New York Shooting Proves More Cameras Don’t Mean More Security
As we upgrade our security infrastructure, we should look to China for what NOT to do.
It has only been 24 hours since a man walked onto a train in Brooklyn, NY., set off a smoke bomb, and started shooting passengers. A suspect has been identified, one Frank R. James--he left the keys to his Uhaul rental van and a Glock 9mm handgun on the train car--but he remains at large. This is scary and dangerous. Apprehending him so he can’t hurt anyone else is the top priority. But his escape begs the question - how was he not caught on cameras exiting, if not entering, the train station in the first place?
Details are still emerging, but at least some of the cameras at the station did not function properly. Again, the most important priority is to catch the suspect, but this incident seems likely to trigger a larger conversation about video surveillance on the subways, in our cities, and in our lives in general.
The MTA has more than 10,000 cameras operating in 472 subway stations across the city. All were operating normally except at the three stations involved in this shooting, according to early reports. It is possible that the emergency itself overwhelmed the communication channels that sent the security feeds to the NYPD and MTA. A bad look.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams promises an investigation but admits the systems did not perform as designed. "The preliminary review stated that there appeared to have been some form of malfunction with the camera system at that particular station. That is still under investigation," Adams said. "We're communicating with the MTA to find out was it through the entire station or just one camera."
The New York City subways have been getting more dangerous; this is no secret to New Yorkers. Part of the response has been to ramp up the installation of cameras. In 2020, the MTA installed 784 new cameras, three times more than in 2019. Unfortunately, these cameras had little impact on crime. Despite record-low ridership, the Gothamist found the amount of crime per rider on the subways went up in 2020.
Despite increased surveillance, however, the drop in subway crime in 2020 was not commensurate with the drop in ridership. Major felonies, overall, were only down about 30 percent in 2020 compared to 2019. And some significant crimes increased. Burglaries, for example, went from 7 in 2019 to 23 last year.
If New York City needs help figuring out how to manage its surveillance state, it can look to China for lessons. By any measure, China is far ahead of the U.S., indeed most of the world, when it comes to keeping tabs on its citizens. The country has built one of the biggest biometric databases in the world, and it uses it for far more than tracking down rogue shooters. According to CNBC,
Already about 200 million surveillance cameras are scattered around the country — to track big spenders in luxury retail stores, catch identity thieves, prevent violent crime, find fugitives, catch sleeping students in the classroom and even snag jaywalkers. In fact, nearly every one of its 1.4 billion citizens is in China’s facial recognition database.
Having accomplished that, many of China’s Administrative regions are moving on to a new “one person, one file” system. Managing all of this information is challenging and hard to do in real-time. The new systems coming online will use AI to automatically match and merge user information so an individual's location can be identified in real-time and cross-checked across all state databases.
There is every reason to believe the Chinese government is using these technologies to oppress and control its population. In March 2020, a bipartisan group of 17 U.S. senators sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It read, in part:
China uses facial recognition to profile Uyghur individuals, classify them on the basis of their ethnicity, and single them out for tracking, mistreatment, and detention. And these technologies are deployed in service of a dystopian vision for technology governance, that harnesses the economic benefits of the internet in the absence of political freedom and sees technology companies as instruments of state power.
It can seem academic to raise issues of privacy when blood is still wet on the floors of subway cars. We need to find the individual responsible for this crime as quickly as possible to ensure he can’t hurt more victims. Cameras and government databases will certainly be part of that effort, but they won't solve the problem all by themselves.
When the calls inevitably come to install even more cameras and connect them to more AI-driven databases, we should understand what those investments may truly cost.
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Breaking my rule about sharing New York Times links, the Substack’s Growth Spurt Brings Growing Pains story on the challenges that Substack is facing is worth a read. There is nothing in this story I didn’t know three months ago when I left PCMag, or three weeks ago when I started Machined. Like most substack writers. this newsletter is not my primary source of income. Like most substack writers, I would be very pleased if it could be one day. I feel confident I got up and running faster with Substack than I would have without it. I’m hanging in there. I hope you will too.