Subway Cams

New York Times (Today)

Officials unveiled the high-tech future of transit security in New York City today: 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 cars - for the first time.


Two scenarios are presented in the article:

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 check out the situation.

So they publish in the New York Times that expired security cards will be detected. Isn't it odd that expired cards weren't being detected up to now. And while we're at it let's publish this and make sure the terrorists know how the system works.

In the second, a briefcase is left on a busy Midtown subway platform. As a camera beams live images, software can differentiate 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.

If the criterion is not-moving, they'd better get the sleeping homeless out of the area or they're going to be visited by bomb-sniffing dogs all day and that isn't going to be pleasant for the homeless or the dogs.

Seriously - how can they tell the difference between a package and a bench that's been replaced. How could they possibly detect a package placed under a bench, or in a garbage can...

And oh, haven't the bad guys been putting the bombs in cars, not on platforms?

This falls under the category of "anything is better than nothing."

But one note of interest: they will have cameras in the darkest of subway tunnels. I expect to see footage from these cameras used on the Discovery Channel in their latest study of rodent life.

I'm not going to go off down the "Big Brother Is Here" tract because I don't care if the State photographs me going on and off the subway if it would help prevent an attack. But I doubt that this melange of video feeds would prevent anything.

However, this will - for sure - be useful after an attack in identifying who the bad guys were. And I would sell it as such.

My only advice is that if you are short and look like a large unwieldly duffel bag, take care not to nod off on a subway bench unless you want to wake to yapping bloodhounds and a SWAT Team.