New Cameras to Watch Over Subway System

New Cameras to Watch Over Subway System

New York Times | August 24 2005

Officials unveiled the high-tech future of transit security in New York City yesterday: an ambitious plan to saturate the subways with 1,000 video cameras and 3,000 motion sensors and to enable cellphone service in 277 underground stations - but not in moving trains - for the first time.

Moving quickly after the subway and bus bombings in London last month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a three-year, $212 million contract to a group of contractors led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, which is best known for making military hardware like fighter planes, missiles and antitank systems.

The authority abandoned its earlier reservations about cellphone service, agreeing that the benefits of allowing 911 and other calls during emergencies outweighed the costs and the risk of a phone-detonated bomb. It invited carriers to submit proposals by Oct. 12. The winning bidder, which would receive a 10-year license, would have to pay for the installation of the wireless network and would be required to disable all calls at the authority's request. It is not clear how long installation, which will cover 277 of the 468 stations, will take.

The surveillance and cellphone strategies, together with a police campaign begun last month to check riders' bags and packages, are a step toward what some critics have long said cannot be done - putting the nation's largest transit system under constant watch, and fortifying it with enough obstacles to deter potential terrorists.

"We will try everything, and deploy all technologies possible, to prevent an attack from happening," said Katherine N. Lapp, the authority's executive director.

The new security measures will be in place in the subway, along with the authority's two commuter railroads and nine bridges and tunnels and busy transit hubs at Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station and Times Square. While transit agencies in Boston and Houston have experimented with so-called "intelligent video" software, and London has far more cameras, the New York plan is the first to try to marry several advanced security technologies at once, experts said.

At the center of the effort will be a dense network of cameras that can zoom, pivot and rotate, all while transmitting and recording images of vulnerable areas, from dark tunnels under the East River to bustling subway platforms in Midtown. Each camera will capture distances up to 300 feet and will cost about $1,200. A selected location could have 2 to 30 cameras. For now, there will be no cameras on trains and buses.

Mark D. Bonatucci, a Lockheed Martin program director, who will oversee the effort and who plans to move to the New York area with about a dozen colleagues, showed off a bank of video screens yesterday that will be part of a new computer-aided dispatch system. He demonstrated how security officials, to be based at eight control centers, might respond to two situations.

In the first, a person tries to enter a secure facility using an expired electronic access card; a computer detects and signals the security breach on an aerial photograph of the area. Officials would pinpoint the site, watch the attempted entry on a video monitor and send a security officer to investigate.

In the second, a briefcase is left on a busy Midtown subway platform. As a camera beams live images, software can distinguish the moving people from the motionless package, sending off an alert about an unattended, suspicious object. Police officers with bomb-sniffing dogs would be sent to the platform.

The system has limits. The cameras cannot determine whether a suspicious object has been left behind in a garbage can, for example.

The cameras will be installed in the next few "weeks and months," Ms. Lapp said, while the underlying software and computer systems are designed. The contractors will also devise a new radio communications system for the authority's 700-member police force, which patrols the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad. (The New York Police Department monitors the subways.)

A handful of subway riders interviewed at Times Square yesterday expressed strong support for electronic surveillance.

Rashida Padilla, 26, a business student at Monroe College in the Bronx, said the London bombings convinced her that the authority and the police should take strong measures to tighten security. "It's just scary," Ms. Padilla said, referring to her daily ride. "I'm for anything that they want to do. It makes me feel more safe to have the searches and the cameras."

Jerry Monchik, 53, an electrician who lives on Staten Island and takes the No. 1 train in Manhattan, said that while terrorists "will do what they want to do, no matter what," it was comforting to know that more activity will be recorded in the subways. "It will help with robberies and muggings, and if there is an attack, they can catch people more easily," he said.

While most experts doubt that technology could stop a determined suicide bomber, Ms. Lapp said the emphasis on surveillance was the best approach now available. "Obviously, this system, we hope, will detect a terrorist before an incident happens - not just be able, for forensic purposes after an incident happens, to identify who the terrorist is," she said.

The Lockheed Martin contract, which includes optional extensions for maintenance work through September 2013, will focus on physical security. A second big contract, the details of which will be completed by the end of this year, will focus on equipment that can detect biological, chemical and radiological agents in the transit network.

Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Md., prevailed over two competitors: the Science Applications International Corporation, an employee-owned research and engineering firm in San Diego, and Siemens, the German electrical engineering and electronics conglomerate. The three companies submitted proposals on July 22.

Lockheed Martin, along with other defense giants like the Northrop Grumman Corporation, had participated in talks between the authority and a specialized Army unit in 2002 and 2003. Those talks ended because, the authority says, the military asked for too much control.

"We understand the need for immediate action to protect the M.T.A. operations," said Judy F. Marks, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, the business unit that will oversee the contract. "We also understand the need to expedite the movement of people and goods in the metropolitan New York area."

Hiring a military contractor to create a security system is a fateful step in the authority's counterterrorism efforts, which have proceeded haltingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2002, the authority set aside $591 million for counterterrorism, but as of last month had spent only a fraction of that amount. It has come under pressure to move faster.

