I'm not familiar enough with the technology to understand the privacy implications--are operators able to identify/snoop on specific users? I'm wondering how easily a building owner or landlord could collect and leverage their residents' data for any number of nefarious reasons.
It's just like any other connection. You can think of the wifi links just replacing a cable. If NYC Mesh are linking through fibre installed at various buildings around town then yes, anyone with access to that router could snoop. In Germany, the Freifunk mesh project solved this problem by routing through VPN tunnels: https://pinneberg.freifunk.net/en/faq
