[Noisebridge-discuss] OccupySF: corporate + state citizen surveillance

[walter park]

 FYI:  Outrageous corporate + state citizen surveillance in NYC, with,
surprise, Goldman, at the center:

October 18, 2011

<http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/print>
 <http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/#>
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/#>
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82<http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/#>
 Meet the “Lower Manhattan Security Initiative”
 Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors In Tax-Funded Center
by PAM MARTENS

*A CounterPunch Exclusive*

*
counterpunch.org/2011/10/18/wall-street-firms-spy-on-protestors-in-tax-funded-center/
*

Wall Street’s audacity to corrupt knows no bounds and the cooptation of
government by the 1 per cent knows no limits.  How else to explain $150
million of taxpayer money going to equip a government facility in lower
Manhattan where Wall Street firms, serially charged with corruption, get to
sit alongside the New York Police Department and spy on law abiding
citizens.

According to newly unearthed documents, the planning for this high tech
facility on lower Broadway dates back six years.   In correspondence from
2005 that rests quietly in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
archives, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly promised Edward Forst, a  Goldman
Sachs’ Executive Vice President at the time, that the NYPD “is committed to
the development and implementation of a comprehensive security plan for
Lower Manhattan…One component of the plan will be a centralized coordination
center that will provide space for full-time, on site representation from
Goldman Sachs and other stakeholders.”

At the time, Goldman Sachs was in the process of extracting concessions from
New York City just short of the Mayor’s first born in exchange for
constructing its new headquarters building at 200 West Street, adjacent to
the World Financial Center and in the general area of where the new World
Trade Center complex would be built. According to the 2005 documents,
Goldman’s deal included $1.65 billion in Liberty Bonds, up to $160 million
in sales tax abatements for construction materials and tenant furnishings,
and the deal-breaker requirement that a security plan that gave it a seat at
the NYPD’s Coordination Center would be in place by no later than December
31, 2009.

The surveillance plan became known as the Lower Manhattan Security
Initiative and the facility was eventually dubbed the Lower Manhattan
Security Coordination Center. It operates round-the-clock.  Under the
imprimatur of the largest police department in the United States,  2,000
private spy cameras owned by Wall Street firms, together with approximately
1,000 more owned by the NYPD, are relaying live video feeds of people on the
streets in lower Manhattan to the center.  Once at the center, they can be
integrated for analysis.  At least 700 cameras scour the midtown area and
also relay their live feeds into the downtown center where low-wage NYPD,
MTA and Port Authority crime stoppers sit alongside  high-wage personnel
from Wall Street firms that are currently under at least 51 Federal and
state corruption probes for mortgage securitization fraud and other matters.

In addition to video analytics which can, for example, track a person based
on the color of their hat or jacket, insiders say the NYPD either has or is
working on face recognition software which could track individuals based on
facial features.  The center is also equipped with live feeds from license
plate readers.

According to one person who has toured the center, there are three rows of
computer workstations, with approximately two-thirds operated by non-NYPD
personnel.  The Chief-Leader, the weekly civil service newspaper,
identified some of the outside entities that share the space: Goldman Sachs,
Citigroup, the Federal Reserve, the New York Stock Exchange.  Others say
most of the major Wall Street firms have an on-site representative.   Two
calls and an email to Paul Browne, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public
Information, seeking the names of the other Wall Street firms at the center
were not returned.  An email seeking the same information to City Council
Member, Peter Vallone, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, was not
returned.

In a press release dated October 4, 2009 announcing the expansion of the
surveillance territory, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner
Kelly had this to say:

“The Midtown Manhattan Security Initiative will add additional cameras and
license plate readers installed at key locations between 30th and 60th
Streets from river to river. It will also identify additional private
organizations who will work alongside NYPD personnel in the Lower Manhattan
Security Coordination Center, *where corporate and other security
representatives from Lower Manhattan have been co-located with police since
June 2009.* The Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is the central
hub for both initiatives, where all the collected data are analyzed.”
[Italic emphasis added.]

The project has been funded by New York City taxpayers as well as all U.S.
taxpayers through grants from the Federal Department of Homeland Security.
On March 26, 2009, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) wrote a letter
to Commissioner Kelly, noting that even though the system involves “massive
expenditures of public money, there have been no public hearings about any
aspect of the system…we reject the Department’s assertion of ‘plenary power’
over all matters touching on public safety…the Department is of course
subject to the laws and Constitution of the United States and of the State
of New York as well as to regulation by the New York City Council.”

The NYCLU also noted in its letter that it rejected the privacy guidelines
for the surveillance operation that the NYPD had posted on its web site for
public comment, since there had been no public hearings to formulate these
guidelines.  It noted further that “the guidelines do not limit police
surveillance and databases to suspicious activity…there is no independent
oversight or monitoring of compliance with the guidelines.”

According to Commissioner Kelly in public remarks, the privacy guidelines
were written by Jessica Tisch, the Director of Counterterrorism Policy and
Planning for the NYPD who has played a significant role in   developing the
Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center.  In 2006, Tisch was 25 years
old and still working on her law degree and MBA at Harvard, according to a
wedding announcement in the New York Times.   Tisch is a friend to the
Mayor’s daughter, Emma; her mother, Meryl, is a family friend to the Mayor.

Tisch is the granddaughter and one of the heirs to the now-deceased
billionaire Laurence Tisch who built the Loews Corporation.  Her father,
James Tisch, is now the CEO of the Loews Corporation and was elected by Wall
Street banks to sit on the Federal Reserve Bank of  New York until 2013
representing the public’s interest. (Clearly, the 1 per cent think they know
what’s best for the 99 per cent.)

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the entity which doled out the bulk
of the $16 trillion in bailout loans to the U.S. and foreign financial
community.  Members of Tisch’s family work for Wall Street firms or hedge
funds which have prime broker relationships with them.  A division of Loews
Corporation has a banking relationship with Citigroup.

The Tisch family stands to directly benefit from the surveillance program.
In June of this year, Continental Casualty Company, the primary unit of the
giant CNA Financial which is owned by Loew’s Corp., signed a 19-year lease
for 81,296  square feet at 125 Broad Street – an area under surveillance by
the downtown surveillance center.

Loews Corporation also owns the Loew’s Regency Hotel on Park Avenue in
midtown, an area which is also now under round-the-clock surveillance on the
taxpayer’s dime.

Wall Street is infamous for perverting everything it touches: from the
Nasdaq stock market, to stock research issued to the public, to auction rate
securities, mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, credit default
swaps with AIG, and mortgage securitizations.  Had a public hearing been
held on this massive surveillance sweep of Manhattan by potential felons,
hopefully someone might have pondered  what was to prevent Wall Street from
tracking its employee whistleblowers heading off to the FBI offices or
meeting with a reporter.

One puzzle has at least been solved.  Wall Street’s criminals have not been
indicted or sent to jail because they have effectively become the police.
*Pam Martens** worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She spent the last decade
of her career advocating against Wall Street’s private justice system, which
keeps its crimes shielded from public courtrooms.  She has been writing on
public interest issues for CounterPunch since retiring in 2006.   She has no
security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article.
She can be reached at pamk741 at aol.com
*

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