New York To Test Facial Recognition Cameras At 'Crossing Points' (vocativ.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vocativ: In a 35-minute speech detailing a landmark $100 billion investment into state infrastructure, largely focused on New York City and Long Island, Governor Andrew Cuomo made a number of promises that would thrill New Yorkers, like the promise of a renovated Penn Station, called Penn-Farley, a direct train from there to LaGuardia Airport, and the completion of the long-awaited Second Avenue Line. Oh, and facial recognition cameras around the city, he said: "At each crossing, and at structurally sensitive points on bridges and tunnels, advanced cameras and sensors will be installed to read license plates and test emerging facial recognition software and equipment." "We're going to be using this in Penn-Farley and we also want to be testing it in bridges and crossings system," he added. On the matter of facial recognition cameras, Cuomo was shy on details. It's unclear how many cameras will be deployed, which agencies will have access to them, what defines a crossing, how citizens' photos will be stored, and what photo databases will be used to compare against the faces of the millions of people who drive into the city. In his speech, Cuomo referenced the cameras as necessary for New York to adapt to 21st century security threats. "In this age of terrorist activity and lone wolves, if you look at points of vulnerability you'll go to our tunnels and to our bridges. So really they have to be reimagined for a new reality," he said.

Comments

Reimagined for a new reality

[Anonymous Coward]

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself -- anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newyorkspeak: facecrime, it was called."

Re:Reimagined for a new reality

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to post the same as the AC above did. But from the same luminary:

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. ... The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. ... The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me."

Coincidentally

[SeattleLawGuy]

It will be used for more than fighting terrorism.

War on Freedom

[MrKaos]

If we are to call it what it is.

how to find "structurally sensitive points"

[turkeydance]

look for the camera

Re:Overhead or low placement?

[just another AC]

No problem. Cameras can track people by their walk and any other number of ways.

Unfortunately your mum was right, you ARE a unique snowflake.

Re:Why

[Kiuas]

The question is "why"? - you have a higher chance of dying from a bee sting or a lightning strike, why not address the higher risks first?

Psychology. The nature of terrorism as a threat is what makes it so efffective towards western populations. I can avoid going out in a lightning storm, and I can for the most part reasonably well avoid bees, but the thing which makes terrorism such a hard issue to tackle is that it's unpredictable and usually there's not much you can do to avoid it if it hits and you happen to be there.

Same is true with car accidents and a whole host of other issues, but the difference is that this is intentional. People can mostly deal with the old truism of 'shit happens', when you're talking about natural catastrophes and accidents, but when you're talking about people with malicious intent, it's much harder to get people to adopt the notion that this really isn't a big deal. Add to that the fact that so far most strikes post 911 in the west have been small, but all it really takes is one major one again to cause massive panic and outrage: lightning and bee stings are not hoping on getting their hands on biological or nuclear weapons for maximum damage.

I'm personally not american and I agree that the war on terror (how can you even have a war on terror which usually is a direct consequence of war itself, that is, wars tend to cause terror) is a failure. I don't support draconian monitoring of people or what the intelligence agencies are doing. But I do think comparing terrorism to naturally occurring accidents is not exactly a good comparison because the 2 phenomenon are quite different in that only one of them is driven by conscious intent to harm people - and that matters when it comes to dealing with threats.