Security Cameras

Security cameras proliferate in Manhattan, pleasing police and disturbing civil libertarians

By TOM HAYS at Newsday

Associated Press WriterAugust 12, 2005, 11:03 AM EDT

NEW YORK -- Six could be seen peering out from a chain drug store on Broadway. One protruded awkwardly from the awning of a fast-food restaurant. A supersized, domed version hovered like a flying saucer outside Columbia University. All were surveillance cameras and _ to the dismay of civil libertarians and with the approval of law enforcement _ they've been multiplying at a dizzying rate all over Manhattan.

"As many as we find, we miss so many more," Alex Stone-Tharp, 21, said on a recent afternoon while combing the streets, clipboard in hand, counting cameras in the scorching heat.

A student at Sarah Lawrence, Stone-Tharp is among a dozen college interns enlisted by the New York Civil Liberties Union to bolster their side of a simmering debate over whether surveillance cameras wrongly encroach on privacy, or effectively combat crime and even terrorism _ as in the London bombings investigation, when the cameras were used to identify the bombers.

Full article at Newsday

LINKS:

Surveillance Camera Project at NYCLU
Report New York City : A Surveillance Camera Town By NYCLU