{"id":80321,"date":"2016-09-26T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80321"},"modified":"2016-09-25T18:02:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T17:02:35","slug":"a-walking-tour-of-new-yorks-massive-surveillance-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/a-walking-tour-of-new-yorks-massive-surveillance-network\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walking Tour of New York\u2019s Massive Surveillance Network"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ingrid<\/a>

Ingrid Burrington, author of the new book \u201cNetworks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure.\u201d
Credit: Jonathan Minard<\/p><\/div>\n

24 Sep 2016 – <\/em>Earlier this month, on the 15th anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks, the lower tip of Manhattan was thronged with soldiers in uniform, firefighters marching with photos of lost friends pinned to their backpacks, and tourists bumbling around the new mall at the World Trade Center. Firetrucks and police cars ringed Zuccotti Park and white ribbons adorned the iron fence around the churchyard on Broadway. Trash cans were closed up, with signs announcing \u201ctemporary security lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it felt a bit risky to be climbing up a street pole on Wall Street to closely inspect a microwave radar sensor, or to be lingering under a police camera, pointing and gesturing at the wires and antenna connected to it. Yet it was also entirely appropriate to be doing just that, especially in the company of Ingrid Burrington, author of the new book \u201cNetworks of New York<\/a>: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure,\u201d which points out that many of the city\u2019s communications and surveillance programs were conceived and funded in response to the attacks.<\/p>\n

\"Ingrid<\/a>

Ingrid Burrington\u2019s \u201cNetworks of New York\u201d
Image: Courtesy of Melville Books<\/p><\/div>\n

In her book, Burrington, a writer and artist, has sketched the pieces of the internet that are visible on and above the streets of the city, and has explained the business interests and politicking behind their installation. Her book is designed to make the internet tangible, and with that in mind, Burrington (who I first met when she worked on a software project for The Intercept<\/em>) agreed to take me and a friend on a tour of what she found in the financial district.<\/p>\n

We began outside 55 Broadway, an office building a few blocks north of the famous bronze bull statue, and eyed a black NYPD-branded camera above the building\u2019s entrance. I used to work in this building, when ProPublica had its offices there, and I remember awkward elevator rides with armed counterterrorism cops. The building is home to the city\u2019s Domain Awareness System, which collects and analyzes information from police cameras, radars, license plate readers and more. The Domain Awareness System was built in partnership with Microsoft, which is selling the software to other cities, with New York getting a cut of the profits. According to Burrington, a number of the system\u2019s cameras belong to private entities, including companies like Goldman Sachs and Pfizer, who have access to the facilities at 55 Broadway.<\/p>\n

\"Burrington\u2019s<\/a>

Burrington\u2019s sketch of 75 Broad Street, which was once home to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company and now contains data centers.
Illustration: Ingrid Burrington<\/p><\/div>\n

We crossed the street, which was marked with orange squiggles \u2014 orange being the surveyor\u2019s color for marking underground communications cables. The symbols in the intersection indicated fiber-optic and cable TV. \u201cThe internet, is, in fact, a series of tubes,\u201d Burrington writes in her guide. And downtown Manhattan, she adds, is \u201creally crowded underground.\u201d<\/p>\n

At each intersection, we looked for NYPD cameras and information-gathering devices owned by the Department of Transportation. Burrington pointed out green boxes sporting little domes; those are signal-control boxes that collect data from traffic cameras, EZ-Pass scanners, and microwave radar sensors, in order to\u00a0track the movements of cars and regulate traffic lights accordingly. There are plenty of urban planning reasons for this data collection, but Burrington notes, \u201cevery camera that belongs to a city agency is essentially also an NYPD camera.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of internet infrastructure resides in buildings that once\u00a0housed earlier\u00a0modes of communication, and those building still bear the aesthetic of another era.\u00a0Early 20th-century communications companies liked\u00a0ornate decor, especially lightning bolts,\u00a0in contrast to the bland or cutesy logos that today\u2019s internet giants hide behind. We went to 75 Broad Street, once home to the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. Over its doorway is a colorful mosaic of an angel with a lightning bolt and two globes showing the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Among other things, the building now houses a data storage center.<\/p>\n

Verizon, meanwhile, occupies an Art Deco skyscraper on West Street that was once the New York Telephone Company. Before being shooed out by a guard, we got a glimpse of a\u00a0lobby ceiling illustrated with imperialist motifs\u00a0of\u00a0communications across cultures of the world, like two African figures drumming.<\/p>\n

Equipped with Burrington\u2019s guide, you start to spot things. Above a restaurant, we noticed some rectangular cell towers that have been hand-painted to look like the brick wall behind them \u2014 the urban version of highway cell towers you may have seen masquerading as pine trees.<\/p>\n

\"Cell<\/a>

Cell towers blend in above a restaurant in lower Manhattan.
Photo: Cora Currier for The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

I asked Burrington what she hoped people would do with her guide. It is empowering to know what you\u2019re looking at, but also overwhelming to consider the scale of the apparatus around you. Burrington described a public records battle she lost to get the locations of NYPD cameras; the city said the data could help criminals. In the process, Burrington realized that the data she was seeking wouldn\u2019t account for unmarked cameras and privately owned cameras that could be turned over to police. To map the entire surveillance network of a city would require a huge effort and become quickly outdated.<\/p>\n

Instead, her aim is \u201cfostering curiosity,\u201d she said. On a local level, organizing to get data for specific purposes could be politically useful; you could look at disparities in high-speed internet access, or you could look for evidence of over-policing. Or just ask simple questions like, \u201cWho owns stuff, why does it end up where it ends up, and who does it benefit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to know Microsoft is a corporation who has a large stake in New York City\u2019s surveillance systems continuing, and expanding them to other cities,\u201d Burrington said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An NYPD camera at 55 Broadway, headquarters of the city\u2019s Domain Awareness System.
Photo: Cora Currier for The Intercept<\/p><\/div>\n

Or take LinkNYC, a new program to make old phone booths into WiFi kiosks around the city. LinkNYC is run by a private entity, and it\u2019s been mostly able to brush off concerns about its privacy policy<\/a>. It\u2019s also largely immune to public records requests.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Lockheed Martin, which is engaged in a lawsuit with the MTA over a much-delayed program<\/a> to install surveillance cameras in the subway. \u201cValid privacy and civil liberties concerns aside,\u201d Burrington says, \u201cyou also have these boondoggles, where the equipment is not even doing what it is supposed to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burrington points out that infrastructure is often designed to be ignored. The field guide, with its cheerful drawings of manhole covers and cable markings, turns the infrastructure into something ordinary and familiar, not intimidating, and not some magical process by which videos and images appear in your phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s effective, it\u2019s invisible,\u201d she says. \u201cBut if it\u2019s taken for granted, we lose the ability to make decisions about how it\u2019s used.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Cora Currier<\/a> – \u2709cora.currier@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new \u201cfield guide\u201d by Ingrid Burrington makes visible the infrastructure of surveillance in New York, and explains the money and politics behind it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}