The ambitious proposal, called Operation Sentinel, is being developed alongside a separate $90 million security initiative to tighten security at the World Trade Center site and throughout lower Manhattan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
"It's our goal to make lower Manhattan the safest and most inviting business area in the world," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a recent interview.
Police officials say Operation Sentinel would rely on license-plate readers, radiation detectors and closed-circuit cameras installed at the 16 bridges and four tunnels serving Manhattan, including the Brooklyn and George Washington bridges and the Lincoln Tunnel. About a million vehicles drive into Manhattan every day.
The vehicle data — license plate numbers, radiological readings and photos — would be automatically analyzed by computers programmed with information about suspicious vehicles.
Police say the terror-alert system could help them intercept attackers before they do harm, or to confirm they hadn't entered the city and should be sought elsewhere.
There is no estimate yet for the cost of Operation Sentinel since it is still only in the planning phase.
The proposal has raised red
"We think that Operation Sentinel and a lot of the surveillance initiatives that the police are planning are an attack on our right to privacy here in New York," said Matt Faiella, a staff attorney for the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Faiella fears an untold number of innocent motorists could end up in "a database of all of their movements and faces."
But police say law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear. Vehicle data deemed innocent would be purged from police records after 30 days, they say.
Investigators need "time to maintain this information to enable us to check and see if any information has surfaced concerning a vehicle coming into the city," Kelly said. "We don't think people should have cause for concern."
The proposal was contained in a security plan prepared by the NYPD's counterterrorism division that also outlined other measures already being implemented to secure lower Manhattan in a post-Sept. 11 world.
Police already are using 30 mobile license-plate readers while patrolling the Wall Street area, and another 86 stationary readers will be switched on in the next eight months. Also, by the end of the year, 1,000 of a planned 3,000 closed-circuit cameras will begin feeding images to a command center on Broadway that's expected to be completed this fall, officials said.
The operation was modeled in part after the "ring of steel" surveillance measures in London's financial district.
"We have worked closely with London authorities," the commissioner said. "But I would submit this will be a much more advanced system than they have in place."
The NYPD's auto theft division already uses unmarked police cruisers with two cameras mounted on the roof to read license plates of passing cars and those parked on either side of the street. Laptop computers inside the cruisers compare plate numbers to a computerized data base with information on stolen and suspicious cars and signal if there's a hit.
The systems have assisted in the recovery of hundreds of stolen cars and in scores of arrests, police said.
- Copyright © 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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