My promise to ALL New Yorkers. #AlwaysNewYork pic.twitter.com/F6IUfYBeRp
— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor)November 22, 2016
Since 1976, it’s been a crime to “loiter for the purposes of engaging in a prostitution offense” in New York City. That might sound like the kind of thing that went out of fashion along with XXX marquees in Times Square. But between 2012 and 2015, the NYPD arrested and charged 1,300 people with this misdemeanor.
The vast majority of those charged with this offense (81%) are women. Overall, according to New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services Arrest Statistics, 85% of those arrested for loitering for prostitution between 2012 and 2015 were black or Latina.
How exactly do police think they can tell when women are doing something “for the purposes of” prostitution? The law gives the NYPD very wide discretion. From the supporting depositions officers file with each arrest, police list as evidence such wholly innocent behaviors as waving at passers-by, having conversations with someone of a different gender, or wearing tights jeans or baring cleavage.
The NSA’s Spy Hub in New York, Hidden in Plain Sight
It would house one of the most important telecommunications hubs in the United States — the world’s largest center for processing long-distance phone calls, operated by the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T.
The building was designed by the architectural firm John Carl Warnecke & Associates, whose grand vision was to create a communication nerve center like a “20th century fortress, with spears and arrows replaced by protons and neutrons laying quiet siege to an army of machines within.
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It is not uncommon to keep the public in the dark about a site containing vital telecommunications equipment. But 33 Thomas Street is different: An investigation by The Intercept indicates that the skyscraper is more than a mere nerve center for long-distance phone calls. It also appears to be one of the most important National Security Agency surveillance sites on U.S. soil — a covert monitoring hub that is used to tap into phone calls, faxes, and internet data.
Documents obtained by The Intercept from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden do not explicitly name 33 Thomas Street as a surveillance facility. However — taken together with architectural plans, public records, and interviews with former AT&T employees conducted for this article — they provide compelling evidence that 33 Thomas Street has served as an NSA surveillance site, code-named TITANPOINTE.
Facing a Trump administration, NYC may push its immigrant data kill switch
In 2015, New York City launched a municipal identification program with the goal of giving some of the city’s most vulnerable residents access to services that require an ID. Mayor Bill de Blasio gave the plan vocal support, saying the card represented “who we are: New Yorkers who value equality, opportunity, and diversity.”
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New York was warned of the problems that might arise when it first enacted the IDNYC plan. As far back as October 2014, immigration advocates were questioning the unintended consequences that could result from retaining the underlying information on cardholders — whether it would be a way for immigration officials to target undocumented immigrants, or even whether the federal government might exercise laws like the Patriot Act to obtain it.
But the city opted for a system that retains underlying documents, with provisions that destroyed them after two years. It did, however, contain a kill switch: the city can prevent law enforcement use by changing how the data is stored, including by deleting it. A councilman said in 2015 that the kill switch was “in case a Tea Party Republican comes into office” — but now the option, which also goes into effect if the city takes no action, is under closer consideration.
For the fourth straight day, the streets of New York City were filled with people protesting Donald Trump’s election yesterday afternoon.
Thousands Of NYers Share Their Post-Election Grief With Sticky Notes & Subway Therapy
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