If You Want to Know What’s Wrong With America, Just Look at New York City

DOT installs AI-powered human ‘activity sensors’ across the city to ‘encourage safer behavior’ of citizens, whether moving on foot, bicycle or vehicle.

If you want to understand why America is in decline, why freedom is evaporating, and why I am pessimistic that the slow erosion of the American spirit is unlikely reverse itself anytime soon, just look at New York City.

This cesspool of technocratic tyranny continues to boil while the frogs inside are not even close to realizing that the heat is about to cook the life out of them.

When the New York Knicks last week won their first NBA championship since 1973, New Yorkers of all political stripes took to the streets to celebrate. Some rioted, turning over vehicles and setting fire to public property.

A basketball game was all it took to spark an organic, unified uprising that made the world take notice. Watch local news report below.

Here’s the rub: No amount of voter fraud, medical tyranny during Covid, nor avalanche of Epstein files revelations about powerful people raping children has been able to shake New Yorkers out of their dazed fixation on their phones, tablets and computer screens. No amount of corruption or oppression in the form of their city’s latest technocratic tracking and tracing schemes has been able to wake them from their stupor and get them off their couches to demand reform.

But a basketball game? Oh yeah. They’re down for that. Up and out the door, onto the streets they go, ready to show their unified jubilation, to the point of violence.

There are so many legitimate reasons for New Yorkers to be angry and ready to demand justice and accountability from their government that I am not going to bore you with the list. Let’s just take the latest indignity that their government has thrust upon them.

They call it “street activity sensors,” which is Orwellian newspeak for real-time tracking and tracing through the wonders of weaponized artificial intelligence.

According to a press release issued on June 2 by the New York City Department of Transportation, DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn announced the use of new cutting-edge sensors (with video here) “to better understand how New Yorkers use their streets and to inform safer street design.”

First piloted in 2023, the release adds, “these small, privacy-protective street activity sensors will count pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and vehicles, and assess patterns in how people use the streets. Sensors will be installed at approximately 80 additional locations (20 have already been installed) across the five boroughs to accelerate data-driven street safety improvements.”

In the name of protecting your privacy, they are stealing it. But even if you’re capable of seeing through the lies and realize there is nothing private about the government tracking your movements, it’s all for your safety and security so don’t get too upset about it.

The press release goes on to quote New York’s DOT commissioner saying:

“Safer street design starts with understanding what is actually happening on the street. These high-tech sensors will help us evaluate how people are walking, biking, and driving so we can design safer streets and encourage safer behavior.”

Encourage “safer behavior.” Did you catch that?

The government is going to monitor your every move while in their city, to make sure you are behaving properly, whether it be as a walker, a bicyclist, a motorist, or on public transit. Everything you do while moving about will be fed into a centralized database and analyzed by AI in real time. This is one of the reasons why so many AI data centers are being built across America, because all major cities and most smaller cities will eventually be installing this over-the-top surveillance technology. A camera on every corner, a sensor on every light pole, roadway, sidewalk, side street and overpass.

The NYC DOT said in its press release that it will be scaling up the technology that has already transformed how the agency measures human activity in the city.

“Initially installed at 20 locations, the sensors replaced traditional manual traffic counts with continuous, real-time data collection—providing a far more comprehensive picture of how pedestrians, cyclists, and vehicles move through city streets.

“Mounted on NYC DOT street infrastructure, the sensors anonymously analyze street activity. In addition to counting different types of road users, sensors can measure speeds, capture turning movements, and map how different users move. For example, the sensors could identify areas where pedestrians are crossing mid-block instead of at crosswalks. This could help identify locations where a mid-block crosswalk would be beneficial.

And here’s the laughable part. The release states:

“Designed with privacy as a core value, video footage is processed in real time and immediately discarded, with only anonymous data retained. Faces and license plates are deliberately obscured in any video footage.”

For starters, people’s faces and license plates are already being scanned and monitored through other technology, such as the ubiquitous Flock cameras, so these new sensors aren’t needed for that. But they are scooping up personal data. Otherwise, why would they say that “only anonymous data” is retained? They admit they are scooping up personally identifiable information on everyone and then we have to trust them to “discard” it.

Let’s not forget the brutally blunt comments from arch-technocrat billionaire Larry Ellison during a September 2024 interview, when he said “everyone will be on their best behavior” once the AI-powered surveillance state is fully implemented.

But none of this surveillance and the lies about how it is being used has caused even a whimper of dissent from those who live and/or work in the Big Apple.

I’m not just blaming New Yorkers for being complacent and complicit in their own digital slavery. I believe New York provides a microcosm of people’s slack attitudes toward the size and scope of government power across our entire country, especially in the bigger cities and surrounding urban areas. Most of the younger Americans who populate these urban areas are concerned basically about two things: their source of income and their ability to afford their preferred source of entertainment, whether it be movies, music, travel and/or sporting events. That’s it.

They are not focused on saving our country from sliding into a digital police state and most don’t even want to engage you in a serious discussion about it. I know there are exceptions, so please don’t attack me in the comments saying you have a 30-something son or daughter who is focused like a laser beam on the more important issues in life. I am saying that, generally, the people who should care the most about what life in America will look like in five years care the least. Perhaps that will change, hopefully before it’s too late, but people need to wake up and wake up now.

https://leohohmann.substack.com/p/if-you-want-to-know-whats-wrong-with