New York to screen every vehicle entering Manhattan

19 AUG 2008: Is it just me, or is this getting beyond absurd. The New York Police Department is working on a plan to track every car, truck or other vehicle entering Manhattan and screen them for radioactive materials and other terrorism threats.

The ambitious proposal, called Operation Sentinel, is being developed alongside a separate security initiative to tighten security in the city.

Police officials say Operation Sentinel would rely on licence-plate readers, radiation detectors and closed-circuit cameras installed at the 16 bridges and four tunnels serving Manhattan.

About a million vehicles drive onto the island every day.

The potential for error?

The vehicle data would be automatically analyzed by computers programmed with information about suspicious vehicles.

And that poses the obvious questions.  Where would the information come from? How is it obtained? And how accurate is it?

Police say the system could help them intercept would-be attackers before they can do harm. 

There is no mention of the perfectly innocent people caught up in this “interception” whose lives would be disrupted and damaged, because a machine misread data, or mismatched information, and who would have no recourse whatsoever.

New York's finest

This is not a criticism of the New York Police Department.  In regular visits to Manhattan over many years, any encounter I have had with the NYPD has never been anything but friendly and helpful.

But the system isn’t perfect. Invoking the “T” word in the US virtually permits the suspension of all rights and freedoms, and, while the overwhelming majority of the NYPD are professional, decent and upright, there are always those who will abuse their power.

In these days of blanket restrictions, suspended liberties and electronic surveillance, care must be taken to ensure the cure is not worse than the disease.