Cameras looking at you, wherever you go.

That may be all right for Londoners (they have some 500,000 surveillance cameras) but not for me and my fellow residents in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This, at least, is what our City Council has unanimously decided, much to my relief.
The council did so after listening to repeated testimony, often eloquent, from ordinary citizens concerned about civil rights and privacy.

Before the council’s action, six powerful cameras had already been posted at various squares and other key sites around the city. They came unsolicited from the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency established by the late Bush administration, to protect people against terrorists.

It shocked me to discover that the cameras had been accepted, some four years ago, without any public discussion. This is so unlike my civic community, which prides itself on citizen involvement. Could our city manager have acted on such a vital matter without consulting the citizenry?

So the question was not whether the city should accept the cameras ─ they were already set in place. The issue now was whether they should be turned on.

Though, on this occasion, I write about my own city, the issue touches people living in other communities as well. One, Brookline, has already faced the question and, by a close vote of selectmen, has decided to give the cameras a one-year trial.

Boston, Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, Quincy, Revere and other cities and towns have also been offered surveillance cameras and some have accepted them. But all cities and towns have a stake in this important question, which concerns the use of public money and the welfare of citizens at large.

To my mind, activating the cameras amounts to yet another assault on our civil liberties. After suffering eight years of erosion of these rights by the Bush administration, we would be assenting to a further narrowing of our freedom.

In his inauguration speech Barack Obama said: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” I welcome that statement as a rejection of the Bush administration’s approach to the protection of the country.

Placing these cameras in public vantage points violates our privacy. It means allowing the federal and state governments to infringe on our freedom to walk city streets without the risk of our every move being recorded and preserved.

I feel special concern for the young people of our community. They are already in danger of growing up thinking it normal for America to be fortified on every front against supposed terrorists.

Among other things, they could well judge it normal that most public buildings (fortunately not yet my city hall) and many private ones require you to empty your pockets and pass through electronic sensors before entering. And, if they know about it at all, they are not surprised that the MBTA has some 500 cameras able to capture the comings and goings of passengers.

Will they believe us when we tell them that America did not used to be like that? It will sound like fantasy when we tell them we were never exposed to such devices, nor to announcements telling us to inform on others when we judge them at all suspicious-looking.

Until recent years we could walk into the state house and other public buildings without submitting to bothersome inspection. And, when walking downtown, we did not need to fear being photographed.

Young people will have trouble believing all this because our society, out of concern about terrorists, has chosen to sacrifice important liberties. They need to understand what is being sacrificed; then, perhaps, they will oppose further extensions of the fortress mentality.

The America we know and love stands in danger of being lost. Is the newly-conceived focus on security worth it?

In particular, one must be skeptical about the widespread use of surveillance cameras. Experience shows that citizens who engage in lawful political protest or other activity frequently suffer repression or arrest. The example of what police did in Boston and New York during the 2004 national party conventions should make us wary of cameras that record demonstrators’ faces.

The ways in which the FBI has often infringed upon the rights of people who have done nothing illegal should also serve to make us unwilling to have our citizens’ images entered into data banks. War protestors and others can find themselves under suspicion for years when they have done nothing wrong.

The views of members of the British House of Lords provide us Americans some of the reasons for being on guard. Lord Goodlad, the chair of an investigative committee, warns: “The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organizations risks undermining the longstanding traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy.”

Richard Griffin