From Gawker :
Essam Attia is the New York street artist responsible for placing fake NYPD ads reading "Drones: Protection When You Least Expect It" around town. In September, he gave a video interview to Animal NY, with his identity and voice obscured, in which he discussed this project and his art in general. Wednesday morning, the NYPD arrested him at home.
The NYDN reports that he's charged with "56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession," the last (and possibly worst) charge coming because cops found an unloaded .22 pistol under his bed when they arrested him. On a practical level, Attia was not the most careful art criminal. He signed his work "ESSAM;" and he told Animal that he was a "a 29-year-old art-school grad from Maine, who served in Iraq as a 'geo-spatial analyst.'" It probably did not take an incredible amount of police work to narrow down the possibilities.
Still—great work by the NYPD to prove Essam's point: you are all being watched. Poke humor at the ALL SEEING GOVERNMENT EYE, and it will make you pay. IT KNOWS ALL. In the Animal interview, author Matt Harvey noted, "He agrees that there is an inherent irony in his spoofs: the very fact that the NYPD (which claims to be strongly pursuing him with their 'counter terrorism squad') hasn't caught him yet, is proof that we have not reached a state of Orwellian control."
Ah.... cancel that.
[Photo via Animal]
Still no statement by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn about whether the New York Police Department will ever put into active use a squadron of unmanned drones against its own citizens, much less about the First Amendment violations stemming from the NYPD's arrest of the street artist.
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