Jack Gin, the president of Extreme CCTV, shares his thoughts on the balance between the needs of privacy and the needs of security for all people.

The terrorist bombings in London's transit system are a stark reminder of how vulnerable major cities are against such attack. Police authorities in London are using video recordings to analyze the activity in the areas before, during and after the bombings took place. Video analysis in the UK has already been accepted as the "third forensic", following (and supporting) fingerprints and DNA.

But it was only a few months ago, in response to criticism from civil libertarians, that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had to defend the growing use of security technologies.

"Were there to be a serious terrorist act in this country and afterwards it was thought that we had not taken the measures necessary, believe me, no one would be talking about civil liberties; they would be talking about why we had not done more to protect the security of this country." Tony Blair, Feb. 23, 2005

Despite Prime Minister Blair's ominous remarks on that February day in the House of Commons, Britain's civil libertarians continue to remind us that a Londoner gets videotaped 300 times a day. Will the civil libertarians lament over the ongoing analysis of the London Underground video footage that has already allowed Scotland Yard to identify the perpetrators of both the July 7 and now the July 21 attacks? Most likely, they will. But any protest now will serve as a reminder that most law abiding, security-minded citizens support police use of technology that enables them to deal with today's crimes.

Everyone who uses the London Underground is videotaped and the use of CCTV video surveillance has helped make London's Underground relatively crime free and even graffiti free. All of the platforms and access corridors have the visible deterrence of surveillance cameras. Even a number of the dark tunnel areas are also under surveillance thanks to active-infrared night vision equipment.

Such CCTV surveillance systems help the police do their work more effectively. They want CCTV, not for supporting crime statistics, but for policing. Much of the hard work in policing is about gathering evidence. Every day, well-known criminals are able to evade the justice system when police cannot present incriminating evidence. But in thousands and perhaps millions of untold real-case histories, CCTV is providing the evidence that lead to arrests and causes convictions.

The UK's previous worst terrorist bombing, the 1998 car bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh, is such a story, and one that has been mostly untold. That explosion took the lives of 29 people, mostly women and children. Like many terrorist attacks, this horrific bombing could have gone unsolved forever. But police made arrests, swiftly and quietly. Convictions soon followed, restoring confidence that justice can be served.