NYPD moves to cloak midtown with camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners

“The NYPD wants to cloak midtown with the same security blanket it rolled out for lower Manhattan: camera license plate readers, and radiation and bio scanners. Those measures covering Manhattan south of Canal St. will slowly be applied to midtown, from 34th to 59th Sts., river to river, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the City Council Public Safety Committee. The announcement is the latest in the NYPD’s attempts to use technology to scan huge swaths of the city.

Modeled after London’s “Ring of Steel,” the NYPD opened its coordination center last November, with cops monitoring feeds from 300 cameras and 30 mobile license plate readers in lower Manhattan. Civil rights groups said wholesale scanning and filming of everyone entering a specific area goes too far and doesn’t insure safety, as London found out when its camera-coated transit system was bombed by terrorists.”

The civil rights groups are wrong. Of course this ensures safety. It ensures safety against the domestic “terrorists” whom the Gunvernment fears: LRC bloggers, Ron Paul supporters, free market advocates, gun owners…