Feel like you’re being watched?

August 12, 2007

More U.S. cities will soon have more cameras watching more Americans.

The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a “surveillance society” in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.

Since 2003, the department has handed out some $23 billion in federal grants to local governments for equipment and training to help combat terrorism. Most of the money paid for emergency drills and upgrades to basic items, from radios to fences. But the department also has doled out millions on surveillance cameras, transforming city streets and parks into places under constant observation.

How much surveillance are we talking about here? Thanks to generous homeland security grants, St. Paul, Minn., will have 60 new cameras for its downtown; Madison, Wis., will have a 32-camera network; and Pittsburgh is adding 83 cameras to its downtown. Those are just from announcements regarding big cities over the last month.

And what about smaller towns? They’re getting in on the fun, too.

Recent examples include Liberty, Kan. (population 95), which accepted a federal grant to install a $5,000 G2 Sentinel camera in its park, and Scottsbluff, Neb. (population 14,000), where police used a $180,000 Homeland Security Department grant to purchase four closed-circuit digital cameras and two monitors, a system originally designed for Times Square in New York City.

“Being able to collect this much data on people is going to be very powerful, and it opens people up for abuses of power,” said Jennifer King, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies privacy and technology. “The problem with explaining this scenario is that today it’s a little futuristic. [A major loss of privacy] is a low risk today, but five years from now it will present a higher risk.”

Isn’t there also a practical concern?

Kevin Drum recently noted that London installed a vast network of closed-circuit TV cameras throughout the city — and crime went up. “If the cameras genuinely helped put muggers and rapists behind bars, we might have a robust discussion about whether the additional safety justifies the loss of privacy,” Kevin said. “But if the city is no safer than it used to be, what’s the point? If it’s just to snap license plate pictures of cars that are illegally parked, that hardly seems worth it.”

As for the loss privacy, we shouldn’t worry; Joe Lieberman is on the case.

Earlier this month, Senator Joe Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, proposed an amendment that would require the Homeland Security Department to develop a “national strategy” for the use of surveillance cameras, from more effectively using them to thwart terrorism to establishing rules to protect civil liberties.

“A national strategy for [surveillance cameras] use would help officials at the federal, state, and local levels use [surveillance] systems effectively to protect citizens, while at the same time making sure that appropriate civil liberties protections are implemented for the use of cameras and recorded data,” Lieberman said.

I feel better already.

Is it going to be possible to stop the growth of a fascistic all-observing state? (Voyeurfascism?) Given that modern technology makes it possible to collect and collate vast amounts of what was once ethereal minutae, will we be able to establish a political consensus that involves not doing it? Or will our children eventually see “privacy” in the way we’ve understood it to be a quaint anachronism?

  • As a Pittsburgher, our 58 cameras may be funded by ‘Homeland Security’ but their purpose is to cite people who violate traffic laws. We may have our share of scary drivers, but to monitor them as terrorists? It’s just another example of authoritarianism run amok.

  • Jeebus “—privacy rights in the public will be lost?”

    Do you hear yourself?

    Hey, not that privacy rights EVER existed in the public realm, and because maybe some thug won’t steal my purse if he thinks he is being watched, so certainly I have no problem with that, I simply I don’t want is private to be seen, I don’t want the feds in my house, listening in on phone, reading my email/mail..

    Because there is a lot crime. gang activity in large meto areas, and that most people live in meto areas, it is simply a fact of life that those living need security- and it doesn’t matter if someone witness you doing something or a camera records a moment of time where you do something in public. It is the public domain therefore there is no privacy rights.

    You have to pick your battles and this is not one of them worth worring about. You wouldn’t do anything in public that you wanted to keep private, and WHY is that, because you know that people are watching.

  • I never hear about the risk of personal data acquired by warrantless taps or street monitors being processed/analyzed by outsourced, overseas folk. The technology to sift through petabytes of data does not require rocket science; the state-of-the-practice in data processing can deal with massive amounts of data.

    How convenient for the PTB when (not if) a public kerfluffle that takes the form of our brave fourth column tut-tutting (tweety’s vein a’throbbing) a leak of the personal information of millions of Americans, the PTB can blame it on lax security in our overseas ‘partners’.

