Downtown cameras in Yarmouth

Business has never been the guardian of human rights. A recent case in point, Winners and Homesense, owned by TJX Co. of Framingham, Massachusetts. They had their computers hacked into this past May and had months worth of credit card transaction information stolen, information that is not supposed to be kept. It is supposed to be discarded as soon as the transaction is complete.

Also recently, council is considering, again, installing cameras downtown. Now, if Councillor (Byron) Boudreau wishes to install cameras in Toots I at least have the choice of shopping there or somewhere else. And Toots is covering the cost. So who will pay for these proposed cameras, monitoring and maintenance? Business interests? No! You and I in the end through our consumer and tax dollars, 100 per cent.

And who will have access to private video about you, who will decide who has access? Councillors? The Yarmouth Business Corporation? The RCMP? Sound a bit like credit card information?

In my opinion, no town council should ever consider intruding on and violating the rights of the citizens it represents, based on the wishes of business interests, or any other special interest groups. I say this knowing that many towns and cities have done so.

And I say this knowing that there is no justification for the cameras as, according to Councillor (Clifford) Hood, the vandalism rate has not risen in our fair town.

As I have written in the past, until Joe Citizen, with the support of all other Joe citizens, stand up and report incidences of vandalism, intimidation, drug dealing and other crimes, we will continue to react like bullied victims, willing or mute to having our basic rights, such as privacy , taken away or significantly intruded upon.

Unfortunately, vandalism is a cost of doing business. So is shop lifting, employee theft, increased insurance costs, investor dividends, CEO salaries and bonuses (a legal form of theft), and so on. But in the end the consumer pays.

It simply adds insult to injury for business to expect consumers to pay for surveillance cameras, and at least a moral intrusion on our privacy rights for town council to even consider such a proposal.

This is just another attempt by business to have the consumer and tax payer pay for a loss prevention/loss recovery program.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure glad we have this newspaper and our local cable company to do 'surveillance' on our local council and development corporation!



Garth Wickens,

Yarmouth