Mayor Daley wants security cameras at bars

"Mayor Richard Daley wants to require bars open until 4 a.m. to install security cameras that can identify people entering and leaving the building. Other businesses open longer than 12 hours a day, including convenience stores, eventually would have to do the same."

"There is no reason to mandate all of those cameras unless you one day see them being linked up to the city's 911 system," says Ed Yohnka of the Illinois American Civil Liberties Union. "We have perhaps reached that moment of critical mass when people ... want to have a dialogue about how much of this is appropriate."

I say none of it is appropriate. Not one damn camera. It's one thing to lie about needing them on city intersections to promote traffic safety, when in reality, they're just new ways to enhance city revenues, but it's a whole different can of worns to mandate businesses to install cameras. This is getting crazy, and getting little opposition outside the traditional civil liberties groups. The public in general, just doesn't seem to give a damn. I'm glad I don't live in Chicago, or any other city mentioned in the article.

The story also contains one of my most hated phrases; "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?". People who say that just don't get it. People like that don't believe in a free society (or one that pretends to be), because being under surviellence wherever you go, for whatever reason, means you're not the least bit free. When are people going to grasp the simple fact that cameras don't stop a damn thing. Nothing. The clear evidence of that can be viewed on any American news broadcast. Despite the claims of security and safety, it's all bullshit. Cameras have been in banks and other businesses for decades, and yet they still get robbed, right in front of the cameras. At most, all they ever do is make it a little easier for the cops, after a crime has been committed. And the ones aimed at traffic, are only there to raise money, without having to pay a cop to sit an watch. Not one damn camera's going to "make you safe".