  • Hey Me_again @ # 3, what’s to keep that camera aimed down on the streets from rotating around to look in your window? Next time the police are beating the shit out of somebody like another Rodney King incident and the recordings aren’t available because they are “classified”, will you have a problem with it then? It’ll be too late then, won’t it?

  • First let me just put down a few quotes from the piece:

    “Being able to collect this much data on people is going to be very powerful, and it opens people up for abuses of power,” said Jennifer King, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies privacy and technology. “The problem with explaining this scenario is that today it’s a little futuristic. [A major loss of privacy] is a low risk today, but five years from now it will present a higher risk.”

    . . .

    Kevin Drum recently noted that London installed a vast network of closed-circuit TV cameras throughout the city — and crime went up. “If the cameras genuinely helped put muggers and rapists behind bars, we might have a robust discussion about whether the additional safety justifies the loss of privacy,” Kevin said. “But if the city is no safer than it used to be, what’s the point? If it’s just to snap license plate pictures of cars that are illegally parked, that hardly seems worth it.”

    1. Ok, first of all, muggers and rapists can easily figure out to wear a mask when they commit a crime, and this is what they’ve already been doing to thwart security cameras for years. Sure, security cameras help sometimes, but we’re talking about lots of security cameras all over the place all the time. We have to ask seriously what’s the point of that if it might not even reduce crime- plausibly, every felon could think of covering up their faces before committing a crime.

    2. Second, how unrealistic is it? We have digital technolgy and cell phones and Wi-Fi internet in this day and age. How hard would it be to bribe people in one or two companies that install these cameras to ensure they’re enabled to transmit data to another source, and recruit a few hard-right Limbaugh-lovers to watch what comes through these cameras 30 minutes-2 hours a person, in each town that has them, each day? They’re already figuring out who’s got a John Kerry t-shirt underneath their button-down shirt before they even come into a Bush event. Why wouldn’t they be wacky enough to want to watch everybody and “find out who all the liberals are”?

    Anyone who has listened to Rush Limbaugh knows how looney-toons these people are. If you put cameras all over the place, it could happen. This is precisely why people wrote all those dystopian novels- to warn future people against the misuse of shit like this.

  • There are so many problems with this approach it is hard to know where to start. First, what are we looking for? Are you going to pick out a terrorist by the way that he/she is dressed? Secondly, who’s manning the cameras? What is their training? Who monitors them?

    Again, we are proving to be moronic in our approach to safety.

  • Imagine some stupid asshole you knew in your past, say growing up or in school. A person like that might actually be more likely than others to think it would be cool, or helpful, if he/she could control everything. A person like that might actually take steps to try to control everything, if he/she was in a position from which starting to take those steps was feasible. That’s what we’re guarding against, assholes like that.

  • ECThompson, since we’re talking about corruption, training isn’t really the concern. You can have all kinds of training and still be Bernie Kerik.

    In fact, what you’re describing may be a proverbial velvet glove: when corruption is discovered, the cover up that would go along with the denial would be “These were extensively trained individuals…” Could be your local Cheeto-stained-fingered right-wing Interent loser, nonetheless.

    Do we really want that (unscrupulous, Limbaugh-believing) loser in charge of describing to people what you do in public all day, and of who finds out who you were hanging out in a park with? Doesn’t sound like freedom to me.

  • Regardless of who originally came up with the idea, we’re all familiar with the saying “those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” What’s been missing, particularly since 9/11, is the debate as to what we’re sacrificing for what potential gain. Somehow, too many Americans have become so overcome with fear that they think security is attainable and worth whatever price it demands. Few realize that only after we’ve paid the price in civil liberties will we realize that we were sold a bill of goods.

  • I agree with me again in post 3. I really don’t have a problem with cameras in PUBLIC places. In fact, when it comes to monitoring publicly funded places like city parks and libraries, I’m enthusiastically in favor of them. While I doubt they’ll be much good in thwarting terrorists, they may well make our public spaces less hospitable for rapists, muggers, crack dealers, exibitionists, etc.

  • Let it be known that no terrorists attacks have occurred in any of these cities before surveillance cameras go up. These cameras would have done nothing to prevent 9/11. They may not reap their privacy dues in the present time but 10yrs. from now they will be in place and ready to turn America into a police state.

