obvious racist, regressive, classist consequences on the lives of New Yorkers and by extension, the lives of a lot of people because New York City is also this test bed for these technologies and then becomes an export industry for these technologies as well.
Like, you know, things like PredPol, one of the first predictive policing companies out there, co-founded by William Bratton, who was New York City police commissioner during the Giuliani days, really was at the forefront of broken windows theory.
If you've watched The Wire and if you listen to our Media Diet episodes on the premium feed, you'll know my wife and I are re-watching.
And I think for this episode, this is a good excuse to get into a topic that we've not talked a whole lot about specifically, right? I mean, we've talked a lot about the police state.
We've talked a lot about the growth of these sprawling, networked, automated ecosystem platforms like the domain awareness system in New York.
Ed, our intrepid, not only co-host, but reporter, you've written a really great piece in New York Magazine that just came out that dives into New York City's surveillance state in particular, which I think we've mentioned it a little bit on the show a long time ago.
We've talked about the domain awareness system, but we've not touched on it in a long time.
And what we've not touched on in the show is Some of the campaign promises by Zahraan Mamdani, which we got a lot of listeners in New York.
So you might be saying, why do we care about Mamdani? I don't live in New York.
There is a growing progressive leftist movement in reaction to the already established and still growing reactionary far-right establishment.
And I think it's really instructive to look at some of these Instances like Mamdani's campaign promises around disassembling the massive surveillance state that exists in New York City, which he talked about on the campaign, these gang databases, these massive sprawling network camera systems.
He talked about the surveillance of New Yorkers on an unprecedented scale through social media surveillance operations.
He warned about the dangers of biometric surveillance, like facial recognition.
He was really... vocal about this in his campaign saying, you know, we need to disassemble this surveillance state that has very obvious racist, regressive, classist consequences on the lives of New Yorkers and by extension, the lives of a lot of people because New York City is also this test bed for these technologies and then becomes an export industry for these technologies as well.
Like, you know, things like PredPol, one of the first predictive policing companies out there, co-founded by William Bratton, who was New York City police commissioner during the Giuliani days, really was at the forefront of broken windows theory.
If you've watched The Wire and if you listen to our Media Diet episodes on the premium feed, you'll know my wife and I are re-watching.
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