Perdido 03

Perdido 03

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Bloomberg, NYPD, and Microsoft Go Into The Crime-Fighting Business Together

Sounds like a story from The Onion - but it's not:

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has unveiled a new crime-fighting system developed with Microsoft – and revealed that the city will take a cut of the profits if it is sold to other administrations.

The innovation, which bears a passing resemblance to the futuristic hologram data screens used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, will allow police to quickly collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources.

It will then display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically, allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they happen or are reported. "It is a one-stop shop for law enforcement," Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference unveiling the new technology.

But, though it has many screens, maps, and flashing visuals that make it look like science fiction, the new technology has a distinctly un-Hollywood name: the Domain Awareness System. Developed by Microsoft engineers working with New York police officers, DAS will allow a host of activities to be carried out, such as spotting a suspicious vehicle and being able to track its recent movements or use cameras to track back and see who left a suspicious package.

It features live video feeds, huge databases of recent crime patterns and can take input direct from the field in real time via things like 911 calls or police radios. "All the information is presented visually and geographically and in chronological context," said police commissioner Ray Kelly.

If other cities purchase this system, Microsoft will share 30% of the profit with NYC.

Given how shoddy Microsoft products generally are, I doubt this thing will work as Bloomberg and Microsoft are advertising it, so we'll just have to see if any other municipality signs on to it.

Even so, I am a little disturbed that Microsoft and the NYPD are partnering on a crime tracking system.

Maybe the Gates Foundation can add a test score/teacher evaluation and really bring the school-to-prison complex together into one huge database?

Oops - maybe I shouldn't give Uncle Bill any ideas - he's been known to steal them before and make them into a core component of his Microsoft business model.

Although as I noted above, if this thing is as bad as Microsoft ME, Vista, Zune or Windows 8, I suspect it will spend more time freezing up and causing frustration than actually helping police track "criminals."

4 comments:

  1. They should be called the Brotherhood of Orwellian Fascistos, Inc. Goldman Sachs would promote their IPO

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  2. You know things are bad when the best you can hope for is that these systems are little more than shoddy, gadget worshipper, boys-with-their-toys boondoggles, rather than the all-seeing Panopticon they are intended to be.

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  3. Well. my guess is that they don't have their cameras trained on places where real crime takes place,like Wall Street and corporate boardrooms,the bullpens at Tweed,offices of the corporation counsel,Mayoral offices,Ugland House or Bermuda.

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  4. Maybe if Uncle Sam wasnt in the biz of slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent brown people over the last decade plus, the authorities here wouldn't be worried about the " bad guys" dropping radiation bombs in Midtown Manhatan, eh? No, this will be more used to victimize the poor suckers trying to make a living in this town, cabbies, truck drivers, etc. This system will be used to collect back fines, parking tickets, or the poor fool who may happen to flick a cigarette butt into the sewer. Will they be giving tickets for picking your nose,a and passing gas as well pretty soon? There are machines out there now that can tell what you had for breakfast, what cologne you have on, and can determine if you were smoking an hour before from 150 feet away....I shit you not. They are going to use them in airports.

    Getting back to "radiation" attacks, this will be more about protecting the scumbags who are responsible for creating the war industrial/media/ finance complex and their spoiled rotten families, as well as creating a wall of surveillance protecting the Gilded Disney Bubble that is Manhattan currently. It gets more frightening by the day.

    By the way, I just read that this system, though developed by NYC and the Bloomberg admin., is being models here for sale to other cities around he globe, so Bloomberg and his cronies wil be making major bucks on this system outside of NYC in the future.

    Heaven help us all....

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