NYPD is refusing to comply with NYC’s new surveillance tech laws
Comments
uncertainrhymes
Tuna-Fish
> I always heard about London being over-surveilled
In London it's not the government that's spying on you. The reason there are so many cameras is that it was established policy for insurance companies give discounts if you have comprehensive camera coverage, and then digital cameras got so cheap that it's simply a great deal for any business owner to acquire enough cameras to surveil the entirety of their business and all the surroundings. And since there's often no co-ordination, if you are walking in Central London you are always in the field of view of at least half a dozen cameras with different owners.
Of course, it did turn out to be very convenient to the police that if something happens, it almost certainly happened on video and they just have to go talk to all nearby business owners to get a copy of it.
cutemonster
Sounds nice if the police doesn't have direct access to all cameras, but instead needs to talk with the nearby buildings. Some balance between capturing crime on camera, and not having a surveillance state -- from the so-many-cameras point of view.
But I suppose there are things I don't know (and wouldn't like), related to this
moremetadata
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Arrath
Reminds me of doing a site survey at a somewhat remote cell tower, prior to performing some expansion work. Was told there was sensitive, classified military communications equipment inside the shack at the base of the tower, and had to perform work carefully around it lest we damage something.
Couldn't tell me what kind of vibrations etc I had to keep my equipment under, as those details were classified. While I was there, I watched a Verizon tech show up to fiddle with their equipment inside the shack, which happened to have the door frame somewhat out of square. The tech's solution to getting through the tight security door? Unlock it, then smash on it with a sledge hammer until it came loose and swung in.
I guess the fragility memo hadn't gotten down the line to the service techs.
mjevans
Seems logically like: They'll either fix their equipment or the frame next ticket if this is too much.
In shared sites like that, infra should all have a clear and obvious owner to report issues to.
dionidium
The wild aspect of this is that nothing seems to have come of it.
If you had told me 20 years ago that eventually every single house would have cameras on their front door I'd have guessed that certain types of crime would drastically drop off in response. But in my neighborhood all the cameras mean is that there's video of the package theft or car break-in to post to the neighborhood group so that everybody can complain about it. It doesn't prevent the crime. It doesn't generate more arrests.
It doesn't, as far as I can tell, do much of anything.
jimt1234
I've heard two differing explanations of this (all the cameras having no effect), one of them from a cop:
1. The police can't do anything with your home surveillance videos mainly because of the trustworthiness of the evidence, most of the videos don't clearly show the crook. But there's also the issue of authenticity, which will be a major issue in any court case.
2. Cops are lazy and arrogant. They don't want more work. They don't want a higher expectation of catching crooks. And they certainly don't want people telling them how to do their jobs.
A lawyer told me #1. A cop told me #2.
MollyRealized
Part of that is that it seems the police are very reluctant to do their job. That is from secondhand anecdote, I'll give you, but I've seen several stories that people have related of bringing Find My results or video to the police only to have the police refuse to follow up on it.
tycho-newman
It lowers insurance premiums.
magicalist
> he did say "they could read a business card from 300 yards away."
Almost certainly made that up. You'd need a telescope mounted there to accomplish that. The mid-2010s video output would still be pretty bad, and you'd only be monitoring a FOV of maybe the width of a doorway or two, not anything like street-wide monitoring.
Maybe this is why the NYPD's clearance rate is so low? Hyper advanced surveillance, as long as the criminal stands exactly where we're already looking?
mike_d
> Almost certainly made that up. You'd need a telescope mounted there to accomplish that.
Which they very well might have had. Surveillance setups often pair a wide field of view "situational awareness" camera with an extremely high level optical zoom PTZ camera for getting things like license plates or seeing handoffs of items.
Retric
Normal zoom levels aren’t that useful from the top of a ~30 story buying. Looking down you’ll just see the top of people’s heads, and looking sideways means an even longer distance.
samstave
Resurrected a memory in me:
Back in ~2002 I lived in San Jose, and my neighbor across from me was a satellite designer at Loral Space Systems...
We often had the same "wash car in driveway" schedule - and I would ask him a bunch of questions about his work, which he couldnt talk about...
But we had a system - I would ask yes/no questions and he would just wash his car - btu if he "waxed left" it was a yes, and if he "waxed right" it was a no...
