Comments on: Big Brother Coming To New York City

By: bepibaxisucn

bepibaxisucn — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 15:15:15 +0000

bepibaxisucn…

nice post…

By: Surveillance Cameras for NYC « Blunt Object

Surveillance Cameras for NYC « Blunt Object — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:31:56 +0000

[...] Big Brother Coming to New York City (The Liberty Papers) [...]

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 20:19:07 +0000

Gosh, I can’t think of anything that would make me feel safer than to be able to “retrace” the steps of a suicide bomber after he blows up. Maybe we could all install cameras in our homes so every step can be retraced no matter where we are. Then the terrorist friends could be watched as well.

Hey, maybe we could wiretap every phone in New York also. Then we could listen to what a terrorist said before an attack (because the phonecall would be on camera too). This is gonna be great.

George Orwell would be so proud!

By: UCrawford

UCrawford — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 14:26:35 +0000

Frankly, I think that the idea of crime prevention is highly overrated and usually kind of ridiculous. 9/11 happened because one terrorist group (al-Qaeda) had more or less unlimited planning time, a safe haven to operate from, and not a little dumb luck in falling through some cracks in our intelligence/law enforcement communities (most of which the terrorists weren’t even trying to exploit). The idea that all terrorist attacks will be stopped by creating systems to hold people accountable is wishful thinking at best…terror attacks will still take place because the nature of terrorism means that they’ll always have the initiative, and a lot of terrorists don’t think or care about the repercussions. There’s nothing that we can do to change that, no matter how many security cameras we install or how severe we make the Patriot Act…and believing otherwise is just wishful thinking at best.

That said, I’m actually okay with the security cameras, since they’ve actually shown that they can be effective in catching criminals after the fact and aiding in their prosecution. The British authorities were able to grab the terrorist planners so quickly because of the cameras, the cameras have proven themselves effective in catching perpetrators of other crimes as well (they helped catch and convict two rapists in the town I lived in in England), and I think that the argument against them on the grounds that we have an expectation to privacy in public arenas is fairly laughable. Having a camera on every corner isn’t really different than having a cop on every corner…in fact, I’d argue that it’s better since video evidence would be more reliable than eyewitness testimony, you don’t have to pay a camera a salary/health care/pension/disability/death benefits, and the video cameras can be just as effective at videotaping police abuses as any criminal acts that we may or may not commit as private citizens.

So as long as the government is limiting the cameras to public areas and isn’t arguing they should be forcibly placed in our private homes and businesses (or restrooms), I don’t really see a detriment to having them…at least not more of a detriment than we have under the current system where the police and criminals can often operate untaped and unchecked.

By: Ardie

Ardie — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:53:14 +0000

The real criminals and terrorists are in the board rooms of the corporations who run the American corporatist police state. Making the taxpayers pay for a security system that would have been of no use during 9/11 seems hardly worth the price in terms of our right to be free from unwarranted surveillance.