PROVIDENCE — A camera and radar system to track and view ships and boaters all the way from the Atlantic to Providence Harbor will soon be in place, making Rhode Island’s coastal waterways perhaps the most closely scrutinized in the nation.

Providence yesterday approved a deal with defense contractor Raytheon Co. to buy four cameras and a limited radar system to be deployed in upper Narragansett Bay. Providence would link its cameras to an existing system run by the Department of Environmental Management that watches southern Narragansett Bay, creating a Bay-wide visual network to track large ships and watch over small boaters alike, city and state officials said.

It almost certainly marks the first time a coastal state has had visual surveillance of nearly all its shipping and boating lanes.

“We’re going to have a pretty unique system in the state of Rhode Island when all is said and done,” said Peter T. Gaynor, director of the Providence Emergency Management Agency. “We’re going to be able to watch our port from the Atlantic all the way up our harbor.”

The cameras’ primary purpose is to track large ships bearing hazardous cargo, but they have also been used to rescue drowning boaters and nab fishery violators. Local law enforcement has also used the images for criminal investigations.

Privacy advocates said that the use of the cameras raises many questions, and that the way they are employed can make a big difference.

Right now, cameras are in place on Beavertail Lighthouse, the Mount Hope Bridge and the Pell Bridge, among other locations, and have been watching shipping on the southern Bay since 2006. But that system does not track ships north of Prudence Island, leaving the upper Bay and the city’s port facilities relatively bare. ProvPort operates 18 cameras on its property, but those focus primarily on the port facilities, and do not normally track ships coming through the harbor area.

Yesterday, Providence approved a $142,867 deal with Raytheon to place high-tech cameras on the Squantum Club in East Providence, on Warwick Light, and at ProvPort. A fourth camera will be mobile, used by the Providence Fire Department.

Three-quarters of the project will be paid for through a Department of Homeland Security grant, and Providence will pay the rest. Gaynor said the Providence-area system could be in place by the end of this year.

As part of the Raytheon deal, Providence will gain access to Raytheon’s Project Athena, a sophisticated system joining visual data with radar tracking and other information like transponder beacons, according to state officials and a data sheet distributed by the company. Project Athena, based in a facility in Portsmouth, uses software to pore over shipping records for any large ship that comes into view, allowing, for instance, DEM to instantly determine the ownership, past port calls, and registration of a ship that it is watching on video.

The existing wireless video and radar system in the southern Bay, known officially as the Port Security Communication Network, first came online in June 2006 using an $856,000 Homeland Security grant, according to John Riendeau, defense industry manager for the state Economic Development Corporation. At the time, a large wireless video network over water was considered extremely cutting-edge, so much so that Rhode Island gave presentations on the system at conferences and for other states and regions looking at similar models.

“It was very unique, and we were blazing a trail,” Riendeau said.

Two years later, the technology is more commonplace, but the scope of it is not; to have visual coverage of such a large expanse of water at a nearly statewide level is still practically unheard of.

“You’ll have almost 100 percent coverage of the entire Bay,” Riendeau said.

Some boaters, however, may not like the idea that the state can watch them as they take a pleasure cruise around the Bay.

Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that cameras on the water raise privacy concerns similar to their land-based counterparts.

“It could be very serious,” Brown said. “Certainly, some aspects of the technology are troubling, if people are being spied on, if these cameras have that ability.”

The privacy issues depend on the quality of the system, and how it’s used.

“In many respects it’s very similar to the issues that arise with surveillance cameras on land. The issues are pretty much the same: how much detail do the cameras provide, can you zoom in with much detail; are there policies in place on how you can get access to the information … how long the information is kept for,” Brown said.

Most of those questions cannot be answered because of the homeland security implications, Riendeau said, though he acknowledged that the cameras are certainly high-quality equipment. Local law enforcement has access to the information through a password system, and the state has even distributed video from the system to the media on occasion, such as last week when it gave video of a water spout in Narragansett Bay to WJAR-TV for its evening broadcast. The state also uses the cameras to spot fishery violations.

Gaynor said that the purpose of the system is to track the large ships, and the idea is not to infringe on Rhode Islanders’ privacy: “Some people may have an issue with the ‘Big Brother’ thing, but it’s certainly not about that.”

The cameras have proven to be lifesavers on several occasions, Riendeau said, such as an incident this past winter where three men spotted by the stationary cameras were quickly rescued from the frigid waters.

The trio was duck hunting from a boat, Riendeau said, when all three fell out, potentially due to the recoil from the guns.

“They all went in the drink, and the cameras were right there watching it. The watch standard at DEM saw it all because the cameras saw it, and she immediately contacted the Coast Guard,” Riendeau said.

The Coast Guard was quickly on the scene, and the men escaped without serious injury. Riendeau said it’s only one of several examples when the cameras came to the rescue — and with nearly the entire Bay soon to be covered, he expects he’ll quickly have more stories to tell.

dbarbari@projo.com