[sustran] Re: The safer streets of Bloomberg's NYC (?): NYPD and Pentagon to place mobile body scanners on the streets

[Todd Edelman]

Hi,

Sure, RT. There is a story - no, not quite the same story - about the 
same subject in the Huffington Post. Credible?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/nypd-gun-detection-device_n_1213813.html

Are you speaking for yourself or representing ITDP with this comment?

- T

On 01/25/2012 06:54 PM, Michael Kodransky wrote:
> Russia Today (RT) is the propaganda mouthpiece of the Russian 
> government. Nearly all of their reporting on issues in the US are 
> meant to raise alarm based on speculation and conspiracy theories. 
> This is not a credible news source.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Todd Edelman <edelman at greenidea.eu>
> *To:* WorldStreets at yahoogroups.com; 'Sustran List' 
> <Sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
> *Sent:* Friday, January 20, 2012 12:42 AM
> *Subject:* [sustran] The safer streets of Bloomberg's NYC (?): NYPD 
> and Pentagon to place mobile body scanners on the streets
>
> The question I hope people ask themselves is if they should be silent
> about this since under Bloomberg the streets of NYC are getting safer in
> regards to traffic....
>
> - Todd
>
> ***
>
> http://rt.com/usa/news/nypd-scanners-new-york-115/
>
> *The safer streets of NYC (?): NYPD and Pentagon to place mobile body
> scanners on the streets*
>
> New York City's war on freedom could be adding a new weapon to its
> arsenal, especially if NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has his say.
>
> The head of the New York Police Department is working with the Pentagon
> to secure body scanners to be used throughout the Big Apple.
>
> If Kelly gets his wish, the city will be receiving a whole slew of
> Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, a high-tech radiation detector
> that measures the energy that is emitted from a persons' body. As CBS
> News reports,/"It measures the energy radiating from a body up to 16
> feet away, and can detect anything blocking it, like a gun."/
>
> What it can also do, however, is allow the NYPD to conduct illegal
> searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York.
> Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector,
> and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone
> on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.
>
> According to Commissioner Kelly, the scanners would only be used
> in/"reasonably suspicious circumstances,"/but what constitutes
> "suspicious" in the eyes of the NYPD could greatly differ from what the
> 8 million residents of the five boroughs have in mind.
>
> The American Civil Liberties Union has already questioned the NYPD over
> what they say is an unnecessary precaution that raises more issues than
> it solves.
>
> /"It's worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the
> street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police
> Department when you're doing nothing wrong,"/Donna Lieberman of the
> NYCLU says to CBS.
>
> The scanners also raise the question of whether such searches would even
> be legal under the US Constitution. Under the Fourth Amendment,
> Americans are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. Does
> scoping out what's on someone's person fall under the same category as a
> hands-on frisk, though?
>
> To the NYPD, it might not matter. In the first quarter of 2011, more
> than 161,000 innocent New Yorkers were stopped and interrogated on the
> streets of the city. Figures released by the NYPD in May of last year
> revealed that of the over 180,000 stop-and-frisk encounters reported by
> the police department, 88 percent of them ended in neither an arrest nor
> a summons, leading many to assume that New York cops are already going
> above and beyond the law by searching seemingly anyone they chose.
> Additionally, of those 161,000-plus victims, around 84 percent were
> either black or Latino. At the time, the ACLU's Lieberman wrote,/"The
> NYPD is turning black and brown neighborhoods across New York City into
> Constitution-free zones."/
>
> Given the alarming statistics, many already feel that officers within
> the ranks of the NYPD are overzealous with their monitoring of New
> Yorkers, regularly stopping them for unknown suspicions that nearly
> nine-out-of-ten times prove false. With the installation of the
> Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners though, those invasive physical
> searches wouldn't just be replaced with a touchless, more intrusive
> monitoring, but will only allow New Yorkers one more reason to fear
> walking the streets.
>
> /"If they search you, you're not giving consent, so they can do what
> they want, meaning they can use that as an excuse to search you for
> other means. I don't think that's constitutional at all,"/New Yorker
> Devan Thomas tells CBS.
>
> /"There are a lot of cameras already here, so as people walk they're
> being filmed. And most of the time they don't know it,"/adds Jennifer
> Bailly.
>
> A lot is somewhat of an understatement. In Manhattan alone there are
> over 2,000 surveillance cameras, public and private, aimed at every
> passerby. That number is the same as the tally of both McDonalds and
> Starbucks on the island, combined, multiplied by a factor of eight.
>
> CBS News adds that the plan puts the NYPD in direct cooperation with the
> Department of Defense, who is working on testing the scanners to find a
> way to bring them to the streets. Such a joint effort opens up questions
> about other endeavors the Pentagon could have planned out with the NYPD
> in the past, and certainly doesn't mark the first time that New York's
> boys in blue have worked hand-in-hand with federal agencies. Last year a
> report surfaced linking the NYPD to the CIA, as documents became
> available showing a connection between the local police department and
> government spies installing secret agents into Muslim majority
> communities in New York.
>
> By using scanners such as the Terahertz Imagining detectors, however,
> New Yorkers will be forced to endure more than just an unknown number of
> eyes prying under their clothes. The consequences could be biologically
> catastrophic, with the scanning technique tied to problems with the
> human body's ability to operate. According to MIT's Technology Review,
> the THz waves used by the scanners/"unzip double-stranded DNA, creating
> bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with
> processes such as gene expression and DNA replication."/
>
>
> -- 
> Todd Edelman
> Green Idea Factory / SLOWFactory
>
> Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081
>
> edelman at greenidea.eu <mailto:edelman at greenidea.eu>
> www.greenidea.eu
>
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-- 
Todd Edelman
Green Idea Factory / SLOWFactory

Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081

edelman at greenidea.eu
www.greenidea.eu

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