The ACLU is...
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Posted on 07/26/2005 5:29:05 AM PDT by Tumbleweed_Connection
The four would-be suicide bombers of the botched July 21 attacks in London have a big problem. They were caught on videotape. Their images have been broadcast in Britain and around the world, making their apprehension astronomically more likely than if they had escaped undetected.
For this, we have security cameras to thank. London has half a million of them. According to one estimate, a person wandering around London will be filmed 300 times in a day. The city is a pioneer of a trend toward video surveillance that is also sweeping the United States and provoking howls from civil libertarians whose internal clocks are set to make a reference to 1984 every 15 minutes or so. Given the choice, apparently, they would prefer not to have the video of the July 21 bombers, which is an indication of the suicidal otherworldliness of ACLU-style civil libertarianism.
Opponents of video cameras unroll various arguments about the cameras. They complain that the cameras are intrusive and a violation of privacy. But how is it possible to violate someone’s privacy in a park or a subway car? People have a right to privacy only where they have an expectation of privacy, and that is not in public places where things they do are susceptible to viewing by dozens of pairs of eyes. No one should expect pristine privacy while walking in a subway tunnel, let alone while he is running away after having attempted to kill and maim people.
If they can’t brandish the Fourth Amendment, civil libertarians get down to practical policing and claim that cameras don’t really do anything to prevent crime; they only occasionally help solve crime after the fact. Even if this were true, solving one terror attack alone — and therefore perhaps unraveling networks that would attack in the future — makes the cameras worth it.
Cameras won’t deter suicide bombers — what will? — but they can tamp down other criminal activity. Cameras in Britain are credited with discouraging the IRA bombing campaign in the 1990s. On a less serious front, San Francisco — one of many jurisdictions, including New York, Houston and New Jersey, that have cameras in their train systems — saw vandalism drastically decline on subway cars after the installation of surveillance cameras.
Some cities have turned to cameras in high-crime areas, mounting them to watch activities in parks and on dangerous streets. The Los Angeles Times reported in October 2004, “Earlier this year, police began monitoring seven cameras around MacArthur Park in the city’s Westlake district, watching in amazement as crime plummeted, gangs, drug dealers and pimps disappeared, and families with children began returning to the 40-acre expanse in one of the city’s poorest areas.” Chicago has used cameras to make drug busts in real time.
Then there is the last resort of civil libertarians. When no real harm can be demonstrated, they always discern a subtle “chilling effect.” “When citizens are being watched by the authorities,” says Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union, “they are more self-conscious and less freewheeling.” But urban areas, where the cameras are proliferating, are not notably bastions of inhibited behavior. City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald, who is nation’s foremost critic of the excesses of the ACLU, writes, “The only people whom public cameras inhibit are criminals; they liberate the law-abiding public.” When they move a camera out of a troubled neighborhood, Chicago police now get complaints from neighbors, who want pimps and drug dealers to be decidedly inhibited.
The priority of a certain class of civil libertarians is apparently to protect Americans from nonexistent threats to their liberty at the expense of protecting them from real threats to their safety. The New York Civil Liberties Union is considering a federal lawsuit over New York’s new policy of randomly searching the backpacks of subway passengers. Only if terrorists can get on mass-transit systems without any risk of their bags being searched or their images being recorded will they finally rest easy.
I bet if we told the ACLU that the cameras could be used to catch smokers, they would agree to their use.
Ann Coulter's take:
What's the difference between a camera on a street corner or a cop standing there?
None.
Both inhibit criminal behaviour.
you just HOPE that a perp that could have been caught on tape does THEM an injustice!
"The priority of a certain class of civil libertarians is apparently to protect Americans from nonexistent threats to their liberty at the expense of protecting them from real threats to their safety."
Ben Franklin still has it right, and this author has it dead wrong.
"Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
In the end, the ACLU and other groups are going to have to realize that certain populations need to be treated like the children they are, and kept under constant supervision for the safety of all concerned. If that means 24-hour camera surveillance in certain neighborhoods with a track record of crime and violence, so be it.
***... certain populations need to be treated like the children they are****
Ahhh! But you can not "discriminate" my friend!
That is a mortal sin to a liberal.
The ACLU is...
Click the Pic J
People have a right to privacy only where they have an expectation of privacy...
Rich Lowry is off his rocker here. The police state he is advocating would lead to a Minority Report atmosphere where instead of national ID cards, you just get videotaped everywhere you go. Police state alert.
How about this idea, ACLU. Those who consent to a search ride in the cars at the front of the train, and those who are offended by a search ride in the back cars. An empty buffer car separates them. In this way any explosion will occur in the cars occupied by those who value their unrestricted liberty above their right to have a reasonable expectation of safety. Will that be OK, ACLU? And which car will you choose?
The irony just kills me.
I've already predicted that they will be used for that.
Operation Law and Order, which started Tuesday, combines the department's version of a SWAT team with undercover narcotics officers to raid drug houses and clear loiterers in parts of the city where drug sales, shootings and killings are most frequent.
Once the corners are clear, members of the Emergency Task Force will continue to patrol the area wearing black battle-dress uniforms and carrying military-style assault rifles. Alexander said Thursday that the appearance of the SWAT-style equipment sends an appropriate message to street thugs.
(Welcom to Bill Johnson's - Rochester, NY Read here)
They tried the camera thing a few years back
This is going to end badly.
Good. Because the mere smelling of cigarette smoke can lead to instant death and dismemberment.
That's what I hear anyway.
Ping
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