    50yrs. ago if my father would have told me that in 2010 America would have surveillance cameras in all their cities to monitor the population I wouldn’t have believed him. That’s not America, that’s Russia. In America the government is us, not some separate entity that rules us. Americans would never stand for it.
    This administration is using terrorism as an excuse to turn America into a police state, doing away with all the checks and balances we have in place to prevent a dictatorship. No matter what is claimed now, these surveillance systems will one day be used to monitor and control American citizens.

  • Somehow, the idea of a minimum wage hall monitor dozing in front of twenty or thirty small screens doesn’t make me feel safer. This is another example of the ineffective but costly feel-good measures that make up the War on Terror, the War on Drugs and border security. Rather than deal in a clear eyed pragmatic way with the root causes of these problems we get another glittery high tech distraction.

    In the words of Governor William J. Le Petomane: “We’ve gotta protect our phoney baloney jobs, gentlemen! …”

  • There IS a right of privacy in public places. I’m not sure I can explain it, but it’s based on the concept that you don’t have to prove you’re innocent (it’s not exactly the same). The default in our society has been that of free movement (at least within the country). We don’t have to report or get permission to go somewhere. Surveillance violates that principle (of if I could only channel CB and explain this properly.) Can anyone else explain why this sort of thing (cameras) is a form of prior restraint?

    Also, in the can’t-explain-well category is the concept that there is something similar to innumeracy among the public. Even the highest crime districts are quiet most of the time. There is some extremely tiny percentage of time in which crimes occur. It seems like criminals are much busier than we think. So to surveil everyone (especially in Podunk) is both unnecessary and intrusive. It’s a little like punishing the class for the actions of one kid.

    Dale, what would you do if you had half-a-brain?

  • Imagine any of the following:

    • You have a medical condition related to digestive or sexual health

    • You are just starting a relationship with someone, and it’s on the verge of getting intimate

    • You and your spouse are having medical problems with intimacy

    • Your child turns out to need special education

    • You and your spouse are planning a romantic getaway, and you don’t want anyone interrupting for a few days.

    In none of these things are you planning anything illegal or even unethical. None of these things are anyone’s business but yours (or in some cases, medical or other professionals with whom you are dealing, and who are generally understood to be obliged to maintain confidentiality). Yet, all of them could be deduced by a sufficiently intrusive government if it was tracking your finances, phone calls, email, private purchases and personal movements from day to day.

    Even simply following you around as you move from place to place through public streets could learn a great deal about your life in great detail (which is how many a private detective works). Simply saying “well, you have no expectation of privacy when you are in public” misses this whole dimension of how much of our private lives could be revealed if someone is able to observe and collate all of our public movements and moments.

    Are we really willing to sacrifice our privacy in this way? Some say yes, they would if it’ll keep them safe from the (in practical terms, very insignificant ) risk of terrorism. Yet there’s precious little evidence that such sacrifices actually do make us safer. As in the London example above, crime rates seem unaffected by the surveillance. Nor does it seem likely these measures will serve to stop terror attacks before they happen, as they’re mostly just used after-the-fact anyway, or else to prosecute minor traffic violations.

    So I go back to my original question. Even leaving aside the public video cameras, just gathering and collating existing data about each of us can result in a massive intrusion of what we used to consider private. Are we all right with that? And if we aren’t, is there a way to stop it?

  • I think when this stops being a good idea is when the “public”- a place where people can see what you’re doing at all times, and have a legal right to look- becomes a place where people are looking everywhere at all times. When that happens, it’s a threat and it’s too easy for really terrible abuse to be peretrated. When a camera is a preventative measure, and it makes it harder for a person to, in areas especially vulnerable to crime (like a bank, or under a stairway, or the end of a long, isolated train platform), commit a crime because evidence could be gathered against the person more easily, that’s great. But when we turn the “public” into a “cage,” or set it up so it could easily be done, we’ve done something else entirely, and we’ve done something terrible. We don’t need the idiot conservatives to have the ultimate tool in their belt to enforce orthodoxy on our society, surreptitiously (through shunning/blacklisting, slander, and blackmail) or otherwise. This doesn’t have to become Saudi Arabia or A Handmaid’s Tale or some obviously repressive, unbelievable futuristic society for it to take its toll, people.

