The dystopian nightmare of "1984" edges one step closer:
The New York City Police Department and Microsoft have partnered up to bring the world a surveillance system straight out of a sci-fi novel. With a name both mundane and a little bit menacing, the Domain Awareness System allows the department to access around 3,000 CCTV cameras around the city and link the feeds with software to cross-check criminal and terrorist databases, take radiation levels, scan license plates, and more — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from a lower Manhattan headquarters. And when Microsoft turns around and sells the technology to other cities, New York gets a cut.
The name is "a little menacing"? Well, I guess so. "Domain Awareness System" is right up there with "Homeland Security" in sounding a little more totalitarian than the namers probably intended.
But this is for our protection, to help catch the bad guys and keep track of those with evil intent! Sorry, but oppression doesn't always (or even usually) make itself known and come right at you. It's disguised as benign or even beneficent, insidously morphing into a controlling force a little at a time.
