Posted on 02/13/2002 6:15:46 AM PST by goldylight
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington police are building what will be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.
The system would eventually include hundreds of cameras, linking existing devices in Metro mass transit stations, public schools and traffic intersections to new digital cameras mounted to watch over neighborhoods and shopping districts, the Journal said.
"In the context of Sept. 11, we have no choice but to accept greater use of this technology," Stephen Gaffigan, the head of the police department project, told the Journal.
He said city officials had studied the British surveillance system, which has more than 2 million cameras throughout the country, and were "intrigued by that model."
One of the first uses of police surveillance cameras in Washington was April 2000, when authorities set up a network to monitor protests during a meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the newspaper said.
On Tuesday morning, in response to the latest terror alert issued by the Justice Department, police activated a $7 million command center that was first used on Sept. 11. The command center, which has dozens of video stations for monitoring cameras, will remain in use until federal officials end the alert, the Journal reported.
Cameras installed by the police have been programmed to scan public areas automatically, and officers can take over manual control if they want to examine something more closely.
The system currently does not permit an automated match between a face in the crowd and a computerized photo of a suspect, the Journal said. Gaffigan said officials were looking at the technology but had not decided whether to use it.
Eventually, images will be viewable on computers already installed in most of the city's 1,000 squad cars, the Journal said.
The Journal said the plans for Washington went far beyond what was in use in other U.S. cities, a development that worries civil liberties advocates.
Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, noted there were few legal restrictions of video surveillance of public streets. But he said that by setting up a "central point of surveillance," it becomes likely that "the cameras will be more frequently used and more frequently abused."
"You are building in a surveillance infrastructure, and how it's used now is not likely how it's going to be used two years from now or five years from now," he told the Journal.
I saw on TV where they had a way to read heat in a persons face to see if they were telling a lie. Similar to one of those "aura machines."
When a person lies, the blood rushes to their face, and it shows up red in those areas. It was creepy!
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NOT! no, I screwed up, I have no idea why i did that. Did Orson Wells have anything to do with George Orwell, acting wise?.
Note to Rebelbase:.. time for brain lubrication.
Clinton deployed troops 40 times during his 8 year reign of terror in an attempt to rule the world, but we were never officially at war with anyone .
Yep. DU disrupter. No doubt. The sh*t just keeps getting deeper.
"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered!" -- Number 6.
If you Freepmail me I give you the names of some real live nutters for you to ping and they'll take up where I left off.
One word....BULLSHIT !!!
The idea was that a crime could be detected before it happened by computerized scanning of the crowd for suspicious behavior, such as walking too fast. They claimed to have observed from their previous spying on the public that fast walking preceded a significant amount of assaults.
So you'd need to walk slowly with your hands by your sides and don't make any suspicious or sudden movements, if you don't want to be stopped for questioning.
No, I'm not making this up. I saw the article here on FR, but unfortunately I didn't save it.
.....kinda' sad to think that you might be old enough to vote...kinda' sad to think about the gene pool.
You showed the perfect example of the mind of a democrat.
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