Police State
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Operation Sentinel, a new program unveiled by the NYPD and Department
of Homeland Security, would encircle Man- hattan with thousands of
surveillance cameras that photo- graph every car or truck entering &
exiting the city across its network of bridges and tunnels.
Information captured by this intrusive project would be stored in a
huge database for an undisclosed period of time.
Additionally, a network of sensors installed at toll plazas would
allegedly be able to capable detect radi- ological materials that
could be used in potential terror plots, the New York Times reports.
However, the New York Civil Liberties Union has de- nounced the
proposal as "an attack on New Yorkers
right to privacy. NYCLU Director Donna Lieberman lambasted this
outrageous proposal saying,
The NYPD's latest plan to track and monitor the move- ments of
millions of law-abiding people is an assault on
this country's historical respect for the right to privacy
& the freedom to be left alone. That this is happening without public
debate, and that elected officials have
had no opportunity to study this program is even more alarming.
("NYCLU: NYPD Plan to Track Millions of Law-Abiding People is an
Assault on Privacy Rights," New York Civil Liberties Union, August 12,
2008)
Last month I reported on a high-tech surveillance system under
development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
called "Combat Zones That See" (CTS).
The 2003 program was predicated on the notion that once thousands of
digital CCTV networks were installed across occupied or "homeland"
cities, CTS would provide occ- upying troops-or police-with "motion-
pattern analysis
across whole city scales."
Based on complex algorithms linked to the numeric rec- ognition of
license plate numbers and scanned-in human profiles, CTS would furnish
troops-or cops-real-time, "situational awareness" of the "battlespace."
Despite repeated attempts by NYCLU to obtain information on Operation
Sentinel, NYPD and DHS have refused to provide any information about
their mega-surveillance system. While all traces of CTS disappeared
from DARPA's website, portions of the program have resurfaced with a
vengeance, courtesy of the NYPD and DHS.
According to New York Times reporter Al Baker,
Data on each vehicle-its time-stamped image, license
plate imprint and radiological signature- would be sent
to a command center in Manhattan, where it would be indexed & stored
for at least a month as part of broad security plan that emphasizes
protecting the city's
financial district, spokesman Paul Browne, said.
If it were not linked to a suspicious vehicle or a law enforcement
investigation, it would be eliminated, he said.
("City Would Photograph Every Vehicle Entering Manhattan and Sniff Out
Radiation," The New York Times, August 12, 2008)
While preventing terrorists from detonating a radiological dirty bomb
or a nuclear device in Manhattan--or anywhere else for that matter-
is certainly a salutary government function, the misuse of such a
system for illegal surveillance of the citizenry cannot be ruled out
in advance nor dismissed out of hand as mere paranoia.
In addition to civil liberties concerns--no small matter after all,
given the repressive nature of NYPD and DHS-Oper- ation Sentinel's
grandiose scheme bank on technological systems which do not exist.
The Times dryly notes, the proposed plan "relies on integrating layers
of technologies, some that are still being perfected." In other words,
the program is rife with potential abuse by enterprising security
contractors, many with documented histories of promising much,
delivering little and with substantial cost overruns borne by the
public.
The department currently deploys portable radiation vehicles known as
TRACS, or Tactical Radiation Acquisition & Characterization System,
which the
Times claims can detect radiological agents such
as cesium and cobalt, and differentiate "between dangerous ones and
ones used in products like
smoke detectors or medical devices."
However, as I reported in June, another system under development, the
"Advanced Spectroscopic Portal" or ASP, allegedly a more "advanced"
system than those currently used, failed, as do today's systems, to
differentiate between the components of a radiological dirty bomb and
natural radiation emitters such as kitty litter, ceramics and bananas!
As I noted, the ASP program is already tens of millions of dollars
above the original estimate provided by Raytheon, other contractors
and DHS.
Why therefore, would any sane person believe that the system currently
under consideration would be anymore functional or cost effective?
Unless that is, Operation Sentinel's real purpose is to enhance an
already-formidable surveillance state.
NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and his staff have been "urging
the creation of a London-style surveillance system for the financial
district that relies on license plate readers, movable roadblocks and
3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, all
linked to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. Known as the Lower
Manhattan Security Initiative, the center is to open in September,"
according to the Times.
NYPD spokesperson Paul J. Browne "could not say, when the program
[Operation Sentinel] would be completed," though "the Lower Manhattan
Initiative is expected to be in place by 2010." Since 2007, NYPD have
been using CTS-type CCTV systems to read license plates linked to
databases for (unspecified) "intelligence purposes."
And if the illegal handling of the 2004 Republican National Convention
protests are an indication of Operation Sentinel's intended purpose,
New York City residents' outrage with the proposal are fully justified.
The Times revealed their own proclivities on this score when they
prominently featured the "analysis" of so-called "terrorism expert,"
Steven Emerson, the executive director of the Washington-D.C.-
basedInvestigative Project on Terrorism, a right-wing think-tank with
close ties to the Bush administration and former New York mayor Rudy
Giuliani.
When civil libertarians (unnamed by the "newspaper of record")
voiced concerns over the intrusive nature of Operation Sentinel and
the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, Emerson dismissed their
apprehensions out of hand,
It is one tool of ensuring that if there is somebody on a terrorist
watch list or someone driving err- atically, or if a pattern develops
that raises sus- picions, it gives them an opportunity to investi-
gate further and-if need be-track down the
drivers or the passengers, he said.
The bottom line is they can't frisk everybody coming into Manhattan;
they cant wand ev- eryone, as they do at airports. This is a passive
collection of data thats not as invasive as what they do at airports.
An Islamophobe with a long record of blaming Muslims and the left for
every act of terrorism under the sun, Emerson demonstrated his bona
fides in 1995 when he claimed that "Arab terrorists" were responsible
for the horrific bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma
City.
The blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children in a daycare center
while wounding hundreds of others. Attentive readers may recall that
the Murrah building bombing was in fact, carried out by a neo-Nazi
gang linked to Timothy McVeigh and the Aryan Republican Army.
While Emerson claims Operation Sentinel is "a passive collection of
data," as the American Civil Liberties Union reports, there are
currently more than one million names in an FBI-administered database
known as the Terrorist Screening Center. Such an unwieldy monstrosity
is hardly a tightly-focused list of potential "threats"!
But let's be clear: Operation Sentinel, and a host of other programs
cooked-up by Bush regime war criminals and their corporatist allies is
another sordid scheme to keep Americans terrorized, while destroying
our civil liberties under cover of "homeland security."