NEW YORK (AP) - Six could be seen peering out from a chain drug store on Broadway. One protruded awkwardly from the awning of a fast-food restaurant. A supersized, domed version hovered like a flying saucer outside Columbia University.

All were surveillance cameras and - to the dismay of civil libertarians and with the approval of law enforcement - they've been multiplying at a dizzying rate all over Manhattan.

"As many as we find, we miss so many more," Alex Stone-Tharp, 21, said on a recent afternoon while combing the streets, clipboard in hand, counting cameras in the scorching heat.

A student at Sarah Lawrence, Stone-Tharp is among a dozen college interns enlisted by the New York Civil Liberties Union to bolster their side of a simmering debate over whether surveillance cameras wrongly encroach on privacy, or effectively combat crime and even terrorism - as in the London bombings investigation, when the cameras were used to identify the bombers.

The interns have spent the summer stalking Big Brother - collecting data for an upcoming NYCLU report on the proliferation of cameras trained on streets, sidewalks and other public spaces.

At last count in 1998, the organization found 2,397 cameras used by a wide variety of private businesses and government agencies throughout Manhattan. This time, after canvassing less than a quarter of the borough, the interns so far have spotted more than 4,000.

The preliminary total "only provides a glimpse of the magnitude of the problem," said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. "Nobody has a clue how many there really are."