This is a clearly a further erosion of our privacy and a surveillance theater, but not for the reasons stated in this article:<p>""Real public safety comes from investing in our communities, not from omnipresent government surveillance."<p>Real public safety comes from preventing crime, deterring crime and removing violent criminals from society so that they are unable to repeat their crimes. The overwhelmingly majority of crimes are committed by a very small percentage of people. These cameras are surveillance theater because nobody is going to be made safer now that a video of their assault will be available for public viewing. Even if videos of these robberies and assaults helped lead to the identification of the perpetrator, criminals who rob, assault and otherwise criminally harass people in New York are not jailed. On the rare occasion when criminals are actually arrested, they are released immediately (like the axe wielding maniac who went viral at McDonalds this week) back onto the street (thanks to "bail reform"), no matter how many similar crimes they have been arrested for (or face pending charges on!) before. Charges are later dropped or reduced and serious prison time for crimes short of murder and rape are rare (thanks to "criminal justice reform"). And when the criminals are 16 or 17 years old (or younger), their cases are automatically transferred to family court where they are routinely dismissed even for extremely serious charges (thanks to the recently passed "Raise The Age Act"). While mass incarceration is certainly not the answer to all of society's ills, it's delusional to believe we should let violent criminals terrorize people just trying to ride the subway to work, no matter what the socio-economic situation.