Cameras stare as you browse at Barnes and Noble or rent a video at Blockbuster. They record the way you handle the merchandise at Macy's or how you glide to the music at the Union Square Virgin Megastore. Grab a latte at Starbucks, brunch on borscht at Veselka, or savor a martini at the Union Bar: cameras are watching every sip you take. Peering from skyscrapers with lenses that can count the buttons on a blouse three miles away, they watch every move you make.

Even Rudy likes to watch. After testing reaction to the monitoring of parks, public pools, and subway platforms, the city is quietly expanding a pilot program on buses. Cameras indistinguishable from lampposts have advanced from the perimeter of Washington Square into the heart of the park. They're already hidden at some bus stops and intersections to snag speeders and parking perps. More are on the way.

• The Housing Authority is rushing to put bulletproof cameras in corridors throughout city projects.

• At P.S. 83 in the Bronx, covert cameras cover the schoolyard; six other Bronx schools will soon follow suit.

• Even university students are under watch, as activists at City College realized last June when they found a camera hidden in the smoke detector outside their meeting room. The administration had put it there.

• Two local jails--Valhalla and Dutchess County--are adding cameras to their guards' helmets to go along with the ones in the visiting rooms and some cells.

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