In a dimly lit and nearly empty room in the Union, William Leaf, founder of Students Against Surveillance, asked the photographer in the room to obtain permission from the other members of the group before capturing the meeting.

“This is a privacy club,” he said.

The meeting last night was called, Leaf said, because of the recent installment of police surveillance cameras in the Lansing area.

“There is this idea that there is no privacy in public. But we need privacy in public in order to be free people,” Leaf said after closing the wooden doors to the Sophia B. Jones Room.

SAS is a new student organization that recently announced its plans to thwart the installation of surveillance cameras in Ann Arbor by encouraging the Ann Arbor City Council to pass The Ann Arbor Freedom from Surveillance Ordinance — a measure to prevent monitoring of public areas in the city.

The text of the ordinance states that cameras need to be banned in outdoor parks and residential neighborhoods but may be permitted on Ann Arbor blocks with unusually high crime rates. The ordinance also states that the footage should not be held by the state for more than two weeks if there is no investigation involved and that live monitoring would be banned.

According to Leaf, an ordinance of this kind has never been implemented previously in the city.

Currently, camera technology has been installed in residential neighborhoods around Lansing, allowing the city’s police department to view the 13 cameras put in place. There are no known plans for the installment of surveillance cameras in Ann Arbor.

Leaf said he and other members of SAS believe that the cameras are useless and have not proven to be effective in limiting the incidence of crime, citing the minimal impact of increased surveillance measures in Great Britain.

Leaf added that the ordinance would not ban the use of surveillance cameras in Ann Arbor, but rather restrict it.

“The academic evidence is on our side. We are actually giving up our freedom for nothing.” Leaf said. “It’s putting the burden of proof on the police department.”

Leaf said if Ann Arbor is a model for medium-sized cities, the ordinance could have national significance.

According to Leaf, police officials in Ann Arbor are not concerned with the problem. Leaf said that a preventative ordinance would be more effective if any surveillance proposals are presented to City Council in the future.

“Governments have abused their power very horribly in the past, and if they have the power to see where everyone is all the time, the abuse of power would be much worse with mass surveillance,” he said. “It’s a nasty feeling, and it’s not one we should tolerate in Ann Arbor.”

The main challenge to SAS, Leaf said, is to get the issue of the breach of privacy into the minds of students on campus and residents of Ann Arbor.

Video surveillance in stores and other businesses would remain unaffected with the passage of the ordinance.

A main tenet to SAS’s strategy, Leaf said, is to expand the network so that the organization can persuade an influential sponsor to propose the ordinance to City Council.

Leaf said he hopes the Michigan Student Assembly will pass a resolution for the restriction of camera surveillance during its meeting on Tuesday, adding that if the resolution were passed through MSA, more manpower would be generated. College Libertarians is also in support of the ordinance, according to Leaf.

“The lawyers we talked to said the ordinance text is good to go,” Leaf said.

But Diane Brown, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said she’s “kind of confused” by the group’s efforts, adding that she doesn’t think SAS is aware of the number of cameras already in place in Ann Arbor.

“It makes it seem like folks don’t necessarily recognize that there are a lot of cameras that capture what’s going on with people on a regular basis,” Brown said.