Public hearing about surveillance cameras, Tuesday 3/31

[ron_newman]

I got this e-mail from the ACLU today. One of the surveillance cameras described here is next to the traffic light in Davis Square. Another is on the SCAT building in Union Square. (Anyone know of others?)
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In Somerville on Tuesday, March 31, there will be a hearing before the Committee on Public Health and Public Safety about the issue of Department of Homeland Security-funded surveillance cameras. Somerville is part of a nine-city network that got the cameras through a DHS grant, details of which have been kept secret.

Somerville Meeting on Homeland Security Cameras
Committee on Public Health and Public Safety
Somerville City Hall
Aldermen's Chamber (2nd floor)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - Starts at 7:00 pm

In two other communities in the network, residents have organized against the cameras. In Cambridge, the cameras were unanimously rejected by the City Councilors in early February. In Brookline, after the Selectmen voted 3-2 to give them a year’s trial, residents are organizing to take the issue to the Town Meeting in May.

The Somerville hearing will give you an opportunity to get information about the cameras and give testimony.

To testify, you do NOT have to sign up in advance. If anyone wants talking points for their testimony, please contact nancy@aclum.org. We hope you can be there -- please spread the word!

Comments

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I have mixed feelings about this issue. On the one hand I am a supporter of most things the ACLU stands for, and I do think the public has every right to scrutinize its governments efforts to monitor them.

But that said, these cameras are recording public spaces, and the concept behind them is to provide the same level of police presence that you'd get by having an officer on every corner but without all the added payroll expenses.

If money were no object, I doubt very much that anyone would mind having more police all over the city just keeping an eye on things, so why is this really that much worse?

I might also add that the addition of video cameras to police cars has actually helped maintain the civil liberties of the accused because it cuts down on the number of situations where it is basically their word against the police officer's.

I guess I'm just having a hard time imagining a situation where I'd want to do something in a place as public as Davis Square, but where I still felt like I had a right to prevent someone from putting it on record.

Besides, I am already being video recorded in just about every private establishment I go into, and that isn't even under the pretense of benefiting me in any way. Why should this bother me more?

[cos]

But that said, these cameras are recording public spaces, and the concept behind them is to provide the same level of police presence that you'd get by having an officer on every corner but without all the added payroll expenses.

The fact that they're public spaces does not by itself suggest that law enforcement surveillance is okay, though it does suggest that private citizens (without special authority under the law) can take pictures as much as they want to.

Cameras do *not* provide "the same level of police presence" - that's something that should be evident without too much thought, but given London's experience with surveillance cameras all over the place, there's now research that effectively shows just how little "police presence" cameras are equivalent to. It turns out to be "close to zero". A complete waste of money.

There is, however, a serious cost in privacy.

... but where I still felt like I had a right to prevent someone from putting it on record.

It's very different when the "someone" is the government:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/privacy_and_pow.html

[derekp.livejournal.com]

"Seriously loss in privacy?"

I make no assumptions about the privacy I have in a public space. It's impossible to lose something I never had to begin with.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I meant cost and not loss. But the point stands ;)

[cos]

You're missing my point entirely, perhaps due to not having read the article I linked to. It may or may not be a personal cost to you (in some ways, only you can tell, though in other ways, even you can't tell), but it is a serious cost in privacy, and privacy is neither a simple binary (you either have it or don't), nor is it 100% individual.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

So you're saying that you'd have no problem with an armed agent of the state stationed on every street corner, watching everything you do?

Especially considering the flagrant abuses of power and complete disregard for personal civil rights by cops in this country that have been publicized in the last few years (and just think of how many are not known about), I'd actually prefer there to be fewer police, thanks -- at least until they show that they can be trusted, as a whole, with the actual public interest instead of their own.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I think the solution to this problem is not fewer cops. It's better management of existing cops.

[cos]

In that case, this is the worst of all worlds: This is sort of equivalent to fewer police officers, with less management, but more power per officer.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

In my mind, power generally equates to authority. They aren't exactly being given greater authority, just greater functionality. If I were fighting against the police as a military force, then I would consider this a bad thing either way. But I'm not. Instead the police are, at least in theory, employed to serve *me*, and so I want them to be able to do their jobs as effectively as possible for as little money as possible without stepping on my civil liberties (as spelled out in the constitution) in the process.

So I think it really comes down to a debate between whether the cameras add to the protection of my civil liberties, by impartially documenting any injustices performed by the state, or takes away from them by making a record of the part of my private life that I spend in public.

What leaves me unconvinced is that I've heard very little convincing argument that there really is such a thing as "a private life in public." If I were to walk out of my house in a very embarrassing outfit one day and stand on the street and say embarrassing things, I think I would have very little authority to prevent anyone, government or otherwise, from making a video tape, audio recording, or taking photos of the event.

The fact that it's taking place on public property is key here. When I'm in my house or talking on my computer over the Internet, I consider that information private and will fight all attempts by the government or private institutions to harvest it for their own use. I tend to think about this as one of the fundamental differences between public and private property.

[cos]

Hmm, it sounds like maybe you also didn't read the link? and thus are also missing what I'm talking about relating to privacy and the balance of power with authority.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Not only did I read the article, but his comment about recording interrogations is what led me down the road of supporting the cameras on the basis of police accountability.

[cos]

Recording all police interrogations, with standards that ensure those recordings are saved and made available, does increase police accountability - as long as the recording covers the entire time the suspect is in custody leading up to the interrogation.

However, surveillance cameras in public places does nothing whatsoever to improve accountability.

[derekp.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to keep sticking up for "the man" but while there have been many publicized abuses of power by police through the years, there have been countless unpublicized cases of good, great, or even above-and-beyond police work.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

And there have also been unpublicized abuses of power, and publicized cases of above-and-beyond work.

I don't deny any of the four categories. I'm just saying that there's two of them that people need to be really concerned about.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

Also, right now if a cop decides to violate my civil rights in public and then lie about it, it's really pretty hard for me to hold them accountable. If anything having cameras in public spaces would work in my favor.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

Except that the police are the ones recording you. I'd bet the odds are pretty high of hearing something like "the system wasn't working that day, we don't have any recordings."

If the cameras were not being operated by the authorities themselves, I'd say you have a good point.

[cos]

Yes: If the output of these cameras were freely available to the public, it would be a very very different thing.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

That seems reasonable to me. It also seems unlikely that the police would be allowed to keep the video information secret within the framework of FOIA, except, I suppose if they were being used in an ongoing criminal investigation.

[m00n.livejournal.com]

That would definitely be a difficult argument to support in court against a defendant with even a barely competent lawyer.

Ironically I think the police are one of the only government authorities with the existing legal framework that I would trust to run such a system. It is easy to believe that if the cameras were watched by some private enterprise that we'd be safer because the people with the physical power (the police) would have to work just as hard to get the videos as I would.

But the thing about the police doing this work that makes me more comfortable is that there is already a set of rules governing how police must treat the evidence they gather. And technically they are accountable to the people. Private corporations are not really accountable to anyone.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Data can be "accidentally" erased.