Stop Whining About Privacy, Bloomberg Says

Posted on Mar 23, 2013

jonathan mcintosh (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cameras record your every step on a corner in Manhattan’s Financial District.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks your concerns about privacy in a world of city- and drone-mounted surveillance cameras are unimportant. His advice to radio audiences Friday morning? “Get used to it!”

Bloomberg’s tough-guy, fatalistic attitude is well and fine for a man with $27 billion. He can buy all the privacy he wants. But you can’t. And he doesn’t care.

“You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, ther’ll be cameras everyplace ... whether you like it or not,” Bloomberg said.

“The argument against using automation is just this craziness that ‘Oh, it’s Big Brother,’ ” he continued. “Get used to it!”

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

NY Daily News:

The New York Civil Liberties Union has documented nearly 2,400 surveillance cameras fixed on public spaces in Manhattan alone. Many are operated by the police, others by poroperty owners.

In Lower Manhattan, an initiative developed after 9/11 known as the “Ring of Steel” integrates the NYPD’s cameras with those of banks and other institutions.

But in the future, the cameras won’t just be planted on buildings and utility poles. Some of them will be able to fly, the mayor pointed out.

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