BRIC

Councilmember Dan Garodnick, D-Manhattan

With Edward Snowden still in Russia and President Trump’s claims about Obama-era wiretaps still in the news, electronic surveillance has been a national story for some time now. But this is a local issue, too. New York City’s police department has a multilayered and growing network of eavesdropping devices, from license-plate readers to cameras, gunshot detectors to the Domain Awareness System.

These tools raise the same questions about civil liberties as the NSA’s eavesdropping does. And now there are some efforts here in the city to at least learn more about what the police are doing with all that spying power.

On Tuesday’s episode of BkLive, I welcomed Michael Price, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program and Councilmember Daniel Gardonick, sponsor of a bill to increase oversight of the NYPD’s surveillance tools.