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New York Plans Surveillance Veil For Downtown
News.com is reporting that a security system modeled after London's "Ring of Steel" is coming to New York City. The plan, to include license plate readers and over 3,000 public and private security cameras, aims to aid officials in tracking and catching criminals. "But critics question the plan's efficacy and cost, as well as the implications of having such heavy surveillance over such a broad swath of the city. [...] The license plate readers would check the plates' numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan is approved, the police will most likely collect information from those readers too, Kelly said."
The terrorists will NEVER figure out a way around THIS!!! After all, they'd have to STEAL someone else's plate and put it on their vehicle! Or make up their own plate. Why, either way, it's next to impossible!
Boy, we're SOOO much smarter than the terrorists!
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Privacy though anonominity in public is a relatively recent phenomenon, and we seem to take it for granted. But most of the world's population for most of its history - including the folks who wrote the US constitution - have not lived that way. Most people spent the majority of thier lives in a radius of a few miles, and were recognized on a daily or even hourly basis by someone who knew them.
We are used to having privacy in public even though we have neither earned it nor voted for it. It is a totally unrealistic expectation that we should be able to maintain it. It is just a freak of timing that we have it at all - the technology that made big cieies possible happened before the technology that made cheap cameras possible.
As long as they stay out of my property, it's ok with me.
The "tax" is a congestion charge. It will be used to get people out of cars and into public transportation to ease congestion downtown and reduce energy use. I don't see how this is a bad thing. They're turning the externality of everyone driving individual cars and turning it into an internalized cost, just like Adam Smith recommends.
Broad taxes based on objective things like income are suspect, but specific taxes that deal with economic externalities, like congestion charges and superfund taxes, are fine by me.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
If they want me to spend my money there, they will not do this. I have already curtailed a previously-planned trip to London because I do not want to partake of their police state where anybody can be detained by police without reason. Now NYC wants to duplicate their Orwellian setup? Then I won't go to NYC. And I'm just the type of affluent daytripper (I live near Philly) that NYC is constantly trying to get to come spend money in Manhattan. Sorry guys, you can either get my money or put a camera on me, not both.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
You know, life in NYC is so difficult. Here let me run through the million and 1 annoying things about living here:
- You want to live somewhere? Cool. So does everyone else. Rents are ridiculously high -- Manhattan rents START at $5 per square foot per month in rent -- and that's for a REALLY crappy tenement built in the 1920s with ROACHES and it may or may not have an elevator. "Luxury" apartments (what in other places you would consider just barely acceptable normal places to live) start at $10/sq foot per month.
- You want to go to the movies? Awesome! Plan on either buying your tickets 5 hours in advance online or not going at all or going at midnight on a Wednesday the second week the movie is out. Almost all the good shows are sold out. Oh also movie tickets start at $10 for your basic crappy theater.
- You want to have a car in Manhattan? Sorry it's impossible because there is NO PARKING. However, you can perhaps keep a car in one of the other boroughs like Brooklyn or Queens -- but don't forget to move your car twice a week because of "alternate side parking rules". It sounds simple enough but the average car owner in Queens spends about $250 per year on parking tickets because this alternate side system inevitably leads to your forgetting to move your car and getting a ticket. I personally spent about $400 in parking tickets last year. That's the cost of insurance in most states.
- You want to go to the beach on the weekend? Well you probably don't have a car (see previous point) so you either have to rent one (plan on spending at least $100/day for a crappy economy car) *or* you can take the Long Island Railroad with all the other schmucks. There's nothing like schlepping a cooler up and down stairs to catch a train that makes you just feel like a winner. Oh and if you do rent that car plan on spending 2 hours each way in bumper-to-bumper weekend traffic on the notoriously overburdened LIE.
- They say the subway is great. They are people that haven't really lived in NY for longer than 1 year. The first year is fun -- the subway feels new and exciting and it's very NEW YORK so newbies get into it. However, after taking it for 20+ years to school, work, etc I can say it is a horribly dehumanizing experience. I have gotten yelled at, pushed, mugged, lost, been stuck in trains for hours, and been subjected to all sorts of gruesome sounds and sights and smells. Also, at rush hour it's really a very unhappy experience since it's so crowded you literally have to push and fight people for a spot to stand. It's really quite uncivilized.
- The nightlife is cool, but people are jaded and cold and it's a bit of a superficial existence.
- And NOW Bloomberg wants to charge us money to drive down below 86th St. He is creating a straw man problem -- there is NO PROBLEM with traffic in Manhattan! Most people don't have cars anyway, and the pollution argument is just stupid (it really is -- I agree people shouldn't be driving -- but charging them money to drive in Manhattan is idiotic and doesn't help with pollution at all -- or if it does it's a drop in the bucket). Bloomberg just wants to create new and exciting ways to charge people money and to rip off the common taxpayer. He already doubled most city fines (everything from sanitation to parking to health and safety fines, etc). Now he wants to invent new fines. It's madness!
- The police here really don't care. Unless it's a major felony -- you can call them and you will be treated as if you are insane for having called them.
- Spying on the citizenry is just going to make it even more fun. Since the police hardly give a shit -- now they can have all this high tech gear with which to harass us.
