The war on terror has accustomed us to the idea of constantly being watched. In airports and train stations, in schools, offices and stores and along city streets, the ubiquitous, unblinking eyes of surveillance cameras daily record our images.
We're no longer unduly alarmed by the idea of police video surveillance of public spaces, or of private businesses installing security cameras to tape what's going on inside their premises. Some people feel safer knowing the authorities are watching.
Still, the agreement between Baltimore police and an East Oliver Street bar called Shirley's Honey Hole to install cameras inside and outside the business with a direct feed into police headquarters crosses a new line in government's steady intrusion into the private sphere.
The bar's owner, Shirley Barner, agreed to install the cameras as part of a settlement to keep her business from being padlocked as a public nuisance. Police alleged that drug sales were taking place on her premises and that patrons had been linked to several recent shootings.
The compromise she reached with police Tuesday obliges Ms. Barner to shut down for a month in October, but after that she can reopen if she hires a security guard and installs the cameras. Reportedly, she plans to put up two large signs warning customers that they are being watched.
That may turn out to be a powerful deterrent and make regular customers who are law-abiding citizens feel more secure about sitting down for a drink. But even the police acknowledge that the arrangement is still an experiment. The bar is the first to participate in such an agreement, and the prospect of continuous live video surveillance of a private establishment moves the department into previously uncharted territory.
Police, of course, have routinely used the video records of private businesses to review possible evidence after a crime has been committed. Often the tapes are made available as a matter of course during an investigation, but police also can seek a court order to have them turned over.
Yet there's a difference between police reviewing store or restaurant video once a crime has taken place and their having the right to constantly monitor a private business' patrons, whether they are doing anything illegal or not. That raises a number of questions about how far government is entitled to intrude into the lives of ordinary citizens going about their daily business.
