The NYPD published a fresh round of surveillance-technology disclosures on Feb. 4, updating its impact-and-use policies for facial recognition, drones and related tools under the city’s POST Act, as scrutiny of the department’s expanding aerial and biometric capabilities intensifies under Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

The revised documents restate the department’s existing limits — no real-time facial recognition, a photo repository confined to arrest and parole images — while landing amid a sharp rise in drone deployments and a strengthened City Council oversight regime passed in 2025.

What the updated policies say

Under the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, the NYPD must publish and periodically update “impact and use” policies for each surveillance tool it operates. The Feb. 4 versions cover facial recognition, unmanned aircraft systems, drone-detection systems, manned aircraft and remote-controlled “throwbot” robots, among others.

The facial-recognition policy reiterates that the department does not perform real-time facial recognition and that its technology compares a probe image only against a controlled repository of arrest and parole photographs of people charged with crimes in courts of competent jurisdiction — explicitly excluding images tied to sealed arrests. The update also spells out that when facial-recognition results figure into a case, the NYPD turns the material over to prosecutors in accordance with criminal discovery law, and that outside agencies requesting NYPD searches must have those requests documented.

The drone policy states the NYPD will not equip unmanned aircraft with facial recognition — but civil-liberties advocates note a significant carve-out: still images captured from drone video can later be used as probe images for facial-recognition analysis, and the policy preserves latitude where there is a “public safety concern.”

A steep climb in drone use

The disclosures arrive against a backdrop of rapidly expanding aerial surveillance. A report by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) found the NYPD conducted 6,546 drone flights in the first six months of 2025 alone — roughly a 3,200% increase since 2022. The department deployed drones to monitor the “No Kings” protests in October 2025, a use critics said lacked sufficient oversight to ensure compliance with constitutional limits.

Tisch, retained as commissioner under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has spent much of her career building the NYPD’s data and surveillance infrastructure, including the Domain Awareness System — a network that integrates camera feeds, license-plate readers and analytics. Her tenure has drawn praise for crime declines and sustained criticism from advocacy groups over the scope of the tech-integrated policing model.

The 2025 oversight expansion

The City Council moved in 2025 to tighten the POST Act framework. Intro 233 requires the NYPD to publish a clear, publicly accessible facial-recognition policy and mandates biannual audits of its facial-recognition use, with results reported to the Department of Investigation and posted online. A companion measure, Intro 168, empowers DOI to demand detailed lists of surveillance technologies and requires biannual reporting on tools the department acquires or retires.

Those measures followed reporting and litigation suggesting gaps in compliance. THE CITY reported in July 2025 that the NYPD had leaned on another city agency, the FDNY, to run a facial-recognition search — using Clearview AI — to identify a pro-Palestinian student protester, raising questions about whether the department’s own ban could be circumvented through interagency arrangements. The Legal Aid Society has separately sued the FDNY over the release of facial-recognition records.

Civil-liberties groups including the NYCLU and the Brennan Center argue the published policies, while a transparency improvement, still leave broad discretion and carve-outs that could enable what they call “digital stop and frisk.” The department maintains its tools are governed by written policy, narrowly scoped, and subject to the audits the law now requires.

Verification

Frequently Asked Questions

What changed on Feb. 4, 2026?
The NYPD republished updated impact-and-use policies for facial recognition, unmanned aircraft (drones), drone-detection systems and other tools, as required under the POST Act. The facial-recognition policy details how matches are turned over to prosecutors under discovery law.
Does the NYPD use real-time or drone-based facial recognition?
Per its policy, the NYPD does not perform real-time facial recognition and does not equip drones with it, though still images from drone video can later be used as probe images for analysis — a carve-out civil-liberties groups have flagged.
Whose photos are in the facial-recognition database?
The policy says the controlled repository contains only arrest and parole photographs of people charged with crimes in courts with jurisdiction, and excludes photos tied to sealed arrests.
How much has NYPD drone use grown?
A Surveillance Technology Oversight Project report found 6,546 NYPD drone flights in the first six months of 2025 — about a 3,200% increase since 2022.