Big Brother's Eyes Captured NYC Bomb Attempt

(May 6) -- Murky details continue to emerge about Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad, but one thing came into focus this week: Big Brother is alive and well.

And he is watching.

Since Saturday, media reports have pieced together Shahzad's movements over the past few months. Much of the narrative has come from video footage captured on security cameras. The images, coupled with other recent crimes caught on tape, reveal that mechanical eyes constantly oversee the country's public spaces.

The prevalence of security footage in the Shahzad case has reignited a debate over whether surveillance cameras are necessary precautions or infringements on privacy.

Video footage became a major player in Shahzad's story almost immediately after Saturday's attempted bombing. On Sunday, the New York Police Department released a security tape showing a white man they said might be a suspect taking off his shirt and "furtively" looking over his shoulder in the direction of the bomb-laden Nissan Pathfinder.

The police also released still images from surveillance videos showing the Pathfinder driving through Times Square in the minutes before it was reported to police.

After Shahzad's arrest, a law enforcement official suggested the video of the white man, who is no longer considered a suspect, may have convinced Shahzad that authorities were not on his tail.

Nearly two months ago, security cameras at a Pennsylvania fireworks store recorded Shahzad as he got out of his car in the parking lot and while he paid at the cash register for goods, including M-88 fireworks, that were found inside the Pathfinder on Saturday.

Shahzad's alleged crime is not the only one caught on video in New York City this year.

In March, NYPD security footage showing a man leaving a bar near Times Square shaking his fist in pain, and a video of the same man stealing a beer from a nearby convenience store, led police to arrest Mbarek Lafrem in the brutal beating of a woman at the bar. On Wednesday evening, four men were caught on tape shooting an 18-year-old to death at a convenience store in upper Manhattan.

In 2005, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced that the city would implement a new counterterrorism plan covering nearly two miles of lower Manhattan. The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative includes increased police patrols, license plate readers and 3,000 security cameras, coordinated at a central hub called the Lower Manhattan Security Coordination Center.

Last fall, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the initiative would be expanded to midtown Manhattan -- including Times Square -- with a $24 million grant from the federal government.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg and Kelly testified before Congress, asking for the money to complete the program in midtown, which Sen. Charles Schumer of New York estimated will require at least an additional $100 million. The midtown extension would add new technology to the equation, including "analytic software" that could identify suspicious behavior as it happened, like recognizing a backpack left on a street or a car driving around the block several times.

"This is a whole new area for us. It has a lot of promise in that regard. We're very enthusiastic about it," Kelly said, according to Fox News.

A 2005 New York Civil Liberties Union census of security cameras in an area of lower Manhattan and Harlem found 4,468 cameras -- up 443 percent from its last survey, in 1998. The subway system alone has 4,313 security cameras. However, nearly half of them are broken, a condition some blame for the escape of a man who knifed two others to death on the subway in March.

The American Civil Liberties Union is an outspoken opponent of widespread surveillance, saying it violates privacy for all and the First Amendment rights of peaceful protesters. Other critics, like security expert Bruce Schneier, say increased cameras don't improve safety and don't generally help solve crimes either.

"By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources," Schneier wrote in an article for CNN.

Police don't look at cameras until after a crime is committed. Even then, it's usually impossible to identify suspects (or police incorrectly identify suspects, as was the case on Sunday). Criminals wear hats, sunglasses and masks to hide themselves from footage, or they simply learn where the cameras are located and avoid them, Schneier wrote. They are expensive and impinge on personal privacy and civil liberties, and leave open the opportunity for police to misuse them, he says.

Schneier concludes that resources spent on cameras would be better spent on policing.

But if current trends continue, the money will be spent on Big Brother. And even if you don't see him ... he is watching you.