Surveillance Cameras Win Broad Support

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians, but credited in London with helping to catch a variety of perpetrators since the early 1990s.

Given the chief arguments, pro and con — a way to help solve crimes vs. too much of a government intrusion on privacy — it isn't close: 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it.

Read the whole article.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism

20 Comments
Posted July 30, 2007 at 8:58 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Brian from T19 wrote:

I used to find it irritating and now I find it sad that the American sheeple are willing to give up their freedoms for a false sense of security.  Benjamin Franklin said it best: They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

July 30, 9:12 am | [comment link]
2. Sherri wrote:

For once, you and I are in complete agreement, Brian. :-(

July 30, 10:23 am | [comment link]
3. justinmartyr wrote:

I couldn’t agree more!

July 30, 2:35 pm | [comment link]
4. Roland wrote:

I don’t understand why anyone thinks he should have a right to privacy when he is in a public place. If you want privacy, go home!

July 30, 4:10 pm | [comment link]
5. Sherri wrote:

When there’s no privacy in public, how long will there be privacy at home? Don’t answer. The wire tapping has already begun.

July 30, 5:17 pm | [comment link]
6. Roland wrote:

When the “right to privacy” holds sway in public places, there will no longer be a basis for prohibiting public indecency.

I would also add that this so-called right to privacy (it appears nowhere in the Constitution) is the legal basis of Roe v. Wade.

July 30, 5:25 pm | [comment link]
7. justinmartyr wrote:

When the “right to privacy” holds sway in public places, there will no longer be a basis for prohibiting public indecency.

Ahh, “indecency”. The public expression of one person will always be
indecent or offensive to another. Christ died partly because he said
indecent things about the Roman Government. Tiananmen square was a protest that offended the decencies of China.

It’s gratifying, the squashing of the freedoms of another on the charges of indecency—until it is one’s own freedoms that are being squashed. Cursing is indecent to most of us. But even more sinful would be blasphemy. And yet we defend the rights of other religions to blaspheme our most sacred beliefs. We know that once we stop others from expressing themselves on the basis of indecency, we are just one step from being stopped ourselves. Beware, what ye sow ye shall reap.

The right to freedom of expression is purposeless if it defends only
the 99% of decent, popular conversation. No, it must defend the offensive diatribe of the minority or nothing at all.

July 30, 5:49 pm | [comment link]
8. Roland wrote:

I guess this is one of those issues that separates us real conservatives from libertarians.

A fundamentalist stance on freedom of expression is absurd. In order to maintain it, you must permit such varieties of “expression” as incitement to riot, conspiracy to commit a felony, and fraud.

Accepting restraints on freedom is the price of civilization. It is the job of the political process to find the right balance of freedom and restraint. The anarchist position (zero restraint) is just as evil as the totalitarian position (zero freedom).

There are many things happening in this country today that endanger our freedom. Surveillance cameras are not one of them.

July 30, 6:33 pm | [comment link]
9. Brian from T19 wrote:

There are many things happening in this country today that endanger our freedom. Surveillance cameras are not one of them.

Here is an article on the UK Surveillance System and its help fighting terrorists:

Surveillance Cameras and the Attempted London Attacks

The June 2007 attempted terror attacks in Britain have reignited discussions of surveillance cameras and their role in the effort to prevent terrorism. This is especially true because Britain has constructed the world’s largest system of video surveillance cameras. Some have even suggested that the incident shows the need for other countries to follow Britain’s lead on cameras. But:

  * This week’s terrorists were plainly not deterred by London’s extensive camera systems. The attacks were fortunately botched, but not for reasons that had anything to do with surveillance cameras. In London it was human observation and common-sense that appears to have thwarted the attack. In Glasgow, it was physical security – airport barriers – that prevented the attack from succeeding.

  * We don’t know all the facts yet about the investigation of the attempted attacks and how it is being conducted – and our only source for facts about the investigation is the police, who may have an incentive to tout certain technologies they have spent billions on. However, even if it is true that CCTV helped identify the bombers after the fact, that still does not end the matter.

  * The key question to ask is not, “do cameras provide any potential benefit in the fight against terrorism.” The questions are, “do cameras provide enough benefit to justify their cost?” and “what are those costs?”

  * The UK spends approximately 20 percent of its criminal justice budget on video surveillance. The right question to ask is: could Britons have gotten greater security benefits if that huge sum of money had been spent on more effective strategies?

  * The costs of pervasive public video surveillance include the potential for the tracking of innocent people, voyeurism and other abuses, and a tremendous chilling effect on our public life. If terrorist attacks are allowed to become justifications for pervasive surveillance, the day will come when we will find ourselves living in an alien society, and regret not asking tougher questions about these technologies, their costs, and their supposed benefits.

  * Overall, video surveillance is a prime example of an ineffective technology. Londoners are under greater surveillance than anyone else in the democratic world. But everyone from academic criminologists to the British Home Office has studied the impact of that surveillance, and has been unable to find any impact on the crime rate. At best, it has a displacement effect – moving crimes from where the cameras are to where they are not.

  * One can construct scenarios or story lines for any technology in which that technology saves the day and prevents atrocities, but what we need to do is figure out what is likely to be effective in saving lives.

  * The fact is, video surveillance is a failed technology that only diverts resources from law enforcement or anti-terrorism measures that will be more effective. London is notorious as a city in which subway crime, for example, is captured on video, but there are insufficient police officers to follow up.

