http://wcbstv.com/…

It’s called “Operation Sentinel” and it proves just how far the NYPD will go to protect this city from terrorists. The plan involves some high-tech tracking that is coming under fire from some groups.

New York City is going to great lengths to make sure that bomb-toting terrorists can’t reach us.

“New York City is something special,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday. “It’s not just a very big city in this world. It is, in many senses, the iconic city. It represents Western Democracy.

As part of the plan the NYPD is creating a huge buffer zone, working with cops in a 50-mile radius of the city. Officials in New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Long Island are given radiation detectors to stop terrorists as far away from New York City as possible.

Police also plan to track every vehicle that enters Manhattan.

“We’re going to be adding cameras as we go forward,” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

That part of that plan calls for photographing and scanning license plates of cars and trucks at all bridges and tunnels. Even small ones like the Willis Avenue Bridge will also be used to detect radiation.

“I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call this Big Brotherish,” said Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The New York City Police Department is creating a huge computer database of the movement of everyone in a vehicle in Manhattan.”

Civil libertarians take issue with one aspect of that plan – data on each vehicle entering Manhattan would be stored for at least one month. Bloomberg, however, defended the idea.

“It is always a balance between freedoms to come and go between civil liberties and security, and I think we pretty much have the balance pretty much right,” Bloomberg said.

The reaction of New Yorkers CBS 2 HD spoke to were mixed.

“I guess I would feel safer in light of everything that happened,” said Tavis Rivere of Ridgewood, N.J. “The city has been under a lot of, you know, pressures and stuff.”

“It’s a violation — I mean it’s ridiculous,” said Sharday Hill of Teaneck, N.J. “I don’t know want everybody or someone knowing where I’m at 24 hours a day.”

The city also intends on putting Lower Manhattan in a so-called “ring of steel,” with 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street. There will be 600 cops assigned to protect ground zero.

Thank you Sharday Hill of Teaneck.

Cameras are too inefficent. I think the government should mandate GPS trackers be installed in every car and have them all tracked in real time. They should also perform random vehicle checks at all entryways to the city and those roaming gangs of paramilitary should be stopping people on the street who look suspisious to ask for identification. Then I guess I’d feel safer in light of everything that happened. The city has been under a lot of, you know, pressures and stuff.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

This time over the city’s efforts to make commuters pay for the roads that they use. This follows repeated calls by Councilman Vallone to secede made :

“I think secession’s time has definitely come again,” Mr. Vallone, who spearheaded a similar push in 2003, told The New York Sun yesterday. “If not secession, somebody please tell me what other options we have if the state is going to continue to take billions from us and give us back pennies. Should we raise taxes some more? Should we cut services some more? Or should we consider seriously going out on our own?”…”Not only is it about self-determination and self-rule, but it’s about fairness,” Mr. Vallone said. “It’s something we see every year in the budget. They take $11 billion from us and give us back a mere pittance and they make it seem like they’re doing us a favor to give that pittance back. Somehow they missed the point that that is New York City’s own tax money and we deserve it.”

With New Yorkers paying an average of $1,400 a year more to Albany than they recieve back, it’s no wonder that there are similar calls for secession in Long Island.

Given NYC is known for being very left wing and supporting of wealth redistribution and my own experience has shown this to be largely true… seems a bit hypocritical to me.