The New York Police Department (NYPD) is testing a ground-breaking counter-terror technology expected to dramatically increase its ability to detect and thwart a potential radiation attack, officials said on July 28.
The technology will allow a command centre in lower Manhattan to monitor 2,000 mobile radiation detectors carried by officers each day around the city.
The detectors will send a wireless, real-time alert if there's a reading signalling a dirty bomb threat.
A dirty bomb, intended to spread panic by using a small explosive to create a radioactive cloud in urban settings, has never been discovered or detonated in a U.S. terror plot.
But law enforcement considers dirty bombs a serious threat because they're easy to build and because of intelligence that foreign terrorists want to use them against American cities. The radiation detection system is being developed as part of a $200 million lower Manhattan security initiative. Police say the overall plan was inspired by the so-called “ring of steel” encircling the business district in London but is broader in scope and sophistication. The initiative will rely largely on 3,000 closed-circuit security cameras carpeting the roughly 1.7 square miles (4.4 sq. km) south of Canal Street, the subway system and parts of midtown Manhattan.
So far, about 1,800 cameras are up and running, with the rest expected to come on line by the end of the year.
The NYPD is using a single, high-bandwidth fibre optic network to connect all its cameras to a central computer system. It's also pioneering “video analytic” computer software designed to detect threats, like unattended bags, and retrieve stored images based on descriptions of terror or other criminal suspects. — AP
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