The reason I moved out of NYC (and out of the country) was because the NYPD put up cameras on my local (135th Street 1/2/3) subway entrance.
If you think the billions of USD of antiterrorism money is somehow not funding purchase of facial recognition software, you're foolin' yourself.
Collect enough uniquely-identified John Does and you can link them statistically to MetroCard swipes, and then you've got names from the credit cards used to purchase them...
Ride the subway enough times with (a) friend(s), and then they've got part of your social graph, too.
Anecdotally speaking, I know people in NYC that live in communities with high crime rates that are happy knowing that their neighborhood is being monitored by the police 24/7. Whether in the long term this is actually a good or a bad thing to have cameras in the streets, I just don't know.
Devil's advocate here, there are countries that have had no such instant surveillance and still managed to oppress their people quite effectively. I don't want to start a flame war so I won't name a country. And many times all it took for you to get arrested was for somebody to accuse you that you were a traitor or that you were badmouthing the government.
No, not city, and not just one— I moved out of a COUNTRY because CCTV cameras got put up on EVERY subway entrance. It just happened to be the one next to my house that catalyzed it for me personally.
"Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows."
There's no hope for privacy or civil liberties in that country. The only nonviolent solution is to leave forever.
If you think the billions of USD of antiterrorism money is somehow not funding purchase of facial recognition software, you're foolin' yourself.
Collect enough uniquely-identified John Does and you can link them statistically to MetroCard swipes, and then you've got names from the credit cards used to purchase them...
Ride the subway enough times with (a) friend(s), and then they've got part of your social graph, too.