Minneapolis cuts funding for contract with Israeli tech surveillance company

Minneapolis, MN – After a year of community pressure, Minneapolis cut funding for its contract with Zencity, an Israeli tech company whose surveillance technology emerged from Israel’s military intelligence center, Unit 8200, notorious for development of surveillance and phone hacking technology.

Throughout the campaign, community members expressed concern with Zencity’s complicity with violations of Palestinian human rights, as well as its role in racist policing practices in the U.S. The campaign to “Cut the Contract” noted that ending this contract will save Minneapolis $112,500 in 2026.

Erin Michaels, an organizer with the Free Palestine Coalition, explained, “Prior to the campaign, Zencity was largely unknown in Minneapolis. Over the course of a year, Free Palestine Coalition members organized across the city, engaging thousands of residents through webinars, social media, and petitions to build public awareness and opposition. Community members from all 13 Minneapolis wards then met directly with their city council members to educate them and demand that the contract be cut. We sustained and escalated that pressure by rallying at City Hall, hand-delivering more than 2000 signed petitions to Mayor Frey and consistently showing up at city council meetings to call for an end to the contract.”

Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, speaking for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) -Twin Cities said, “Our tax dollars should be spent in our city, not on a company with origins in a genocidal military. As Jews we know that a budget is a moral document. We are grateful to the community members and city councilors who pressure the mayor to cut the contract with Zencity.”

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) was using Zencity to target residents with digital surveys to gather community perceptions of itself and public safety but did not proactively update the city council with such data and provided very little information to the community.

Zencity’s technology has been used by U.S. law enforcement nationally to surveil the Black community’s internet activity after high profile killings of Black people. For example, the Brooklyn Park police department contracted with Zencity after Brooklyn Center police killed Daunte Wright, a young Black man, in 2021.

Ray Himmelman of JVP-TC and Healthcare Workers for Palestine summed it up this way, “We know that investment in community means centering the voices of those who are systematically harmed by MPD and whose voices are erased by a survey targeting people via ads on social media. We need community engagement in the hands of the people of Minneapolis, with our powerful history of community care despite the abuses of MPD over the last 150 years.”

Community members have been clear – the contract with Zencity is a waste of taxpayer money and raises ethical concerns. Over 2000 people signed the petition to Cut the Contract, which was then delivered to Mayor Frey’s office in September, followed by multiple rallies that attracted hundreds of community members and public testimony. The campaign to Cut the Contract, which includes over 20 organizations including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Twin Cities, MN BDS Communities and the Free Palestine Coalition, led a rally on November 19 outside of the city budget hearing.

After community members across Minneapolis expressed outrage, City Councilmembers Payne, Wonsley, Osman and Cashman issued a press release on November 26 requesting that Mayor Frey cut the contract by the December 1 deadline, a position supported by a supermajority of the council. On December 16, the council passed a budget that eliminates funding for Zencity, effectively withdrawing authorization for the contract and politically constraining Mayor Frey.

This makes Minneapolis the first U.S. city in over a decade to effectively cut a contract with a company in response to sustained community campaigning over ethical concerns, the most recent cases being the Veolia corporation in Boston and security firm G4S in Durham.

“Minneapolis’s divestment from Zencity sets a historic precedent for divestment at the state and national level, and draws pivotal attention to the role of even our municipalities in the genocide of Palestinians. Our government institutions, including our cities, have been historically complicit – but this victory is the start of a dramatic shift,” explained Sanaa Wazwaz, chapter lead of the MN chapter of American Muslims for Palestine and a spokesperson for the Free Palestine Coalition.

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