Surveillance cameras will be installed on all rapid transit cars in New York City to make riders feel safer.
New York City , home to the largest rapid transit system in the country, will install surveillance cameras in every subway car by 2025, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday
The move is aimed at boosting rider confidence in subway safety, Hochul, as ridership continues to lag pre-pandemic levels. It also follows several high-profile crimes that have occurred on the transit system, including the rape of a tourist on a subway platform this month, a mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway car in April that left 10 passengers injured and the fatal shooting of a Goldman Sachs on a train in May.
But the decision to install cameras in subway cars has some privacy advocates worried, who say it will increase the level of surveillance of New Yorkers without necessarily making the subway safer. Subway stations in the city already have surveillance cameras.
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"It's awful. This just seems like a terrible public relations surveillance stunt to boost ridership," said Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a nonprofit organization that aims to dominate digital surveillance in New York City.
“We wouldn’t know how the data would be shared with federal and out-of-state partners,” Fox Cahn.
The subway footage will be stored on a memory card in each camera, an MTA in an email, but will be available to any local, state or federal law enforcement agency to solve crimes. The MTA is still developing its procurement plan for the manufacturer of the cameras it will use.
In announcing the move, Hochul downplayed privacy concerns .
"Do you think Big Brother is watching you on the subway? You're absolutely right. That's our intention, to send the message that we will be monitoring the activities on the subway trains and that will give people a lot of peace of mind," Hochul said.
"And if you're worried about that, the best answer is to not commit any crimes on the subway," he said. "Then you won't have any problems.".
Several other rapid transit systems in the U.S. already use surveillance cameras, including the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART and the Washington, D.C., subway. The New York project will be the largest such initiative in the country, with two cameras installed on all 6,455 MTA train cars at a cost of $5.5 million . It is funded by grant money from New York state and the Department of Homeland Security, Hochul said.
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As transit surveillance cameras have become more common, some privacy advocates have raised concerns about who manufactures the cameras and stores the footage, as well as which law enforcement agencies have access to it.
Instead, Hochul described the issue of cameras in subway cars as purely a matter of public safety and rider confidence.
"This is about safety, the safety of our riders and letting would-be criminals know that if you harm any other passenger in any way, you will be watched, caught and prosecuted," Hochul said.
Janno Lieber, the chairman of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority who joined Hochul in the announcement, told reporters that subway crime was already down nearly 9% this year compared to the same period in 2019.
"The subway is one of the safest places in New York," Lieber said, "and the statistics back it up.".
Source: nbcnews.com