...it seems to be lost on many people that the surveillance network in London isn't what stopped the recent terrorist plot, it's merely what helped them track down the people responsible. If some random jerk hadn't gotten into a knife fight near the car-bomb, the plot might have succeeded even with the cameras.
These things don't add any safety. They just make vengeance through the criminal justice system easier.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
So... just out of curiosity, in your personal worldview, what's the motivation for environmentalists to take away your freedoms? Is it still because "they hate freedom", or do you have a more creative justification for why people concerned about the environment would want to destroy your civil liberties?
Furthermore this issue is fundamentally different than just technology. A watched society is not a free society. It does not matter who the watchers are, or whether they do good or ill with what the see. People behave differently when they know they're being watched.
People do not exercise their freedom of expression as often. They do not take unpopular views, or will not discuss them in public. They conform. They are not free. People need to escape from watchful eyes, for their own health and sanity. This starts in teenagers, when fundamental biological urges drive young people to get away from the tribe with their honey, for reproductive purposes. But it is a fundamental part of the human psyche.
We would be naive to believe that we could live a watched life, and still be the same person we are today.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Did you ever think about the irony of cops who treat every traffic stop as if they've just pulled over a mass murderer? Approach from both sides, stay behind the driver, weapon holsters unsnapped, at the ready, hand sometimes on their weapon while they assess the threat level and decide if the occupants have guns - meanwhile, the driver is sitting there, probably having seen stories about excessive force used by police, and he *knows* that person walking up behind him is in fear for their life AND that they have a gun.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
However, I live & work & party in London and get up to all sorts of activities that, were I the paranoid sort, I might imagine would interest The Authorities in me greatly. I take drugs, for instance, and have a slightly unusual sex life - nothing too weird, you understand, but I wouldn't try to get security cleared as it might be the sort of thing someone would try to blackmail me over.) I'm also somewhat active in various pressure groups, ranging from civil liberties issues, via "YourRightsOnline" type stuff, and various other causes dear to the average slashdotter's heart. (I've also donated to a muslim charity, amongst others - that's made me wonder a little bit, which in turn just makes me wish I'd given them a bit more.) Apart from being annoyed at getting fined for driving into the congestion charge zone, so far I haven't seen or heard even any rumours about the associated ANPR systems being misused for sinister purposes. I don't *think* it's a threat to life and liberty, and I appreciate the discernable improvement it has brought to London streets - there are less cars! It's quieter, it's cleaner, it's safer, and there's a subtle yet definite change in the atmosphere - for the better.
Of course we could all be frogs in a warm but not uncomfortable bath, but I really don't think so. Face facts, if a genuinely evil police state took over the UK, they'd be able to build all this stuff anyway if it didn't exist already.
Good lord. You simply can not articulate a coherent argument. Please try to build support for your statements instead of simply making unfounded assertions. I have made my point and supported it. You have not. Explain how and why freedom is security.
If I am in solitary confinement I have lots of security and little freedom. If I am kayaking class 5 rapids, I have a lot of freedom, but little security. I can not understand how anyone can confuse these two very different and unrelated concepts. If you can't explain yourself better without resorting to ad hominems, I give up.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nah, St. Louis has none of that. Nor does its surrounding metro area. It has less social annoyance, but much greater for police abuse.
However, aside from periodic flooding, St. Louis is also sitting on top of a 8+ point fault (New Madrid), with a 90% probability of a 6+ quake in the next 20 years. And it's not built for it (yeah, LA sits on the San Andreas, but we know the big one's coming, and have tried to build to deal with it).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Case and point, Homosexuality in the military. The majority of the population supported allowing openly gay individuals in the military in 1992, but when Clinton attempted to allow gay people to openly serve, conservative groups flooded White House and Congressional Phone lines, shutting down government business in what might have been one of the first DDOS attacks in history. Faced with this challenge, the government decided to implement don't ask don't tell policy, essentially avoiding enforcement of the law.
Homosexuality was illegal in many states until 2003, consensual sex between 15 year olds is illegal everywhere in America, sex toys and fellatio is illegal in a couple of states. These are not mere factoids; there have been serious and concerted efforts to repeal these laws, only to be thwarted by passionate minorities.
We as a society could confront these minorities, but doing so incurs serious causes of social strife, with little or no benefit. A far superior method is to simply fail to enforce the laws, and rely on the power of jury nullification (That a jury has the legal right to acquit a defendant if they disagree with a law) incase a couple of overzealous officials attempt to enforce it.
I'll tell you why not in the Bronx: because Robert Moses' dream lives on, and he's the kind of person who pronounces the word "African-American" with a double G. The Bronx was an inconvenient residential area that was getting in the way of that neat expressway he wanted to build, you see...
This surveillance crap is there to reassure wealthy tourists and spending types, like the rich guy from Philly who posted earlier. This system does nothing for the average person because the average person doesn't live in Manhattan: it's too fucking expensive. The average person, however, is more likely to *drive to work* (or use mass transit) to get to a job in Manhattan. So people who don't live there and won't benefit from the increased surveillance (and who certainly aren't the target audience even if they're the targets) are paying for this.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...