Hello residents of New York City! (And probably also New Brunswick and parts of Connecticut, Buffalo, and Philadelphia)! Are you doing anything wrong? No? Then why not let Michael Bloomberg’s personal army the NYPD take a look at what you’re doing ALL THE TIME? You don’t mind, do you? After all, if you’re not doing anything WRONG (or emailing OTHER people who might, by some stretch of the imagination, be THINKING about doing something WRONG) then why would you mind? Good, now that this has been settled, you can look forward to the unveiling of the all-seeing “Domain Awareness System” next week, which is not at all Orwellian and given that it was developed via a partnership with Microsoft, has absolutely no security issues! Don’t you feel Safer already?
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — The New York Police Department will soon launch an all-seeing “Domain Awareness System” that combines several streams of information to track both criminals and potential terrorists. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the city developed the software with Microsoft. Kelly says the program combines city-wide video surveillance with law enforcement databases. He says it will be officially unveiled by New York’s mayor as soon as next week.
Kelly spoke Saturday before an audience at the Aspen Security Forum.
The NYPD has been under fire for surveillance of Muslim communities and partnering with the CIA to track potential terror suspects. Muslim groups have sued to shut down the NYPD programs. Kelly defended the policies as key to thwarting 14 terror plots against the city since the attacks of Sept. 11th.
Of course, these “14 terror plots against the city” include the plot wherein the police gave $100,000 to a man of “limited functionality” who had no bomb, no link to foreign terrorist groups, and no real ability to carry out a terror plan. But kudos anyway, because it’s the thought that counts. Oh and they also include a plot that was actually stopped by a T-shirt vendor in Times Square and that the NYPD knew nothing about beforehand. But they WOULD have maybe if they had been able to conduct surveillance on the Time Square Bomber all the time, probably. And think about how much SAFER you’ll feel when Bloomberg’s own army the NYPD are able to monitor YOUR every move, on or offline! After all, if you’re not doing anything “wrong” (or emailing someone else that might be thinking about doing something wrong) then why would you mind?
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NYPD's just US Amercian for NKVD
Without the fun usually associated with the VD part.
So way out of date.
Two names after NKVD.
Deliver me from "well-intentioned' men in power.
As a New Yorker, between the private security cameras and the plainclothes security guards and cops, and the eyes in the sky, I just assume I'm being watched at all times, except perhaps in my bedroom (and even there….OK, look, Editrix, I know about the webcam!)
As an actor, I just turn it into one long audition.
I make the same assumption about living here in the DC area. I'm on camera unless I'm well away from anything historical, political, or cultural, which is most of DC.
OK, Chief, it's time to lower the cone of silence.
"All the world's a stage"
Huh, that's your day job? Glasspushing is just a hobby for me. Here I thought that that feeling I got whenever I visit NYC was just perfectly normal paranoia.
We're all actors in the "Security Theatre" — it's performance art for everyone!
personally, i like to stop in the middle of the street and give them a little lady m.
but maybe that's just me.
Bloomberg just yearns to be Master of His Domain.
This is nothing new. The Police have been watching every breath you take for years!
We're wrapped around their fingers.
When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.
Don't stand so close to me! On any other day, I'd be driven to tears, but today, it's all murder by numbers.
Non-stop police surveillance — a connecting principle, linked to the invisible, almost imperceptible
snort
Right, but does everyone stare they way they do?
Too many cameras and not enough food.
Why does it have to be all throughout all of NYC? Why not just concentrate it on Wall Street, that's where the real criminals are.
nosy fuckers.
Well, I'm not doing anything wrong, so I already feel safer, because I know exactly how well the NYPD treats people who are doing nothing wrong.
Wow. Thanks for the link, that's fascinating. Looks like the next "Serpico" will be a frat-boy-esque farce.
I work in Jersey City. No security cameras here. The police turn them off because most of the people wandering the street are butt awful ugly.
You should move to somewhere more attractive or have the ugly people deported.
I get on my bus and go to my seaside home. Everyone in a while we go out to Sandy Hook and take an occasional stroll through Gunnison Beach.
Don’t rag on Jersey City; at least it isn’t the suburbs. You should take great comfort in the fact that you are only a PATH ride away from Hoboken or an excellent Portuguese meal in Newark.