  * Cameras will obviously not deter suicide bombers who are not worried about being identified in the course of the investigation that follows – and may, since the purpose of a terrorist attack is to terrorize and to gain publicity, actually attract them since the cameras create video footage for latter use on television.

  * Experience has already shown that perpetrators who, unlike suicide bombers, are concerned with being caught after the fact, will find ways to make sure that the cameras are no help toward that end – whether by disabling the cameras or hiding in crowds or obscuring or disguising their appearance with simple steps like a hat pulled down over their faces or simply moving their activities to places where there are no cameras.

  * Ultimately, boundless human ingenuity will always defeat technological solutions such as cameras. Rather than turning into a surveillance society, we have no choice but to rely upon old fashioned intelligence and investigatory techniques (the only thing that has ever succeeded in actually stopping an attack), as well as attacking the root causes of terrorism and improving our ability to respond to an attack.

More information about video surveillance can be found on the Web site at: http://www.aclu.org/cameras.

July 30, 8:34 pm | [comment link]
10. Roland wrote:

Brian - Now you’re talking the language of costs and benefits, rather than ideology. These are much more persuasive arguments.

July 30, 8:44 pm | [comment link]
11. Br. Michael wrote:

These cameras are the things of totalitarian societies.  One does have a right to some level of privacy in public space.

July 30, 8:50 pm | [comment link]
12. Roland wrote:

I’m sure the criminals who 1) mugged me and 2) broke into my car and were never caught enjoyed their privacy very much!

July 30, 9:16 pm | [comment link]
13. justinmartyr wrote:

Now you’re talking the language of costs and benefits, rather than
ideology. These are much more persuasive arguments.

Ah, Roland, your true nature comes out now. I guess that’s the difference between us moralists and you utilitarians. We’re just so
suffocatingly absolutist. All goods and bads, and no in-betweens. You’re a utilitarian. A little bad’s okay, as long as it brings about a lot of good. You and Caiaphas would have hit it off swimmingly: “It is good that one man should die for the people,” and all that.

Someday we are going to give an account for every fetus, child, man or woman we killed, enslaved, or whose freedom we stole in our maniacal quest to turn the world into a Garden of Eden

July 30, 9:50 pm | [comment link]
14. justinmartyr wrote:

I’m sorry to hear about your car theft and mugging. That would definitely explain your aversion to crime. I hope that the culprits are brought to justice. I’m sorry if my previous quote seemed facetious. From your last comment I can see that you’ve been carrying a load lately. Sincerely

July 30, 9:59 pm | [comment link]
15. Roland wrote:

I’m not a utilitarian, but I am a professional economist. We are talking here about public policy, not philosophy, so I feel free to wear my economist’s hat. (Philosophically, I’m an advocate of natural law. But surveillance does not violate human nature, so I don’t think it enters this debate.)

Someday we are going to give an account for every fetus, child, man or woman we killed, enslaved, or whose freedom we stole in our maniacal quest to turn the world into a Garden of Eden


True. But I’m not the one here who is trying to turn the world into the Garden of Eden. I’m just acknowledging the impact of the Fall and trying to contain it. That’s what government is for.

To borrow some terminology from H. Richard Niebuhr (“Christ and Culture in Paradox”), our goal as human beings is regeneration. The state has no role to play in our regeneration. The state’s role is, rather, prevention of degeneration, a less exalted role, but one that can facilitate our pursuit of regeneration.

And, as I said before, the “right to privacy” provides the legal basis on which “abortion rights” are founded in this country.

July 30, 10:22 pm | [comment link]
16. Brian from T19 wrote:

Off topic but I have a question.  Justin used the word ‘facetious’.  I had always heard that this is the only word in the English language that uses allm of the vowels in order (also ‘facetiously’ I suppose).  Someone on this site mentioned that there was actually a second but never revealed it.  Does anyone know what it is?

July 30, 10:40 pm | [comment link]
17. Brian from T19 wrote:

Well, I just found the other one at this quiz site:

http://www.quepolandia.com/site/article.asp?21

You can visit if you want the answer!

July 30, 10:52 pm | [comment link]
18. Larry Morse wrote:

The problem with the cameras starts with their subtility and their impersonality. We would feel differently if there were an actual man standing on a box on every street corner. If there were, we would know where to bring an objection. But the camera is virtually invisible, and no one knows who receives its images or what is being done with them.
It is easy therefore to see the cameras as harmless.

  Yet obviously their potential for grave harm is substantial because we have no access to the people behind the cameras.Moreover, the cameras can do much more than just watch. They can also listen and we would never know. Again, the principle established is capable of dreadful extensions, such a putting cameras in all school hallways and classrooms so that troublemaking will be prevented and teachers protected. (I have had some classes in which I would almost have opted for the camera.) Is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of freedom?  LM

July 31, 11:43 am | [comment link]
19. Sherri wrote:

But the camera is virtually invisible, and no one knows who receives its images or what is being done with them.

Thanks for putting it in these terms, LM. It is chilling to think of and naive to assume that such cameras and what they record will always be in the “right” hands and always used for “right” purposes.

July 31, 3:08 pm | [comment link]
20. Reactionary wrote:

Sherri,

Along those lines, it is going to be amusing to see Republicans contemplating the PATRIOT Act in the hands of President Hillary Clinton.  So for all who welcome government surveillance of their activities in public, be careful what you wish for.

July 31, 5:12 pm | [comment link]
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