But ponder the examples Bloomberg cites as if they justify his conclusion.

Security cameras wouldn't have prevented hijackers from flying airplanes into the World Trade Center. In Boston, there were already enough private security cameras in place to identify the bombing suspects, and more cameras couldn't have stopped two guys with backpacks from dropping them.

There's no reason to think more surveillance cameras or fewer Constitutional rights would've saved lives in either case*. Yet Bloomberg invokes 9/11 and Boston in support of that preexisting agenda, exploiting the terrorist attack to advance his purposes as blatantly as Dick Cheney.

I don't doubt that Bloomberg earnestly believes America would be better off with omnipresent surveillance and fewer Constitutional protections, any more than I doubt that Dick Cheney really believed that invading and occupying Iraq was in the long-term interests of the United States. But neither is a rational response to the terrible attacks we actually suffered, even though both men improved the odds of getting their way by invoking the specter of terrorism.

At least the political press understands that Cheney is an ideologue, even when those who share his agenda try to represent it as pragmatic. Despite it all, Bloomberg is still treated as a pragmatist.

That should end.

A solution-oriented pragmatist wouldn't respond to the Boston attack by telling people they need more security cameras and fewer rights. He or she would look at facts specific to the case, many of which are still being discovered, and suggest solutions grounded in what actually happened. Invoking a tragedy isn't off limits. If you want to argue that the FBI should pay more attention to tips it receives from foreign governments, of course you're going to cite Tamerlan Tsarnaev. What's unpersuasive is invoking Boston in service of a policy that wouldn't have stopped it.

A certain kind of surveillance is almost certainly going to be more common in the future -- the sort that we all participate in by walking around with smart phones that take GPS tagged, high resolution photos and videos. Between smart phones and private security cameras, it's increasingly hard to imagine any notable event happening in a big crowd without someone noticing.

Right now, it takes a major crime for all that visual data to be accessed. In other words, it is made available to authorities after a mass casualty attack, but is of no use to someone like, say, a busybody mayor who wants to monitor the size of soda cup held by the patrons exiting a particular bodega. I doubt that's the specific reason that Bloomberg wants more surveillance cameras. But I'm confident he's imagined all sorts of paternalistic ways to make use of NYC's surveillance cameras that have nothing to do with protecting Americans from future terrorist attacks.