Speeding down the slope
Adopting the British bad example of building a web of telescreens to monitors its citizens, NYC is demonstrating that smoking bans and Trans-fat bans were only a humble beginning:
By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.
If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.
“This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation,” New York City’s police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said in an interview last week. “We want to make it less vulnerable.”
We are speeding down the slippery slope if it is agreed that extensive use of Telescreens by the government protecting human rights and safety. And the near future is even grimmer and more similar to the one predicted by Orwell, considering the idea of using the telescreens to issue direct orders.
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Rogel @ July 9, 2007