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Oct 1, 2007 1:19 pm US/Eastern
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Bloomberg: Get Used To Surveillance In Big Cities
LONDON (AP) ―
Residents of big cities like New York and London must accept that they are under constant watch by video cameras, and opposition to the use of high-tech surveillance to catch criminals and terrorists is ridiculous, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.
Bloomberg, holding talks with his London counterpart, Ken Livingstone, said measures such as London's "ring of steel" -- a network of closed-circuit cameras that monitors the city center-- were a necessary protection in a dangerous world.
"In this day and age, if you think that cameras aren't watching you all the time, you are very naive," Bloomberg told reporters at London's City Hall.
"We are under surveillance all the time" from cameras in shops and office buildings, "and in London they have multiple cameras on every bus and in every subway car," he added.
"We live in a dangerous world, and people want to have security cameras."
Bloomberg visited a London police station to view the ring of steel, a system of cameras and road barriers introduced after Irish Republican Army bombings in the 1990s to protect the city's central business district.
The New York mayor watched cars driving into the financial core on banks of screens at City of London police headquarters. Every vehicle entering the business district, known as the City, is photographed and has its license plate recorded by one of hundreds of cameras.
London has one of the world's highest concentrations of surveillance cameras. An estimated 4 million CCTV cameras operate in Britain, and some civil liberties campaigners have warned the country is becoming a "surveillance state."
New York has far fewer, but the number is growing. Authorities hope to implement a version of the ring of steel for lower Manhattan, featuring surveillance cameras as well as barriers that could automatically block streets.
"It's ridiculous, people who object to using technology," Bloomberg said during a meeting with the City's head of counterterrorism, Chief Superintendent Alex Robertson.
Bloomberg said New York lagged behind London in the number of cameras on trains and buses.
"We are way behind, and we really do have to catch up," he said.
"There are some people who don't like cameras," Bloomberg acknowledged, "but the alternative is so much worse."
Bloomberg, on a European trip focusing on environmental issues as well as security, also said he was confident of introducing a road-pricing scheme modeled on London's traffic-busting congestion charge to New York.
The toll on entering the city center by car was introduced by Livingstone in 2003 and has been credited with cutting traffic gridlock and increasing the number of bus and bicycle journeys.
Bloomberg must convince both New York's city council and the state legislature to back his plan, which calls for charging $8 to drive a car into Manhattan south of 86th Street on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
A commission is studying Bloomberg's plan and other ways to reduce the city's traffic and is due to make a recommendation by the end of January.
The two mayors arrived at London's riverfront City Hall on Monday after a ride on a new hybrid double-decker bus, another of Livingstone's green initiatives.
Bloomberg said he was confident his toll plan -- he prefers the term "congestion pricing" to London's "congestion charge" -- would be introduced.
"The bottom line is, this is a popular thing. We have to convince the state legislature," he said.
"I'm very optimistic the assembly and the senate will pass it, the governor will sign it. I just think there would be such a firestorm if they didn't, because every day our children are breathing in the air, every day our stores and business are suffering, and it is going to get worse."
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)