NYC mayor Adams uses free internet to expand police surveillance at NYCHA

nysfocus.com

21 points·h2si··3 comments

Almost any public technology infrastructure includes surveillance. Road projects include flock LPRs, speed and redlight cameras retain weeks or months of data. Police and municipal vehicles often carry cameras or LPR.

Reality is, nobody gives a shit.

If I had my 'druthers, local approval for road-cameras etc. would contain some enabling provision like:

"These services may not be operated unless there is a state law creating a criminal penalty of at least X severity for the service being abused in any of the following Y ways. If these conditions cease to be true, the service must be terminated within Z weeks unless the condition is restored before then."

Ideally with some termination provisions so that any would-be vendors are strongly motivated to petition the state government to keep the laws against abuse.

Are we supposed to be upset about this? NYCHA is public property for one. A disproportionate amount of the city's violent crime happens there, a significant amount also gang related. (IIRC, it's 4% of the city's residents and about 20% of the violent crime.)

And that line about chilling public assembly and protest? Spare me: as the nucleus of Occupy Wall Street, pride celebrations for dozens of identity groups, and a major center of the BLM movement, NYC is not exactly a 1984 hellscape of conformity.

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