Bloomberg: You Will Be Watched

LONDON — Saying that “we live in a dangerous world” and people “want to have security cameras,” Mayor Bloomberg is making the case that New Yorkers need to get used to being watched.“I do think that in this day and age, if you think that cameras aren’t watching you, you are very naïve,” he said during an appearance at London’s riverfront City Hall with the city’s mayor, Ken Livingstone.Mr. Bloomberg went on to say that “we are under surveillance all the time,” and noted that the first thing the police department does when trying to solve a crime is collect surveillance footage from nearby stores and buildings.“The people of London, I think not only support it, if Ken Livingstone didn’t do it, they would try to ride him out of town,” Mr. Bloomberg said. Mr. Bloomberg was in town to talk to Mr. Livingstone about London’s system of charging drivers to get into the center of the city, a scheme he is trying to implement in New York. He was also here to see London’s so-called Ring of Steel, the web of security cameras monitoring traffic in the city’s financial center.During a demonstration of the surveillance control room in a police precinct in London’s “square mile,” which has a camera on every corner, Mr. Bloomberg said New York is “way behind” when it comes to cameras on subways and buses. He said the Metropolitan Transportation Authority “just has to get us this kind of technology.”A spokesman for the MTA could not immediately say how many security cameras exist in the subway system, but the agency does have a contract valued at more than $200 million with Lockheed Martin to install thousands of cameras. According to published reports, there are already more than 2,000 cameras in city subway stations.“It’s just ridiculous,” Mr. Bloomberg said as a London officer pulled up an image of the mayor’s car from when it pulled into the neighborhood less than an hour earlier. “People who object to using technology — we have to pay either police officers or technology, and using a combination really lets you be much more efficient.”The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Donna Lieberman, sees things differently. In a telephone interview yesterday, Ms. Lieberman said City Hall has not “exposed its surveillance programs to the sunlight.”She said that while the NYCLU is not opposed to technology, that government has an obligation to ensure that safeguards are put in place when it comes to surveillance.She added: “If you can’t walk for three blocks in Manhattan without it being captured on camera, then we have to worry about being turned into a Big Brother society or whether we’re a free society that we all cherish.”Through the New York Police Department, Mr. Bloomberg by 2009 plans to implement an $81.5 million version of the Ring of Steel in Lower Manhattan to monitor license plates and activity below Canal Street. A police department spokesman, Paul Browne, said yesterday that the initial funding for that effort has been approved by the City Council.The mayor’s proposal to charge cars to travel in certain sections of Manhattan also hinges on the installation of hundreds of cameras in the proposed congestion zone — an issue that opponents have raised as a serious civil liberties concern.Yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said cameras are “just the way of the world.”“If you’re worried about the security issue, you’ve already given that away once you buy a car and register it and put a license plate on the back,” he said.Mr. Livingstone said that not once in his seven years in office has he received a letter complaining about the cameras that blanket London.An Associated Press report earlier this year said London has 6,000 cameras monitoring its underground subway system and another 1,800 cameras in train stations. It also noted that Britain has 4.2 million cameras, or about one for every 14 people.The chief superintendent and head of counterterrorism for the City of London Police, Alex Robertson, said a key to the city’s camera system, which was installed after a rash of Irish Republican Army bombings more than 10 years ago, is public trust. He said the public must trust that the footage is not there for “evil” purposes or to embarrass, but instead to ensure safety.The stop in London, where Mr. Bloomberg owns a home, was the last stop on his four-day European tour, during which he focused on enhancing cooperation with global cities and the possibility of an economic downturn.

Bloomberg: You Will Be Watched

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