Microsoft, in partnership with the New York City Police Department, is announcing a new state-of-the-art law enforcement technology called Domain Awareness System. The said system is designed to bring the latest crime prevention and counter terrorism technology capabilities to New York City and to other law enforcement, and intelligence agencies around the world sometime in the future. Essentially, the Domain Awareness System aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data streams in real-time by using cameras, license plate readers, environmental sensors and law enforcement databases. This will give NYPD investigators and analysts a comprehensive view of potential threats and criminal activity.
The system is also outfitted with an intelligent and intuitive graphical interface and mapping capabilities. The Domain Awareness System, for example, will be used by the NYPD to gather information about a suspect’s record, 911 calls associated with the suspect, and previous related crimes. The NYPD can even map criminal history to geospatially and chronologically reveal crime patterns of suspects. The Domain Awareness System will be using the city’s roughly 3,000 closed-circuit TV cameras to monitor criminal activity and potential threats. Microsoft has agreed to pay the city 30 percent of its gross revenues on the sale of the system to other customers worldwide.