Now, I dont know how truthful he was, but I would ask about the resolution and size of the spy satts... and he indicated that, yes, they did in-fact have satellites that could read your license plate from space.
toss1
When I was in college before Hubble was launched, my astronomy professor told me that the original design for the Hubble space telescope was for a smaller mirror, but got upgraded because the larger one would be cheaper to make the larger mirror, because larger mirror size was already being made. Also the Space Shuttle was sized for the larger mirror diameter. The strong inference is that the US DOD was already making that size, so existing tooling could be used. Consider Hubble pointed at a target only 200-3mmkm away...
TedDoesntTalk
Reading newspaper headlines from satellite imagery was possible in the late 1960s. Source: my father, who worked at Kodak and Hughes Aircraft on such systems.
pc86
I totally believe they have satellites with this level of clarity, and probably did 20+ years ago as well.
But how do you read a license plate at a 90° angle from space?
godzillabrennus
Doesn’t surprise me. Maxar sells CNN photos where you can make out with reasonable clarity what is going on at the surface of the earth. The stuff the government has probably makes that look like a child’s attempt at satellite imagery.
neilv
If only you'd taught him wax on, wax off instead, now he'd know karate, instead of getting questioned by stern-looking people next week about security practices.
RoyGBivCap
I live in Portland and watching the Portland Police planes circle downtown all night with their data hidden on https://www.flightradar24.com/, (but visible on https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ (for now)) is a little unnerving. I have no clue what tech they have onboard, but I assume high res + night vision.
It was every night last summer and I think most residents are completely unware that they're up there.
n8cpdx
You can find the auditor’s report and learn more about how the ASU works. The cameras are 90s tech and not suitable for identifying individuals - just good enough to track the movement of someone they already know about.
The plane is particularly useful for reducing the need for car chases.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tVI6fn4YGFo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=j0jTuCj7Qeg
Auditor’s report link directly to air support unit info: https://www.portland.gov/audit-services/news/2022/4/6/police...
PaulWaldman
>he wouldn't specifically say who owned them
That sounds a little concerning. Was the implication that it was a government agency at some level?
TheFattestNinja
It's quite likely they had no idea. Easy to imagine a scenario where there is a company owning the building, one owning the cameras and maintenance, one owning the data/recording, all wrapped up in management partners mergers shells etc.
samstave
Cut the 'server hard line' and see who shows up!
14
Exactly. Why would you let a random person into your building if there was no answer who they worked for? Was it because they claimed to work for business and you blindly trusted they were doing what they said or did you have some heads up from your boss saying let them in? There must be more to this story or maybe op just didn’t care about random people entering and accessing equipment.
tedunangst
"they could read a business card from 300 yards away."
What's the field of view?
TomK32
Probably just the business card.
crop_rotation
This reminds me of San Francisco Police Strike 1975 where the Police ignored court orders and called the court order "Unconstitutional". (https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/20/archives/police-out-san-f...) In the end they got what they wanted too.
fakedang
Looks like USA is a police state after all. The irony.
BonoboIO
I don’t know why you are downvoted.
pclmulqdq
NYC, SF, and other big cities behave this way, but most of the rest of the country doesn't.
seanw444
As a police officer, you swear an oath to uphold the US Constitution. If you believe a law is unconstitutional, you have an obligation to not enforce it. I know, that kind of autonomy and trust is foreign to non-USAers, but that's why this country is great.
KennyBlanken
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_police_strike
Ten deaths and countless other crimes, violent and property related.
shadowgovt
After watching the NYPD's response to Black Lives Matter, nobody should be terribly surprised about this sort of thing. The organization's leadership pretty clearly considers the organization to be a power unto itself that is only partially regulated by civilian authority.
drumhead
There isn't much accountability when it comes to the NYPD. They seem to do what they want and get away with it, and the public as a whole there don't really look like they care.
i80and
This is anecdotal, but most New Yorkers I know care, there's just not much they can do. The NYPD is effectively a military force and they have de facto veto power over the city government.
woodruffw
This is correct, and to elaborate: the NYPD (1) is largely staffed by employees who live outside of the city, and (2) has an openly revanchist attitude towards the citizens they ostensibly protect and serve.
