This week on Surveillance And The City, hosts Albert Fox Cahn, Liz O'Sullivan, and Ali Winston discuss NYPD's so-called "gang database" and its systematic, unconstitutional criminalization of New Yorkers of color. Driven by social media monitoring and other surveillance technology software, NYPD's "gang database" is often described as a new digital form of stop-and-frisk policing, exploiting a highly broad definition of "gang" to justify surveillance of (primarily) Black and Latinx neighborhoods. What criteria are used in identifying alleged gang members? What's the historical context of "gang databases," and how are they connected to immigration enforcement and U.S. foreign policy? We also cover the push in local NYC politics to ban the database, as well as use of similar gang surveillance tactics in other cities around the country. 

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This is what the Spy Pod Hosts are Reading and Watching this week:

CARLOS, directed by Olivier Assayas

The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman

Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America, by Steven J. Ross

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick