I think I'm in love

With Heather Mac Donald, if only for the first sentence of her essay about surveillance cameras:

Will the civil libertarians please shut up now?

Another of the current dumb conventional wisdom is that everybody has a right to be anonymous. That might be true if there were no criminals, sexual predators, terrorists and other slime among us. Until that day, we need to be able to spot the creeps, especially after they harm us, and surveillance cameras in public places serve that need far better than any number of eye witnesses, who only think they were watching.

Just after the London bombings, Glenn Reynolds posted that the surveillance cameras in the London tube hadn't protected the Brits. I thought at the time, that's not why they're there. Within a day or two, we were seeing photos of the suspects being sought and then they were in custody. America had to get photos of the 9/11 hijackers from ATM cameras. One wonders if they'd have ever been identified if they hadn't used their cash cards. I'm sorry, but I want the FBI to be able to track people who are out to harm us, even if it requires me to prove who I am. So does Ms. Mac Donald.

Update: Dorothy Rabinowitz has a similarly beautiful mind. The ACLU doesn't seem to think that life is all that important a civil liberty, or at least that safety is outweighed in its view by the right not to be searched before entering the subway. So if the NY subway gets bombed, you'll know whom to blame, in addition to the Jihadists.