320- Mamdani, NYPD, And The Surveillance City

I weigh Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win against NYPD’s surveillance muscle and ask whether a progressive platform can work with Jessica Tisch’s hard-data approach. Then we react to another GTA 6 delay and debate whether a $20,000 home robot is help or a privacy hazard.

• mandate from a three-way race and decision to keep Jessica Tisch
• scope of NYPD surveillance and post‑9/11 legacy
• warrants, oversight, and data retention limits as safeguards
• protests, campus security, and public trust
• civilian response units for non‑police calls
• GTA 6 delay to November 2026 and fan fatigue
• home robot costs, capabilities, and privacy trade‑offs

Links to the articles

https://www.wired.com/story/welcome-to-mamdanis-surveillance-state/

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/gta-vi-delay-november-2026-allows-take-two-potentially-bigger-launch-analysts-2025-11-07/

https://www.cnet.com/tech/before-you-preorder-a-20k-home-robot-theres-something-you-should-see/

Chapters

• 0:00 Solo Setup And Three Topics
• 3:22 Mandani’s Win And NYPD Reality
• 7:00 Tensions With Jessica Tisch
• 11:30 NYPD’s Big-Data Surveillance Machine
• 17:45 Warrants, Oversight, And Power
• 23:10 Politics, Protests, And Campus Fallout
• 28:40 Policing Plans And Potential Clashes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:06

