The thief in the night...

I have a healthy cynicism when it comes to government. We’re lucky in this country because we live in a free society but, each day in very subtle ways all around us hard-won civil liberties are being sacrificed under the guise of making us safer...

More than 100 surveillance cameras have been quietly filming Brooklyn subway stations over the past two weeks, according to a state legislator who used MTA funds to place them in his district.

Notice how it’s being done quietly, no signs letting you know. Doesn’t make you any less likely from being a victim of a crime, just means they’ll be able to show it on a Fox special some day.

Here’s the capper I read about in the paper today, this is absolutely chilling...

Locations for cameras have not yet been finalized but areas likely to be targeted for surveillance include Manhattan’s Herald Square, Times Square and 125th Street in Harlem as well as busy thoroughfares in the city’s other boroughs.

The primary goal of the program would be to drive down crimes such as assaults and robberies, a police source said, adding that extra scrutiny in high-profile areas could also be a deterrence to terrorism.

“The plan to install 400 surveillance cameras around the city has all the earmarks of Big Brother and puts us even closer to becoming an all-out surveillance society,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“Video surveillance is tempting as a quick fix to all our problems, but it isn’t,” she said. “As a society we want to prevent crime and that can be better done by officers on the street, not with cameras.”

And of course as a follow up there’s this article:

Big Brother is not new to the Big Apple - where housing developments alone boast about 3,000 of the city’s 3,200 public cameras - but the news has civil-liberties activists fearing the possibility of privacy infringement.

Public housing developments aren’t any safer because of cameras. The people who are going to commit crime aren’t going to let a little thing like being caught on camera stop them (there’s this little thing called a mask dumb asses). No, the people who do play by the rules just had their life intruded upon yet again - 1984 is coming, just a little bit late and a little at a time.