While I welcome Judge Haight's decision barring the NYPD from photographing and videotaping political demonstrations, it seems almost quaint, considering the ubiquity of surveillance cameras (private and public) that record so many of our public moves, routinely and without notice. In addition, we’re apt to be captured on tape by fellow citizens armed with video cameras, on the look-out for whatever behavior they consider worth exposing on the Net.

I recall walking into the Cambridge Police Department headquarters in Central Square one day during the peak of the Vietnam era anti-war protests. Looking for a particular officer, I accidentally wandered into an office maintained by the “intelligence” unit of the department. There I came across a wall of photographs spanned of college students and Cambridge residents at local anti-war demonstrations.