Welcome everyone to Politically High Tech with your host Elias. This is going to be a solo episode. This is one of the few of the season. It's going to be a final one after the last development episode as well. So it's going to be my second solo episode. I'm going to be focusing on technology. The three things I'm going to talk about is Zora Mandani. For those of you that are not aware, he has won the mayoral race and he has gotten the bear majority. Okay, which is pretty impressive in a three-person race. And he has over a million votes. So that's the that's the result of that. And he is going to inherit a Savale Heavy NYPD, the New York Police Department. And he's going to have to grapple with that because I know he has a specific unit that's going to deal with the emergency costs, but we're going to get deeper into it. And he just and his campaign, he decided to keep Jessica Tisch, who is more tough on crime, she's pro-surveillance, and her family even support Israeli causes. So that's gonna I won't be surprised it's gonna cause some conflict there. Well, I hope they work it out together because I do not support being weak on crime. So if I have to take a side here, if I'm gonna be honest, I tie uh when it comes to crime, I would side with Tish James, even though I would love the unnecessary unwarranted surveillance to be reduced. I know that's a bit of conundrum. I really I am strongly against soft policing and abolishing NYPD. Zoran Mandati is not gonna do that. Let me just be clear about that. But that's what I'm gonna talk about. I'm gonna get deeper into that and how that that might cause some problems. And he is gonna inherit that because NYPD, it does even some work to the out to a lower degree than the CIA. I'm gonna get deeper into that once again. And then the second topic is gonna be something a lot more lighthearted, but it's gonna piss people off regardless. There's another delay of Grand Off Auto 6. More memes are coming now. Um, people say I got married right before GTA 6's release. That was more lighthearted kind of thing. I want to start with some heavy, then something more lighthearted. And then something, then a third one. It's gonna be something weird. You could pre-order your old Sorry about that. Yeah, I don't want that, I don't want that damn thing reading to me. Yeah, so you get to pre-order your own robo-made, essentially. Yeah, that's the weird. And there's gonna be a hefty price tag to that. Over 20k. Do you want a robot house made or you rather clean it yourself? I don't, but for early adopters, it's gonna be pretty expensive for sure. That's why not everybody is an early adopter. There's skepticism and there is high costs. Okay? And I'm pretty sure there's gonna have a lot of problems. I mean, this is pretty radical right there. So let's get to the first and uh the heaviest one of the three. Zara Mandani is gonna be mayor New Year's of 2026, so right after the in not right after, it's during the New Year's celebration. That's when the mayor gets sworn in. That's how it's done in New York City. Okay, he's gonna have to uh he's gonna inherit this. Okay, there is just not much he could do about that, okay. And this article here from the wire, and I'm gonna link it in the description, is describing how my Zora Mandani and Jessica Tish may have clash, they're gonna have some clashes. It's hypothetical, but I won't be surprised because not just Jessica Tish, it's also her family. They have they have stronger ties to the Israel lobby. You know, Mandani is he supports a Palestinian state. That could cause a conflict for sure. And I won't be surprised. Um that's gonna it's gonna boom cause some friction between the two. And yeah, that's gonna be that's gonna be very that I think that's gonna be interesting to see because he said in his campaigns or Mandani again that he wants to keep Jessica Tish as the NYPD commissioner. Okay? And where Jessica Tish got her interesting start with the NYPD is that she's she remembered right after 9-11. Some of you were not born, and some of you were younger at that time. Remember, there was massive surveillance on mosques and Muslim New Yorkers because of the 9-11 attacks. Okay? That was a thing, and I won't be surprised they're still doing that, but more in covert operation. Okay, and then there's a professor here, um Andrew Gothrie Ferguson of George Washington University Law School, studies high-tech surveillance and law enforcement, and he's the author of the The Rise of Big Data Policing. He studied about how NYPD has created such a massive infrastructure for mass surveillance, okay. Reading license plates, gunshot detectors, video analytics. He's been doing that since 9-11. You know, 9-11 changed everything, okay, and we're still dealing with the intense impacts of that to this day. Yep, to this very day. And look, let's just be clear, I don't mind warranted surveillance, but with this massiveness, you a lot of it is is going on warranted. They don't have to ask permission, they can just scan through. And Mandani has not provided a comment for that. I