New York City builds a ring of superfluous surveillance

Mary Jane Irwin — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:45:29 EDT

What's up with the CCTV lovefest? It's already been established that surveillance cameras aren't all that effective when it comes to crime-fighting. Following Chicago's lead, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg says he's looking to emulate the "ring of steel" — cameras and road barriers — that London devised to fend off IRA bombings. Bloomberg brushes off all the privacy hubbub by saying, "We are under surveillance all the time." You're naive to think otherwise. Your privacy is an illusion, much like your security. What we want to be a bit less private, though, is who's making bank off this urban paranoia.

New York City's network is set to cost $81.5 million and Chicago's cost is unknown, but certainly ungodly. IBM, long drawn to expensive contracts, is in charge of setting up Chicago's system. No vendors have been named for New York's system, but we doubt Bloomberg is picking up supplies at Home Depot. (Photo by Jon Gos)

In defense of the naive New York transplant

Nick Douglas — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:30:28 EDT

So this cute kid moves from the Midwest to New York City to work as an intern at Google. Wholesome Eric Hielscher starts a blog to track big-city revelations like "I see rats almost every day running around on the subway tracks" and "Ugh, what a pain in the butt it is finding an apartment in New York." Then Valleywag's sister blog, the bullyish Gawker, teases the poor boy and either buries the site in unexpected traffic or scares him into shutting it down himself. What a shame, it's really a cute blog (as is he, don't you think, ladies?). Thankfully, even though the blog won't show up normally, it's still in the Google cache. Or read Gawker's funny write-up! Oh my, Eric confused one neighborhood for another! Ha! Ha!

Gawker: valleywag, new york city

New York City builds a ring of superfluous surveillance

In defense of the naive New York transplant