Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even drones in the city.
“You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they’ll be cameras everyplace … whether you like it or not,” Bloomberg said.
“The argument against using automation is just this craziness that ‘Oh, it’s Big Brother,’” Bloomberg said. “Get used to it!”
The New York Civil Liberties Union has documented nearly 2,400 surveillance cameras fixed on public spaces in Manhattan alone. Many are operated by the police, others by poroperty owners.
But in the future, the cameras won’t just be planted on buildings and utility poles. Some of them will be able to fly, the mayor pointed out.
“It’s scary,” Bloomberg said. “But what’s the difference whether the drone is up in the air or on the building? I mean intellectually I have trouble making a distinction. And you know you’re gonna have face recognition software. People are working on that.”
Bloomberg warned that drones would be able to peep into private residences - but that Peeping Tom legislation could help maintain some privacy.
“It’s just we’re going into a different world, unchartered,” he said.
“We’re going to have more visibility and less privacy. I don’t see how you stop that. And it’s not a question of whether I think it’s good or bad. I just don’t see how you could stop that because we’re going to have them.”
“I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom,” Bloomberg said in an interview with NBC last week.
To many New Yorkers, NYC is already considered a police state. Last year the NYPD began the ‘Domain Awareness System’ which combines over 3,000 surveillance camera’s throughout the city, license plates scanners (which monitors every single care that enters Manhattan), facial recognition software’s, ect. to monitor civilians.
According to police commissioner Ray Kelly“We can track where a car associated with a murder suspect is currently located and where it’s been over the past several days, weeks or months.”
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(via fucknobigbrother)
