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Sarkozy to Step Up TV Surveillance in Paris Amid Terror Concern By Gabriele Parussini 8/18/05 |
Aug. 17 — About 20,000
closed circuit cameras keep an eye on Parisians, compared with half a million that monitor Londoners. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy wants to narrow that gap.
While police cameras identified the four bombers who killed 52 people in London's July 7 attacks, Sarkozy said Paris needs similar video surveillance coverage to fight terrorists. Sarkozy plans to present a bill to legislators as soon as September to add more
closed circuit surveillance cameras in the French capital.
"We have decided that it was necessary to increase
video surveillance, speed up our know-how of phone tapping and data storage," Sarkozy said a day after the London bombings.
The proposal reflects increased pressure on European governments to step up security measures after the attacks in London, where suicide bombers blew up passengers on three subway trains and a bus.
The police only monitor 330 of Paris’s
closed circuit cameras; the rest are privately maintained. A police spokesman, who asked not to be named, declined to say how many more TVs might be added in Paris under Sarkozy's plan.
London has one
security camera for every 14 people, according to research group Urbaneye. Londoners are likely to be caught on camera as many as 300 times a day, according to the Web site of human rights group Liberty. Britain has more than 4 million such cameras, making it the most-watched country in the world, according to Liberty.
London has one
surveillance cameras in Paris have raised concerns among some civil liberties groups that see it as an invasion of privacy.
"In a city like London, watched over by thousands of cameras, no-one has been able to prevent terrorist attacks," said Jean-Pierre Petit, a founding member of Souriez, Vous Etes Filmes, or Smile, You're Being Filmed, a Paris-based association that fights the use of
cameras for surveillance.
Increased surveillance may be inevitable. French Transport Minister Dominique Perben said on Aug. 4 the airport authority plans to triple the number of
surveillance cameras at Paris airports. The Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports have about 2,000 cameras.
Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer, or SNCF, the public monopoly that manages French railways and some of the Paris underground trains, has equipped 130 of the 230 stations in the Paris region with
closed circuit TV's, said a spokesman.
SNCF boosted security after a July 1995 bomb attack at the Saint Michel underground station in Paris's central Latin Quarter left eight people dead and 100 injured.
"Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens, or RATP, the public company that manages the French capital's public transport, will install
6,500 security cameras in the Paris metro by 2007," said Alain Caire, Head of Security. Source: bloomberg.com |
