When the Democratic National Convention brought antiterror security to Boston last year, some civil libertarians warned of a city where police surveillance would be omnipresent, the Boston Globe says. Although Boston police kept 29 of the 75 high-tech video cameras, none of the 19 hard-wired cameras has been installed. “We don’t have a room with 500 cameras going in it,” Sergeant Thomas Sexton, a department spokesman, said. “It’s not like we’re sitting back watching every move that people are making.”
Of the estimated 90 cameras monitored in the Police Department’s command center on Sunday night to view the post-Super Bowl crowds, most were shared video feeds from local universities and other city or state agencies. Policee officials have taken a cautious approach to the technology. “We’re not installing them without serious input from the communities where they could potentially be deployed,” Sexton said. The first seven wireless surveillance cameras will be installed around Feb. 15 at key intersections in Chinatown that have seen a recent increase in illegal drug activity and violent crime.