Remember Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense plan?  It sounded like just the trick to protect us from the Ruskies when he told us about it.  Alas, the Strategic Defense Initiative, as it was officially called, had one flaw.  It wouldn’t work. 

New York City has a plan too.  It’s going to track every vehicle coming into Manhattan, across the 16 bridges and 4 tunnels that allow people to enter the center of the universe.  The reason is to stop a terrorist attack.  According to Newsday :

Operation Sentinel, as the focus on Manhattan-bound vehicles is called, is fairly simple: using the latest technologies, police want to keep track of every vehicle that enters Manhattan over the 16 bridges and four tunnels.

License plate scanners would relay data to an NYPD command center, where information would be checked to see if the vehicle in question has been linked to suspicious activity or an ongoing investigation.

Data from vehicles with no such links would be purged from the NYPD’s records after 30 days, police said.

Now there are a lot of vehicles traveling into Manhattan.  Unlike Star Wars, scanning license plates doesn’t seem to techno-problematic, though processing a few zillion a day could take up a lot of disk space.  But this is going to be a costly system, both to create and maintain, if it is to work on any reliable basis.  If you’ve ever dealt with the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority people, they’re going to need to make scanner that can withstand a lot of abuse (not to mention Boston Creme and raspberry jelly).

And with this robust scanning system, every license plate will be captured and put into a computer.  This is going to include a lot more non-terrorists than “suspicious people.”  But while Donna Lieberman at the NYCLU states the obvious when questioning the impact on privacy and the right to be left alone, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly is unconcerned:

Kelly, however, noted that average New Yorkers accept that their picture is taken each day, for instance, whenever they step into a bank or a department store.

“I think they realize we have to take these steps in this day and age,” Kelly said. “I don’t think anyone should have cause for concern.”

This day and age is a perfect explanation, at least in New York City.  We had an attack here, you know.  So if people want to come into Manhattan, why should they be worried about being tracked by computer, if they have nothing to hide? 

Well, there’s a philosophical concern, as Lieberman points out.  It’s another brick in the wall of Big Brother government.  Some might prefer to be able to go where they want without the government knowing, just because they like the free America better than the safe one. 

But the fact is that government already has access to this information for most people, since E-Z Pass is already used by most people who travel into Manhattan, and while not its purpose, it can well serve the same function.

However, all of this begs one huge question:  What’s the point of it all?  Tacking vehicles “linked to suspicious activity or an ongoing investigation” tells the police nothing about what the driver or occupants of a vehicle are up to.  Nor does it tell you where they are going or what they are doing once they drive out of the tunnel.  But it’s “an initiative [the NYPD] calls necessary in the age of terror.”

If there’s reason for the police to stop these vehicles before they enter into Manhattan, why are they letting them drive around beforehand unmolested?  And if there’s no reason to stop them yet, then what good does the scanner do to add reason to stop them?  Do the police plan to covertly follow each of these suspicious vehicles through the streets of New York?  That’s going to eat up a lot of manpower, not to mention wreak havoc on intersections. 

The best reason I can imagine for employing this expensive, intrusive system is to create evidence of a single fact; that a vehicle entered Manhattan at a particular date and time.  Beyond that, it seems utterly pointless. 

Perhaps I’m missing something, but I fail to see any legitimate benefit gained by this scheme. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, however, said license plates, by their very nature, “identify you in your car.

“We have to protect the public,” he said. “If you want to have a civil liberties issue, I suspect you should go to the state and talk about license plates.”

The best Mike can say is “protect the public?”  Come on, Mike.  What’s this really about? 

Manhattan still feels the sting of 9/11, and the fear created on that day and inflamed ever since remains in the hearts of many.  They are willing to give up a lot to avoid it happening again, and the police need only tie their latest intrusive plan to the word “terrorism” to get the approval of many New Yorkers.

Like Reagan’s Star Wars plan, however, it isn’t going to do anything to help stop terrorism.  So why are they doing this?  While everybody is properly concerned with its intrusive impact on privacy and freedom of movement, nobody is questioning the true purpose of this plan as far as I can tell.

The war on terror?  Nope, I just don’t see how this helps at all.