mean, he's busy developing this whole woman transition team led by Linda Khan, who is a big fighter against a fight against big tech. Sort of a journalist, and she doesn't mind holding big, you know, p big tech people to account, especially those who own it. And and that's gonna lead the transition team. That's the only reason why I'm mentioning her. And look, there is uh NYPD, they love to rely on big data. That's been a thing since William Bratton. Okay, William Bratton came back when when the when former mayor de Blasio, who I quote from this former radio host, Adobio, I wasn't a big fan of him, Bratton also mentored Jessica Tisch highly of her. Okay, so very, very highly of her. There's nothing visually entertained, so I'm not gonna show you the article, but I will link it in the description. And Tish is the architect of NYPD's domain awareness system, DOS for short. Okay, it looks into public, private cameras, licensed plate reviews, gun, gunshot detects, even social media feeds, biometric data, cryptocurrency analysis location data. That sounds like Big Brother is stupid on you on a local level. Yeah, you would be right. You would be right. And they got inspired by London's surveillance network. Okay, that's a whole inspiration. I'm not gonna read all that stuff to you. It's people filing a lawsuit against us, I'm not sure they're gonna win. And this could cause abuse easily, and mass surveillance on people's religion, racism, what have you. If this was used responsibly, I will be for it. Let's be clear. When a lot when you have this much surveillance, you'll need to ask for warrants, things like that. You should you should investigate people who are suspicious, but you're stupid through people's things. That warrant, yeah, that creates abuse. I guess I'm not the most anti-police person. I believe police are absolutely necessary. Okay, and let's be clear. Keeping tit keeping Jessica Tisch, does he have a strategy to work with her? Or is he moderating himself? Or is he really afraid of her, right? I mean, that's something one should think about. Why did he say he decided to keep her? Okay, just think about that. That's a common section activity right there. Why do you think he decided to keep her? What's your overall opinion about this? Just to open this discussion even further, right? And look, and there's even an example of there's municipal oversight NYPD's mass surveillance or lack thereof. And look, New York City's passed a law for oversight NYPD, but they refuse to comply. They don't have accountability because they're too big and they're too powerful. And how is Mondani gonna maintain that progressive brand? Because that's not progressive. All the surveillance is mass surveillance, and let's be clear, Jessica Tish comes from a wealthy family that is pro-Israel. I'm not gonna spare all the details. Even though they donate to museums and arts, things like that, that's nice, that's great, but you're also being so greatly surveilled by them. And look, and then this data won't be surprised is even being shared. I'm speculating here, of course. So Trump administration, this is why they're able to do these ice raids. And look, Eric Adams just cleans his hands. He is saying, in my opinion, I don't care. I'm no longer gonna be mayor. And ice has been coming in strong ever since, especially with that Trump pardon. And look, I warn you, Democrats, Eric Adams is very corrupt. He he will he's two-faced, he will, he's an opportunist. I warned you, I don't hate the guy. I mean, I don't have any hate, but I warned you, Democrats, you settle for him. You had other choices. You had other choices, but y'all settle with Eric Adams, so this is your fault, not mine. I voted for Curtis Siwa on 2021 mayoral election. Okay. So And look, and then you have this weird robot police dog. It's a little creepy to be honest, that's stooping around, even had his little It's it's a bit creepy. And it's also doing its surveillance. I don't know what was supposed to do besides being creepy. I mean, it's just I mean, it's a it's a big surveillance city, New York, New York City. I mean, I wouldn't agree to some of it, just use it responsibly, but that's like I don't know. And look, and in Madani, again, this is a clash that's gonna happen. He wants to he vows to get rid of the gang database, and limit and Tish is against that, and I actually support her in this case. We need to keep taps of gangs. I mean, that that part is a no. Let's see, I'm a moderate here. I know that one I'm with Tish James. Um I'm just wondering how these two are gonna work out. That's my that's my deal. How are these two going to work out? Using yeah, using robot dogs and drones too. They have drones flying around. You know, you get and a lot of it's for far above. Yeah, New York, New York City, you're greatly surveilled. If you care about privacy, well. I mean, my radical advice to you is live off the grid and don't have a smartphone. Don't have these computers, because all these a lot of these technological devices are keeping track of you one way or another.

