New York has big security plans:
The Police Department is working on a plan to track every vehicle that enters Manhattan to strengthen the city’s guard against a potential terror attack, the department’s chief spokesman said.
The proposal — called Operation Sentinel — relies on integrating layers of technologies, some that are still being perfected. It calls for photographing, and scanning the license plates of, cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels and using sensors to detect the presence of radioactivity.
Data on each vehicle — its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature — would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored for at least a month as part of a broad security plan that emphasizes protecting the city’s financial district, the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. If it were not linked to a suspicious vehicle or a law enforcement investigation, it would be eliminated, he said.
Not sure how much of this stuff goes on already, so no point freaking out. Not to mention, it doesn’t matter anyway, and the Republicans will just chant “IF YOU AREN’T DOING ANYTHING WRONG, YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO WORRY ABOUT,” while the Democrats are too afraid of being portrayed as soft on terror and weak on security to say anything. So what the hell is the point of even fighting it anymore?
Second, I just don’t see how this improves security. All it seems to do is to help law enforcement AFTER the fact establish who or what did whatever. I am just so weary of all the terror hysteria.
Breschau
“Operation Sentinel”? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Have these people never read a Marvel comic book?
SpotWeld
If something like this could be effective, wouldn’t London already have put it into place. They have worked under terrorist threat for much longer and already have a well intigrated CCTV system.
This sounds like a system that would have a high cost (just to maintain it!) for very little practical result.
Conservatively Liberal
They should have called it ‘Operation Central Scrutinizer’. I await the day we are required to wear imbedded ID chips. If these fucks have their way, it will be next week.
‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ has lost all meaning. Now we have nothing to fear but our government as they have become our worst enemy.
John PM
Exactly! The system only prevents an event if you have some information ahead of time regarding a particular plot. Otherwise, it is as useful as the sureveillance footage of the 9/11 hijackers getting onto an airplane in Boston.
Dennis - SGMM
Yep, they’ll know that it was one of a couple of million vehicles rather than one of a couple of hundred million vehicles. In other words, they’ll know everything about nothing.
4tehlulz
I LOVE
NEW YORKSINGAPORE!Cris
I’m sure there are plenty of practical results, just not any related to preventing terror attacks.
PaulW
I wonder at what point the entire law enforcement system is gonna collapse from having TOO MUCH information.
They’re taking the whole “Needle in the Haystack” metaphor and adding more hay to it.
D. Mason
Actually, if they had their way it would have been this past May. Well close anyway. Bureaucracy and I’m sure a bit of incompetence has caused delay after delay. I count this as a big win for red tape.
nightjar
This is why I stay away from cities. NYC just wants to sniff out traitorous Red Sox fans. It’s diabolical, but necessary for Yankee purity.
Jay C
Well, since another side-effect of instituting the plans outline by “Operation Sentinel” would be the transfer of many many millions of taxpayer dollars to the NYPD to install and maintain the system, I would say its fundamental purpose is sound indeed.
Besides, it’s not that bad an idea: if a radiation-leaking terrorist vehicle DID manage to be detected, it would merely end up getting trapped (probably for hours) in Manhattan traffic: making it just that easier for it to be captured!
Incertus
If they have, then I assume they chose the name deliberately. Think about the type of people we’re talking about here.
Dennis - SGMM
The whole homeland security cluster reminds me of that episode of the old “Get Smart!” television show where Max observes, “If we know who, what, and where, then we’ll know when and why.” Back then it was a joke, now it’s a policy.
syl
It’s aimed at deterrence I guess. The idea is that there are a certain number of would be terrorists at the margin that will now decide not to attack based on the increased risk of capture/punishment. Not sure how much you buy into that. It’s basically the same argument that people who are pro death penalty use. Well, at least the people who fancy themselves too “serious” to rely on “Fry all dem Bastards!”
jake
Gee. I wonder who got the contracts for this boondoggle.
As John notes, these systems are currently only good for the [ahem] post-mortem. It might eventually prevent an attack (assuming everyone is alert and does their job 100% of the time and the various programs don’t glitch out) but before it can do that the system will need data gathered before a few attacks. Cheerful, no?
Corner Stone
Like the FBI investigating something like 124 false leads at once, or saying everything they received from the illegal wiretaps was garbage, or when they trailed a pizza delivery guy 24/7 on bad intel?
toujoursdan
So wouldn’t this just push the terrorists to set off the dirty bomb in Jersey City or Hoboken and let the westerlies blow the falloout over Manhattan?
