Had the terror suspects in London's Tube bombings chosen instead to wreak havoc in the US, it might have been weeks before the world knew what they looked like.
That is because the all-seeing network of 24-hour-a-day security cameras which blankets Britain, and which allowed police to quickly beam pictures of the suspects across the globe, simply doesn't exist in the US.
Though the London attacks have prompted calls for a similar kind of system, any bid to expand the fledgling US network of surveillance cameras could fall afoul of freedom and privacy guarantees in the US Constitution.
"The ethos we have in this country is that government leaves you alone unless it has good reason to suspect you of wrongdoing," said Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union. "Videotaping everything you do when you leave your apartment or house doesn't really qualify as leaving you alone."
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, some US jurisdictions have improved their rudimentary closed-circuit TV (CCTV) systems, branded by opponents as "spy" cameras.
"They are pretty scarce, as far as law enforcement CCTV is concerned. There are, of course, a lot of private CCTV networks," said Cedric Laurant, a policy analyst with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
Chicago has around 1,200 cameras, there are more than 200 in Baltimore and there are 20 to 25 police cameras in Washington, as well as a network in Metro subway stations, trains and buses, according to EPIC.
TIT-FOR-TAT: The arrest of Filipinos that Manila said were in China as part of a scholarship program follows the Philippines’ detention of at least a dozen Chinese The Philippines yesterday expressed alarm over the arrest of three Filipinos in China on suspicion of espionage, saying they were ordinary citizens and the arrests could be retaliation for Manila’s crackdown against alleged Chinese spies. Chinese authorities arrested the Filipinos and accused them of working for the Philippine National Security Council to gather classified information on its military, the state-run China Daily reported earlier this week, citing state security officials. It said the three had confessed to the crime. The National Security Council disputed Beijing’s accusations, saying the three were former recipients of a government scholarship program created under an agreement between the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
Sitting around a wrestling ring, churchgoers roared as local hero Billy O’Keeffe body-slammed a fighter named Disciple. Beneath stained-glass windows, they whooped and cheered as burly, tattooed wresters tumbled into the aisle during a six-man tag-team battle. This is Wrestling Church, which brings blood, sweat and tears — mostly sweat — to St Peter’s Anglican church in the northern England town of Shipley. It is the creation of Gareth Thompson, a charismatic 37-year-old who said he was saved by pro wrestling and Jesus — and wants others to have the same experience. The outsized characters and scripted morality battles of pro wrestling fit
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
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