Superbowl Means Time For Spy Cams, Hazmat Squads and Bomb-Sniffing Dogs

Toe, The writes "The New York Police Department has quietly installed about 200 temporary surveillance cameras in midtown Manhattan to help spot trouble along 'Super Bowl Boulevard,' a 13-block street fair on Broadway that's expected to draw large crowds during the windup to the game. The temporary cameras for the Super Bowl festivities will supplement a system of thousands of permanent cameras covering midtown and Wall Street that the NYPD monitors from a command center in lower Manhattan. The department has pioneered analytical software that allows it to program the cameras to detect suspicious activity, such as a bag or other objects left in one place for a long time. Hazmat and bomb squads will be on standby. Others officers will patrol with bomb-sniffing dogs. Still more will watch from rooftops and from police helicopters. At a recent security briefing at the stadium, police chiefs and other officials said success will be measured in part by how well authorities conceal all the concern over potential threats." Now it's a proven tradition: Superbowl crowds are a good place to test people-watching gear.

Comments

"Temporary"

[rolfwind]

Temporary until they decide they really like them.

Re:"Temporary"

[interkin3tic]

No, they're one upping Orwell and successfully framing it as a new thing. In airports they say "Due to heightened security..." implying security is higher than normal at airports despite the fact that it has been that way for a decade and will never decrease. The national security level system had lower levels of threats on it, but pretty clearly no one ever intended to tell the public they were finally safe and could stop funding the military industrial complex.

With a conflict that has always been going on, people will accept it. But they'll be apathetic about it too, so you can get less money out of it.

JUst Curious

[rmdingler]

Since the location of each Superbowl is typically known years in advance,

why would some terrorist have to set up the big fireworks anywhere near the day of the game?

Re:JUst Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

They wouldn't, and they haven't, because there are no terrorists. The police are fear mongering scum.

Re:JUst Curious

[DarkOx]

Well the earlier you put something like that in place the greater the chance someone happens upon it before the main event so to speak.

Re:JUst Curious

[Antique Geekmeister]

Explosives, especially homemade explosives, degrade over time and with exposure to moisture and weather. So do control electronics, and organic poisons. The stability of C4 is the exception, rather than the rule. Documented cases of old mines and artillery going off at unexpected times are common in the aftermath of military conflicts around the world. Maintenance in buildings that large, occupied by the pubic on a frequent basis, absolutely require maintenance crews to do thorough inspections to avoid collections of far more mundane materials. Some of the relevant regulations can be found at http://www.fifa.com/mm/documen....

Re:JUst Curious

[timeOday]

On the news they showed Russian police near the Olympics pulling up man-hole covers to inspect the sewers. So they are mindful of that kind of thing.

Re:JUst Curious

[z0rt]

Who he is doesn't matter. What matters is his plan.

Temporarily, it's the Terrorists

[rmdingler]

When that source of evil dries up,

some other group will pop up to unite our hatred until our eyesight is clouded.

Re:Temporarily, it's the Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll go back to pedophiles, or maybe communists or witches. Or better yet, we can go back to the 80's and be afraid of pedophile witch communes sacrificing children (which do not have to be proven to have ever existed in the first place) to Satan. Now those were the good ol' days; that was an irrational fear you could really get behind. Some of those people are still in prison - real prison, not that pussy Guantanamo crap - based solely on the testimony of preschoolers that were interrogated for 12+ hours at a time and fed leading questions. Just let it slip to the local pastor about how rock music was encoding messages backwards and *BLAM*, ten people arrested for accusations made by the congregation and convicted on confessions beaten out of them with phone books. Sure, we have waterboarding now, but it's just not the same. I want to see character assassination, not just regular assassination. If you don't break them before killing them, then where's the fun in that?

Too bad that Janet Reno isn't in the Capitol anymore. It's a sign of the moral decay that the country is in since we stopped lynching the gays and blacks.

Re: Temporarily, it's the Terrorists

[alen]

So who was it in the 80's hijacking planes and killing elderly Americans on Italian cruise ships?

Re:Temporarily, it's the Terrorists

[flyneye]

Well, we don't hear "Disco Duck " on the radio anymore, perhaps someone has a nonexistant source of evil dryer.

Rock and a hard place...

[Jamlad]

In their defense they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. So they're just covering their asses, like any employee. If they don't step up "security" they'll be lampooned for inaction and complacency, if they do install cameras and add extra patrols they get call "fear-mongers" and "fascists". But the professional cost of not adding extra security, particularly in light of an (highly unlikely) attack, is greater than if they don't.

Re:Rock and a hard place...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. So they're just covering their asses, like any employee

So, you are saying the road to hell is paved with covered asses?

Re:Rock and a hard place...

[Anonymous Coward]

In their defense they're caught between a rock and a hard place. Damned if they do, damned if they don't. So they're just covering their asses, like any employee.

If they don't step up "security" they'll be lampooned for inaction and complacency, if they do install cameras and add extra patrols they get call "fear-mongers" and "fascists". But the professional cost of not adding extra security, particularly in light of an (highly unlikely) attack, is greater than if they don't.

No, I'd say the crushing weight of an overly oppressive government hell-bent on taxing us to death with FUD (mixed in with a few lies to keep the hype going) is the true greater cost, considering what it feels like to be "free" these days.

I fear no foreign faceless terrorist directly. I fear named, titled, domesticated ones far more.

What I really want to know is who is paying

[DarkOx]

Are local tax payers footing the bill for the enhanced police presence? Is every America paying to have TSA goons and FBI thugs swarming about? Or are the NFL and TV broadcasters picking up at least some of the tab?

Re:What I really want to know is who is paying

[RoccamOccam]

New Jersey (where the superbowl isn't even happening) is spending something like $20m just to accommodate extra transportation for the super bowl.

Umm ... This year's Superbowl will be played in MetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Welcome to your police state

[FuzzNugget]

I mean, holy shit, when police are smothering every angle of a peaceful gathering just in case by default, that's when you know it.

America has had it so good for so long that one act of mass violence happens and they lose their shit (not to mention their rights). There are other countries where such things have historically been the norm, yet haven't resorted to police state tactics.

Has anyone up there even stopped for a moment to think that, just maybe, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy? That all the rights-abridging, war-mongering, imperialistic atrocities committed by America's for-the-government-by-the-government system in the name of "spreading democracy" (AHAHAHAHAHAHA...) is causing certain people to react in such an extreme manner? Or am I being too naive in thinking that they haven't considered this and decided they want it this way?

Re:Welcome to your police state

[Seumas]

And the 100,000+ at the event will gladly accept it, because "better safe than sorry" and "you gotta give up a little freedom and convenience for security durp durp".

Even if that were true... all these resources to protect so many of the most disposable.

Well of course. They have to make sure that

[Ellis D. Tripp]

the fans coming in from Washington and Colorado didn't bring any weed with them....

A "superbowl" is what gets packed

[Ellis D. Tripp]

when the 2 states that recently legalized weed meet for a championship football game...

Superbowl? You mean the "Big Game"?

[nolife]

You can't use the word Superbowl or even Super Sunday without the NFL wanting some money. People have been calling it the the "Big Game", although the NFL is now trying to trademark that term as well.
http://www.techdirt.com/articl...

Unless you pay the NFL money, if the NFL has their way, we might have to call it
"that game that happens at the end of the season that determines the champion in the sport that uses the brown oblong ball in the US"