For the past 18 months, the authority has surveyed its universe of existing security devices, which include some 5,700 closed-circuit television cameras. Many of them are antiquated, unable to record images or are in relatively unimportant areas.

In a statement last night, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg commended the M.T.A. "for taking this important step to increase the security of our mass transit system." He said completing the system should be the authority's highest priority. "They need to move forward immediately with installing more cameras in subway stations, as they are an important deterrent and will be an invaluable investigative tool for the N.Y.P.D."

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a legal challenge to the bag-search policy, said it was worried about abuses. "There are questions about both the value and the privacy implications of massive video surveillance in the subways," said Donna Lieberman, its executive director.

Roger Toussaint, president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union of America, called for better training on emergency preparedness. "Done correctly, new technology has its place," he said. "However, the human element is indispensable, and in the event of an emergency, it is personnel, not computers and cameras, who will respond."

Lockheed Martin will work with six partners, including Systra Engineering, a transportation engineering firm in Bloomfield, N.J.; the Intergraph Corporation, a software and data management company in Madison, Ala., and the Cubic Corporation of San Diego, a transportation and military business that helped establish the MetroCard system in the subways in the 1990's.

The other partners are Lenel Systems International, a security technology company in Rochester; Arinc, a transportation communications firm in Annapolis, Md.; and Slattery Skanska, part of the large Swedish construction firm Skanska.

I live this everyday bro,

As seen thru the eyes of someone who dug at Ground Zero.

At Penn Station New York, New York

.....armed Military M-16's, and 9mm side arms, Police with dogs, German Shepard mixes they look to be. As well as I am sure no small number of some sort of undercover police.

... annoucements telling you that packages and containers can and will be subject to search at random.

At Jamacia Station.

...More armed Military.

...NYPD just bought the sniper's Fav, 50 cal. rifle 10k each x2. Siteing it can punch holes in boat hulls from a helicopter at 1000 yards. That statement alone makes me chuckle a bit.

Those of you who will say all this is ok in your eyes as long as its in the protection of us.

Well...I have never seen any of these guys doing anything but walking around and watching everyone.

I am not convinced these guys are protecting anyone.

To tell me that Cameras are now needed inspite of all these people.

But they sure are locking someone down are'nt they.

I wish that for every person that told me not to worry about things that I cannot control.

Someone would make the revelation that if we ALL do somthing about it, we can control it.

Then we might actually have a chance at saveing our nation and way of life.

National ID cards, road blocks, sectular liveing, Military Police patrolling citizens, Government spewing mis-information, and information, WMD's they never found, Osama they never found, Oil they've siezed, Corporations influencing Governments (if not directly working in harmony with),

Our nations Police are sueing the Manufacturers of their body armor claiming a defect, who's armor will they be wearing next?

I am sure then they will want the Camos so they match so nicely, can't have a man or women of athority not looking stern and ominuos you know. ... LOL.

Its all stareing us right in the face and it is shocking to me how many are simply blinded to this.

Back to the cameras..... Well, it seems par for the course, if you have an MTA of any sort I am sure you can expect things like this comeing to a bus station, train stations and airport near you.

Peace.

im not fucking blind.

theyre full of shit, and soon people will wake up, theres just too many.


and something noone ever mentions....how the fuck can the city and govmnt keep up this high tech surveillance shit? it costs money...which means another country will have to be raped or taxes will have to be hiked....either way wont sit well with americans.

but then again ive stated before that america is becoming a state of fucking sissies and pansies. i call it lunchbox syndrome

i know...there's no money for homeless and poor people, but as soon as a war comes along, and the government needs to spy on people and attack itself to boost its budget, well then there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to go around...

marlboro laid it out nicely...living in a military dictatorship isn't freedom, and doesn't keep you safe, it gets you used to living in a military dictatorship, because the government has nice plans for us. you think it's bad now, wait until the globalists' nuke a city or two and release chemical weapons...as a cover for a collapsing world fiat economy...

then, by god, we've got to have national id cards...we can all work for homeland security at checkpoints and camera monitoring factories watching people, getting credits on our national id cards...answering to big brother...basically, 1984 and brave new world.

but it's not happening.

there are cameras in small 4 way stop sign towns in texas...and over the country. they want it so you can't escape.


imagine if anne frank lived in this kind of world...imagine if tommy thompson told anne frank to get a microchip because her government loved her...

My comment about our Police getting their body armor from the Federal Government has taken another step forward by the Fed changeing the rules to allow the Burea of Prisons to sell there manufactured goods to the Police Stations around the country.

The goods were limited to DOD only until this change.

The highest recorded hourly rate at which the goods are calculated at is 1.38 per hour.

Now, ask me why our prisons are getting more populated everyday.

How many prisoners will they take from their cells to the dessert?

As I see it the only way to change any of this is to reform the election process.

Americans need more choices aside from the two that can be bought to determine the outcome.

Every political party should have a candidate thats recieves the same backing as everyone else along with popular vote wins.

With so many names in the hat, I dont see it possible that all of them could be crooked.

Anyway, back to the body Armor.

It wont be long before our nations police are in full Military combat uniform, same as our fighting forces over seas.

Das Papas?

Peace.