Related: Brookline Draws Line on the Police State
"Brookline may ax town cameras; Project sparked privacy concerns" by Richard Thompson, Globe Correspondent | June 4, 2009
The town of Brookline appears likely to shut down the dozen surveillance cameras it installed along major intersections just two months ago.
I noticed them in the center of town for the first time the other day.
Town Meeting members rejected the project Tuesday, calling for an end to the controversial practice that has drawn the ire of some privacy rights advocates.
Under the resolution passed Tuesday night, Town Meeting members urged the Board of Selectmen to immediately end the one-year trial period that was enacted in January. The selectmen will probably go along, one key member said.
"I'm suspecting that we'll pull the plug on it," said Nancy Daly, chairwoman of the selectmen, adding that the pilot program was set in motion provided that Town Meeting could have its say on the matter this spring.
Brookline was among nine communities in the Boston area that received the cameras last year as part of a $4.6 million federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security, an effort aimed at aiding in evacuation planning coordinated through the Boston mayor's Office of Emergency Preparedness.
The rejection is unusual, but not unprecedented. In February, the Cambridge City Council halted the activation of eight surveillance cameras in the city out of concern for possible invasions of privacy.
Also see: No Candid Camera in Cambridge
Similar grants have doled out tens of millions of dollars in recent years for placing surveillance cameras across the country, from Pittsburgh to St. Paul, spurring concerns from the American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy advocates that the cameras usher in a "surveillance society," where every aspect of private life is monitored and recorded.
Oh, thank you, false flag lie of 9/11!
If it wasn't that it would have been something else!!!
Brookline Police Chief Daniel C. O'Leary, who has maintained that the cameras are necessary to monitor traffic and provide real-time images that could help investigate crime, said the equipment is not meant to keep tabs on residents.
Yeah, well, we were TOLD it was needed for TERRORISTS, not THIS!!!!
"I'm disappointed it turned out that way," O'Leary said after the vote. "A lot of people, I think, looked at it on a philosophical basis, not as a public safety tool."
Yeah, I'M DISAPPOINTED things have turned out the way they have, too, sig heil!
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