New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the nation will “have to change” its interpretation of privacy laws and the Constitution following last week’s Boston Marathon bombings.
Speaking at a Monday press conference
reported by the Politicker, Bloomberg said, “The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry.” But he added: “We live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
The mayor, who has come under fire for the New York Police Department's “stop-and-frisk” program and surveillance of Muslim communities in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, stated that the rest of the country needs to implement more aggressive monitoring.
“Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11,” he said.
“We have to understand that in the world going forward, we’re going to have more cameras and that kind of stuff,” Bloomberg continued, pointing to the use of magnetometers to detect weapons in schools.
“It really says something bad about us that we have to do it,” he added, “but our obligation, first and foremost, is to keep our kids safe in the schools; first and foremost to keep you safe if you go to a sporting event; first an foremost is to keep you safe if you walk down the streets or go into our parks.”
“We cannot let the terrorists put us in a situation where we can’t do those things,” the mayor said. “And the way to do that is to provide what we think is an appropriate level of protection.”
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