Lockheed Martin Hardware to Protect NYC Transit

Gerhardius writes "Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $212 million contract to provide cameras and sensors for New York City subways, bridges and tunnels." The entire program is being conducted under the guise of anti-terrorism and includes plans for a possible wireless network which would allow cellular phones to be used in case of emergency.

Comments

"Cameras" at JFK airport in NYC

[EMIce]

I was there yesterday and quite a few devices were sitting above the sliding doors and in a row along the ceiling as you came into the terminal, and they were oval shaped. They rotated on a platform and spun on a spindle, giving them 360 degrees of freedom. Each white oval was maybe 1.5 feet by 1 foot in diameter and they seemed to follow and track things, mobilizing suddenly at times, but remaining in default position most of the time.

The thing is the each egg shaped "camera" seemed to point with either a lens on one end the oval or a square shaped opening on the opposite side. The square shaped side I imagine has some other sort of detection ability. They looked big and expensive, and I was kind of curious what sort of tech goes into these.

Is anyone on slashdot working on these sorts of applications? Maybe someone could shed some light on what sort of sensory abilities these things have?

Good for NYC

[malchus6]

Lockheed is a quality defense contractor, and they Already do good work in NYC with the NY/NJ Port Authority (bridges and tunnels). So alot of the work probably overlaps in the homeland security realm. Nothing wrong with a keeping things under one umbrella. One less layer of problems to deal with...

Re:Guise?

[timeOday]

However, you are not subject to anything. You have the choice to take private transportation to your destination, and avoid random searches of your backpack.

The idea that you forfeit your constitutional rights by setting foot on public property is preposterous.

And the private transportation argument is bogus, since we also have checkpoints and random stops on the roadways.

It's a shame what they've done to the 4th ammendment.

Re:Guise?

[shmlco]

Not to be paranoid, but this assumes, of course, that both sides have equal access to the evidence...

Police brutality? No, sorry. That camera was down for maintenance.

I also suspect a police chief, mayor, governor, congressman, senator, or even a strongly connected businessman (just to name a few) can see pretty much whatever feed they wish. But can we as citizens watch the feeds that show use their comings and goings?

Re:Contrarian views

[nwbvt]

"What terrorists? How would you "find and capture" them? Especially if they are dead in the attack? Suppose they don't want to bother the trains, and instead, oh, blow up the water pipelines? Can you place cameras everywhere? If you can, how will you answer the first two questions?"

Not all terrorist attacks are suicide attacks. Maybe you havn't been paying attention to the news lately, but not too long ago the London subways were bombed and surveillance cameras helped police determine their identities. No, this won't stop every possible type of terrorist attack, but it will help prevent a specific type of attack. If we had a two hundred million solution to all terrorist attacks, I would be pissed off that it hadn't already been implemented.

"Most terrorist plots busted up in the US are hatched by white men. Fact. How would this stop them? Or is this just a war on funny looking brown people, ignoring the crazy white men who are actually arming and plotting?"

Believe it or not, white people aren't like vampires. We will show up on video just as well as Arabs. And the fact that we are busting terrorist plots hatched by white guys is evidence they are not being ignored.

"Amazingly enough, the terrorists from the 9-11 attack were mostly Saudi Arabians -- and we haven't even said boo to the Saudis."

And amazingly people like you think that just because someone is from Saudi Arabia means they are agents of the Saudi government.