Public housing tenants filed a stunning lawsuit against the city Thursday night, alleging that the NYPD is illegally surveilling tenants via technology installed to provide NYCHA tenants free WiFi during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By using the bandwidth from NYCHA’s free WiFi program, called Big Apple Connect, the suit charges that NYPD linked NYCHA CCTV cameras to its Domain Awareness System, a vast repository of data collected from and about New Yorkers, and granted itself a 24/7 remote feed of the hallways, elevators and public spaces of at least 220 NYCHA buildings. This allows officers to watch the feed for as long as they’d like, wherever they’d like – including on cops’ phones – without independent limits or oversight, the plaintiffs argued.
