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Mysterious metal towers are popping up at local [NYC] tunnels, and soon they'll start appearing at bridges, too.
But even people on the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority] board in charge of the towers can't say why they're being used or what's in them, CBS2's Dave Carlin reports.
Jose Lugo said the tall metal towers quickly appeared up after the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel tolls[sic] booths came down.
"We don't really know what's the purpose of this," he told Carlin.
It's a $100 million MTA project shrouded in secrecy, with 18 of them for tunnels and bridges. So what are they exactly?
[...] [MTA Chairman] Lhota: "The base of these new pieces that are going up include whatever fiber optics are necessary for those Homeland Security items."
Z backscatter arrays?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Friday September 29 2017, @03:20AM (25 children)
If it is Z Backscatter designed to severely compromise the civil rights, and human rights, of American Citizens in a mass surveillance fashion, then bomb the fuck out them. Tire necklaces on steroids. Cut the fiber. Use our own lasers, whatever, to fuck them over from a distance. Mini drones with thermite burning through the equipment.
Whatever it takes to turn those things off. Under no circumstances should the government get to have a secret project like that in civilian areas. Area 51 is okay, where millions of commuters pass through is not.
If it really is some mass surveillance, I expect quite a backlash because there is no opt-out.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @03:49AM (5 children)
I hope there is a backlash, but I expect none. Because, terrorism! mumble mumble danger!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday September 29 2017, @05:33AM (4 children)
If you have nothing to hide, why do you want to prevent us from protecting people from $BadGuys ?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @06:07AM
... than whether your snot-nosed kid gets blown up.
Also, who is "us"? Fuck off.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday September 29 2017, @11:23AM (1 child)
Said the Nazi to the
Jew$BadGuy--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @09:04PM
Said the jew to the natives of whatever land the jew parasite happens to be occupying and exploiting at the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @08:22PM
… than whether your snot-nosed kid gets blown up.
Also, who is "us"? Fuck off.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Friday September 29 2017, @04:18AM (18 children)
I can think of worse things than mere surveillance. (Like this would be the first instance of that!)
There's no telling what is behind those arrays are, but they don't look like cameras. You don't need arrays of fixed cameras.
Look more like a radar array emitters, but could be any sort of NBC detectors. They could be xray emitters, which would be plenty of reason to keep it secret.
But the circular arrays appear to point in all directions, and don't appear tob be motorized.
That could be gun shot analysis, or chemical analysis. But why only near bridges? And why so secret.
If they were merely detectors, there is no reason to keep them all that secret. After all the objective is to protect the bridges and tunnels. Deterrence is the best protection.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 29 2017, @04:35AM (2 children)
They could be xray emitters, which would be plenty of reason to keep it secret.
Does anyone have any plans for an X-ray detector? Or a link to a device you can purchase? Something like that could be useful, with things like this popping up, plus the scanners that DHS has been using on roadways which are powerful enough to X-ray through your vehicle with you in it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by dwilson on Friday September 29 2017, @05:18AM (1 child)
I believe a scintillation tube [wikipedia.org] is what you're looking for, with the proper electronics package bolted on. I have no idea where you'd find a complete, ready-to-use device as an off the shelf purchase, though.
Anecdote: I once worked with a fellow who had been an electronics technician for a wireline company in a previous career. He had (many) horror stories about his time there, and one of the milder ones was about a time that he spent all day trying to diagnose and repair what should have been a simple problem with one of the downhole tools. The tool in question contained a neutron source (the actual source was locked up in it's safe, he had a -much- weaker handheld source for testing purposes) used to probe the surrounding rock as it went down the well, plus assorted electronics for reading the results. The detectors were all based around scintillation tubes. He had a hell of a time with it, intermittent failures, results showing up unexpectedly. A pull-your-hair-out sort of day, repeating the same tests under the same conditions and getting wildly different results. It turns out that the business across the street, a pipeline company, had been running 'non-destructive' tests on some sections of pipeline, which involves bombarding them with x-rays. The tool was so sensitive it was picking up the scattered x-rays from across the road and two largish truck yards.