unknown: 12:02

Okay?

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

And this has been the police, this has been NYPD's police modeling since the 90s. Okay. Since the 90s. They got look, they even got fingerprinted technology and smartphones, augment reality, where police could could download that stuff with say phones. I mean And it was even time when NYPD used uh FDNY account with uh ClearView AI to identify proposity and protests. Yeah, that's why they were able to get these photos of these people real quick, huh? And City Council can't do much about it. Um NYPD lobbying the union is pretty damn strong. Okay, it's pretty damn strong for sure. Pretty, pretty damn strong. And I'm not gonna go too deep into that. You can read that for yourselves. You want to read deep into Jessica Tish's history, and of course, she files to fight anti-Semitism. Looks like Zora Mandai's on the same page on that, at least on statement-wise, but the how is where there's plenty of fertile ground for debate for sure. Right? And the NYPD did crack down on that. And I mean, I support there some of the intent's intervention there because they did damage buildings, they did do things. You know, this is why I disagree with the article. It may seem like all these pro-Palestan protesters were innocent and didn't commit any violence. That's bull crap. That is bull crap, okay? I only will defend those who have done it peacefully, not the ones that broke buildings, antagonized other people, and even Jewish students. They were caught on that crossfire. It's yeah, it's it's yeah, it was crazy. And ever since then, you know, and I say this, and I'm gonna I forgive me for those who've been loyal listeners that you are hearing this again, but I missed the time where I was able to openly walk into Columbia University, use the extra shortcut, in some cases, during my unofficial touristy NYC sightseeing. That's how I'm gonna brand it. Now I gotta get due security. And now it's a big freaking blockade. Okay? I mean, I didn't miss that. I appreciate that, and this is why I say you have to be responsible, people. Freedom comes with responsibility, because once you start doing chaotic things, security states can get involved. It may moderate to some point, but is it gonna be completely gone? That is not guaranteed. That is not guaranteed, okay? It's not guaranteed, it really, it really isn't. And I think one of makes a good point. It can't be sanctuary city, city in surveillance state. Well, I don't know. I don't you know what? Let me retract that. I don't know, New York City's proven you can do both. It's been doing it for decades. You probably just wish you had less surveillance, Mr. Fox Cone. But that's not the reality, okay? That's just not the freaking reality. And how does Zormondali want to do policing, okay? And how does he want to do policing? I know he wants to have a unit that is dedicated to non-police cause, okay? And that's to deal with social work, you know, those with mental illness, that's community safety, and that's Tish is gonna have a problem with that. Who knows? She might resign. I don't know, I don't think she would resign. I think she's gonna she might give the mayor a hard time because you know she is part of that powerful family, or who knows? Or maybe she will resign. I mean, the FDMY commission resigned before before Mandani replaced her. Well, he was gonna be replaced anyway, so you know, I I just say give the guy a shot. Give the guy a shot. And I'm just gonna talk about Mandani briefly before I jump into the other topics, and the other topics are gonna be much shorter than this, that I'll could tell you that much. Zara Mandani, he did excellent campaign. He used social media really well. I even he got my attention. I'm someone who dismisses a lot of political campaigns. This is one of the few I would give a A, not an A plus, because I think he could have done just a little more campaigning on just Stand Island in the Bronx. A little nitpick there, but other than that, he's ran such an effective campaign. His messaging was good. Even though his videos were longer, but they were engaging, he articulated most of his policies real clear. He even explained the how. Most of them not willing to do that. Did Andrew Cromo do that? No. He has more experience, granted. That's not a debate there. But you know, he's part Cromo was part of the past. He's done great for New York in the past. I would say he's done pretty good. But you know, he just felt like his name ID was enough. And guess what? He was almost right, Andrew Cuomo. He was almost right. But even Curseel got some name and recognition. But Cuomo was synonymous with New York at some point. But Zoromandani caused an upset, and that made things very interesting. Remember, he started like at 1-2%, he was a nobody, and then he upset Andrew Como and beat him at 13 points. In general election, fast forward to that, he beat him by nine points with the bare majority. Curtis outperformed worse than expected. I mean, let's just compare with the polls real quick. So Ramandani 43. He got over 50%. So he overperformed by 7%. Andrew Como, the polls predicted 33. He overperformed. He had about 41%. 