⚡️ Mayor Zohran Mamdani's NYPD is poised to sign a three-year, $750,500 no-bid contract with Israeli surveillance firm Cognyte for FalcoNet, an AI-driven device that mimics a cell tower to track phones and can be mounted on police cars and drones or hidden in a backpack, the New York Daily News reported. Cognyte won a tender to sell intercept spyware to Myanmar's state telecom weeks before the 2021 military coup, Reuters previously reported. Meta banned the firm the same year, saying its customers used fake accounts to target journalists and politicians in Kenya, Mexico and Indonesia. The firm is part of an Israeli surveillance industry that grew big as a result of the military's monitoring of Palestinians, whose phone calls Israel's Unit 8200 has intercepted and stored by the millions, including to carry out genocide in Gaza and enforce a brutal illegal occupation in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Is L.A. mayoral candidate Nithya Raman a capitalist? "I'm a capitalist and I'm also a Democratic Socialist...we need to make sure capitalism works without harm to workers... to poor people." She says the DSA is a "big tent" but she disagrees with members who call to abolish police, prisons and the Senate. Interview via @InsidePolitics on @CNN