Will the civil libertarians please shut up now? If they had had their way, London’s public surveillance cameras would have been unplugged long ago, and the British police would not have quickly identified the 7/7 suicide bombers from their pictures in the King’s Cross and Luton train stations—a breakthrough crucial to tracking down other participants in the plot. The London attacks have exposed the privacy fanatics’ campaign against public cameras as folly; it is just a matter of time before reality crushes other civil libertarian excesses as well, including opposition to data mining and to immigration law enforcement.
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I have long disagreed with privacy activists over public surveillance cameras. The fourth amendment of our Constitution requires that citizens be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Public surveillance cameras certainly don't violate the privacy of citizens' homes, papers or effects as they are set up outside and pointed at public streets. They certainly don't violate the privacy of a citizen's personal privacy as they aren't x-ray cameras. They can't see into your pockets or your purse. These cameras simply document your actions in public the same as a police officer standing across the street would document the same.
I believe Mac Donald is right in that the 7/7 London terror attacks vindicated the use of these cameras. In my estimation there is no valid constitutional argument for prohibiting them and a whole world of good arguments (terror prevention chief among them) for using them.