500 cámaras de vigilancia instalan en Nueva York

TOM HAYS, AP
NEW YORK (AP) _ Along a gritty stretch of street in Brooklyn, police this month quietly launched an ambitious plan to combat street crime and terrorism.
But instead of cops on the beat, wireless video cameras peer down from lamp posts about 10 metres above the sidewalk.
They were the first instalment of a program to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million US. Hundreds of additional cameras could follow if the city receives $81.5 million in federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of midtown with a surveillance »ring of steel» modelled after security measures in London’s financial district.
Officials of the New York Police Department _ which considers itself at the forefront of counterterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ claim the money would be well-spent, especially since the revelations that al-Qaida members once cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions.
»We have every reason to believe New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we have to do what it takes to protect the city,» Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week at Harvard University’s John Kennedy School of Government.
The city already has about 1,000 cameras in the subways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional 3,100 cameras monitor city housing projects.
New York’s approach isn’t unique. Chicago spent roughly $5 million on a 2,000-camera system. Homeland Security officials in Washington plan to spend $9.8 million for surveillance cameras and sensors on a rail line near the Capitol. And Philadelphia has increasingly relied on video surveillance.
Privacy advocates say the NYPD’s camera plan needs more study and safeguards to preserve privacy and guard against abuses like racial profiling and voyeurism.
The department »is installing cameras first and asking questions later,» said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear because the cameras will be restricted to public areas. The police commissioner recently established a panel of four corporate defence lawyers to advise the department on surveillance policies.
April 17, 2006

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