NYPD Expands Surveillance in NYCHA Housing

Published Date : 10/3/2025 

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has integrated cameras from the Big Apple Connect broadband program into its Domain Awareness System (DAS), sparking privacy concerns and political debates. This move, which allows real-time surveillance of NYCHA residents, has been criticized for turning public housing into a testing ground for expanded government monitoring. 

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has quietly begun wiring cameras at scale in public housing into its real-time surveillance network, sparking a political battle over privacy, transparency, and the use of digital-equity infrastructure as a policing tool.

By tapping the broadband lines of the city’s Big Apple Connect program, officers are now able to watch New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents through a live feed connected to NYPD’s Domain Awareness System (DAS). This move, officials say, will speed investigations, but critics warn it turns public housing into a testing ground for expanded government monitoring.

Originally designed as a counterterrorism platform, DAS now aggregates CCTV, license-plate readers, 911 calls, complaint, arrest, and warrant data, and other NYPD databases. It can surface linked records about people, locations, and vehicles.

The public first got a clear picture of the scope of the system’s expansion this week when the New York City Council held an emergency oversight hearing in response to reporting that the mayor’s administration has been using Big Apple Connect to wire NYCHA’s CCTV network directly into DAS.

At the hearing, the NYPD’s information-technology chief testified that 68 cameras at one development are already live and that the department plans to add roughly 1,900 cameras across 19 properties by year’s end, with a longer-term buildout to nearly 17,900 cameras at 119 developments. He framed the change as an “unbelievably valuable” shift from after-the-fact retrieval to instant access that can show crimes unfolding and rapidly identify suspects, witnesses, or dead ends.

Council members pressed officials on why none of this had been publicly disclosed until contract records surfaced. City technology officials conceded they had not notified residents and apologized for contradictory statements given over the summer.

The NYPD also acknowledged it may share information gleaned from NYCHA feeds with federal immigration authorities “when required by law.” The broadband program was extended last week through 2028, locking in city spending at an annual cost of about $38 million, well over $100 million over the term.

The mayor’s office touted the digital-equity benefits, including free Internet for more than 300,000 residents, while advocates warn that an infrastructure marketed as a social good is now doubling as a law-enforcement backhaul.

Civil liberties organizations and technologists reacted sharply as details emerged. The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project argued that public housing has repeatedly been used as a proving ground for invasive policing tools, and that “using public broadband does not mean anyone invited NYPD into their homes.” The group said residents need “surveillance-free broadband” to participate in daily life without becoming the subjects of continuous monitoring.

BetaNYC’s executive director likewise warned that linking public-housing cameras to the Domain Awareness System without POST Act transparency or resident input “erodes trust and threatens civil liberties” and undermines public support for the very broadband programs meant to close the digital divide.

The POST Act, in its current or revised form, mandates certain disclosures of surveillance technologies, data flows, retention, and usage policies, though gaps and enforcement challenges persist.

Defense attorneys and community advocates carried their concerns into the council chamber. A Harlem public defender testified that NYPD surveillance in NYCHA has already been used to watch who young people spend time with on camera, raising First Amendment questions about freedom of association.

Council members also honed in on the integration with the Domain Awareness System, which has long been criticized for opacity around facial recognition and “precision policing” models. NYPD officials said they can audit which officers view specific feeds and for how long. Council members suggested that independent, proactive auditing is needed to prevent “suspicionless long-term monitoring of individual residents.”

In the weeks leading up to the hearing, New York Focus traced how the plan evolved behind closed doors. NYCHA initially told the outlet that Big Apple Connect “is not intended to support” its cameras; OTI, the city’s tech office, insisted there were “no live feeds.” Later, NYPD confirmed the program allows officers to view live video, access playback, and pull up to 30 days of footage, contradictions that fueled council demands for a halt and a full accounting.

In April, the city council strengthened the POST Act with a package that, among other provisions, empowers the Department of Investigation to demand detailed inventories of surveillance tech, mandated a public policy and biannual audits for facial recognition, and requires disclosure of all outside entities that receive NYPD surveillance data.

The Brennan Center, which pushed for the reforms after the city’s inspector general flagged compliance gaps, said the updated law closes some longstanding loopholes that let the NYPD sidestep meaningful disclosure. Council leaders who shepherded the package through have since signaled they want tighter auditing and clearer rules for inter-agency data sharing connected to NYCHA feeds.

Lawmakers have begun to introduce measures specifically aimed at oversight of the NYCHA pipeline. Sponsors and privacy groups are also floating resident-centric guardrails, notifying tenants when live access is activated at a development, posting clear signage and impact-use policies at building entrances, publishing selection criteria for camera integration, and setting retention limits with independent audits.

The mayoral administration and NYPD argue the change is a technical modernization, not a “new technology,” and therefore not subject to the POST Act’s public notice provisions. That interpretation landed poorly with council members and civil liberties groups, who countered saying that swapping “how” access occurs is precisely the sort of shift the POST Act was written to surface.

The debate matters because the POST Act’s updated rules now require disclosure of data flows to outside agencies and regular audits of sensitive systems, obligations that would directly address advocates’ concerns about immigration referrals and cross-database profiling.

For residents, the stakes are immediate. Real-time camera access, wired through an equity-branded broadband network, risks normalizing continuous observation of exteriors, lobbies, and corridors with potential ripple effects into gang databases, predictive-policing models, and immigration enforcement.

The city council’s hearing, powered by document disclosures pried loose through records litigation, forced the city to acknowledge that residents were not informed and that public explanations shifted under scrutiny. With the broadband program extended through 2028, pressure is likely to climb for statutory guardrails that move oversight from internal logs to independent audits that treat method changes as “new” for transparency purposes, and that guarantee public-housing tenants the right to know when their buildings become nodes in the city’s surveillance web. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS): 

Q: What is the Domain Awareness System (DAS)?

A: The Domain Awareness System (DAS) is a surveillance platform used by the NYPD that aggregates data from various sources, including CCTV cameras, license-plate readers, 911 calls, and other databases. It is designed to help in real-time investigations and crime prevention.

Q: How has the NYPD integrated cameras in public housing into DAS?

A: The NYPD has connected the broadband lines of the Big Apple Connect program, which provides Internet to NYCHA residents, to the DAS. This allows officers to view live feeds from NYCHA cameras, access playback, and pull up to 30 days of footage.

Q: What are the concerns raised by civil liberties groups?

A: Civil liberties groups are concerned that the integration of NYCHA cameras into DAS turns public housing into a testing ground for expanded government monitoring. They argue that residents should have surveillance-free broadband and that the move erodes trust and threatens civil liberties.

Q: What measures are being proposed to address these concerns?

A: Lawmakers and privacy groups are proposing measures such as notifying tenants when live access is activated, posting clear signage and impact-use policies, publishing selection criteria for camera integration, and setting retention limits with independent audits.

Q: What is the POST Act and how does it relate to this issue?

A: The POST Act mandates certain disclosures of surveillance technologies, data flows, retention, and usage policies. It has been strengthened to include provisions for independent audits and disclosure of data shared with outside entities. The act is relevant as it can address concerns about transparency and accountability in the use of DAS. 

More Related Topics :