Surveillance

Infra Alia

In Art, Chicago, Environment, Housing, Manhattan, Rorty, Surveillance, Twitter, Visualization on 4 June 2008 with no comments

Two days out of the year Manhattan seems like it was built to accommodate the sun; they call it Manhattanhenge.
The Financial Times reports that housing prices and mortgage difficulties in London and the southwest of England have prevented 40 percent of young households (aged 21-40) from purchasing homes.
Clever art from Harmen de Hoop (1, 2, [...]

The City of Big Brotherly Love

In Philadelphia, Screens, Security, Surveillance on 23 October 2007 with no comments

Philadelphia, the City of Big Brotherly Love? Salient details:
Philadelphia will be getting 250 additional surveillance cameras…
The expansion will cost nearly $10 million
“I envision cameras in just every district of the city down the road,” Gaittens said.
The city has partnered with a private company to install and maintain [...]

“The cities are the problem.”

In Military, Security, Surveillance on 12 October 2007 with no comments

In Nick Turse’s “Slum Fights”, Mother Jones covers the future of urban warfare:
Duane Schattle doesn’t mince words. “The cities are the problem,” he says. A retired Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who worked on urban warfare issues at the Pentagon in the late 1990s, he now serves as director of the Joint Urban Operations Office [...]

Treatments of graffiti reveal competing visions of the city

In Art, Crime, GPS, History, Los Angeles, New York, Photography, San Francisco, Screens, Surveillance on 11 October 2007 with no comments

Graffiti Tracker applies NSA-style analysis to photographs of graffiti. BBC recently profiled the company.
BBC recently profiled the company:
Graffiti Tracker, the brainchild of graduate student and crime analyst Timothy Kephart, uses global positioning systems (GPS), digital photography and computer databases to track and catch graffiti artists.
The system - dubbed Graffiti Analysis/Intelligence Tracking System (GAITS) - takes [...]

NYPD tests UK-style license plate cameras

In New York, Security, Surveillance on 10 October 2007 with no comments

The New York Police Department is testing cameras that scan the license plates of (mostly) innocent drivers:
The camera is an example of the kind of technology the NYPD hopes to use to create a high-tech security ring around Lower Manhattan, the Daily News reported. City officials pointed out that the camera, also not far from [...]