I never realized how good the mass transit was in NJ until I moved to California. Luckily I'm a bike ride away from BART…
It's in the genes to rag on NJ. Even the first European settlers that landed in Paulus Hook in Jersey City on the Hudson River left and relocated on the west side of Lower Manhattan. Then they barged all their garbage across the river and now Paulus Hook is three blocks from the river.
You clearly don't live there, if you can notice the difference. Spill.
Time to invest in the hot new industry that omnivorous facial-recognition-software-coupled surveillence will spawn: Sunglass 'N Balaclava Hut.
BTW, everyone does know that Facebook got start-up funding from a CIA-owned investment company, and that Instagram is a test-bed platform for combining your address book with facial-recognition software… right?
Will your hut sell tin-foil hats, too?
Actually, tin-foil hats increase your ability to be surveilled.
Bah. Picasa had been doing that for ages, even long before they were acquired by Google and integrated fully into Google+.
But it's okay, because they're not evil! They even tell us so!
Wow, the NYPD looks nothing like Tom Selleck's NYPD!
Like Ben Franklin said: "Those who would surrender a little liberty for a little safety deserve a fourth-floor walkup studio in the Bronx."
Yeah, well, he said that when rents were still reasonable.
Do not fuck with the NYCPD. Believe me they will smack you with that stick right on the short part of your mullet. It'll leave a welt.
Kudos to them. The new program helped prevent thousands of super-sized soda sales to terrorists.
*Gulp!*
Needz moar Steve Earle singing 'bout burning down Walmart. Not that there are a lot of Walmarts in NYC, just because.
They can watch, but they have to be quiet and just touch themselves, not me or my partner.
Is your billing discreet?
We come in a brown paper bag. Budda Boom!
Both of you?
This is charming only when done by a fat guy with a white beard and red suit who brings presents.
Not even then. Somewhat (!) O/T – have you ever noticed the similarity in the iconography of God and Santa? A white bearded man who lives above us keeping track of who's naughty and nice and punishing and rewarding accordingly?
Like that nice old man who always gives us that hot cocoa that makes us all sleepy, and then we wake up with the trots?
He's a Catholic Saint, and they're just repurposed pagan demigods, anyway.
Reduce, reuse, recycle?
…incinerate, landfill…
One reason for the idea of God is to keep people in line. Santa is an introduction of this concept.
Breaking into our homes to steal food in the dead of night, banging our moms while our dads are out of town on business…
APB on fat old man with white beard.
The city might save some money if they change security vendors from Microsoft to the American Guild of T-shirt Sellers.
I'm shocked that New York City residents have tolerated the militarization of their police department, and its flagrant disregard for their rights and privacy. I live in what many Northerners would consider a reactionary, oppressive part of the country, but we would NEVER tolerate our police engaging in widespread, race-based "stop and frisk" searches of random pedestrians.
What's wrong with you, New Yorkers?
Hahaha! As if.
We are all on drugs.
9/11 happened, man.
Here's the thing about Noo Yawkahs: nothing bothers us. Until it bothers us. And then it becomes a bed-wetting panic, perpetrated mostly by the tabloids and their TV equivalent, the local news.
For instance, Son of Sam: guy killed, what, a half dozen people one summer? Do you know how many women refused to go out on dates that summer, afraid that, in a city of seven million people they might get singled out?
You stood a better chance of dying of rabies from a rat bite that summer than being shot by Berkowitz (Spike Lee's movie does credible justice to the panic).
A manhole cover can blow up right next to us, and we're all like "I call heads!" But tell us about Dartman, and ooooooooooooooh, no one eats at a hot dog cart anymore.
Not that those things can kill you, but because a guy shot some broad in the ass with a needle.
And now we know Son of Sam was just standing his ground.
"Do you know how many women refused to go out on dates that summer, afraid that, in a city of seven million people they might get singled out?"
How many did you ask?
(Oh come on Man, you can't just hang a big slow ball out there and not expect me to take a swing at it!)
All of them, Katie.
Literally. I ended up marrying the first one who said yes.
(game, set, and match ;-))
I've only been to NYC a handful of times, all in the '90s. The most memorable time was in 1994: I was visiting a friend there right in the middle of the Jordan-less Bulls' epic second-round playoff battle with the Knicks. I was real popular around town in my bright red Bulls jersey!
