Filming

Marcelo Ebrard has plans to install 11,500 cameras around Mexico City, in an effort to control crime. I don't know a whole lot about these cameras, but my understanding is that their efficacy is far from a foregone conclusion. (Here's an article about a study that failed to find a drop in crime in San Francisco after cameras were installed.) And 11,500 is a huge number, at least while the kinks are still being ironed out. Chicago, about a third of Mexico City's size, has only 560 cameras up and running. London, whose metro area is about half the size of Mexico City's but whose city limits hold a comparable number of residents, has only 3,000. There's no information about the cost of Ebrard's plan, but this article says that Chicago's cameras cost the city $5.6 million for the hardware and almost half a million a year on camera monitors. So multiply all that by ten (we'll assume that DF can find a way to do it on the cheap), and you are left with a rather pricey surveillance network. Furthermore, the previous linked article suggests that cameras are often used to bust people for such threats to the public welfare as sipping on a beer; that seems like a weak justification for such an expensive system.

Then again, London's cameras caught the tube bombers in 2005, and they probably provide some psychological benefit to residents of high-crime areas, and as I said my knowledge here is pretty limited, so I supposed I could be convinced that the above paragraph is mistaken.