8-point increase. Curtis Lewa, the polls predicted 15%. He went down by 7 to 7. So that's an 8% decrease. So yeah, it's uh I know those of you who are Cuomo supporters, you are upset. And why am I talking about something that's so local? Because it has gone under national tension. And you know what's funny? The right had a similar meltdown to when the left had their meltdown when Trump was first elected. And I was laughing at the left for having that kind of meltdown. But I'm laughing at the right for having that meltdown. I said, oh my god. So y'all, y'all, some of y'all even visibly crying. Sean Hannity crying, it was hilarious. It was hilarious. But this is where we in. Hyper hypocrisy. All right. That's we'll see. I'll continue. And I won't be surprised I'll be talking about Mayor Mandani on an occasion. I'm not gonna talk about him that much because he's not my main focus unless it generates a lot of national buzz. Okay. Alright, that's that one. That's the longest one. It's not gonna be longer than that. The index two. Now let's talk about the more lighthearted one. GTA 6 been delayed once again. Once again, it's been delayed to November 2026. Remember, it was delayed to October 2025, May 2026, now is November 2026. This is my thing. And I'm just gonna be real quick about this. Rockstar, don't do the mistake that Square Enix did with Kingdom Hearts. We keep continuously delaying freaking Kingdom Hearts 3. I mean, let's just put perspective. Kingdom Hearts 2 came out in 2005, Kingdom Hearts 3 did not come out to 2019, and that's what a good chunk of the fan base didn't give a rats behind anymore. Alright, let's just let's just be clear here. Don't don't make that mistake. Don't make that mistake. Look, I hey look, I'm not against this personally, but there are people that are upset. I mean, one of them. One of the stars, you could easily do a Google search on him. He said, I have done all five seasons of Stranger Things before GTA 6 come on. I'd started laughing. Because some people's rate, you know, this is a meme that's gonna continue to persist until the damn game is released. And I want to play it. Am I gonna play it all the time? Of course not. But I'm gonna enjoy it with some of my fun and crazy friends. Okay, yes, I'm still a gamer. I'm an occasional gamer. If you want to talk to me as a teenager, I will I was a habitual gamer. But no, no, you know, grown in responsibilities, helping people out. That's what I do. But that's the short end of it. Yeah, so GTA 6. The delayed once again. And maybe that's a good day to launch it because that's you know, that's during the holidays. That's the what the Black Friday, that's the the cyber I I call it Black Friday month at this point. And then you get into Christmas. I think it's a good idea. I think it's a good idea. I know this opinion might not be popular. Link in the description. The source I got here is for Reuters. But I look, I get it. You some of you are just impatient, but I just think I don't know if slipping to 2027 is gonna be a good idea, but that sadly that is a possibility. Let's just be clear about that. Do I want that to happen? Personally, no, I think this should be good. And there's been some conflicts with uh workers and rockstar. And I just hope I just hope they get their stuff together. I mean, they have known to delay their games, and their games are of high quality. I mean, they got credibility. I mean, come on now. This is how quality games are made. I mean, we're just so impatient. That's another thing. I just want to my thing is I have a balancing act, right? And to me, I think the max for a good, I mean, for me, I mean, gamers, developers, feel free to correct me. Is this your common section activity, or you can call me dumb here? But what do you think is a good amount of you to create a high quality game? Is it five years? Okay, that's what I'm leaning with. Five years should be the max. Okay, and yeah, yeah, that's it. That's it for the whole GTA. Let's just hope it doesn't delay again. Okay, until 2027. I think it's a good time to release it at November 2026. Come on, sales, money, holiday, black Friday, or black month. Okay, okay, now there's the third or final item, the weird one. You know, you could you could pre-own, not pre-own, what am I saying? You could pre-order a home robot. It costs about 20 grand. Yeah, 20 grand. It's supposed to help you with housework, okay? If you're a lazy ass, sometimes like me, this could be useful. And the robot, if you want to know the height of this robot, it's about five foot six inches tall. And link in the description is cnet.com. And it comes with three colors. It has a brown, no, it doesn't have a brown. That's a gray, an ivory, and a black. It's not cheap. It's supposed to be your personal assistant. Take care, you know, matures. Alright. And it stands like five foot six inches tall, so it's gonna be it's a height of uh so it's less tall than the average American man. But it's taller than a good chunk of American women. It's name Neil, Neil's the name, NEO, okay. And the company that owns it's California-based, okay, and they have done things like robot vacuums, but you know, will this work? I mean, I've seen some videos and test runs, and I gotta say, some of them are epic fails. You know, it according to the company, I'm very skeptical by this by the way. I gotta see at least one year of decent test runs. And I'll and I want to see errors, by the way. Don't try to be don't try to act perfect with me, because I'll be very how get very suspicious. I will generate such suspicion so quickly, it's