I also happened to be walking around on the Upper East Side near the Met one afternoon, and noticed a shitload of news vans and people hanging around outside of one building, quietly expectant of something. I asked a cop what was going on, and he just looked at me and said, "Kennedy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Onassis#Death
Or more recently, like how when that Long Island Serial Killer that they never caught made it nearly impossible to get *ahem* dates on craigslist. Or so I hear. From a friend. Some people say.
Interesting. Those of us who live in flyover country are alternately fascinated and repulsed by New York City. I've only been there once myself, for a few days in the 1980's. My most vivid recollection is the smell that wafted out of the subway vents.
Nonetheless, I have a pretty clear mental picture of the various neighborhoods in Manhattan, gained by reading, looking at maps, and in later years, Google Earth. My wife is impressed that I can usually describe the area around any given Manhattan street address; she sometimes suspects that I'm a closet Yankee.
I think your self-awareness is quite keen.
I've lived in a brownstone. I've lived in a ghetto. I've lived all over this town.
Actually, that song is a pretty good description of the attitude a New Yorker has to have to survive here.
This is another great NYC tune, (working title was actually "Manhattan"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrJfBqNJo_A
Stevie Wonder.
Um, they beat us up when we resist? Literally?
So does emailing pictures of dogs dressed in Halloween costumes count as wrong? Because I still do that.
If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right…
Mom???? Didn't think you would be on the Wonkette! Do you still have the one with the cheerleader dog as your screen saver?
The real crime takes place on Wall Street and in banks.
AMAZING BUT TRUE!
"We've been given the number of a 'Michael Bloomberg', Mr. Reese. And most disturbingly, he seems to have backdoor access to The Machine." http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/Pers…
"Fight fear with fear." It has a catchy beat, maybe the NYPD are onto something.
…
Wha, don't look at me? The Scissor Sisters
saidsang so themselves!The original name for the system was "The Blue Screen of Death!"
HAL 9000 is here to help and protect us.
At least HAL had the decency to lose at chess sometimes.
Gathering and possibly retaining information about us before crimes are committed is just NYPD's way of showing they care.
NYPD just can't quit the "Red Squad" of yore.
Who's going to watch the watchers?
This is all because everyone chose the blue pill.
Fucking conformists.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
With the NYC crime rate being so low, NYPD had to rush in and fill the demand.
FREE CRIME MARKETS WORK!
That "terror plots prevented" count will zoom right up after this new system is in place and the NYPD can start collaring anyone carrying a large soda!
God help New Yorkers if the police ever start a "stand your ground" policy…
Because terrists always assemble their bombs within sight of police cameras, and make plans via their AOL email accounts.
Come on. Even terrarists dont not use AOL.
You can give any vague reason for the eradication of privacy, like terrorism or 9/11, but the savvy will always understand the true implications and work hard to circumvent them.
Just one more brick in the wall that made me run.
Here in Ha Noi, journalists have a bit of freedom. They can complain about things that are wrong as long as they do not blame it on the government personally. Here, the government leads by following. A journalist writes about a problem & the gov. listens. Sometimes things improve.
In the US a journalist just asks a poitician about the law of gravity & the pol says he wants the law taken off the books. Photogenic journalist nods knowingly & asks about rounding pi to 3., Good luck free press.
You know the morons in charge of public safety are just getting ripped off by some techies , who are laughing all the way to the bank.
Developer: 'Every time you press this button, you can follow a terrorist. For realz!'
Moron cop boss: 'Cool'
In NYC, there are ten million people moving around and doing shit all day long. Who the hell is going to watch the millions of hours of video, and read millions of emails, every fucking day? You know how many plays "bomb", and how many athletes "attack", in a thousand different messages? Heck, there are probably enough dolls that get "blown up" to keep 'em chasing their tails all day long.
Don't worry – there are still enough hellholes here to provide shelter and comfort to the most extreme anarchists.
On the other hand: I was taking arty photos of a power installation a few weeks ago. The street was deserted. Suddenly, a rather sinister but friendly guy appeared behind me and pointed out that what I was doing was illegal (9/11). As I walked away, I noticed that he was taking pictures of me.
By the way, there is next to no real information in that WaPo article.
Ha ha ha, oh come on that can't happen here. Ouch. Hey, what's this camera doing up my ass?
Well, at least they chose a nice and friendly name for it.
(If Apple had been the contractor, would it have been "iSpy"?)
“Domain Awareness System” doesn't sound Orwellian at all …
Skyscrapers! And everythang!
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