Saturday, April 17, 2010
Pittsburgh, colleges seek $14 million for more security cameras
Post Gazette: "The city of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon Unviersity, and Community College of Allegheny County this morning announced that they're jointly seeking about $14 million in federal stimulus money to install 220 additional video cameras throughout the city."
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6 comments:
Although I understand that safety is obviously incredibly important, and we should do the utmost to insure it for the public, I cannot help but feel a bit funny about a. having more cameras installed that are constantly watching the happenings of city life, and b. having $14 million spent of it. As society uses more and more technology to enforce laws, safety, etc, we also become more dependent on it functioning constantly.
While my safety (and the safety of others) is important to me, 14 million does seem a tad ridiculous. Maybe this is why they wanted to tax the college students. One of the things that's nicer about Pittsburgh that that, at least to me, seems a bit safer than some of the other major cities in the US. Now I'm not about to run around downtown by myself, but being smart is half of being safe anyway. I'm sure that if I was one of the however many people robbed this year that I would feel differently, but to me CMU and Pittsburgh aren't half bad.
This doesn't sound like great news to me. Pittsburgh already has a famously suffocating police presence, and it's hard for me to get behind CMU's support of this as a simple research project. I don't really feel the need for more cameras, and I'm not sure that they really make us any safer. Furthermore, if they haven't decided for sure how they're using the infrastructure, I'm wondering if they know for sure how the images are going to be used.
While the idea that more cameras equals more security, it also tends to equal more things that can be stolen and a falser sense of security. Especially given what just happened with the snow removal, or lack of, I can not really think that security cameras are the best use of $14 million that the city of Pittsburgh could think of. Yes public safety is a big deal, but given the economy and other issues Pittsburgh seems to be facing like the recent slew of cop shootings, is $14 million on security cameras really the best use of the money?
I have noticed more attention being paid to security around campus lately and am not surprised to hear that the rest of Pittsburgh wants to up its security system as well. I feel that any benefit from the installation of new security cameras would not be immediately felt because they cannot stop any harmful/illegal occurrences, only help to find and stop offenders, and in this way make Pittsburgh safer. Although safety added safety is definitely a good thing, I also am a little hesitant to support spending $14 million dollars on more security cameras.
This seems completely excessive. If the entire city only received $2 million for all the bridges we have then I cannot see how one campus could possibly need $14 million worth of cameras. I feel like the bridges are more of a concern for homeland security than our local community college. I also think that their ideas for the network seem a little strange considering I don't know of any library that you can't get internet in already. I personally don't think this is a good way to spend this money.
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