Technology certainly played a role in catching the Boston terrorists. But this revelation is also heating up a debate about how much surveillance is too much. We now know how helpful all this new technology was in catching them. Smartphone pictures identified them. Infrared cameras verified that the brother was in a backyard boat. The best evidence came from a Lord and Taylor department store security camera.

I might also mention that this isn’t the first time surveillance technology has helped catch terrorists and evildoers. Cameras in London helped identify the terrorists in 2005. Surveillance video captured the Tucson shootings in 2011. No doubt Big Data and surveillance technology are potent weapons against terrorism.

What about our privacy? Representative Peter King (R-NY) explains: “If you walk down the street, anyone can look at you, anyone can see where you are going. You have no expectation of privacy when you are out in public.”

While that may be true, video surveillance is much more intrusive than that. Most of us have been in a shopping mall or a building and needed to adjust our clothing, clean our nose, whatever. We go around the corner thinking we are in private to attend to that need. Then we look up afterward and see a video camera that has recorded everything we just did. Maybe you were doing something silly or embarrassing only to look up and see a crowd of people taking pictures or videos of you with their phones.

Each year we seem to accept more video surveillance at the expense of our civil liberties. Think about it, in airports and government buildings you are ALWAYS on camera, except perhaps when you are a bathroom stall. With more cameras on street corners, we are approaching a level of video surveillance that reminds me of the movie “The Truman Show.”

I believe we need to have a debate about the balance between security and privacy. We shouldn’t have to give up all our privacy in the name of security.