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Should US cities try a London-style camera network?
New York plans to install a permanent, extensive system for lower Manhattan by year's end.
By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 11, 2007 edition
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New York - The speed with which London's ubiquitous surveillance cameras helped identify would-be bombers has prompted calls for extensive closed-circuit television networks in the US.
In the first such public effort in the US, New York is planning to begin the installation of a similar, permanent system for lower Manhattan by year's end.
In the struggle against terrorism at home, its backers say CCTV is both a forensic tool and a deterrent to all but the most dedicated suicide bombers. Sophisticated imaging technology allows cameras to alert police to unattended packages, zoom in on objects hundreds of feet away, identify license plates, and "mine" archived footage for specific data.
Opponents contend that this very technology is overly intrusive and open to abuse, raising serious constitutional questions. They also note that surveillance cameras not only are helpless against suicide bombings, but also that perpetrators may use video records to try to glorify their acts.
The British system was developed in the 1970s and '80s with little public discussion, in response to attacks by the Irish Republican Army. By the 1990s, technology improvements made it a key tool in the security cordon around central London known as the "ring of steel."
But the US has a very different constitutional system, some experts say, one that requires vigorous public debate before the government wires cities with a similar network of live, roving electronic eyes.
"We haven't even begun to have that debate over here about what that means in terms of surrendering privacy," says Ronald Marks, senior fellow at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute. "[Closed-circuit television] is a security measure that is effective in identifying people, but I don't know how effective it ... is at stopping them."
Millions of private cameras already guard building entrances, chemical plants, and malls. Most police departments in big cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, use surveillance cameras in high-crime areas and to identify traffic scofflaws. Most of those recordings have to be downloaded so the images can be analyzed.
