A Little More "Police" Added To NYC's Police State

New York City is known as a target for terrorists, but the protection the NYPD is trying to provide is a little ridiculous, over the top and frankly, Orwellian in nature. The NYPD employs more than 35,000 cops to protect approximately 8.3 million citizens and at least in Manhattan, we are treated to "parades" with 5-20 police cars that zip through the city with their lights on, supposedly to drill in the event of the next attack. Although it looks foolish, the parade is ok with me, the program that will photograph every single automobile that goes into the city is a whole other ballgame.

From Fox 5:

Improved terror security in New York City could involve photographing the license plate of every vehicle entering Manhattan and scanning the information.

The NYPD is considering the plan called Operation Sentinel.

The license plate information would reportedly be stored for at least one month in a lower Manhattan facility.

Security cameras already watch wide swaths of the city and this just adds another layer of surveillance to our daily lives. Slowly but surely, we are becoming a real-life version of 1984 or Gattica. It would never happen all at once, but this is how the stripping of civil liberties gets done.

Big Brother Coming Closer To NYC

What once was the science fiction of George Orwell is quickly becoming the reality of today. There are so many high-tech gadgets that are meant to provide surveillance that it is scary and wondrous at the same time. Some of these tools look good, others seem to be right out of "1984."

From WCBS-TV:

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK An array of high-tech gadgets -- including a helicopter equipped with infrared cameras and a backpack designed to detect dirty bombs -- will help secure the city against terrorism, the police commissioner said Wednesday.

In the future, the New York Police Department even hopes to deploy "a system of stationary airborne devices" to help officers conduct surveillance and respond to emergencies in a bustling, target-rich setting, Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

"There is no environment across the nation that compares to New York City," Kelly said at a Manhattan forum hosted by the firm CIT Aerospace. "We have the highest number of critical assets in the smallest amount of physical space."

That is true, there are plenty of spots in the City that are targets and they need to be protected. Another thing we need to protect are our liberties, and those are the people's responsibility to stay vigilant for. Although WCBS reports on these specific devices, there are far more intrusive instruments across the pond that are in use today. The Brits are even closer to living under Big Brother than we are. Try and imagine surveillance cameras that talk back to you if it thinks you are misbehaving. Now that is frightening.

NYC Fights Against Civil Liberties

In a heavily Democratic town such as ours, you would think that the laws of New York would reflect a population that prefers liberty over tyranny, freedom over oppression and the right to public assembly (as stated in the Bill of Rights). Even if a majority of New Yorkers feel this way, it is apparent that the lawyers for the city of New York do not.

Recently a federal judge issued a ruling for the police department to stop videotaping public gatherings and protests so that people who went out on the streets would not feel intimidated by those that are charged to protect and serve, not protect and spy.

On February 15th, Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. resolved a 35 year class-action lawsuit by threatening to hold the city in contempt if the random videotapings occurred again. Nearly a month later the city's attorneys have started an appeal that claims the judge over-stepped his authority in limiting the police's activities. Their assertion is that in 2003 the city agreed to less restrictive rules because “the N.Y.P.D. never had any intention of agreeing to the incorporation of detailed operational guidelines into the consent decree subjecting itself to contempt for a plethora of potential violations.” Basically they find his ruling "an impermissable" order.

As the NY Times points out, the plantiffs disagree:

But the class-action lawyers said yesterday that the city was misstating the facts when it characterized the implementation of the weakened rules in 2003 as a negotiation the city had won. They cited a passage of Judge Haight’s ruling last month.

He wrote that he made those new rules part of a court order in 2003 because he was concerned that improper investigative techniques were being used against people involved in political activity.

He made the new rules part of his 2003 order, he wrote last month, “after senior N.Y.P.D. officers misbehaved themselves by ordering that arrested protesters held in precinct station houses be interrogated in inappropriate ways before being released.”

The city argues that these restrictions limit the police from effectively dealing with threats of terrorism. According to them, asking for permission is too much for cops to be 'vigiliant' on the streets to look for terrorists. This logic is shaky at best. When the police videotape peaceful protests without any good reason to do so, they are blatantly violating the First Amendment. Recording citizens engaged in political activism for the sake of intimidation is simply wrong.

Fighting terrorism is a laudable act and it can be done within the limits that Judge Haight set in his ruling. The city needs to learn that this is still America and their actions need to be curtailed. Too many abuses of power have taken place in the last few years (including the Critical Mass bike ride) and it is unfortunate that a federal judge had to be involved in order to make the police force respect the constitution. Nevertheless it had to be done and the lawyers for the city should just sit there and take it. Hopefully the appellate court sees it the same way.

Big Brother Is Watching New York

From and excellent post by the Gothamist:

In the wake of a federal judge criticizing the NYPD's videotaping procedures last week, I-Witness Video looks at what the NYPD actually uses to record public events and calls it "360 degrees of surveillance," best illustrated by what the police used during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

Officers used "lipstick cameras" which are easily concealed, as well as helicopters with "military-style infrared imaging." And Fuji lent the NYPD its BlimpCam, and I-Witness Video describes the blimpcam footage from August 27, 2004:

The first scene on the clip shows people from the antiwar group Not in Our Name lying on the grass in Central Park, spelling out a giant "NO" with their bodies. Every so often the camera operator focuses on some young women lounging nearby who do not seem to be part of the antiwar event. The hovering blimp cam seems almost to float above this tranquil scene. It might even be a pretty picture if it were not for the fact that we are viewing this all through what appears to be a military targeting scope superimposed on the frame...

When the camera zooms out, what seems like half of the island of Manhattan comes quickly into focus. The blimp cam has a truly awesome depth of field and range...

The NYPD Fuji blimp continues downtown to Union Square Park where it floats above the assemblage of parkgoers and bicyclists gathering for the Critical Mass ride... A man stares directly up at the blimp, giving rise to the insight that staring directly at an aerial observation platform allows a perfect view of your face.

There are videos of each kind of surveillance, which we recommend you to check out - all the footage converges on the Critical Mass ride that resulted in hundreds of arrests. Photoblogger Mike Epstein from Satan's Laundromat was arrested and wrote about his experience.

The NYC Camera Surveillance Project has mapped and located over 2,000 video cameras in Manhattan. As they note, spotting these cameras is a task far from over. As a resident of New York City, it has become tacitly accepted that we live in a 'police state' where many of our moves are documented. Although it may not be as bad as Orwell predicted in his masterpiece 1984, Manhattan and many other cities (especially London) is increasingly under surveillance both by private and public enterprises. The 'big brother' feel of this can and has lead to arrests of protesters who were exercising their First Amendment rights. Time will tell how invasive these cameras will get, but as many psychologists will tell you, the best way for people to feel comfortable with invading their privacy is to do it nice and slow so as to not alarm the populace.