NYC Mayor: Big Brother Surveillance a City Necessity
Pastor Dale Morgan
NYC Mayor: Big Brother Surveillance a City Necessity*
By JILL LAWLESS
The Associated Press
Monday, October 1, 2007; 8:16 PM
LONDON -- Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept
that they are under constant watch by video cameras, New York Mayor
Michael Bloomberg said Monday.
Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart Ken Livingstone,
said such measures as London's "ring of steel" _ a network of
closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center_ were a necessary
protection in a dangerous world.
"In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren't watching you all
the time, you are very naive," Bloomberg told reporters at London's City
Hall.
"We are under surveillance all the time" from cameras in shops and
office buildings, "and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus
and in every subway car," he added.
"The people of London not only support it, but if Ken Livingstone didn't
do it they would try to run him out of town on a rail. We live in a
dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras."
During his visit, Bloomberg was getting a demonstration of the ring of
steel, a system of cameras and road barriers introduced during the years
of Irish Republican Army bombings to protect London's central business
district.
London has one of the world's highest concentrations of surveillance
cameras. An estimated 4 million CCTV cameras operate in Britain, and
some civil liberties campaigners have warned the country is becoming a
"surveillance state."
New York has far fewer, but the number is growing. Authorities hope to
implement an $81.5 million version of the ring of steel for lower
Manhattan, featuring surveillance cameras as well as barriers that could
automatically block streets.
"It's ridiculous, people who object to using technology," Bloomberg said
during a meeting with the City's head of counterterrorism, Chief
Superintendent Alex Robertson.
The mayor said New York lagged behind London in the number of cameras on
trains and buses.
"We are way behind, and we really do have to catch up," Bloomberg said.
"There are some people who don't like cameras," he acknowledged. "But
the alternative is so much worse."
Bloomberg, on a European trip focusing on environmental issues, also
said he was confident of introducing a road-pricing scheme modeled on
London's traffic-busting congestion charge to New York.
The $16 toll on entering the city center by car was introduced by
Livingstone after he was elected in 2000 and has been credited with
cutting gridlock and increasing the number of bus and bicycle journeys.
Bloomberg must persuade both New York's city council and the state
legislature to back his plan, which calls for charging $8 to drive a car
into Manhattan south of 86th street on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
A commission is studying Bloomberg's plan and other ways to reduce the
city's traffic and is due to make a recommendation by the end of January.
The two mayors arrived at London's riverfront City Hall on Monday after
a ride on a new hybrid double-decker bus, another of Livingstone's green
initiatives.
Bloomberg said he was confident his toll plan _ he prefers the term
"congestion pricing" to London's "congestion charge" _ would be introduced.
"I'm very optimistic the assembly and the senate will pass it, the
governor will sign it. I just think there would be such a firestorm if
they didn't, because every day our children are breathing in the air,
every day our stores and business are suffering, and it is going to get
worse."