Blanket Surveillance of All Public Areas

Great Debates
1
  1. Would anyone have a problem with that?
  2. Is it technologically conceivable?

What if we lived in a world where you were on camera from the moment you left your front door to the moment you ducked into your office? (As it is, many US cities have surveillance cameras in place at strategic points. I understand that such cameras are even more prevalent in Europe than in the US.)

Constant surveillance of public areas would not be unconstitutional, at least not according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s current construction of the Constitution. (But should it be considered unconstitutional?)

On the positive side, it would make the job of fighting crime much easier. Mugging on Elm Street? Let’s review the tape.

Seems like it would also aid the fight against terrorism. Bomb went off? Let’s look at the video data to see who planted it, then trace their steps backward. (And indeed, I believe surveillance cameras are becoming omnipresent in Britain for that very reason.)

It’s not as if anyone would actually be watching you at all times. Logistically impossible. To state the obvious, there aren’t enough people to watch everybody. Presumably, the images would only be reviewed under cirtain specified circumstances.

There is of course the danger of abuse if the data is used improperly. (Say, to follow a cheating spouse. Or to stalk a potential victim. Or to follow political opponents.)

So would you consider constant surveillance an infringement of your rights? Even if it doesn’t violate a “right,” would you support legislation to limit surveillance? Or would you welcome surveillance as a tool to fight crime in general and terrorism in particular?

And will we ever have the technology to make blanket surveillance practical?

2

Well, the technology is already there to tell you the truth. I would support legislation for surveillence in cities and such. But why would legislation be needed? the cameras are already there. “They” are not putting camera’s in peoples houses [or are they??] Just kidding. If a camera on fifth ave, ‘sees’ the person’s face who just shot your brother, and that camera helps catch the shooter…uh…isn’t that good?

As long as the cameras do not break my/or any citizens constitutional privacy then why not have cameras help stop crime. I know for a fact that New York city,Boston, Hartford, Providence, New Haven, Bridgeport, Springfield MA, all have cameras. I have seen them. Students have studied them. I would advocate having them for helping stop crime. / However, on the other hand, if there are cameras, looking at my family and I having a BBQ in my back yard…then I would say that is an infringement on my privacy. And that would be going way to far…Also on that note possibly the ‘camera’ issue is snowballing and already going that far, what then…

3

My question was whether you would support legislation to LIMIT surveillance.

4

:o oh yes of course…then yes I would support legislation to LIMIT surveillence. However, you DID ask more than one question in that thread…

5

What if a private company did this? Picture this scenario: A private company sets up cameras to have blanket surveillance of all public areas in say, a small town. This company then opens a small building were citizens could then come and, for a fee, review any tape of any time they wished. Unconstitutional? I don’t think so. Should it be? What do you think?

6

1: Me.

2: My brother has created a program which can be used to match pictures, or even a basic abstract pattern, much like a face. Adapted slightly, his program can be used to compare a databank of criminal photos and compare them to surveilience images taken by such a network of cameras. This same technology could be modified to follow a person and record his or her every public movement (video/audio records) in a file in a computer. This would eliminate the need for a person to watch you all the time, it would be a computer that watched you.

Ok, so we let the gov. set up this surveilance network, only in public of course, not infringing on our public space. That’s fine, they might not even fine you every time you jaywalk. What happens when the government decides to step things up a little? Once you give them cameras, why not GPS implants in our bodies? Or electronic devices that record our every movement and action (only while we’re in a public place of course)? And then, when the gov. decides to take total control, to make sure that people stay safe, and personal privacy ceases to matter, what then? The networks are set up, you’ve got implants in your body, the gov can do anything it wants.

By giving them the cameras, we leave the door open to worse things.

7

Even if we don’t give them cameras democracy leaves the door open for worse things. I think the main thing I would do is limit their legal use untill they become well established. People would probably put too much faith in them:)

8

I’d have a problem with it. My biggest problem is that I do not know where the United States governent is headed. Right now they seem to have good intentions, but what if that changed? Having the infrastructure to record public areas would make the job of running a dictatorship a lot easier. Surely we have all read 1984.

Plus it’d creep me out.

