It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong - Andrew P. Napolitano [56]
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Currently, cameras are being installed throughout Midtown Manhattan. In response to the attempted Times Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad on May 1st 2010, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg flew to London to take a look at its surveillance camera system, or the “Ring of Steel.” The “Ring of Steel” is composed of five hundred thousand cameras capturing an individual’s identity (within London) an average of three hundred times a day. Mayor Bloomberg is now hoping to duplicate this Orwellian system in New York and install thousands of cameras in Midtown Manhattan by the end of 2011.1 However, Mayor Bloomberg appears unsure as to whether this gross invasion of your privacy would work. He stated, “It’s not clear that they would have helped in Times Square. Other than if the perpetrator knew there were cameras, he might not have tried to come into Times Square.” Despite his uncertainty of success, Mayor Bloomberg and other government officials continuously attempt to convince you these cameras and license-plate readers are there to combat terrorism and protect your safety. Unfortunately, the reality is the cameras act as a government-sanctioned intrusion on your natural right to privacy: Your right to be left alone.
But do these cameras make us safer, or do they only make us feel safer, and lead us to believe that at least the government is doing something; or are they just another sacrifice of a fundamental liberty at the altar of government expansion? And if we feel safer, but are not actually safer, won’t that false sense of security (thinking that the government is protecting us when it is not) make us less safe? As previously described, when the crackpot Faisal Shahzad parked a bomb-filled SUV in the midst of Times Square, in the heart of New York City on Saturday evening, May 1st 2010, he unwittingly illustrated what little effect these cameras have. Not only did the local cameras fail to deter Shahzad from attempting to murder thousands of individuals; they also failed to identify him. In fact, Shahzad was on a plane at JFK Airport, an hour travel time from Times Square, before the police caught him. Clearly, the cameras in place played no role in preventing an attack. It is impossible for the police to monitor these thousands of cameras in real time and thereby thwart crime. The best they can hope to do is to review a tape after a crime has occurred and maybe get a lead on a suspect. That is not prevention or safety.
Fortunately, other governors in our nation are opening their eyes to individuals’ calls for privacy. On July 15th 2010, Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona let state contracts expire for thirty-six fixed cameras and forty vans installed with cameras. The dismantling of the cameras and vans began the next day. Brewer’s predecessor and the current Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, instituted these devices in September 2008. Behind the guise of advocating road safety, then Governor Napolitano believed the fixed and mobile cameras could generate up to $90 million in revenues to the state in the first year. In order to achieve such revenues, the cameras snapped photos of individuals traveling more than eleven miles per hour over the speed limit and then issued tickets for $181.2 However, $90 million of revenue was never reached because the payment rate on the tickets was only 26 percent.3 The refusal of folks in Arizona to pay the tickets issued by the government, and the subsequent dismantling and removal of the cameras and vans, is a testament to the power of individuals standing up for their rights—specifically, the right to privacy.
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Constitutional Guarantees
The United States Constitution does not expressly state a right to privacy. While numerous historians speculate and propose reasons as to why the Founders did not articulate this right in the text, the most telling reason may be the use of the word privacy in eighteenth-century America. In fact, a search of Thomas Jefferson’s sixteen thousand writings