The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI) is a

New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD), officially the City of New York Police Department, established on May 23, 1845, is the primary municipal law enforcement agency within the City of New York, the largest and one of the oldest in ...

initiative overseen by the Counterterrorism Bureau to increase surveillance efforts in Lower Manhattan,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, New York,

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. It is housed in the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center (LMSCC) located at 55 Broadway. The LMSI covers a 1.7-mile area from Canal Street to

Battery Park The Battery, formerly known as Battery Park, is a public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City facing New York Harbor. It is bounded by Battery Place on the north, State Street on the east, New York Harbor to ...

, including the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed ...

, World Financial Center, former World Trade Center site, and numerous financial institutions.

History

When the

launched the initiative in 2008, it aimed to install over 3,000 new

security camera A closed-circuit television camera can produce images or recordings for surveillance or other private purposes. Cameras can be either video cameras, or digital stills cameras. Walter Bruch was the inventor of the CCTV camera. The main purpose o ...

s in Lower Manhattan, as well as 100

automatic number plate recognition Automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR; see also other names below) is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can use existing closed-circuit te ...

devices which are intended to scan plates and compare the numbers with information in a database. According to police spokesman Paul J. Browne, the footage from the cameras would be monitored from a center staffed by police officers and private employees. The activities the cameras are programmed to pick up on include the delivery of packages. For privately owned cameras, Scientific American reported in 2011 that the NYPD depends on private CCTV camera operators to manually control their cameras to point at significant elements in their environment, and the NYPD would cut into those dynamic feeds as needed. Other features of the system include mobile roadblocks, which could swivel into the streets and block traffic, and

radiation detector In experimental and applied particle physics, nuclear physics, and nuclear engineering, a particle detector, also known as a radiation detector, is a device used to detect, track, and/or identify ionizing particles, such as those produced by nuc ...

Upon its initial proposal in 2007, the estimated cost of the LMSI was around $US 90 million (excluding the cost of radiation detectors), with the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

paying for 10 million of this, and the city government covering 15 million. In 2009 an extension to Midtown was announced, supported with $24 million from DHS. As of 2010, the Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative (MMSI) used 689 surveillance cameras between 30th and 60th Streets. As of 2010, the LMSI and MMSI combined used 1,159 cameras. The program was further extended in cooperation with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

and is fully active as of 2012. It is known as the

Domain Awareness System The Domain Awareness System is the largest digital surveillance system in the world as part of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative in partnership between the New York Police Department and Microsoft to monitor New York City. It allows the NYPD t ...

. As of August 2014, the LMSCC uses feeds from 6,500 cameras owned by NYPD and private stakeholders, and reads approximately 2 million license plates per day. Whereas most cities' cameras aren't networked and require an individual to retrieve the footage, NYPD's cameras are viewed in real time by officers located at the LMSCC.

Criticism

The plan has been compared to the ring of steel around the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

, the financial district at the center of Greater London. The City of London had 649 city-government-operated cameras in 2011. In October 2007, the

New York Civil Liberties Union The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is a civil rights organization in the United States. Founded in November 1951 as the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, it is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization with nea ...

served the NYPD with a

FOIL request Freedom of information in the United States results from freedom of information legislation at the federal level and in the fifty states. Federal level The federal government is bound by several laws intended to promote openness in government. ...

for all documents related to the planned surveillance system. After multiple requests, the NYPD responded with only 91 pages of documents, prompting the NYCLU to sue the NYPD in State Supreme Court in September 2008. Gothamist reporter

Jake Dobkin Jacob "Jake" Dobkin is an American journalist, blogger, author, and co-founder of Gothamist. He is currently a director of New York Public Radio. Biography Dobkin is a native of New York City and grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He graduated fr ...

expressed concern over the IT security of the LMSI in a critical editorial, noting that the Wi-Fi password for the facility was "P@ssword1".

References

{{New York City Police Department Surveillance Organizations based in Manhattan 2008 establishments in New York City

History

Criticism

See also

References