New York City to adopt London's big brother surveillance tactics

every day brings another story about the erosion of privacy and the ever-increasing ways in which we're being watched as we go about our daily lives...

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 after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.

i posted at the end of may on privacy international's huge and comprehensive study of the state of surveillance around the world (PDF)... this is taken from their report on the uk (PDF)...

There has been a proliferation of CCTV cameras in hundreds of towns and cities in Britain. It is now estimated that there are over four million cameras in Britain, one for every 14 residents, a 300 percent increase in just three years.5573 The camera networks can be operated by police, local authorities or private companies, and are partly funded by Home Office grants. Their original purpose was crime prevention and detection, though in recent years the cameras have become important tools for city center management and the control of "anti-social behavior." Many of the systems have been enhanced with technology for facial recognition but the jurisdictions that have installed the systems have admitted that the technology has yet to result in an arrest. In London, a system for "congestion charging" uses a sophisticated number plate recognition system to charge motorists who drive into central London during business hours. It was later revealed that the system was organized in cooperation with the intelligence services that use it with facial recognition systems to monitor the drivers of the cars. The government announced in January 2005 that it was expanding its pilot program of automatic number plate recognition nationwide.5575 Traffic cameras have also spread across the country.

and, as usual, nobody's connecting the dots... note that new york city is also planning a "congestion charging" system for manhattan which, no doubt, will involve technology similar to that being used in london...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to reduce traffic by charging people who drive into the busiest parts of Manhattan received significant support on Thursday as Gov. Eliot Spitzer endorsed the idea and the Bush administration indicated that New York stood to gain hundreds of millions of dollars if the plan were enacted.

If the measure is approved by the Legislature, New York will become the first city in the United States to impose a broad system of congestion pricing, which was introduced in London in 2003 and has been credited with reducing traffic there.

now, why do you think new york would stand "to gain hundreds of millions of dollars" from the bush administration if the plan were enacted...? hmmmmmmmm...? do you suppose it might have anything to do with the fact that it would provide an excellent new surveillance platform...? nah... i'm just being cynical again...

[UPDATE]

and in the very same nyt edition that reported on the "Lower Manhattan Surveillance Security Initiative," comes this op-ed...

There are legitimate concerns about exactly how congestion pricing would work. A commission can be appointed later to hammer out the details. But first, the state needs to sign off on a general plan, so New York does not let as much as $500 million in federal money needlessly slip away.

yep, hurry up and get that money so we can be spied on sooner...

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