    I heartily encourage anyone who reads this to take a stand against the over-proliferation of surveillence cameras in public. If we don’t fight the threat when it presents itself, then it will be your children and generally the children of our society who pay the toll because we didn’t have what it takes in us to confront the threat.

  • The biggest problem with this is it could already be organized to send data to one place- a situation just like totalitarian monitoring, except we’re depending on the goodwill of the people doing the monitoring. And who would be doing it, again? The cops- the people who put 41 shots into Amadou Diallo, sodomized Abner Louima and almost beat Rodney King to death? I like the cops when they’re rushing into collapsing buildings to save people, but I like them less when they’re making other discretionary decisions. Meaning, this isn’t the ACLU monitoring the cameras, here.

    A better alternative innovation for people who are concerned would be hand-held, personal cellphones capable of sending streaming video as a satellite-Internet cellphone call. If you’re personally attacked, you can probably send a much better picture to 911 (with audio) than a(n obvious) camera on a streetlamp can, but again, the muggers may figure out to wear ski-masks.

  • Ah, those security cameras… KGB’s best friend but, like policemen, never there when you need them.

    Anyone seen “Unbearable Lightness of Being”? There you were, waving a flag in Prague and hollering for freedom and the next thing you knew, you were being interrogated regarding your loyalty to the party.

    On the other side of the spectrum… Anyone remember the case in Nevada last fall? Governor Gibbons doing what monkeys do best and mauling a woman in a parking garage and in full view of the security cameras? But, when she needed to prove her charges… Ooops… The tapes went missing. And when they resurfaced, the critical minutes seemed to have disappeared. Nothing recorded at all, not even his version of the incident.

    And those security cameras are supposed to make me feel safer? If anything, they’re more likely to fool people into a feeling of false security so that they stop using common sense to protect themselves.

  • I meant an Internet cellphone call in my last post, not a satellite one (although I’m not entirely sure I’m right that an Internet phone would be better for sending live video from a cellphone).

  • The whole purpose of this exercise is to give whatever division of Haliburton that makes security cameras a shit load of cash, period.

    They’ll install the cameras, the cameras will break, the repair team will never arrive, the end. I bet they even have the PR statement ready for when a suitcase nuke is detonated right under the cameras.

    “No one could have possibly foreseen…”

    Gah!

  • …….. from more effectively using them to thwart terrorism to establishing rules to protect civil liberties.

    So they need to spy on us to protect our civil liberty. They will spy on us in order to protect us from unwarranted, illegal search and seizure. Um…..1984?

  • tAiO, @21

    I wonder if it would be possible to “marry” the security cameras and the voting Diebolds (and its really not my fault, but… Diebold and “diabel”” — Polish for “devil” — are so similiar sounding…)

  • Sounds good, Swan. “Excuse me, Mr. Mugger, while I shoot this video. Hope you don’t mind.”

    A lot of muggers are a lot more cowardly than people think. They aren’t in it for any rsistance, even from a little old lady. They just want to get what they want by scaring people, not by using or confronting force.

    At any rate, it’s not more unrealistic than using a cellphone to call 911 in some situation. A lot of situations are going to provide the victim with a lot more options than just being held up against a floor or a wall by a mugger. Sometimes they can kind of get away to call from a safer space, sometimes they can see the mugger from a distance- it becomes clear he’s a menace when he’s still far away.

    The cellphone also has the advantage of being with you. A streetlamp with a camera on it can’t follow you around to anywhere a mugger might show up.

  • What I want to know is why a town of 14K got more Homeland Defense money than mine…

    …And why that 180K only bought them four cameras. I could buy four security cams for $180 down at Fry’s…

  • I wonder if it would be possible to “marry” the security cameras and the voting Diebolds (and its really not my fault, but… Diebold and “diabel”” — Polish for “devil” — are so similiar sounding…)

    In English: Diabolical (devilish, evil). Spanish: Diablo, I’m not going to show how much of my French lessons I’ve forgotten but I know the spelling is similar to the Polish.

    Coincidence?

    Sure. (Mwahahaa)

    I don’t know if they’d even need to run the cameras on the voting machine system. Diebold already provides household security systems. Whoops, the voting machines keep shutting down when a Dem inserts his card. [/tinfoil hatting]

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