9

Limit how?

Oh, he jaywalked, that’s not important so they can’t use the tapes.

Oh, he commited murder, that’s so heinous these tapes can be used.

Oh, the crime was commited between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM the tapes can’t be used.

What kind of limits would you like to see?

10

The company I work for does install CCTV surveillance. We of coure do this for companies for a variety of reasons.
Here is a little wrinkle I want to add to this discussion.
Face recognition software is becoming a strong reality. To the point of Casinos in Vegas having their system keep a look out for known cheats.
With the advance in computer processing speed. I could see such a public surveillance system used along side these programs.
Example:
Computer: Cameras on corner of Wall and Welborn Possible ID on John Q Suspect, wanted in questioning for robbery.

Such software with a suspected or known criminals profile loaded in would greatly increase the speed in capture of many suspects. I am sure such software could be developed to use such a system to track a vehicle as well.

Where would the cameras be placed? I could see such a system once developed could have some advantages. Yet, also it could have some wide spead opportunity for abuse.

I like the topic of debate spoke- will check back on this one later.

Osip

11

Hey, I’m no fan of camera surveillance of public areas, but c’mon. It’s a little step from cameras in public places to implants in our bodies? That is a massive step.

Anywho, back to reality. I don’t see any constitutional or legal bars, but I believe there should be. I am reminded of Justice Stevens dissent in the case that allowed for sobriety checkpoints (any help on the case name?): there are many legal things we don’t want to be caught doing. I wouldn’t want to get caught on camera in a secluded section of Central Park kissing the proverbial minister’s wife.

I think a fair compromise would be that the cameras are unmonitored and the tapes not reviewed unless a felony was committed at the location. Then, perhaps with consent from a judge, perhaps not, the tapes for that area for the relevant time period may be unsealed.

I recognize that this eliminates the possibility of preventing crime by use of the cameras, but freedom v. security always requires compromise.

Sua

12

Brilliant, Sua. My FIL and I often argue about surveillance; he’s of the mind that if you haven’t anything to hide, why would it bother you? I can’t describe the vaguely uneasy feeling that increased surveillance gives me (and IANACriminal) so we end in impasse.

Now I can reverse the argument; would he be prepared to have unmonitored cameras and unreviewed tapes? If not, why not?

In the UK, the police are working on sophisticated facial recognition linked to city CCTV systems. It really won’t be long before you’ll have to avoid all city centres (and motorways) if you don’t want them to know where you are. Sinister.

13

Personally, I wouldn’t mind, as long as EVERYONE were subject to the same surveillance.

After all, who would cast the first stone?

This issue calls to mind the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. There are cameras everywhere, but the room with the monitors is in full view of the public.

If the watchers are also watched, it arguably limits their ability to abuse people.

Let the sun shine everywhere.

14

Here’s the thing. You can put all the legal limitations on this you like, and it won’t do any good. You see, cameras and storage are just going to get cheaper and cheaper and smaller and smaller. I remember the day back in the 80s when I got a digital watch in a box of cereal. It kind of gave me a chill. Here was an instrument that would have cost a month’s salary 60 years ago, and they’re giving it away.

Digital cameras and digital storage will soon…within 10-20 years…be about that cheap. And of course, everything could be easily hooked up to everything else via wireless internet connections. So you have a situation where anyone can watch any camera at any time for any reason. And cameras will be so cheap they could be installed on virtually every manufactured item in the world.

You can pass all the laws you want, but you aren’t going to be able to prevent ubiquitous surveillance. In fact, making it illegal would be worse than useless, since criminals could use the cameras to plan and commit crimes, while at the same time the cameras could not be used to avoid, catch or convict them.

Our whole notion of an expectation of privacy will be obsolete, at least in public places. Kids will simply grow up knowing that every minute of every day they are being watched and recorded when they are in public. Whether this is good or bad is irrelevant, since there is really nothing that can be done to stop it without causing worse social problems.

So, what must be done is to set up the system to mitigate the bad effects and take the most advantage of the good effects. And lucwarm has the right idea. Everyone can watch everyone else, but then anyone can watch anyone who is watching them. The same technology that lets the stalker keep track of his victim allows the victim to keep track of the stalker and allows the victim to summon help if they need it.

