Education, awareness, and cooperation between management, boards, and residents can make a huge difference in deterring crime in and around a building. Some basic behavioral adjustments – such as making sure nobody follows you into the buil…
George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 was all about how Big Brother was watching us. It isn’t hard to imagine what Orwell would think about today’s technologically-advanced world, where there are full-body scans at the airports, photos snapp…
In the old days of video surveillance, a closed-circuit TV system (CCTV) to monitor the doors and parking garage and lot used to be a grainy black-and-white mess. The footage would transmit to some subterranean bunker with a tiny TV so some…
The most important aspect of managing a building is keeping it, its residents, and their property safe. In days past, 'safety technology' consisted mostly of well-lit exits, the installation of panic bars and glow-in-the-dark stripping on e…
For time immemorial, the home has been synonymous with warmth, comfort and, most importantly, safety. The boards and managers who oversee co-op and condominium communities are aiming to preserve this image by ensuring that safety is their …
While it’s true that over the last two decades, New York City has become a much safer place to call home, that doesn’t mean that security concerns don’t still exist—especially for those living in co-ops, condos or HOAs. While security guar…
The drop in crime in New York in the last 40 years has been nothing short of miraculous. In the 1970s, the city’s obvious danger was notorious. Muggings were commonplace. Subway cars rolled along the tracks tagged in graffiti and ugly fluo…
The issue of intellectual property and an individual’s right to privacy has become a greater concern since more and more people conduct their lives online—whether for banking, social media or dating. While the aforementioned generally h…
Q Is it lawful for security cameras to be placed inside a co-op’s community room that shareholders are paying to use for their private parties? Is this not an intrusion of privacy? —Suspicious of Big Brother A “The qu…
A few years ago, when I lived in the East Village—in a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up—I had a creepy experience when the cable guy came to hook up our service. He arrived in a beat-up windowless van that looked like it had been boosted …