It’s like the joke that is airport security where they subject the public to mass misery to give us the illusion of safety when circumventing the process pretty easy actually.
Good grief what a fear based society Americans live in. People in NYC are much more likely to be killed by a wayward cab than a dramatic terrorist event.
Dennis - SGMM
They’ll be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that on the day of an attack there were cars and trucks in Manhattan.
El Cruzado
That will stop suicide terrorists alright. Sure.
MattF
I think I’ll go watch ‘The Conversation’ again.
germ78
The only security being provided is job security. There will always be cars and trucks needing to be monitored, not to mention the wonderous layers upon layers of bureaucracy required to keep track of all that data.
Conservatively Liberal
That is the point that people will miss. If they commit suicide while pulling off their nefarious plan, what good will this system do? Provide great footage of the event?
Control, that is what it is all about. Information is power, and with power you can control.
How about barcodes? How about we all become tomatoes and get our bar codes? Will Big O save the day or will the evil Alex Rosewater win? ;)
PC
I would go for ‘Operation Scrutator’, but I’m biased.
Mike P
Wired had a big article about this back in April.
J sub D
Oh yeah, this will work. I will be far away from Manhattan when the full up op test occurs and the system does a Hindenburg. Your tax dollars, hard at work.
gbear
What percentage of people moving around in Manhattan are in private vehicles? Don’t most people walk or take cabs or public transit?
I’d hate to be a messenger or delivery route guy; every one of them is going to wind up on a list of potential terrorists. Just another way to make life suck.
Marshall
The Russians / Soviets always assumed that any vehicle that left DC and went into Virginia (or vice versa) was tracked, so their drops were always in the District or in Maryland. (You have to pass over bridges to get from DC or Maryland into Virginia.)
I don’t know if that is true, but I do know that there are some bright lights in the various overpasses going to those bridges.
syl
I agree with about deterrence in this case Conservatively Liberal. I think deterrence works on a small scale for lower level crimes or actions (i.e. the only reasons I don’t smoke marijuana are the legal and professional consequences, even given the relatively low likeliehood of being caught). But for big stuff, you’re relying on the concept of a “reasonable terrorist,” or “reasonable murderer.” It might work for someone like Judge Posner who thinks that people can accurately calculate dollar values for the enjoyment they derrive from in-flight movies and then discount that against ticket prices from airlines who don’t provide movies. But I find the whole thing pretty dubious mostly.
Wilfred
What about Brooklyn? Expendable?
If someone gets close enough with a nuclear device for its radiation level to be detected isn’t that close enough for it to be detonated?
Zifnab
That’s basically what I’m seeing. Absolute information overload, zero practical results. All to prevent an attack that occurs maybe once every eight years and even then doesn’t always function as intended.
This is a political hand-out. If the system even works half of the time, I’d be shocked. But it does hand out millions of dollars in contracts to a handful of City Hall insiders who promise the world on a plate and deliver nothing but bills and excuses.
This is the Star Wars Missile Defense Program, writ small over and over and over again. The public keeps getting bamboozled with “magical” technology that claims to do work cheaper and better than old fashioned boots on the ground. And when the shit hits the fan, it just induces more people to buy into more crappy technology. Like watching the Black Plague wash over Europe and seeing snake oil salesmen make a killing.
binzinerator
This data means absolutely nothing unless there are people who can sift through it, review it, makes sense of it and make the connections. They can store all the data they want; it’s meaningless unless a human can spot the relationships in it. It’s a program that will suck up enormous amounts of hours, detracting from other police work and for what? To ascertain after the fact that a Ford SUV makes better shrapnel than a Toyota?
And radiation scanners? WTF — Do they think terrorists have never heard of lead shielding? A big pantswetter scenario our Homeland Heros frighten people with involves a suitcase-sized ‘dirty’ bomb. Tell me why an SUV or a pickup capable of carrying a suitcase of explosives wrapped around caesium-137 can’t also carry a ton or so of sheet lead wrapped around both to shield it?
And why do they automatically assume the goal is to sneak it past the detectors at a tunnel or a bridge? A suicide truck bomb that detonates on a bridge seems like a good place to disperse the radioactive material. It wouldn’t matter then if it trips the detector or not. They’re not going to be stopped in time, all-seeing central scruitinzer data command or not.
