There is nothing Ms. Ritger can do about the unwanted surveillance of her yard, her life and her daughter, say officials.

That’s because the camera is not trained on her bedroom or bathroom window — places where New York law says a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and such surveillance would be illegal.

“I’m stuck and I’m very uncomfortable and I’m concerned,” Ms. Ritger, an elementary school teacher, said during a recent interview in her yard under the watchful eye of her neighbor’s camera. “When does surveilling someone’s property become an invasion of someone else’s privacy?”

Not when it’s in a homeowner’s back, side or front yard.

Ms. Ritger’s video-taping neighbors defended their rooftop camera, saying they are protecting their yard and in-ground pool, not spying. They accuse Ms. Ritger and her brother, who lives in the house next-door, of throwing worms, berries and calamari (squid) into their pool over the last few years. Ms. Ritger has flatly denied those claims, calling them “ridiculous.”

“It’s watching my yard and her yard,” the neighbor, Peter Malvagna, said of his camera. “It’s legal and I can’t get in trouble for it.”

. . .

William Smith, a spokesman for the Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan, said the Staten Island office was the first to win a felony conviction in the state under Stephanie’s Law. A retired firefighter was convicted here in 2004 of secretly recording his girlfriend’s teen-age daughter undressing in his home.

Before the enactment in 2003 of Stephanie’s Law, which was created after a Long Island woman was secretly recorded by her landlord undressing in her apartment, there were even fewer protections from prying eyes.

Approximately 130,000 riders a week board buses without dipping MetroCards, or plunking change into fare boxes, according to new transit data, suggesting the cash-strapped agency is losing millions of dollars annually.

“We’ve identified the worst routes, including the worst bus stops or hot spots,” said Joseph Smith, NYC Transit vice president in charge of buses.

Smith said he hoped the crackdown would start in a week or two. An NYPD spokesman, however, said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has yet to sign off on a final plan. The two sides are in talks about how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority could defray costs.

Fare-beaters enter via rear bus doors that are opened by exiting passengers or by helpful riders on board. Some simply saunter past the driver and fare box up front. To reduce the risk of being assaulted, drivers are instructed not to confront or accost fare-beaters.

Above-ground fare-beating is most prevalent on 10 routes in Brooklyn and the Bronx, according to NYC Transit. The worst is the B46 in Brooklyn where drivers have reported “theft of service” at a rate of about 4,000 a week. The route runs the length of the borough, between Williamsburg and Marine Park, through Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant and East Flatbush and Flatlands.

Do I swipe in a stranger? Is that legal? Can I share my monthly card with my spouse or a friend? What if someone offers to sell me a swipe at a discount? And what if a machine accidentally gives me a free ride — something token booth clerks were not known for. Do I take it?

The ethical quandaries of the free ride were spotlighted this week by the disclosure of a computer glitch that allowed hundreds of people to get free tickets and MetroCards — most of them unwittingly — from vending machines in Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North Railroad stations.

Selling a swipe on a MetroCard is illegal and can get you arrested. Bending a MetroCard’s magnetic strip to fool the turnstile into letting you through is also a form of theft.

But letting a friend or a relative use your unlimited-ride MetroCard when you are not using it is perfectly legal, as long as you don’t charge for it, said Paul J. Fleuranges, an authority spokesman. (The card allows only one entry every 18 minutes.)

New York City actually is responsible for less than half of all economic activity in its own metropolitan area, the data show. According to the city comptroller’s office, its economic activity constitutes 43% of the region’s total economy.

. . .

The New York City metropolitan area, which includes parts of Connecticut up to Bridgeport, as well as Long Island and northern New Jersey, accounts for 6.6% of the country’s population while contributing 9.1%, or $1.129 trillion, of the country’s GDP.

“The guy was yelling at no one in particular, ‘Stop this crazy guy. He’s trying to kill me!'” said super Bobby Gardocki, who admitted he looked somewhat bizarre running barefoot in his jammies after the burglar Saturday night.

Gardocki was grabbed by Manhattan Community College police, who thought he was the culprit.

A building tenant convinced the guards they had the wrong guy and cops arrested the suspect, Michael Estrada, 38, of Queens, nearby.