Wall Street Firms Spy on Protestors in Tax-Funded Center
by: Pam Martens, CounterPunch | News Analysis
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.”
So, if you are in Lower Manhattan, and you see one of those security surveilence cameras, you might assume that on the other end of that camera is the New York City Police Department, looking for lawbreakers. And you'd be half right, because along with the cops, there are Goldman Sachs representatives spying on you as well.
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.
Cooperation between law enforcement and corporate security? That can't be good.
Some folks might think that this sort of public/private partnership sounds nice, but as Benito Mussolini famously said:
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism
because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
And if this Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center is not a perfect example of a merger of state and corporate power, I don't know what is.
Read the whole story here:
http://www.truth-out.org/wall-street-firms-spy-protestors-tax-funded-center/1319125056
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