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NARR: They look more like street lamps than what they really are: video surveillance cameras. Advocates say they catch crime as it's happening and can help find terrorists after an attack. Critics say they are dangerous threats to privacy, able to zoom in on what you're reading or look up a woman's skirt.
But one thing is certain: New York is now covered with security cameras that blend almost seamlessly into the urban landscape.
And there are about to be more. The law the city council passed on Wednesday is meant to respond to…
ACT: COMRIE (:07): … a recent rash of violent incidents regarding and involving the staff and patrons of city bars and nightclubs.
NARR: That's Councilman Leroy Comrie, speaking on Wednesday about the new law. The ordinance states that its inspiration is a young graduate student named Imette St. Guillen, who last year was allegedly kidnapped by a bouncer on her way out of a Soho club, and later raped and strangled to death.
But club owner David Rabin says the city's new law probably wouldn't have saved St. Guillen's life …
ACT RABIN: (:13): …that security guard since he was a worker there would have known where security cameras was and how to avoid it or how to shut it off.
NARR: Rabin is a co-owner of two large New York clubs - the Lotus and the Double
Seven -- and serves as the president of the New York Nightlife Association. He has no problem with security cameras, and says most clubs didn't oppose the city's measure, because most already use video cameras to protect themselves from liability lawsuits. Rabin says the new mandate was prompted by hyped up press coverage.
ACT: RABIN (:26): I think that the city council felt that in light of the slew of articles by the new york post last summer that they had to respond somehow and this was an easy fix for them. they found no opposition from us so it wasn't hard for them to get past us on this one, and it make the public feel that there is greater safety.
NARR: The New York Civil Liberties Union says the problem with the new law isn't only that it's not effective at stopping crime.
ACT: LIEBERMAN (:17) This mandate is the first government mandate that private entities actually engage in surveillance of either their customers or people who happen to pass by the lens of a highly sophisticated video camera and it sets off the alarm bells.
NARR: That's Donna Lieberman, the Executive Director of the NYCLU. She believes that there's no way to ensure that surveillance of private behavior doesn't end up on the internet, even though the law mandates fines for such leaks. And she's even more worried that…
ACT: LIEBERMAN (:26) The government doesn't just go to the clubs and say can we take a look at your tapes but requires that the clubs videotape what goes on outside the club, indeed on public property as well as private property no doubt, it's a real problem. It has a creeping 1984 feel to it, except 1984 was pretty tame compared with what's going on with the technology these days.
NARR: There are already thousands of cameras on New York streets. Police Chief Ray Kelly defends the cameras as vital tools for fighting terrorism and crime. This year, the New York Police Department plans to install more than 500 new cameras in so-called "high crime" areas. This is Sitara Nieves, Columbia Radio News.