Who's watching YOU in Greater Danbury?

There are cameras everywhere.

In Main Street in Danbury, there traffic cameras monitoring the ebb and flow of traffic.

Security cameras are ubiquitous in banks and stores -- in corner convenience stores and big box locations.

They're also now everyday installations in public schools -- especially in larger high schools, where it's hard to keep an eye on every hallway.

"They're a fact of life," said New Fairfield First Selectman John Hodge. "In fact, there may come a time when you're considered negligent if you don't have one."

Local police are now starting to use cameras to scan passing license plates, feeding those scans into central databases.

A bill introduced in the General Assembly that came close to passing would have installed cameras at intersections to catch people speeding through red lights.

A bill that died earlier would have required the Department of Motor Vehicles to study the use of radio frequency identification on state license plates.

That technology involves tiny radio components the size of a pellet of rice that give off information about the vehicle and its owner when it passes through a scanner.

That technology is now in use in private industries and retail stores as a way to track inventory. It's how an E-ZPass works on a highway. Some European countries are now installing the components in passports. The United States already has, since 2007.

With a warrant, police can track your whereabouts via your cellphone.

All this gives some people pause. The many ways of tracking where you are going and what you are doing can be a bit intimidating.

"It's probably gotten worse since 9/11," said prominent civil rights attorney John Williams, of New Haven. "But the debate over these issues has been going on for a long time. Dostoevsky wrote about in `The Brothers Karamazov.' "

"Personally, I don't think it's any of the government's damn business to know where I'm going," said Kevin Gutzman, professor of history at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

"The problem is there will never be a point at which the police stop and say, `We've got enough information,' " Gutzman said. "They always want more."

But for the people who rely on the cameras and what they're capturing, they are simply a valuable tool.

Art Colley, finance director for the Brookfield school system, said there are now 42 cameras in the hallways and common area of Brookfield High School -- but not in the classrooms, cafeterias or gymnasiums.

"It's a very long building. We added to it by making it longer," Colley said.

The monitors allow administrators make sure nothing untoward is happening. He said the school keeps the video tapes for a week.

"If anything happens, we can go back seven days," he said.

Sal Pascarella, Danbury superintendent of schools, said there are cameras at the entrances of every school in the city to watch who enters and leaves.

Only Danbury High School has cameras inside the building.

"We can monitor the hallways from the principal's office," Pascarella said. "I can watch from my office.

"They're not an intrusion," he said. "They are there for students' protection."

Alicia Roy, New Fairfield's school superintendent, said the images caught on the tapes can be used to help teach students.

If a camera catches a student bullying another student in a hallway, Roy sad, school administrators can use the film to show the student why it was wrong to act that way.

"We don't see it as a disrupting thing," she said.

The cameras that watch over Main Street, are, in fact, benign. City Traffic Engineer Abdul Mohammed said Danbury has the webcam system at several locations so it can watch how traffic waxes and wanes.

"The Highway Department uses it to watch the road during emergencies," he said.

The film is never stored and never used for law enforcement. Anyone can watch it by going to the city's traffic cam website at web.ci.danbury.ct.us/trafficams.

For some civil libertarians, the increasing amount of monitoring in other venues is a little off-putting.

For them, the police use of license plate scanners with an unlimited database is an easy way to keep track of cars -- and people -- without any legal restraint.

"It's so easy," Williams said of the way law enforcement can track people. "You don't need to leave any fingerprints."

Williams said in the 1970s, it was easier to prove police were involved in illegal wiretapping and other intrusions into private lives.

"Today, it's impossible to do that," he said. Police have become much more sophisticated in gathering information.

Along with that, there's an increasing sense that people believe it's all right for the government to do this -- "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should I worry?"

Gutzman, who has written the book "Who Killed the Constitution?" as well as a new book on James Madison, the father of the Constitution, has said that under the reauthorization of the National Defense Authorization Act, the U.S. Congress made it legal to apprehend anyone suspected of terrorism, including U.S. citizens, and hold them without trial indefinitely.

"Obama said the bill was so bad he wouldn't sign it," Gutzman said. "When it reached his desk, he signed it anyway, then had a signing statement that said he would never use that power. I would really like something more than a personal promise."

Williams said as technology advances, it's more important than ever for those who defend civil liberties to speak out against its infiltration of our lives.

"They have to keep their chins up and keep fighting," he said.

bmiller@newstimes.com; 203-731-3345