Under the current scheme, there is no incentive structure that "fixes" the NYPD; the NYPD is functioning as intended, and in broad conflict with the roles that constrain every other NYC civil servant (e.g., around living in the city).
int_19h
Even NYPD cops themselves can't do much about it: Here's one guy who tried to blow a whistle on his PD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft
The very people who were in charge of investigating police conduct reported him to his superiors. And then his own colleagues raided his house and forced him into involuntary confinement as an "emotionally disturbed person", handcuffs and all. The cops who delivered him to the psychiatric ward intentionally lied and misrepresented the whole thing to make sure that he remained confined and restrained.
Luckily, the guy had two recorders running during the raid, and the cops only found one, so there was ample evidence. I actually wonder if he'd still be in psych ward if not for that.
atchoo
They voted for an NYPD Captain as mayor so it would seem if they do care, then it's supportive, desiring more NYPD power over government not less. Which seems insane to me...
kulahan
Why would veto power matter in a scenario where they've gone rogue?
taco_emoji
Yeah, I mean, who do you call to arrest the cops?
aqme28
> the public as a whole there don't really look like they care
Really? The George Floyd protests were the largest protests in US history. That summer in NYC was extremely tense between the NYPD and regular residents (I have plenty of stories). Maybe I lived in an NYC bubble, but nearly everyone I knew was extremely upset with the NYPD, and remains upset.
drumhead
Why hasnt anything changed then?
fallingknife
I think you're probably living in a bubble. The people of NYC elected an ex NYPD officer as mayor in 2021, so they can't be that upset with the NYPD.
kmeisthax
This has been the case for over a century. The history of the NYPD is actually wild: it was originally two different police organizations who would regularly get into fights with one another. This was itself the result of a power struggle between the city and the state.
The public do care, though - in fact, it's why the Democratic Party base was more or less calling for a total purge of police departments. It wasn't because they want to be able to crime with impunity or because they want The Purge IRL. It's because a good chunk of them live in a city where the police force is a only few steps away from being the deep state.
akira2501
A personnel purge without enacting any structural changes is not particularly useful, and it is often the action of a group who wishes to capture the corruption for themselves, rather than actually fixing it.
VWWHFSfQ
I think the public has seen the dramatic increase in violent crime and other major crimes since the pandemic and want NYPD to fix it and they don't really care how they do that. Adams ran on a platform of exactly this and now the public expects results.
SamoyedFurFluff
Tbh, in my circles there’s already deep resentment for Adam’s not actually addressing this. Instead we have cops lining up to ticket bike riders for no bells or turning on a red, while bike lanes themselves are notoriously unprotected from cars parking in/driving through them and pedestrians are getting killed in hit and runs that go ignored. The general sentiment is that police presence will always make a situation worse and don’t have incentives aligned with actually improving the lives of people.
marcellus23
The perception that crime has skyrocketed since the pandemic is propaganda, fueled by a police department afraid of being defunded, media outlets desperate for clicks, and a cop running for mayor.
Reality doesn't back it up. The murder rate in NYC is roughly where it was in 2009, and still five times less than it was in the 90s.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-is-nyc-safe-crime-st... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City#/media/...
GVIrish
This is why police reform is so hard to achieve. When crime spikes, people are far less committed to police reform.
Even when crime isn't spiking, police can just sit on their hands whenever reforms are pushed and instantly change the narrative. This happened in SF with the AG recall and has happened in numerous municipalities. Local politicians can't afford to anger the police union because all the police has to do is stop enforcing the law aggressively and a local politician is done for.
So New Yorkers may want police reforms but the NYPD union has a lot of leverage to resist it. And voters generally dont' have the stomach to oppose police union backlash.
bradleyjg
Except the police aren’t fixing it and are also still walking around like they are untouchable gods. It’s one thing to be a thug that runs the trains on time and another to be a thug that doesn’t.
See, also, Putin’s current reputation in Russia.
deepspace
> There isn't much accountability when it comes to the NYPD. They seem to do what they want and get away with it
We were recently discussing police accountability in Vancouver, Canada. Different city, different country, but the same issue. Our police chief openly stated that he is not accountable to the city, or anyone at all, and he and the VPD will continue to do as they please.
