New York's subway and bus operator said on Tuesday it awarded a $212 million contract for surveillance cameras, motion detectors and other equipment to detect potential attacks against its stations, bridges and tunnels.
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin will lead a team of companies in a deal struck with North America's largest transportation network just one month after bombers attacked the London transit system on July 7, killing 52 people. The $212 million will be the first major piece of a $591 million security plan approved in 2002. Before the Lockheed deal, only $42 million had been earmarked. Lockheed will install 1,000 cameras and 3,000 sensors under the three-year deal that aims to eventually allow the New York Metropolitan Transportation to stop attacks before they happen by spotting unattended packages that may contain bombs and alerting its employees to unauthorized intruders in its tunnels and other sensitive areas.
HOW SOON BEFORE THE ACLU SUES TO STOP THEM? After all, this would be an unreasonable encroachment of our privacy - 'cause when we're in the subway our privacy is our chief concern. Yeah, sure. And how soon after that will the first DU'er charge that this is another example of BusHitler/Cheney/AshKKroft/Halliburton war-machine buddies profiteering off of their phony "endless war" - after all, the contract is going to LOCKHEED - a major defense contractor!
UPDATE - 8/24: It didn't take long - LESS THAN 24hrs! NYTIMES:
Hiring a military contractor to create a security system is a fateful step in the authority's counterterrorism efforts, which have proceeded haltingly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2002, the authority set aside $591 million for counterterrorism, but as of last month had spent only a fraction of that amount. It has come under pressure to move faster. ... The New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a legal challenge to the bag-search policy, said it was worried about abuses. "There are questions about both the value and the privacy implications of massive video surveillance in the subways," said Donna Lieberman, its executive director. ... A handful of subway riders interviewed at Times Square yesterday expressed strong support for electronic surveillance.
The NYTIMES and the Left is so so sos SO so darn predictable.
2 comments:
Thanks for the heads up on this.
u da man!
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