NYPD'S 'Ring of Steel' camera rolls, monitors license plates

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NYPD'S 'Ring of Steel' camera rolls, monitors license plates

BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Monday, October 1st 2007, 1:42 PM

Camera at corner of Church and Duane Sts. scans plates of downtown cars in test of city's 'Ring of Steel' surveillance.

A high-tech camera in lower Manhattan has been secretly monitoring the license plates of passing cars periodically for more than six months in a test of the city's planned "Ring of Steel" surveillance system, the Daily News has learned. The camera scans the rear license plates of northbound traffic on Church St. from a light pole at the corner of Duane St., just blocks from Ground Zero and City Hall.

The images are sent wirelessly to a computer system that can automatically scan the plates and compare the numbers and letters against a database - so the NYPD can instantly know when a suspicious car or truck has passed that corner.

So far, sources said, the system was used only for a month of testing in March and April, as well as occasional demonstrations since then - but it is still feeding images and could start reading plates again at any time.

"It is not storing data at this point or being used for any law enforcement purposes," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. He said the license plate data created during those tests were "not retained."

He said the NYPD has some license plate cameras mounted on squad cars, but the camera at Church and Duane Sts. is the only one in a fixed location. "This particular camera is just a test camera," said Paul Cosgrave, commissioner of the city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. "It worked as it was designed to work, which is that it was able to read most license plates."

The camera is part of the NYPD's Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, an $81.5 million plan to protect the Financial District with more than 100 license plate readers, thousands of surveillance cameras and barriers that could automatically block streets.

The plan is nicknamed the "Ring of Steel," based on a similar project that encircles central London, which Mayor Bloomberg is to watch in action today during his visit there. The camera is also similar to those that would be used in Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, which would charge drivers in parts of Manhattan by reading license plates and E-ZPass tags at 340 locations.
The camera was installed by Northrop Grumman, which won a $500 million contract last year to create a secure high-speed wireless network for city agencies.

Public and private security cameras watch over many New York streets, and the city already uses cameras to automatically ticket drivers who blow through red lights. Still, Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the license plate camera raises new fears about privacy.

"These are license plates of innocent people, doing nothing more suspicious than coming and going. In a free society, people should be free to come and go as they please, without worrying about being recorded by the New York Police Department," Lieberman said. "For the government to be keeping them on file is not the hallmark of freedom. It's too much like Big Brother," she said.

alisberg@nydailynews.com