- D
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 29 2017, @01:39PM
XRF guns.
http://www.eonpro.com/metal/ [eonpro.com]
They are SO cool. They're the next FLIR in that they're incredibly insanely useful but the technology and qtys mean they cost $30K today but thats actually pretty cheap because they were bench tools costing $150K just last decade.
Apparently you can hurt yourself pretty well with XRF guns so they may never be as popular as FLIR but who knows.
For those too lazy to click thru or wikipedia, they're basically a star trek scanner. Wave it over a piece of mystery metal and seconds later, Oh I see its a bar of "C12L14 ledloy (tm)" or whatever to many decimal places. Really cool. Dumb people think it can tell you if the metal is tempered or hardened correctly, not so much AFAIK.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @04:47AM (2 children)
Near bridges because that is where all vehicles enter the area from, good choke point. What is in them? Who can really say? All I know is I'm tired of living in this world where shady organizations get to do all sorts of shady shit and the people are shit out of luck.
On a similar note, there were some very odd boxes hanging from a tunnel in San Francisco on the way to the Golden Gate bridge. They had a triangular pattern on the front made from what looked like solar panel crystals and they had no obvious purpose. A few years later they are now all gone. Maybe they found a more covert method for whatever they were.
My bet is on these being emitters and detectors operating at a range of frequencies which would make it easy to detect, well, everything. Now what is the increase in cancer risks for those daily commuters driving past these things? I do hope we're all wrong, but these days you don't even need to put on the tinfoil hat to find shady shit everywhere.
The "big incident" sure did a number of US psychology, sent 50% of the country into an absolute state of terror, ha ha haaaablergh, which allowed this kind of bullshit to glide right through. I fully expect the shady bastards to try and ride this dead horse until it collapses from exhaustion, then we'll have fun putting all our pieces back together. They've already stripped basic dignity and civil rights completely away when it suits them, and so far no real push back. We all still file along as they march as they slowly crank up the heat, we'll be cooked and ready to serve by the time we as a whole figure it out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday September 29 2017, @05:44AM (1 child)
Ask Runaway if he saw any kind of shady shit on his farmlet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @05:08PM
Are you kidding? He IS the shady shit ;P Poor sheep are ready to stage a coup to keep him from disrobing their females.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday September 29 2017, @04:49AM (9 children)
They detect the National Broadcasting Company?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Friday September 29 2017, @05:01AM
NBC = Nuclear, Biological and Chemical.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday September 29 2017, @05:08AM (1 child)
"They detect the National Broadcasting Company?"
No, that's the National Bank of Canada.
And if it detects those sneaky Canucks, it'll activate the Hacker Hellstorm.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday September 29 2017, @11:30AM
Come join the North side: We have beer!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @05:13AM (2 children)
Nah, man. "Non-bran cereal"...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @05:25AM
Non-binary child
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @05:32AM
Gotta have my bran or I don't give a shit.
(Score: 2) by UncleSlacky on Friday September 29 2017, @09:47AM (2 children)
No, cookies. (an oblique reference to SNL's "Star Trek final episode" sketch).
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday September 29 2017, @05:07PM (1 child)
That usage is usually abbreviated "Nabisco."
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by UncleSlacky on Saturday September 30 2017, @02:51PM
From http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75vstartrek.phtml [jt.org] :
"That's called a "California license plate", and it's registered, or was in 1968, to a corporation known as "NBC". Wait.. there's something more.. The computer isn't sure, but it thinks this NBC used to manufacture cookies."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @09:45AM
If you want to cripple the island that is NYC you attack the bridges and tunnels. Also, you detect what ever nastiness comes in when it arrives.
You prevent the “we need to attack now, before these new devices catch us!” crowd.
We may never know what they really are, or the real capabilities, to prevent these devices from becoming targets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @03:13PM
Bridges are choke points [wikipedia.org]