The Shadow Knows

Nick Turse talks with some police officers monitoring Zuccotti Park. He was fascinated by SkyWatch, a 21st century spying device.

But SkyWatch is not the only surveillance of Occupy Wall Street. There were police watching from a variety of places. Turse's closing comments:

The activists across the street in Liberty Square have frequently been assailed for a lack of concrete demands and clear positions on issues, but they sure know what they’re doing. Surrounded by a ring of metal barricades, a not-so-thin-blue line of armed men and women who watch their every move, plainclothes officers and undercover cops who surreptitiously monitor them, a panoply of police vehicles, fixed cameras, mobile cameras, and all manner of other gear, they are building a new society.

From what I’ve seen, it’s a society in which a somewhat surly, armed man sitting 25 feet up in a little metal box spying on people, protected by a similarly armed, perhaps slightly confused, young man in a car, would be considered odd and unnecessary. The fact that New York City is now a place where you’re not supposed to notice such things, much less question them (and, if you do, you’re questioned for it), says a lot about where the United States is as a society and why, perhaps, there are hardy souls braving the cold in Zuccotti Park to build a new one.