Big Brother Gets a New Pair of Shades

By Matt Wood in News on Oct 4, 2006 11:48AM

The city is rolling out 100 new surveillance cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, but this time they won't be so obvious. The new cameras will look like a streetlight, weigh just 15 pounds, and cost 80 percent less than the 200 existing cameras in giant boxes with flashing blue lights.

The obtrusive old cameras, complete with a Chicago Police Department logo, were designed to have a deterrent effect as much as anything, but some residents complained that they just pushed criminals to the next unwatched block, or inside. The city plans to use a mix of the different types of cameras to prevent crimes and to actually catch some of them on tape. Chicagoist always thought that a criminal stupid enough to do something bad around one of the old cameras was bound to get caught anyway, video or no, so the presence of the camera just sped up the matter. But sleek and stealthy or not, we're sure the smart bad guys will figure out how to spot the new cameras too.