Private Eyes Are Watching You
As part of the city’s London-esque Ring of Steel plan to one-day monitor New Yorkers as they eat, drink, walk, talk and take a shit (all of which have been known to occur right on Broadway), the NYPD has been quietly testing a camera that scans the license plates of cars that venture too close to ground zero. Police spokesman Paul Browne said that the camera is currently not storing any data, which is hardly a comfort whether you’re all for the Big Brother approach or against it. And this is just the beginning folks; these types of cameras will likely be installed in a ring around all of Lower Manhattan for the low, low price of $81.5 million, with 3,000 cameras below Canal Street by the end of next year. The particular camera in question, located at Church and Duane Sts., sends footage wirelessly to a computer system that can automatically compare the plates against a database so the NYPD will be aware when a suspicious vehicle has passed that corner. Except that the NYPD will also be aware when all not-so-suspicious vehicles have passed that corner. According to the Associated Press, Mayor Bloomberg has said that city folk must accept that they are under constant watch as a necessary precaution. “In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you all the time, you are very naive,” Bloomberg told reporters at London’s City Hall while visiting to study their security system. Naive, invested in civil liberties, same difference.
