The place where fascism and the environment meet for casual sex and everyone watches...

Here's a follow up to the fact-flash that NYC will soon be graced with the same video surveillance that helped protect London on July 7, 2005.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - A proposed ``congestion pricing'' toll system to reduce traffic and pollution will be too expensive, its array of cameras for enforcement will threaten civil liberties, and downtown businesses will shrivel.

New York City, 2007?

Try London 2002. Those were the dire predictions a half-decade ago when the British city pioneered what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg hopes to repeat now. In London, the results include a drop in traffic congestion by 20 percent and similar decrease in carbon emissions in London's central zone since 2003.

But the plan to help fight global warming, in which cars would be charged $8 and trucks $21 to drive into Manhattan south of 86th Street, will first have to get through state lawmakers in Albany on Monday. It faces some strong opposition and bad timing.

In London, where the fees were about double what Bloomberg proposes, ``there was enormous opposition, both politically and from business owners and ultimately it was approved through a long and arduous political process, much like we have here,'' said Steven Polan, a Manhattan lawyer who worked for London's government on its congestion pricing plan after working for New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
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All in the name of fighting global warming in the global city. Imagine what President Bloomberg would do? For that matter what President Gore will do.

Here's a quote from Raymond Kelley, NYPD Commisioner when he was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

Well, it's long been settled in the law that there is no expectation of privacy in the public place. That's been the law of the land for quite a while. There was a landmark Supreme Court decision, I believe, was in 1968.

So it's simply not a legal issue. It's not a violation of the Constitution. It's not a violation of statute. I think what the professor is talking about is policy. And we're really -- you know, we're not talking about a violation of anyone's constitutional rights.

Will there be, you know, some aberrations? You can always point to some misuse of a piece of equipment. But by and large, I think it just simply makes sense to have cameras, to have the ability to monitor activities in this most sensitive location, I'd say for the United States of America, not just for New York City.

Good advice Ray. So next time your necking your girl in Central Park, remember to make it look extra good, because your not alone and the Watchmen like it hot.