NYC Unveils Domain Awareness System Developed With Microsoft

The city of New York has unveiled a new wide-reaching surveillance system that was developed in cooperation with Microsoft called Domain Awareness System. The new system brings together various information streams, including content coming from CCTV footage and criminal databases. NYC went official with the announcement of the system this week.

Other than using the Domain Awareness System to help fight crime within New York City, the city is also making money off the system itself. According to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city of New York gets a 30% cut when a system is sold to another city in the future. There is no indication of how much the system costs, but it has to be expensive.

The money earned from sales of the system to other cities will go to New York's counter-terrorism and crime-prevention programs. Officially, the Domain Awareness System is described as a sophisticated law enforcement technology that's able to aggregate and analyze existing public-safety data streams in real-time. The system is capable of providing the NYPD and analysts with a comprehensive look at potential threats and criminal activity.

This sounds more than a little like the system used in the TV show "Person of Interest." Some key facts include that the Domain Awareness System gathers no new information on residents of the city. The system is used to centralize existing information to make it easier for police and analysts to access and use.

[via Betabeat]