Public housing tenants filed a stunning lawsuit against the city Thursday night, alleging that the NYPD is illegally surveilling tenants via technology installed to provide NYCHA tenants free WiFi during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Any officer can just watch in real time any surveillance footage they want for whatever reason,” said tenant attorney Jeremy Ravinsky of Beldock Levine & Hoffman. “That could be innocuous, but it can also be really dangerous to give people the ability to surveil public housing residents at will.” “And, the deeper reason that we’re super concerned about this,” he added, “Is because it’s an expansion of what’s becoming a totalizing surveillance regime that the NYPD is setting up and that public housing residents historically have been the guinea pigs of.” The attorneys say it is also deteriorating trust between public housing tenants, city government and the NYPD.