IG_Semmelweiss
"Impact on disparate groups"
I know who made the law happen, but it seems odd to me to ask police depts to run statistical analysis of their own work. Not only they are not a neutral party, but thats not their mission. Thats for qualified data scientists and researchers to do.
Police are supposed to address crime
pulisse
The NYPD has more than a few data scientists on staff, as they should. At their scale (40k officers policing a population of 8.5 million), small biases have effects that are large in absolute terms.
mjhay
Those data scientists are incentivized to make assumptions that wind up giving the results the NYPD wants. Statistics is not objective.
hobs
Well, it seems like they should arrest themselves based on this article.
sixothree
This country was founded on the principle of checks and balances. There are no checks on the police. Without adversarial oversight, police will always be above the law. This is a bad place for our country to be.
zzzeek
send some data scientists and researchers into an NYPD office to "touch" things and see how that goes
thrillgore
Police in the US have no obligation to serve the public or prevent crime due to Warren vs DC.
pwinnski
This is a bad reading of the case. The ruling on appeal was that the police in that case had no special duty to that particular person, but still had a duty to the public at large.
Specifically, "the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists."[0]
People like to extrapolate from that, saying that if no specific legal duty exists toward individual 1, and no specific legal duty exists toward individual 2, and so on, then ultimately, no specific legal duty exists toward any individuals at all, but again, the first part of that sentence restates that there is a duty to provide services to the public.
I mean, look, the story of the crime itself is horrifying, but if the ruling had gone the other way, the concern was that cops would essentially be held to a standard of perfection, and any cop who ever didn't investigate any crime aggressively enough would be liable in court for their lack of aggressiveness.
I think it's a bad ruling, but it doesn't say what people claim it does, and it also doesn't seem to apply particularly strongly outside of the District of Columbia.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
ch4s3
This applies to constitutional law only. Any state or municipality can legislate more specific requirements for policing if they choose, because that’s how federalism works.
chimeracoder
> Police in the US have no obligation to serve the public or prevent crime due to Warren vs DC.
Actually it's due to Castle Rock v. Gonzalez, but you have the right idea.
IG_Semmelweiss
Can you elaborate? id like To understand what you mean.
malfist
They're addressing crime....by committing it.
dmix
It always amazes me there isn’t a publicly accountable oversight committee that comes with every major privacy violating power. The courts alone aren’t sufficent. And secret courts like FISA that are only selectively required are doubly insufficient.
standardUser
When I was a teenager I worked with a city council member in my hometown to help establish an independent oversight committee for the local police department. Within a month, the council member was pulled over and given a ticket, and her teenage daughter was pulled over and given a ticket. They don't say ACAB just because it's catchy.
yieldcrv
various municipalities enact oversight committees as a “gotcha” to rogue police departments
all that happens is that the oversight committee doesn't get information shared to them
there are other solutions
bastard_op
Perfect example of why they don't care, they already ignore virtually all oversight anyways. https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/31/nypd_surveillance_rul...
susanasj
I understand the objections to "abolish the police" sloganeering because I think the alternatives of "restorative justice" and all that are pretty poorly defined (I say this as someone pretty involved in left wing politics).
However, it's increasingly clear that city police departments in many cities basically operate as unaccountable gangs that extort city government. LA Sheriff's Department has quite a few actual, traditional gangs operating within it. The NYPD routinely breaks the law when they feel like it. In Austin, the Police Academy training was found to be discriminatory and militaristic so the City Council created an oversight board, and the Police Department just doesn't let the board view trainings that they are supposed to.
Not to mention the constant police violence that they are rarely held accountable for, including the stuff from 2020 where we watched NYPD officers running their vehicles into protestors.
I don't know what the solution is but the status quo feels unsustainable.
malfist
Sounds like a police department wants to be defunded. They forget who they work for.
merrywhether
I wish the defunding movement had instead focused on moving monetary liability from the city instead to the police union. Let the officers pay higher dues to protect their problematic colleagues from million dollar judgements. I feel like that change would be much more politically viable and also have a strong ripple effect. Right now the solidarity of the thin blue line is free, and I don’t think it would stand up to internalizing that cost.
tehwebguy
Civil rights violations done on behalf of the city should not have a cap of some private group’s bank account / insurance policy.
hedora
Hey, citizen’s arrest is a thing. We just need the proponents of this law to surround the chief on their way to work (or maybe a police station), then call the feds.
