Tourists beware of being databased in NYC

If there were a global George Orwell Award for the vastest city police surveillance apparatus, New York City, where I live and work, would win this tracking and databasing prize.

In “Nowhere to hide from NYPD’s new computer system” (Rocco Parascandola and Tina Moore, nydailynews.com, Aug. 8), I discovered that I am subject to the Domain Awareness System, created by the New York Police Department and Microsoft to track “data from a network of (video) cameras, radiation detectors, license plate readers and crime reports.”

Triumphantly, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said: “For years, we’ve been stovepiped as far as databases are concerned. Now, everything that we have about an incident, an event, an individual comes together on that workbench, so it’s one-stop shopping for investigators.”

via Tourists beware of being databased in NYC.