The University of Kentucky just installed a  2,000 security cameras across its campus, and a number of its students have have voiced serious privacy concerns – especially as one of the cameras  aimed at the school’s free-speech zone.

Christopher White, a University of Missouri graduate student and an editorial assistant for The College Fix, shares these details:

The $5 million security system also includes electronic IDs for students that will help monitor students’ whereabouts, as the cards will be used by students to access campus buildings and dorms after hours.

University of Kentucky Police Chief Joe Monroe told the Lexington Herald-Leader that the security cameras and electronic student ID cards will “allow us unprecedented capability for monitoring the campus for crime and protecting our students.”

But not everyone is thrilled with the new system, students and privacy advocates alike.

“You’re capturing a lot of information about people who are completely innocent,” Amber Duke, a spokeswoman for the ACLU, told the Lexington Herald-Leader. “That’s a lot of information that could be misused.”

University of Kentucky Senior Nolan Gray, regional director of Students For Liberty, told The College Fix that the university is “responding to imagined threats” and argued it may have been safer, cheaper and less invasive to invest in police foot patrols to ward off possible criminal activities.

The cameras, Gray said, are in highly lit, visible areas – not in dark allies where traditional crimes often happen. One of the cameras is even aimed at the school’s “free speech zone,” which, Nolan says, is awkward considering the fact that it’s the only place on campus where students protest issues without fear of reprisals from authorities.

Neither university officials nor the campus’ chief of police were available for comment to The Fix.

Monroe declined to tell the Lexington Herald-Leader how long or where the system will hold the information gleaned from the cameras or the ID cards. The police chief, in an effort to reassure those concerned about the university’s accumulation of data, explained that the information would not be held for very long.

The system also includes 26 new blue phone locations for emergency contacts, as well as early-warning speakers throughout the campus that alert students and staff of weather emergencies.

Student government President Roshan Palli told the Lexington Herald-Leader most students aren’t concerned.

“As a whole, students have felt really safe on campus, and more than anything else, it would reassure parents and students even more,” he said.

Yet an editorial published Monday in the Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper at UK, questioned the need for such an extensive and possibly invasive system.

“This intrusiveness might be justifiable if UK was a particularly dangerous place, but it is not,” the editorial stated. “The university’s online crime log is mostly filled with small thefts and drinking-related issues.