not even funny. Okay. As a four-hour runtime. Well, it's what can you do in four hours? I mean, clean a room very thoroughly, or two rooms, depending how small the apartment is. The company says it can lift up to 154 pounds. Hmm. Interesting. And carry 55. That's pretty damn strong. I don't know, it doesn't look it. You know, and I don't, you know, I don't honestly, I'm very skeptical. Very skeptical. It's gonna, you know, this is AI robotics now intersecting officially here. Okay. It's it's gonna it's gonna learn your house, your layout, it has to get data, so that's you know, that's a privacy issue. If you don't want that company knowing about how your house layout is, because the AI needs to know, so it's gonna know where to walk, how to make its turns, and where to find what, and it said cameras will blur out humans, and you could restrict it for entering specific areas. And there is a monthly subscription of about$500 as opposed to pay for the whole for the whole damn thing. There's gonna be a much broader layout in 2027. But all I'm gonna say is now this is weird, pretty skeptical. I love technology, but I don't love it this much. I prefer to do my own cleaning. Okay, I clean up my pace. Um, oh yeah, this is a surveillance thing. I I I personally don't trust it. I gotta see more videos, I gotta see people, you know, be guinea pigs, early adopters for me. So my cowardly intelligent ass don't have to deal with some of these bugs. I'm just being real. I'm just being real honest with you there. Because look, I'm not ready for that whole robot thing. Meet in my house. I mean, shoot, I don't even trust Alexa, okay? I don't. Just Alexa's such a snooper in a big mouth. Okay. So I don't know. They have to convince me I need to see more studies, more test runs, and some of them are already failing. It's not the same exact product, but I've seen similar products, have done things. The YouTubers have bought these robotic maids, and you know what? They have failed tremendously. They slip, they trip, they fall, they cause big mess. I mean, some spend big money, and I I was just laughing. To me, this is like a com it was it was comedic. But but yeah, no, I'm just not no, no, I don't want it. I don't want it. I really don't want it. Okay, I really don't want it. Until I don't know, I'd rather have a little vacuum robot thing. Now I will settle for that. I will just clean dust and hard to reach corners. I would I will support that, but not uh not the whole robotic main thing coming over and all that. Will it be better in the future? I'm sure it will, but as of now, I am skeptical of the whole damn thing. Okay, and and it's gonna they're gonna offer it, and I'm sure these things are gonna get cheaper and better by then, but for the time being, I'm a hell no. Of the recording of November 8th, 2025. Can I change my mind? Can't I really change my mind? Of course I can't. And the last comment section activity is do you read do you want a robot made robot, you know, an assistant, robot assistant help you clean and do stuff? Do you do you want that? Are you ready for that? You don't like doing house chores? You know, I I want your I want the the affirmative, the one that supports that, and I want the negative, the ones that are against it, to you know, put some comments here, okay? So alrighty, that is it. I'm gonna wrap it up. There's a few things. Zora Mandani is gonna have a task, and I will say pretty uphill battle with the current NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch, healthy family, pro-Israeli family with his more progressive, pro-Palestinian stance. I wanna say can they work it out? It's possible. I'm sure they're gonna have some difficulty along the way. Okay, and none of them are good or bad. I just want to see if they can really work together because they need to work together to make the city a great place. Okay. And Zorman Dani is, you know, he's gonna be the boss of New York City. He's gonna be the chief administrator, okay? Let's see how him and and Jessica Tish work together. Yeah, uh and hopefully they work together. I want them to work together. That's my that's my hope, right? And God willing that they work well together. Who knows? Sometimes people with different ideological perspectives actually end up working well together. Okay? That could happen sometimes. And then for GTA 6, only one sentence summary, it's been delayed again to November 2026. Can it be pushed back to 2027? Yeah, that's possible, but I think November 2026 is a good day. That's a holiday release. And then if they could probably push a little early to October to 2026, I'll say that's a little better. Just my opinion. Just my opinion. And then the last one Are you ready? Do you really want a robot assistant? Are you ready to spend$20,000 alternatively a$500 a month subscription. The pre-order is available now. I'll link all these articles in the description. That's all I could do. It's gonna be a pretty short one because I don't have any guests, okay? So, my fellow listeners and viewers, like, comment, subscribe, and for my usual plugin, join a new paper. It's your short and sweet, no political flair kind of news. You have your stocks, your sports, your national news, geopolitical news. All in new paper, and it's free. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for that. 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