SkyWatch Tower: New wave in coercive #OWS surveillance
At the corner of Trinity Place and Liberty Street, inside a little metal box that goes by the name Sky Watch, sits Officer Guzman.
Sky Watch is a 7-foot by 6-foot metal box, with blacked out windows on its four sides, bristling with cameras, spotlights, and a small spinning anemometer (to calculate wind speed), atop spindly hydraulic legs that allow it to sit on the ground or rise up two stories. Inside that climate-controlled cube is a control panel with switches to turn on the lights, a joystick to raise and lower the unit, and various other remote controls that Officer Guzman or someone like him can use to direct the cameras and watch their feeds on video screens (while they are recorded on multiple digital video recorders).
When a couple of “special” cops came to gas up Guzman’s Sky Watch tower, I called out a question about how frequently they needed to feed the mechanical beast. “I can’t tell you that information,” was the cold response I got from one of the policemen. As I scrawled down the terse reply and snapped a few photos, another strode over to the metal barricade I was leaning on. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Nick, what’s yours?
Anthony. What, are you writing a report?
I’m a reporter.
Do you have some ID that says you’re a reporter?
Nah, you guys like badges, not me.
As I produced a couple pieces of identification, I asked why he needed to see ID from someone asking an innocuous question while standing on a public sidewalk. “What interests me is that you’re taking information about our Sky Watch and asking questions about our Sky Watch so it makes me wonder why you’re doing it. I’d like to know that.”
Then I asked to see his ID. “You have my ID,” he said. But I didn’t. He was a fancy cop. No badge and nameplate on his chest, so I insisted. “I don’t. I only know your name is Anthony.” To his credit, he produced some. Anthony Torres. Shield #4528. So I told him of my interest in Sky Watch and the mini-surveillance state the police had set up more generally. Why, I asked, did the NYPD need a Sky Watch surveillance unit on-site when they also had a permanent camerastationed across the street from the park, a surveillance truck up the street with a camera on a 20-foot pole, dozens of cops stationed on the park’s perimeter at all times and, no doubt, other less conspicuous methods to spy on a park, alreadysurrounded by metal pens, filled with unarmed, nonviolent protesters?
In the meantime, Officer Guzman had descended and emerged from the Sky Watch box to take a closer look at me face to face. I gave a quizzical look as my ID was, without my permission, handed off to him. I watched him closely as he wrote down all my information “We’re just gonna take your name down. That you’re a reporter and that you’re asking questions about our Sky Watch. Don’t worry. No summons,” Torres said. Guzman just glowered.
Officer Torres was adamant that while the surveillance truck at the other end of the block was a response to the occupation of Zuccotti Park, the Sky Watch unit was to keep an eye on the nearby World Trade Center site. Now, the fact that Sky Watch’s four cameras never seemed to point toward “Ground Zero,” but instead the streets right around the park suggested otherwise.
I took note of exactly which directions its four cameras were facing. As per usual, none were pointing at the World Trade Center site. Instead, the main roof cam swiveled to focus on me.
Throughout the day, whenever I stopped to take notes on the cameras, which never did point anywhere but at the environs of the park or the sidewalks around the tower — at least when I was near — the cop in the cruiser would take note of me.
About two hours after Torres and I parted ways, I noticed the main camera on the top swing around to focus on me. That Guzman! Maybe this was his way of cracking a smile? So I moved and watched the camera follow. Then I moved again, as if I would walk past, but instead doubled back to my starting point. The camera swung about, looking for me, I guessed.
I was hardly shocked when Officer Husain left his cruiser and approached. “Is there any reason why you’re taking pictures of our…” he asked, never even getting the words “Sky Watch” out. Maybe he thought it was classified.
Like Torres, he wanted my ID and when I handed it over, he had the same issue. He wanted to know why I was so interested in security around the park, so I tried to explain again. I told him how four top cops had recently complained to the New York Post that the large police presence at Occupy Wall Street was the reason for a spike in shootings across the city. If so, I asked him, wasn’t it overkill to have so much surveillance, so many vehicles, so many barricades, so many cops, for this modest encampment if shootings were surging? Did he think they needed this many cops for a protest in a tiny park? “I’m not here to think,” he responded. “We’re not here for the protests. We’re here for counter-terrorism,” he said before lapsing into semi-incoherence about having to protect the Sky Watch, presumably from terrorists. “Wait, you’re saying someone is going to attack that?” I said gesturing to the Sky Watch tower. In a city filled with iconic structures, terrorists might target a metal box on stilts with, maybe, one cop inside. Really?
He seemed confused and ended our conversation abruptly with: “It’s much more than simple words.”
I doubt I’ll ever know what he meant by that. Chances are, he might not either. But his statement said a lot about the police response to Occupy Wall Street, about surveillance for surveillance’s sake, and about the increasing hollowness of using “terrorism” as a get-out-of-jail-free card in New York City. It also taught me something about how a person — even packing a pistol, handcuffs, a nightstick, a radio to call countless numbers of similarly armed individuals, and the authority conferred by a badge — can feel insecure if he doesn’t know what he is doing or why.
(Source: enlighteningnews)
-
38milestograceland reblogged this from discordandharmony
-
collectionsofwords reblogged this from enlighteningnews
-
thugwizard reblogged this from enlighteningnews
-
discordandharmony reblogged this from enlighteningnews
-
that-katie-with-the-bangs liked this
-
enlighteningnews posted this
