Video cameras are popping up in schools, offices and atop buildings

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SACRAMENTO, California (CNN) -- Police surveillance cameras are aimed at public streets in at least a dozen U.S. cities. And, by some estimates, another 200,000 video lookouts are in place in and around private homes. Such a spycam setup on a residential street in California helped catch a suspected killer and rapist on tape.

The $2,400 system, paid for by the 10 neighbors on Black Branch Court, a Sacramento cul-de-sac, represents a new level of surveillance, even in a society where video cameras seem to be everywhere.

"This is a new one," said attorney John Crew of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. The ACLU has opposed video surveillance when it believed "government was acting as Big Brother" but has no position on private video surveillance of public areas, he said.

Look around and it's clear America loves to spy on itself.

Video cameras record people in banks, convenience stores, casinos, offices, day care centers, schools, buses and prisons. They monitor freeway traffic; they're atop buildings as television news skycams.

Criminal caught on tape

An image similar to this one caught an alleged assailant on tape.

The Sacramento neighborhood's four unobtrusive around-the-clock cameras were running January 5, shortly after 1 a.m., when they taped -- through foggy darkness -- a person in front of a house, said sheriff's Lt. Jim Cooper.

Investigators say it's the image of a masked man who entered the house and attacked a 23-year-old woman.

Her 81-year-old grandmother, Soledad Abogado, was in another bedroom and armed herself with a machete she kept for self protection.

The intruder heard her, went to her room, grabbed the machete and struck Abogado at least twice in the head, killing her. He then sexually assaulted the granddaughter for about three hours.

Authorities charged a 21-year-old shoe salesman using evidence other than the tape. The image may not figure heavily in the trial but it was an unexpected gift.

Kathleen Kennedy, who oversees Neighborhood Watches for the sheriff's department, said they were unaware the neighbors had installed the cameras but added that there was no rule requiring they report it.

Without audio, surveillance cameras are 'fair game'

Knox

Ken Knox, the neighbor who installed the system six years ago, said neighbors were willing to chip in for surveillance cameras, worried that a new high school nearby might increase crime.

The spycams, treated as a novelty at first, have helped solve minor crimes in the cul-de-sac.

But after one of the cameras, used specifically for close-ups, captured the image that helped police make an arrest in the murder and rape, Knox says callers from neighborhoods all over the United States have been asking how to install their own electronic neighborhood watch.

It's a strategy some cities already are using. Honolulu, for example, has 18 federally funded cameras that watch the streets in high-crime areas.

"If there's no audio attached, if you can't listen to what you're seeing, then the law says its public domain, and its fair game," says Marcus Nieto of the California Research Bureau, a unit of the state government.

'1984'?

But high quality digital cameras that tilt, pan and zoom can see sharply even at a thousand yards, are a prospect that troubles privacy rights advocates.

Banisar sees danger in the ubiquitous surveillance camera

Such technology is reminiscent of George Orwell's "1984," the futuristic novel which introduced the phrase, "Big Brother is watching you," to American culture as a shorthand description of government invading the privacy of its citizens.

"Just because you're walking down a public street, doesn't mean that the government or any other person should have the right to follow you around wherever you go, and take notes of who you see and what you do," says Dave Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Back on Black Branch Court, neighbors not only want to capture troublemakers on tape, they want to deter them as well. New signs on the street now read: "Warning, video surveillance area."

Correspondent Don Knapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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