As previously predicted here at TechnoEsq, the United Kingdom’s Ring of Steel surveillance network is being used as a model for a similar network in New York City. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in response to the New York Police Department’s refusal to disclose information concerning the plan, called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative.
According to the NYCLU’s website, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative is projected to cost ~$100 million, which means it will actually cost closer to $300 million. This initiative was created with no public input into the project and according to Donna Lieberman, NYCLU executive director, “The NYPD is planning blanket surveillance of millions of law-abiding New Yorkers, but it refuses to disclose even the simplest details of this costly proposal…A plan of this scope, expense and intrusiveness demands robust public debate and legislative oversight. The public has a right to this information.â€
The scope of the Initiative is gargantuan. As described by Christopher Dunn, NYCLU associate legal director and lead counsel on the lawsuit, “This proposed system, which would result in the police tracking millions of law-abiding New Yorkers, has profound privacy implications…Since the police department continues to embrace government secrecy, we are left with no option but to turn to the courts to force public disclosure about what the NYPD plans to do with all of this information about innocent people.†
The network would include 3,000 public and private surveillance cameras to track and monitor vehicles and pedestrians south of Canal Street. It would also include a database which would be maintained to keep track of the movement and whereabouts of millions of New Yorkers and visitors.
As stated on the NYCLU’s website, the lawsuit seeks information about:
- the scope of information to be collected about law-abiding people;
- how the police intend to use the information;
- who the police will share the information with;
- how long the police will store the information before destroying it;
- any privacy protections included in the system;
- which private surveillance systems, such as bank security cameras, will become part of the system;
- assessments of the Ring of Steel system, upon which the plan is modeled;
- and the extent to which city funds are being used to create the system.
All of this is taken with the “news reports last month which disclosed a further plan (“Operation Sentinelâ€) to photograph and track every vehicle entering Manhattan and then keep data on each vehicle in a police database.”
Given today’s significance in United States history, is this something which the general public will accept because of heightened fears of terrorism, or will this be seen as an undue infringement on privacy? We haven’t seen any of the major news media outlets pick up the story, so we can only hope citizens find out from the Internet so they can make up their own mind.