hrbrmstr's Journal: In NYC, you're not the only one watching your back...

The AP (via Yahoo! News) is running a story on the new police cameras in NYC.

[the cameras are] the first installment of a program to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million. Hundreds of additional cameras could follow if the city receives $81.5 million in federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of midtown with a surveillance "ring of steel" modeled after security measures in London's financial district.

Officials of the New York Police Department -- which considers itself at the forefront of counterterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- claim the money would be well-spent, especially since the revelations that al-Qaida members once cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions.

"We have every reason to believe New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we have to do what it takes to protect the city," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Except that all of the cameras in London did nothing to prevent the subway bombings, so I'm curious as to how these are going to make NYC residents (and visitors) any safer.

Perhaps the scariest quote is:

Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear because the cameras will be restricted to public areas.

Is *anyone* else getting tired of the "law-abiding citizen" references these days?

I suspect that the NYPD will have to produce a set of guidelines as to what behaviour you need to avoid in order to be considered a law-abiding citizen. I'm guessing that walking around in costume might get you confined for a while.

[sarcasm]But, law-abiding citizens really do not have1 any2 evidence3 of law-enforcement officials absusing surveillance cameras...[/sarcasm]

But I'm sure the Patriots of this New Order would be glad to see such measures in place everwhere so that we feel more secure.