Lower Manhattan on camera lockdown. Yay/Nay?

mannybolone

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/09/news/security.phpManhattan takes cue from London's 'Ring of Steel'By Cara BuckleyMonday, July 9, 2007NEW YORK: By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London's so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects following the London subway bombings in 2005 and after the car bomb plots last month.If New York City succeeds in getting the estimated $90 million to build the full network, it will include not only license plate readers but 3,000 public and private security cameras, a coordination center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks."This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation," New York's police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said in an interview last week. "We want to make it less vulnerable."Civil liberties advocates say they are worried about the misuse of technology that tracks the movement of thousands of cars and people, and for a while it appeared that New York could not even afford such a system.Last summer, Kelly said the program was in peril after the city's share of Homeland Security urban grant money was cut by nearly 40 percent.But Kelly said last week that the department had since obtained $25 million for the plan. Homeland Security grants provided $15 million, he said, while the other $10 million came from the city, more than enough to install 116 license plate readers in fixed and mobile locations, like cars and helicopters, in the coming months.Kelly said he hoped the rest of the needed money would come from additional federal grants.The license plate readers would check the plates' numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan goes through, the police most likely would collect information from those readers too, Kelly said.But the city's security plan is much broader than keeping track of license plates. Three thousand additional surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of next year. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.Unlike the 250 or so cameras the police have already placed in high-crime areas, which capture moving images that have to be downloaded, the security initiative cameras will transmit live information instantly.The operation will cost an estimated $8 million to run the first year, Kelly said.The entire operation is forecast to be in place and running by 2010, in time for the projected completion of several new buildings in the financial district, including the new Goldman Sachs world headquarters, which could increase Lower Manhattan's allure as a target for terrorists. While the Police Department has already increased its presence and patrol of the area, it believes electronic eyes are needed, too.But critics question the plan's efficacy and cost, as well as the implications of having such heavy surveillance over such a broad swath of the city. Would this mean that every Wall Street broker, every tourist munching a hot dog by the U.S. Court House and every sightseer at the former World Trade Center site would constantly be under surveillance?"This program marks a whole new level of police monitoring of New Yorkers and is being done without any public input, outside oversight, or privacy protections for the hundreds of thousands of people who will end up in NYPD computers," Christopher Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union, wrote in an e-mail message.Dunn said he worried about what would happen to the recordings once they were archived, how they would be used by the Police Department and who else would have access to them.Already, according to a report released by the civil liberties group late last year, there are nearly 4,200 public and private surveillance cameras below 14th Street, a fivefold increase since 1998, with virtually no oversight over what becomes of the recordings.Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for the police, said the Police Department would have control over how the material was used. He said that the cameras would be recording in "areas where there's no expectation of privacy" and that the typical law-abiding citizen had nothing to fear.For all its comprehensiveness, London's Ring of Steel, which was built in the early 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks, did not prevent the July 7, 2005, subway bombings or the attempted car bombings last month. In the recent car bomb plots, the cameras proved useful in retracing the suspects' paths only after the attacks were attempted.

Jonny_Paycheck

I don't want to sound like I am down with it, but I do see it as an inevitable progression... honestly, the area they are talking about is not exactly a teeming residential area so I'm a little less concerned than if they were going to start doing this, say, in downtown Brooklyn. I think it would be more worrisome even in midtown... and I'm pretty sure there is already a lot of surveillance up there.

I can obviously see why people wouldn't like it - I'm not exactly excited about it - but at the same time, I can't really see a plausible scenario for abuse. Scrambling police to arrest a panhandler? Nabbing someone for selling socks illegally? Towing a car with an expired registration?

If we're talking about wall street/financial district, I am not really bothered by it. If they started putting these up around downtown in the more residential districts it would be more alarming.

jlee

i tend to agree with JP, in that I see this as an inevitable progression. and as he noted, downtown is very much a commerce center as opposed to residential/social area of the city.

but one thing i think that needs to be addressed is whether or not video surveillance is the best option for city/states to invest in. as pointed out last week in london, it was not their much touted video surveillance unit that found the cars that had explosives, instead it was a parking attendant and ambulance/EMS workers who discovered the cars.

this week's TIME magazine actually had a lot of good points regarding this whole process:

link

PROTECTION VS. PREVENTION

The best way to protect civilians from terrorist attacks is to prevent them from being planned. One goal is not separate from the other. But governments still tend to focus much of their time and money on our last lines of defense--explosives sniffers at airports and haz-mat suits for firefighters. That's the equivalent of building a really deep castle moat and waiting for the invaders to arrive.[/b] "Unless you can arrest [terrorists] before they get to execution stage, your chances of averting bloodshed and death come down to luck," says a French former counterterrorism official.

The London and Glasgow cases are an excellent reminder of how thin the line is between a near miss and a catastrophe. An alert ambulance crew, an efficient parking-enforcement crew and a faulty bomb design may have prevented a massacre. And yet as the news of the car bombs broke, some politicians were more inclined to credit London's wondrous surveillance system. "The Brits have got something smart going. They have cameras all over London," said U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman. "I think it's just common sense to do that here much more widely."[/b]

But gadgetry alone is inadequate. In June 2006, Glasgow Airport installed a high-tech license-plate-recognition system that would be the envy of many U.S. airports. The system activates a barrier at the entrance to the inside lane around the airport. Only taxis and buses with registered numbers are allowed through. When the men in the green Jeep pulled up, however, they simply tailgated behind a registered car and sped past before the barrier closed.

Flomotion

They've had this in place in London for a few years - numberplate recogntion cameras and more recently facial recognition technology too. When my car was stolen it was recovered within 3 hours thanks to the numberplate cameras which sent automatic alerts to police checkpoints in the area. That was impressive.

Truth is that even in NYC with all the private security cameras on shops, office blocks, banks etc you're already on camera pretty much wherever you go. A little extra surveillance isn't going to change much.

DocMcCoy

For all its comprehensiveness, London's Ring of Steel, which was built in the early 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks, did not prevent the July 7, 2005, subway bombings or the attempted car bombings last month. In the recent car bomb plots, the cameras proved useful in retracing the suspects' paths only after the attacks were attempted.

This is slightly misleading, inasmuch as the Ring of Steel was created to protect the financial centre of London - stock exchange, merchant banks, etc - and the July 7 bombings all took place well outside of the Square Mile. There are cameras all over London now. I doubt there's a major European city that's as comprehensively monitored.