Surveillance Veil Coming To New York

Jul 17, 2007 3:08 PM

By the end of 2007, police officials say more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan. It's the beginning of a surveillance system inspired by London that would be the first in the United States.

The plan is called the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, and it will resemble London's so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots in June.

According to the New York Times, if the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.

"This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation," said Raymond W. Kelly, New York City's police commissioner in an interview with The New York Times. "We want to make it less vulnerable."

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.

It was often thought that New York could not afford such a system since last summer, when Kelly said that the program was in peril after the city's share of Homeland security urban grant money was cut by nearly 40 percent.

But Kelly says that the department has since obtained $25 million toward the estimated $90 million cost of the plan. Fifteen million dollars came from Homeland security grants, he said, while another $10 million came from the city, more than enough to install 116 license plate readers in fixed and mobile locations, including cars and helicopters, in the coming months.

The readers would check license plate 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.

According to the plan, 3,000 surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of 2008, about two-thirds of them owned by downtown companies. Some of those are already in place. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.

There are already about 250 cameras placed in high-crime areas throughout the city, which capture moving images that have to be downloaded. But the new security initiative cameras would transmit live information instantly.

The operation will cost an estimated $8 million to run the first year, Kelly told The New York Times. Its headquarters will be in Lower Manhattan, he says, though police are still negotiating the exact location.

The NYPD is still considering whether to use face-recognition technology, which matches images against those in an electronic database, or biohazard detectors in its Lower Manhattan network, Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the police said.

The entire operation is forecast to be in place and running by 2010, in time for the projected completion of several new buildings in the NYC financial district.

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