In New York
NEW York City: The city that never sleeps.
And – it seems – never even blinks.
I was surprised at the number of surveillance cameras that dot the city. On buildings, on street lamp poles – even on display booths.
You're on candid camera.
ST Photo: Tan Chong Yaw
Then again, this is a city that was devasted by the 9/11 incident. Some pananoia is expected.
But a study by the New York Civil Liberties Union – an organisation that defends civil liberties and rights – estimated that the number of surveillance cameras may have gone up five-fold between 1998 to 2005. And these were just for cameras visible at street level.
It will not account for flying eyes – cameras with night vision mounted on police helicopters that can spot a licence plate from 300 metres away. Or cameras inside buildings.
Many of these surveillance cameras are domes – benign-looking black hemispheres the size of a soup bowl or smaller. Hidden inside the black plastic is a closed circuit TV (CCTV) camera that can pan, tilt and zoom. Simply put – if you can see the camera – it can definitely see you.
It can also be souped up with infra-red lamps – light invisible to the human eye which allows the cameras to see in total darkness. Just look up the next time you sit down in a restaurant, department store or even your doctor’s clinic.
That everyone is being monitored in many places all the time is disturbing. Couple it with face recognition and machine intelligence and the amount and depth of surveillance can be intimidating.
And the security extends beyond cameras. To enter the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (the inside of the statute was closed to the public since 9/11) – that’s the 10-storey structure that Lady Liberty sits on – I was subjected to the worst security checks I have ever had – bar none.
The public was corralled into a specially-erected tent which featured airport-standard security scanning for metal objects. No phones, cameras, wallets, drink bottles, jackets and belts was the security guard’s mantra. Even my plastic Timex watch had to be taken off.
And get this – there were even puffers. While waiting in the holding tent, I was wondering what were weird sounds that I was hearing from the adjoining inspection tent. Sounded like pneumatic machines in a factory.
It was a roll of General Electric EntryScan3 machines. Step inside and you are subjected to super-fast, super-strong puffs of wind. It was a Marilyn Monroe moment. Remember her in The Seven Year Itch where the wind lifted up her skirt? Yes, the film was shot in New York City.
The puffer is an automated explosives detector for humans. But this is an intimidating machine the size of a small passenger lift car.
On a lighter note, there's a camera for the hamburger-eating public. The camera captures the queue to the hamburger guy. If you think 1.30pm is good for a hotdog, just verify with the webcam. It'll tell you the truth!
Lest you think this is a world-wide hamburger chain, the Shake Shack is not. This is just a four-year old setup in Madison Square Park. Only last year did it open a second stand at Upper West Side.
Where's the Shack-cam?
ST Photo: Tan Chong Yaw
Besides the year-round Shack Cam on its website, Shake Shack also has a Facebook page and clips on YouTube – many on the length of its queues. It’s about building a buzz.
How popular was it? I stood behind a queue of thirty people for more than half a hour before I could place my order. What’s the big deal? It was past lunchtime - 3pm. And though technically it was the first day of spring, it was snowing in the morning. (Many thanks to my fellow DL colleague – Yuen-C – for suggesting this as a New York must-eat.)
Oh, and one last thing – I broke the law in New York City.
I couldn’t finish my fries so I offered them to a squirrel who looked like he was waiting impatiently for me to be done – he was gnawing at paper napkins to pass his time. It was only afterwards that I read the park notice: "No feeding of birds and squirrels". By Mayor Michael R Bloomberg, no less.
Fingers crossed, no surveillance camera captured my transgression and “squirrelled” it away into some security video archive.
Tan Chong Yaw is in New York City covering Sun Microsystems’ CommunityOne – an open source developers’ conference. (And clearing some of his leave to take a bite out of the Big Apple.)