This actually worked reasonably well in the US a century or so ago. It’s one of the few use cases for the 2nd amendment that made any sense (other than hunting for food).
devoutsalsa
Makes me wonder if anyone has ever been charged with resisting a citizen’s arrest.
Chris2048
Do citizens get Qualified Immunity? b/c that's the what allows the police to murder you.
dikaio
“Call the Feds” is that sarcasm? If you haven’t read of late the way the federal government uses law enforcement for their own agenda regardless of the US constitution than I will assume calling the feds was made in parody.
dabluecaboose
The 2nd amendment isn't, and literally never was, about hunting.
sneak
The second amendment has been effectively abolished in New York.
dgacmu
History with NYPD suggests they know they have a good chance of getting away with it, unfortunately.
A4ET8a8uTh0
Politicians of bigger metropolitan areas tend to learn quickly that cops are a fairly important power center ( usually come a bigger unrest ). For example, in Chicago, both Lightfoot and her predecessor faced those issues.
You have to understand. The relationship is not nearly as straightforward as you make it out to be.
piuantiderp
Defunding is the dumbest possible move. You have to align the incentives of the police with those of the middle middle-upper class, anything else is disfunctional will only get worse.
int_19h
Why should incentives of police be aligned with one particular swath of the population that isn't even representative of it?
EngManagerIsMe
Anyone who has been watching cops over the past few decades shouldn't find this at all surprising. Cops consistently believe themselves to be above the law and above oversight -- especially the NYPD, but the problem is in every precinct around the country.
It's all cops.
jMyles
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nemo44x
It’s interesting because I’ve been to many countries all over the world and of very different cultures and they all had police and prisons. Crazy that that are all just remnants of slave patrols I guess.
jimbob45
what we once called slave-patrols-and-plantations and which we now call police-and-prisons
There’s been a huge resurgence across Reddit and HN today to resurrect Defund the Police and ACAB but implying police and prisons were invented after 1865 surely takes the cake.
Scubabear68
Sorry, no. It’s not all cops. I know several people in law enforcement, most of them are very decent people and don’t do nasty things.
If policing was as bad as some people want us to believe, we’d all be cowering in our homes afraid to go outside.
EngManagerIsMe
> most of them are very decent people and don’t do nasty things.
That's not really the bar though. Police officers have exemplary powers, being the manifestation of the violence of the state. They must be held to a standard above "decent people".
And being personable and friendly is not the mark of a good cop. A good cop needs to be willing to stand up for the right thing even if their peers are doing something wrong. That has been documented to be exceptionally rare in the police.
Friendly, approachable police officers are still involved in systematic injustices too -- as long as the justice system punishes the poor and minorities more than others, the police are part of the problem. The police intake people into the justice system, and knowing this if they are targeting poor or minority people they are engaged in systematic problems.
So a friendly "nice guy" cop can still be a problem.
jksmith
1) Let me ask you, should I have respect for a cop because of the uniform, allowance to carry a gun, has a badge etc? I'm asking, because I really don't know how high the vetting standards are for cops. Are they that high?
2) Also, do cops respect other cops because they also wear a uniform, carry a badge, etc? In my second-hand experience, no. Some cops think other cops are a piece of shit, regardless of them being cops.
3) Here's a way to piss a cop off and get a ticket: say, "If you wanted to serve your community, you could have been a fireman."
Being a cop is a shitty job that many cops I've met end up hating and they obsess over all the retirement mechanisms all the time - they talk about it incessantly. They also talk about how much people piss them off, how much other cops in their dept piss them off, etc. They hate the world to some degree, are very self-righteous as if they have some respect narcissism complex, and act like the only thing that keeps them from shooting or beating somebody is one more day closer to a full retirement and buying dogecoin to get rich.
Ok, so to circle back around, anybody still believe in this cop respect sacred cow? Do you really feel completely safe from a cop when you're pulled over and you tell the cop you aren't rolling the window down all the way?
scarface74
It is all cops. What are the chances that the “decent people you know” would actually report on their fellow police officers if they saw then doing something illegal?
tyingq
The skeptic in me says any effort to fix it will just push it all into the shadows behind parallel construction.
radicaldreamer
That's likely already the way most cases are "solved"
irrational
Law enforcement for thee, but not for me.
ck2
Think about this one:
The NSA is probably aware and/or can detect every corrupt cop in the country.
