MTA Plan for Camera-Equipped Subway Cars

MYFOXNY.COM - The MTA plans to buy 290 more subway trains and equip them with video surveillance cameras. The cameras, which would be hidden in the ceiling, would only record. They would not send out a live signal.

The MTA also has an option to purchase 50 more subway cars with cameras if the budget permits.

"Future cars will be camera-ready," MTA spokesman Paul Fleuranges told the New York Post. "The hardest part of retrofitting old cars to run the lines is that it involved taking the car apart."

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly considers video surveillance cameras on subways a move in the the right direction. He said it's like chicken soup -- it can't hurt.

But the head of the New York Civil Liberties Union said there have to be guidelines before there is abuse of the video images. Donna Lieberman said that although the cameras are in public, people have a right to know how the images will be used, how long they will be kept, and who will have access to them.

Lieberman acknowledged video surveillance cameras can help solve some crimes, but insists the police department keeps pushing for wider use of cameras without considering privacy protection.

The NYPD is now completing electronic connections for live video from Grand Central Terminal, the 42nd Street Subway Station and Penn Station to its Lower Manhattan security initiative camera system.