Yup. The terrorists we should worry about are in the White House.
Bin Laden was the best thing that ever happened to the right wing radicals that have taken over the GOP. They did’t go after bin Laden out of professional courtesy due a colleague.
Bedlam UK
Its merely another step in the direction of control for the government. Over here we have the cameras, the id checks, now they are discussing putting microchip gps into every car to ‘help monitor pollution’.
It merely has the side effect that the government can check where / what everyone is doing.
And the idea that they will remove information about people after a period of time is laughable too.
Oh Orwell you cheeky boy.
Frank Jacobs
Oh, jeez. Well, they have now, bizinerator. Great job telling the terrorists about our super secret security flaws.
>;)
Heshe
First they track the cars and trucks, then the people walking around the streets. Before long we’ll all be required to line up and get tracking chips put under our skin. (A select few will be able to buy out of that program.) Kiss freedom goodbye. Osama bin Forgotten won.
Michael G
We think someone may attempt to blow up a nuclear bomb in Manhattan. So we will store a photo of their car IN THE AREA THEY ARE TRYING TO BLOW UP. I don’t see any problems with this brilliant plan.
toujoursdan
There is a lot of car and truck traffic into and out of Manhattan each day and the Brooklyn Bridge goes right into the financial district.
Emily
I dunno. To me it sounds like a back door way to get congestion pricing up and running. “But Mr. Legislator, we already have this infrastructure. And do you know how much money we could make on this?” Billed directly to the address on the registration, natch.
SpotWeld
It’s like there’s this “mythology of the hot pursuit”. It’s as if reality were an episode of “24” where any truly horrible crime has a dedicate team of law enforcement officers actively attempting to catch the criminals before the crime can take place.
I think the reality is that much of the effort happens after the crime has taken place to prevent the crime from happening a second time.
chopper
i blame the jews.
yet another jeff
Points for the Joe’s Garage reference.
mds
I smell a connection to the security firm of one R. Giuliani, who thought it would be great to put a command center in someplace that had already been a terrorist target.
Joshua
A Green Zone in downtown Manhattan. Could there be any more fitting symbol of the past 7 years?
binzinerator
Shit! My bad, so sorry!
HEY YOU TERRRISSTS AND DARK-SKINNED SCARY ISLAMOFASCIST-FASCISLAMISTS OUT THERE…I was just want you to know I was only kidding about the lead thing. It really doesn’t work. In fact, I just said it to fool you into thinking it would work. So just ignore it. Thank you.
There. All better.
Bill Arnold
An apologist (or somebody who sounded like one) on the NYC NPR (WNYC) this morning answered a “it’s only good for forensics” comment by sketching a scenario involving a U-Haul truck rental in Ohio plus some other suspicious activity plus said U-Haul appearing in Manhattan. It might be good to find that U-Haul truck. Agreed.
Since this could only possibly work if there were massive U.S.-wide surveillance plus heavy advanced data mining, there would be significant associated business opportunities.
binzinerator
AND FORGET WHAT I SAID ABOUT THE EXPLOSIVES AND THE CAESIUM-137 THING. That was a little joke too. One I read on wikipedia, which means you do not need to go there to read about it. So ignore that as well.
That is all. Thank you.
sparky
just bloomberg getting his congestion pricing via a different route. a trojan horse of terror, if you will.
take that, shelly silver!
ps: manhattan only has a certain number of entry points for commercial vehicles as it is, so this isn’t really a big deal. is it anything other than symbolism? probably not.
Stuart Eugene Thiel
It’ more Orwellian than it sounds. New York will never be able to fund all the people it would take to process the information. Just as on 9/11, they’ll spot the terrorist a month after he’s done his dirty deed.
Stuart Eugene Thiel
Oops, hit “submit” too soon. Here’s the correct comment:
It’s more Orwellian than it sounds. New York will never be able to fund all the people it would take to process the information. Just as on 9/11, they’ll spot the terrorist a month after he’s done his dirty deed. Not only will the equipment not help find terrorists, the tapes will sit around for some demagogue (Rudy, this means you) to abuse.
AmIDreaming
Well, let’s see. Not doing anything wrong, so nothing to worry about…
That kid who fell off the overpass, broke his back, and then got tased to hell and back by the cops…
He must have been doing something wrong, then! QED!