NEW YORK — The NYPD is backing away from a $750,000 no-bid contract with a company accused of treading on people’s civil rights for a new technology that can quickly pinpoint a suspect’s cellphone after Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced heat over the city using tech from the controversial firm, the New York Daily News has learned.

The department confirmed it is restarting the procurement process and accepting competing bids for similar technologies. The decision was made after an outpouring of criticism against the Mayor over the contract and a meeting with Mamdani and NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, sources with knowledge of the case said.

Since December 2025, the NYPD had been in negotiations to adopt Cognyte’s mobile AI-driven surveillance system, called FalcoNet. The technology simulates a cell phone tower, thereby forcing nearby phones to connect to it and allowing cops to keep tabs on suspects.

Cognyte, an Israeli corporation, has been accused by human rights groups of doing business with governments, including Israel, that use the tech to target adversaries and opponents. Cognyte, which markets itself as a rival to the American software company Palantir, has also been banned from several Meta platforms.

FalcoNet, meanwhile, has drawn criticism from advocacy groups concerned the technology is used to unconstitutionally track not only suspects but also innocent bystanders.

“It did not meet the criteria for a sole source procurement, so we are moving to an open, competitive procurement process,” an NYPD spokesperson said of the contract Tuesday.

The spokesperson said that Cognyte could still submit a bid for the contract, the spokesman said.

The news of the contract negotiations, which was first reported by the Daily News, was met with a backlash on social media as allies of the mayor slammed the potential contract.

Councilmember Tiffany Cabán, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, like Mamdani, said Tuesday that the city should not pour more money into the “mass surveillance of New Yorkers.”

“That is doubly true for a technology that has been used by human rights abusers including the governments of Israel, Myanmar, and South Sudan to track dissidents and targets of state violence,” she said. “It’s time for our city government to cut ties with companies like these that profit off of human rights abuses.”

The issue of public safety has emerged as perhaps the biggest pain point for the mayor in his first ten months in office. On the campaign trail, Mamdani pledged a transformation of the city’s public safety apparatus. But in office, he’s largely taken a hands-off approach to policing, frustrating allies and advocates and allies who expected a bigger shift.

“More tools for mass surveillance have never and will never keep our communities safer,” State Sen. Julia Salazar said in a statement on social media in response to the news of the contract. “Especially not a tool that we know is regularly used by governments to track and crack down on political dissidents.”

And Councilmember Julie Won, who is not affiliated with DSA but earlier this month called for the mayor to drop Tisch as police commissioner, said she was “shocked” Mamdani would consider allowing the contract with FalcoNet to go through.

“Warrantless spying on everyday New Yorkers will not keep us safe, and will erode trust between the NYPD and the communities they serve,” Won said, drawing a line between this contract and the surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers after 9/11.

The NYPD already uses other cell-site simulators to track down suspects as well as people who are missing or suicidal, but officials said FalcoNet — which would be mounted on department vehicles — is currently the best one available.

If the contract was approved, the NYPD said it would not have used FalcoNet to listen to calls or collect information, such as text messages, from phones not involved in their investigations — or share such data with other agencies.

The department’s strict policy regarding the use of cell-site simulators demands that when the technology is used in investigations, detectives are required to get a warrant for the information first, officials said.

In exigent circumstances — including the search for someone missing or threatening suicide — cops have a green light to use the technology without a warrant, but must document the emergency and obtain the warrant within 48 hours of using the cell-site simulator, they said.

“This technology turns New Yorkers’ cell phones into tracking devices,” the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. “The NYPD may claim it has rules and safeguards in place, but the department has a history of using invasive surveillance technology without adequate oversight, including its past use of cell-site simulators more than 1,000 times without a warrant.”

“New Yorkers should take every opportunity to prevent the NYPD from acquiring more intrusive technology to deploy in our communities, and we must also demand that lawmakers finally establish clear prohibitions on government and commercial surveillance,” they added.

The mayor appears to have largely deferred to Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a holdover from the previous administration, to run the department. Tisch first got her start at the department as an intelligence analyst in 2008 and was an architect of the NYPD’s surveillance network, called the Domain Awareness System.

Mamdani, for his part, has in the past expressed general disapproval of police surveillance, including in a 2023 co-authored opinion in City & State promoting legislation to block police from creating fake social media accounts, where he called that type of surveillance “widespread and dangerous.”

—With Rocco Parascandola

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