More than 100 cameras in Lower Manhattan, roadblocks, to mimic London “Ring of Steel”
The city that never sleeps is about to get many more unblinking eyes.
New York – In a controversial move that is certain to be challenged by privacy-loving Americans, the police of New York City 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 U.S to help thwart terrorist attacks.
Dubbed the New York City’s Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the program is based on a similar initiative already existing in London, and involves installing license plate-reading cameras along with roadblocks and other measures, is dubbed the Ring of Steel.
It is intended to detect, track and deter terrorist attacks or to help with capture if an attack occurs.
British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the 2005 London subway bombings and following the car bomb plots late last month.
According to a report in Monday’s New York Times, New York City is setting up a web of surveillance cameras, remote-controlled roadblocks, and license-reading technology throughout lower Manhattan, which includes Wall Street.
Inspired by the success of the program in London city, UK, where CCTVs helped successfully track the July 7 bombers recently, the program has managed to impress even those police chiefs in the United States who had earlier expressed their doubts about its feasibility and propriety.
In the struggle against terrorism at home, its backers say CCTV is both a forensic tool and a deterrent to all but the most dedicated suicide bombers. Sophisticated imaging technology allows cameras to alert police to unattended packages, zoom in on objects hundreds of feet away, identify license plates, and “mine” archived footage for specific data.
The initial phase of the program will see 116 cameras and pivoting gates being installed at an estimated cost of $90 million, i.e. approximately £45 million. The pivoting gateways have been found to be useful in isolating suspicious vehicles. In combination with the cameras, this can be an effective way of thwarting terrorist attacks, especially of the car bomb variety. The program will be the first of its kind in the US.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Times that the project is “very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation.” The new security measures, he said, will make the city “less vulnerable.”
When completed, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative will have 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center for police and private security officials.
About 2,000 of the cameras will be owned by downtown businesses, a tactic that many think would help finance the project to an extent. And this is critical, because many of the critics have been predicting the program would fall on its face because of the financing aspect. They feel the NYPD would not be able to find enough financing to make the project a success.
The NYPD are upbeat about the project, however. According to sources, the installation of the cameras is certain, what is still being considered is whether they would be using face-recognition technology.
The entire initiative is projected to be completed by 2010, with 100 cameras being operational before the end of this year.
Opponents contend that this very technology is overly intrusive and open to abuse, raising a serious constitutional question 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.
They also note that surveillance cameras not only are helpless against suicide bombings, but also that perpetrators may use video records to try to glorify their acts. 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 per cent.
But Kelly said last week that the department had since obtained $25 million for the plan. Fifteen million dollars came from Homeland Security grants, he said, while another $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.
There will be cameras in fixed locations, in addition to mobile ones in cars and helicopters. The information will be transmitted live. According to the Times, the police have not yet decided if they will use face-recognition technology, but they will be able to read license plates.
The plate readers would check a car’s numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The Times reported that remote-controlled gates, at vital intersections, will be able to block traffic on command.
The British system was developed in the 1970s and ’80s with little public discussion, in response to attacks by the Irish Republican Army. By the 1990s, technology improvements made it a key tool in the security cordon around central London known as the “ring of steel.”
But the U.S. has a very different constitutional system, some experts say, one that requires vigorous public debate before the government wires cities with a similar network of live, roving electronic eyes.
“We have not even begun to have that debate over here about what that means in terms of surrendering privacy,” says Ronald Marks, senior fellow at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute.
“[Closed-circuit television] is a security measure that is effective in identifying people, but I do not know how effective it … is at stopping them.”
Others, such as the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted that there is little evidence security cameras actually deter terrorism.
“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 email message.
Dunn also said he is worried about what would happen to the recordings once they were archived.
This is not the first time that critics have attacked the plan. A previous plan had been shelved because of cuts in New York’s Homeland Security grant money, some of which has now been restored.