Posted on 03/22/2006 6:39:18 AM PST by af_vet_rr
New Yorkers, get ready for your closeup.
The NYPD is installing 505 surveillance cameras around the city - and pushing to safeguard lower Manhattan with a "ring of steel" that could track hundreds of thousands of people and cars a day, authorities revealed yesterday.
..
The NYPD also has applied for $81.5 million in federal aid to install surveillance cameras, computerized license plate readers and vehicle barriers around lower Manhattan, Kelly said.
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But don't expect the NYPD to install its cameras without battling the New York Civil Liberties Union. The watchdog group's associate legal director, Chris Dunn, questioned the plan.
"Commissioner Kelly may be ready to launch us all into a surveillance society, but we believe cameras are not a cure-all for crime and terrorism," Dunn said. "It is far from clear that cameras deter crime."
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I guess you don't read the newspapers.
http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-42.htm
You're from New Orleans and haven't yet learned that you need to be self-sufficient to protect yourself and your family when things go downhill? Wow.
~ Blue Jays ~
Uhhhh...yeah, that makes a LOT of sense. How is being "self-sufficient" going to help my car on a public street when it gets broken into in the middle of the night? Try again
Did anybody notice that for all their whining about rights, it is the left that is always the first to turn fascist? and that it's always directed against law-abiding citizens while they always protect actual criminals and terrorists?
For criminals: They stand up for their rights, are against the death penalty, want them to be well represented, want to allow illegals into the country and give them government benefits, want to give convicted felons the vote, want to legalize hard drugs.
For law abiding citizens: They want to take away their legal guns, want to restrict their use of property, want to prevent them from smoking, want to tax the heck out of them (taking their money), want to steal their property (Kelo decision), want to restrict their speach ("hate" speach laws, campus fascism, political correctness and "free speach areas).
For liberals everything bad is good and everything good is bad. God and faith are bad, abortion is good. Patriotism is bad, discent and hating the country is good. Sin (including porn and homosexuality) is good...
Our country is in a sad state wehn people demand tyranny.
Not only that, but from what I hear, they are going to charge tolls for driving in downtown Manhattan soon.
So tell me how a government camera is going to prevent your car from being burglarized in the middle of the night? A simple proactive step that YOU can do to prevent thefts is parking your vehicle in a securely locked garage.
Police are not going to drop everything they're doing because a dirtbag smashed your glass and bolted with a roll of quarters in the ashtray. Relying on someone who might be watching a monitor to help you is patently absurd. Cameras are simple window-dressing and do nothing to make you materially safer.
~ Blue Jays ~
So tell me how a government camera is going to prevent your car from being burglarized in the middle of the night? A simple proactive step that YOU can do to prevent thefts is parking your vehicle in a securely locked garage.
Police are not going to drop everything they're doing because a dirtbag smashed your glass and bolted with a roll of quarters in the ashtray. Relying on someone who might be watching a monitor to help you is patently absurd. Cameras are simple window-dressing and do nothing to make you materially safer.
~ Blue Jays ~
Well there you go, maybe you shouldnt ASSUME things, now should you? Lets say a persons car is parked on the street and it gets broken into in the middle of the night. If that street has a camera, A) the perp may (or may not) be inclined to NOT break into the car and B) if he does then theres a good chance the camera will get a description of the perp.
Did I say that they would cure all of societys ill's? NO. Can they help reduce crime.....yes. To say that cameras are only WINDOW DRESSING is just idiotic. I guess Banks and dept stores just put up cameras cause they think they look cool and pretty.
Not to mention that numerous murders have been solved over the past few years by checking video tape from available cameras in ATMs, etc.
Too many people don't want to be responsible for anything.
and convience stores catching child abductors! Christ.....some people are so DAMN paranoid that they cant see that cameras DO offer some advantages!
Either Orwell was an amazing prognosticator, or his book has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There will always be people willing sacrifice all liberties for 'saftey'. This trend is disturbing. Writing on the wall. I'd sooner pack my bags and live in Africa, rather than in Big Brother society. Hopefully that day is still a bit off.
If it stopped there, I might be able to accept it. It won't stop there. Big Government will be all over everything you do, eventually. Every transaction you make, everything you buy and where, everywhere your car goes, time and location.
Government agencies simply won't stop. You're on the right path, check my post# 42 for a granular scenario.
~ Blue Jays ~
Do you honestly believe a methamphetamine tweaker looking to score drugs is really stopping to consider if cameras are around before he/she smashes your car window to steal quarters and highway tokens in the ashtray?
My father had his identity stolen a few years ago. An alert bank manager where this guy was running his scam took three crystal clear 8" x 10" glossy color photographs of the smooth criminal in action. With this perfect evidence, the police are still having a difficult time nailing this little worm. The detective who worked my father's case informed us the guy is still stealing identities in a different part of the state. The police aren't going to invest much manpower in your measly $14.00 of stolen change.
To continue with your commentary about banks and department stores...they can have all the cameras they wish...because they're typically inside and installed on private property. Additionally, signs on the door inform you that you're being taped...which is a huge difference from hundreds of government cameras placed on utility poles around a city.
~ Blue Jays ~
Worlds Most Amazing videos must be short on material.
Basically, we are looking at the end of the Bill of Rights, and the essence of the warnings given by Adams and Franklin.
Hi tumblindice-"...I suppose you're against DNA evidence as well, as `intrusive'?..."
If a police officer approaches me in a crowded shopping mall and asks me for a DNA sample, you're darn right I'm opposed to it as being intrusive! That's essentially what government cameras are doing, they're peering into our lives and monitoring our comings and goings even though we've done nothing wrong. It is a broadbrush approach. I'll also stake the value of my home that any bureaucrat pushing for cameras will stridently advocate facial recognition software next year. It's a no-brainer.
Do you feel any apprehension at all knowing that your identity would be known and that you were FReeping from the Starbucks hotspot on the corner of Nassau Place & Liberty Street on Wednesday, March 22 @ 11:20 a.m. while wearing a beige dress and red scarf? Why should your life or mine be an open book to someone who happened to pass a civil service exam?
~ Blue Jays ~
It's come down to where we're just about to the place where "the question of the day" will be, "Wouldn't we be safer if we issued master keys to the police, so that they could enter our homes any time they wanted, to search through our personal papers, our computers, and so forth? After all, if you're an honest law-abiding person, you have nothing to hide, and it just might catch some criminals. It would certainly help find child pornography!"
I don't put any smilies after that, because as the sun rises in the east, there are "conservative freepers" reading the above right this very moment, pounding their fists, saying, "Hell YES! We need that kind of security, and we need it SOON!"
And as the sun sets in the west, I fear we'll get it -- SOON.
For those fossils who still have their heads screwed on straight, I present for rememberance sake only (since that is all these words are good for anymore), the following pieces of history:
Next, I halfway expect to be hit with angry replies lecturing me on how "those guys" didn't live in the kind of dangerouse society we face these days.
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, -- go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
--Samuel Adams
# # # "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
--Benjamin Franklin
Yes, yes, right... of course. Of course the likes of Ben Franklin and Sam Adams lived in such easy, comfortable, safe times. Why, they never even knew the meaning of "danger", now did they.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so perhaps I'll simply vomit.
America, we hardly knew ye...
True. I'd rather live in my car than within 1,000 miles of New York.
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