NYC police to use camera drones for security at Times Square NYE party

By Georgina Torbet December 30, 2018

The New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square is an iconic event in the New York City calendar. And this year, the party will be supervised by camera-equipped drones which will keep watch over partygoers for security.

For the first time, New York City police will use drones to keep an eye on Times Square for the NYE party, which is expected to attract as many as two million attendees. In addition to the camera drones, the police will also be deploying new “counter-drone technology” to block other drones from flying in the area and potentially interfering with the police drones. The drones will be used in addition to traditional anti-terrorism tools like police airplanes and helicopters which will be used as surveillance tools.

Bloomberg reports that the drones and other security measures are being put in place in an attempt to prevent another incident like the shooting in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017, in which 59 people who were attending an outdoor concert were killed by a sniper located in a hotel room overlooking the Vegas strip. Although New York police say that they do not have evidence of a credible threat against the NYE celebrations, they are deploying the drones as an extra safety measure.

In a press briefing, Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller said that in addition to the drones, the police will be using other technology for security including the use of 1,225 portable and stationary cameras. Miller described the drones as supporting devices that will give “visual aid and flexibility” from being able to move a camera around a large crowd and being able to move quickly to any required spot. “This is the first time we’re going to be using it at a large-scale event,” Police Commissioner James O’Neill said. “It’s just going to give us an additional view of the crowd.”

The New York Post reports that other security measures used by the police will include 235 vehicles to block off areas of Times Square, 50 canine teams searching for explosives, and the installation of more than 200 cement blocks in addition to the metal stanchions already in the area.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."