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Big surveillance plans in New York City

Wireless cameras over Brooklyn and a virtual “Ring of Steel” for Lower Manhattan – More than 500 surveillance cameras are planned to be installed in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Hundreds of cameras will follow if New York City secures an $81.5 million federal grant from Homeland Security. The grant would fund a London-style “Ring of Steel” around Manhattan’s financial district that includes metal walls, military style guard posts and another wave of hi-tech surveillance equipment. NYC subways will also be set up with more cameras.

Co-Host Heidi Boghosian caught up with Surveillance Camera Tour Guide Bill Brown in downtown Manhattan. They discuss the implications of Homeland Security funding a massive influx of hi-tech security surveillance systems in New York City. Brown points out how most media have not been informed of details surrounding this build up of cameras.

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Jack Anderson Files

FBI desperately tries to obtain more than 180 boxes of notes and files from the late muckraking journalist Jack Anderson. Anderson who died last December from complications with Parkinson’s Disease, spent the last fifty years unearthing government misdeeds such as J.Edgar Hoover’s apparent ties to Mafia, the Savings and Loans scandal and the search for fugitive ex-Nazi officials in South America. Now, the Anderson family is in the process of transferring ownerships of the files to the George Washington University Library. The FBI would like to see them first however, the library and the Anderson family refuse.

The columnist’s son Kevin Anderson says the FBI expressed interest in documents that would aid the government’s case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, who have been charged with disclosing classified information. The FBI also told the family “they planned to remove from the columnist’s archive, which has yet to be catalogued, any document they come across that is stamped “secret” or “confidential.”

Guest – George Washington University Librarian – Jack Siggins. Siggins also tells Law and Disorder hosts Heidi Boghosian and Michael Ratner that the FBI had asked to obtain library records and emails from faculty, staff and students of George Washington Library. Hosts suspect this type of inquiry has occurred at libraries across the country.

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Blackwater USA Law Suit

The private security firm Blackwater USA, a North Carolina-based private security company is being sued by four families of the private American security contractors who were ambushed by Sunni resistance in Falluja on March of 2004. Law and Disorder hosts speak with independent journalist Jeremy Scahill and attorney Marc Miles about the lawsuit. Read Jeremy Scahill’s investigative report in the Nation here.

From Jeremy Scahill’s article – “This is a precedent-setting case,” says Marc Miles, an attorney for the families. “Just like with tobacco litigation or gun litigation, once they lose that first case, they’d be fearful there would be other lawsuits to follow.”
Guest – Jeremy Scahill – Independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently at The Nation Institute on fellowship. He can be reached at jeremy@democracynow.org

Guest – Marc Miles – attorney for the families.

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We listen to a short segment of senior attorney Donald Goldberg with the Center for Environmental Justice describe how 40 percent of the Arctic Polar ice cap has melted in the last few years and subsequent warming has destroyed Inuit habitat. Human rights litigation is underway to protect the Inuit. Other speakers included Dr. James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen makes the case that global climate change is at the tipping point and emissions from power plants and vehicles are mainly to blame. Law and Disorder will air more from this forum in the programs to come.