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Vol. 71/No. 33      September 10, 2007

 
N.Y. cops to expand video surveillance system
 
BY EMILY PAUL  
NEW YORK—The police department here is working to install an extensive video surveillance network to monitor thousands of people and cars throughout Lower Manhattan. The system, which is being set up in the name of fighting “terrorism,” will include electronic license plate readers, 3,000 cameras, movable roadblocks, and a 24-hour command center staffed by police and private security officers. The first such operation in the United States, officials say it will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, the most extensive urban surveillance system in the world.

The $90 million project is scheduled to be installed by 2008 and fully functional by 2010. About 1,000 public and 2,000 private security cameras would be set up below Manhattan’s Canal Street, transmitting live information. It would include remote-controlled swinging barriers that cops could use to block traffic and trap a car.

There are already 4,200 surveillance cameras in place below 14th Street, a fivefold increase since 1998, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union.

About 200 cameras have already been placed in working-class neighborhoods labeled “high-crime” areas in New York’s five boroughs.

City officials are seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, “which would require the use of license-plate readers,” the New York Times reported. Although billed as an “anticongestion plan,” if it is approved “the police will most likely collect information from those readers too,” the paper reported.

Washington, D.C., already has a Joint Operations Command Center in police headquarters that can conduct surveillance through 14 video cameras in several downtown locations. Closed-circuit surveillance systems for the district’s public schools and regional subway stations can be watched through the center.  
 
 
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