September 10, 2004 | Chicago Not Learning UK Lessons

Using money from the Department of Homeland Security, Chicago plans to install a net of 2000 surveillance cameras monitored by 'smart' motion-sensing software, according to Debbie Howlett of the USA TODAY.

I wrote a story a while ago for In These Times about Washington, D.C. police plans to emulate London's 150,000 cameras.

Here's a couple of excerpts from that piece:

London has an estimated 150,000 public cameras, which it uses, in part, to levy an approximately $8 charge on all cars entering the city center. However, crime rates have gone up in England, despite the 2.5 million cameras nationwide.

...

Privacy groups say they are trying to prevent the government from revisiting the widespread surveillance abuses of the ’60s and ’70s as chronicled in the congressional Church Report, which disclosed that the FBI had a list of 26,000 people to be detained in the event of a national emergency.

Johnny Barnes, executive director of the Washington ACLU, worries just as much about the self-imposed censorship that cameras can create, especially in D.C. “We don’t know how many people won’t exercise their First Amendment rights because they are afraid of surveillance,” Barnes says.

The City Council, which held extensive hearings on the cameras in December, will return to the issue in coming months.

The ACLU argues that if camera surveillance takes hold in our nation’s capital, proponents of cameras will use it as a model for the rest of the country. Says Barnes: “We ran from a British-style system in 1776, and we should run from it now.”

Someone please explain to me why the Department of Homeland Security is funding this effort, but does not have enough money to put radiological screening devices at every port.

For my money, I'd prefer safety to surveillance.

Posted by Ryan Singel at September 10, 2004 12:10 PM