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Electronic Eyes Are Following You By Mark Wiebe 8/29/05 |
If you leave your home today, if you buy gasoline, use an ATM or shop for groceries, remember this: You are not alone. The chances are good that, at some point, a
security camera will be watching you.
Surveillance cameras track you in government buildings and shopping malls, in banks, parking lots and on college campuses. Even driving in your car, you can be under the watch of Kansas City Scout, the traffic-management system that trains 83 cameras on area highways.
Now, with little fanfare,
security cameras are taking aim at other public spaces in the Kansas City area. Area residents soon can expect more
security cameras to watch them, as cities and law enforcement, often prodded by outlays from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, turn to high-tech means of surveillance.
In a society that values openness and freedom, not everyone embraces that push for an omnipresent eye. Civil libertarians argue we should not rush to install
surveillance cameras without first debating their use.
“As a society, we want to think very hard about people’s privacy and whether we want a situation where our lives are an open book to the government,” said Adam Schwartz, staff Attorney for the
American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
The day has yet to arrive when Kansas Citians are watched as much as Londoners, whose city’s
500,000 security cameras are estimated to capture each person’s image 300 times a day, or Chicagoans, whose city is installing more than
2,000 security cameras in public spaces. Nonetheless, the move to monitor is on.
The Mid-America Regional Council, using $185,000 drawn from Federal Security Grants, is working to establish an area wide plan for
portable surveillance cameras. Three of the area’s largest cities — Kansas City, Overland Park and Kansas City, Kan. — have introduced cameras in public places or plan to do so.
Those who will implement the systems insist the
surveillance cameras will not be used for anything other than monitoring criminal or, potentially, terrorist activity.
Source: kansascity.com |
