⭕️ Mayor Mamdani’s NYPD's planned deal with Israeli firm Cognyte for an AI-powered phone tracker builds on nearly two decades of secretive cell-phone surveillance. 🔹 The department used "Stingray" devices, which pose as cell towers to force nearby phones to connect, 1,016 times between 2008 and 2015 without a written policy, according to records the New York Civil Liberties Union obtained in 2016. Instead of warrants, police relied on lower-court "pen register" orders, the NYCLU found. 🔹 The NYPD bought cell-phone trackers and other spy tools through a confidential "Special Expenses" program that kept about $2.8 billion in surveillance contracts from public view, according to records obtained by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) and the Legal Aid Society. Those contracts include more than $5.5 million paid to Verint, the New York-based firm with major Israeli operations that spun off Cognyte in 2021. The program ended in 2020 under the POST Act, a city law forcing the NYPD to disclose its surveillance tools. 🔹 The NYPD's updated cell-site simulator policy, issued in February 2026, removed an earlier assurance that the devices do not use artificial intelligence or machine learning, New York Daily News reported. The policy requires a warrant except in emergencies, when police can get one within 48 hours, or to locate a missing or suicidal person. 🔹But the department still doesn't report each use, according to S.T.O.P. The quiet edit came months before the NYPD moved to buy FalcoNet, which Israeli firm Cognyte markets as AI-driven.