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Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday announced a major expansion of the city's video surveillance system, adding 250 cameras and tying more than 2,000 existing cameras used by the city, Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Housing Authority and other local governmental agencies to the city's 911 center. Private-sector companies also will be able to opt into the system, linking their security devices to the center as well. "Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mayor Richard Daley said Thursday. Neither the courts nor the American Civil Liberties Union have objected to cameras in public places, saying there is no expectation of privacy on a city street. Ed Yohnka, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union cited a 2003 ACLU report that concluded that a "dark potential" lurks in the national proliferation of monitoring systems. "If we do not take steps to control and regulate surveillance to bring it into conformity with our values, we will find ourselves being tracked, analyzed, profiled and flagged in our daily lives to a degree we can scarcely imagine today," it said. "We will be forced to constantly ask of even the smallest action taken in public, `Will this make me look suspicious? Will this hurt my chances for future employment? Will this reduce my ability to get insurance?'" Yohnka also questioned the effectiveness of cameras, saying they have not reduced crime in London, where they have been used for years. [more

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