Certainly the financial corruption, they aren't stuffing cash into their mattresses.
Yet nothing is ever done with that data, even without using it for prosecution.
Avshalom
You don't need to be the NSA to figure out who's a corrupt cop. They wear badges and have uniforms.
sneak
How do you know nothing is ever done with it? You definitionally would never hear if it were.
Same goes for all judges, congresspeople, etc. Those in a position to surveil the mobile network know every mistress, every drug dealer, every bag man for every powerful person in the country.
tehwebguy
Surely the police refusing to comply with this law will be arrested & left to rot in Rikers for months awaiting pretrial arraignment
calvinmorrison
Surely the DA will be on top of this, presumably charging officials with not following the law to a T. When is the indictment coming?
ehvatum
I hope you’re not suggesting that the DA being motivated by politics is a bad thing.
He’s an elected official. His job is to respond to his constituents by prosecuting people they don’t like.
kevviiinn
...rather than people that break the law?
dragonwriter
If you don’t have a single monolithic local paramilitary law enforcement entity, then you won’t have this problem of police veto.
nikonyrh
How can we push this down to 80% ? :D
classified
So the NYPD is breaking the law. Aren't they supposed to enforce it?
zzzeek
cant imagine why a police department where thousands of their employees park their personal vehicles each day all over sidewalks illegally as a matter of course might be slow-walking some annoying rule about surveillance.
javajosh
They also regularly use their lights and sirens just to get through traffic. Those constant little violations of the law have a cumulative effect, like how broken windows and other minor violations make a neighborhood feel less safe.
John23832
This is a very succinct way to describe the problem. This is "Broken Windows" by our government/law enforcement.
The constant skirting of the law public servants in NYC, be it the illegal parking, the using of sirens to push their way through traffic, the "I won't wear a mask but will fine you for not wearing one", NYPD officers not paying subway fares but fining the average joe, the special treatment (private spaces for NYPD families and adjacents in what are supposed to be public events)...
All of that shit culminates in the lack of trust in institutions and the degradation of OUR city.
aqme28
Remember on July 4th when they made a private fireworks viewing section in a prime area for only police and their families, while the public areas were overcrowded?
https://gothamist.com/news/nypd-blocked-off-vip-viewing-site...
yowzadave
And often run red lights without even using their sirens. This kind of corruption drives me nuts.
gukov
Oh, so exactly like in Canada. Good to know we’re not the only ones, I guess.
I do think turning on the lights possibly serves a good thing: it’s a silent reminder that the cops are in the area, especially at night.
bitwize
Reminds me of the stories I'd heard about Toronto cops using their lights and sirens to clear a path to Tim Horton's. Which I found mildly surprising in Toronto's case, not at all surprising in NYC's.
dathinab
Honestly anything I hear about NYPD sounds like they are beyond being fixable and need to be dissolved and recreated from scratch with anyone in power of the recreation needing to be unrelated to the original NYPD.
But then what I hear about it is very limited an done-sided.
firstlink
So? Nothing will happen. Police are above the law.
theknocker
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hedora
Does this law have any teeth? OIG-NYPD’s only reasonable conclusion is that the NYPD’s use of all the surveillance technologies bundled into the noncompliant report is unlawful. (Due to lack of correct record keeping and reporting.)
This should be easy enough to prosecute, e.g., via internal affairs.
Floegipoky
My guess is that this is not a criminal violation and the "best case" scenario would be a civil lawsuit which would end up being paid by the city.
When I worked in NYC (mid 2010s) we were on the top floor of our building and one day a service guy came through needing access to the roof from our suite.
Turns out he was there to update some cameras on the roof that pointed out to Union Square. I talked to him for a while, and while he wouldn't specifically say who owned them, he did say "they could read a business card from 300 yards away."
This was probably before there was much facial recognition going on, but it stuck with me that we were only one of many buildings with these set ups. I always heard about London being over-surveilled, I guess the NYPD did a much better job of keeping quiet about it.