For a book length discussion of this topic, see David Brin’s The Transparent Society.

15

I love the CCTV network in GB and wish we had it here all over in the States because it works and crime has dropped up to 75% in some areas just because of the cameras. There was a big fuss raised when stores started not only putting cameras in the customer areas but in the employee sections also, people screaming about invasion of privacy, civil rights, lawsuits and all but there is nothing in the constitution that concerns surveillance in a business, except keeping out of the changing rooms and bathrooms. Even there, cameras can be placed in the public areas of a bathroom.

Funny though, it seems all of the people doing the screaming were mostly those who liked to steal from their employer. Once the cameras went in, the stores started saving on employee theft to the tune of millions a year and prosecuting those they caught.

Now, Americans are having a bit of a problem because of the Big Brother complex (darn Bradbury for ‘1984’!) and because those who commit crimes, even minor ones, don’t want the cops looking over their shoulders. Me? I want the darn cameras because I want to walk down streets without being afraid of muggers, nuts and the assorted creeps out there or if I get into trouble on the highways, not have to wait forever for a cop to come by and that guy who blows by me at 200 mph, nearly forcing me off of the road, I want caught, hopefully kicked around a bit by the cops and jailed.

With the speed cameras, I want those smartassed producers of so called license tag disguisers run out of business for trying to screw with the law, those darn reckless drivers caught and fined and every road rager who attacks a driver hunted down and put in the deepest, darkest jail possible. The CCTV cameras can put an end to that.

In this day and age, where so many feel that they can do what they want, when they want to whomever they want and be gone before the cops get there and municipalities keep restricting the size of their police forces, the CCTV would be great.

Now, all they need to do is actually make an interactive nationwide Police computer network and force detectives to freely share clues and evidence instead of stupidly sitting on it, hoping they make the Big Score first and nationwide crime would drop at least 50%.

The Brits are way ahead of the US in law enforcement because of their CCTV network.

16

Lemur - it’s an excellent book, and I also recommend it. Brin incorporated the idea into his novel Earth.

However, what Brin was talking about and the OP aren’t quite the same thing. Brin advocated a transparent society of private actors. The OP is talking about government survellience. Until such time as a critical mass of private citizens exist to effectively monitor the actions of the government and the police, we do need, if only for an interim period, legal restrictions on police survellience power.

Sua

17

I believe that a society that is overdependent on artificial monitoring will eventually lose the concept of self policing. Once you abjure your own right to enforce the law, a vital link in social cohesion is broken.

Do we really need such a blanket of “self-protection”? I think it will only further atrophy our need to look out for each other, just as high density housing has almost neutered the sense of community that was once so common.

18

Well, as a Brit who is under constant surveillance from the moment I get out of my car until the moment I enter the office block where I work, I can say (to paraphrase a catchphrase of a UK political satire show)… I couldn’t disagree with you more.

Whilst I cannot disagree that it has some beneficial effects on street-crime (at least in catching the perps once the crime has been committed), that isn’t the point. Not much effort seems to have been put into identifying other methods of achieving the same aim.

By tacitly treating everyone as potential crime perpetrators, we somehow lose something as individuals and as a society.

However, Lemur866’s points are well made. I can rant as much as I like and it’s really not going to change anything.

19

The answer to governmental surveillance is that every citizen should be able to view the feed from the government cameras.

Zenster: I don’t understand your objection. Individual citizens don’t generally enforce the laws. Do you arrest jaywalkers or litterers, or track down serial killers? No, we typically delegate those tasks to the police. And my point is not that we need such a system, but that such as system seems inevitable.

You can’t ban small ubiquituous cameras without also having some serious interference in civil liberties. I have the right to carry a camera with me and take pictures of what happens to me, right? Well, in the future I’ll be able to have a couple video cameras capturing every interaction I have. If the cops harrass me, I’ll have the tape to prove that they did. If I rob a store, the store will have the tape to prove that I did.

Are we going to disallow camera/video evidence in court? Of course not. What is the dividing line between current-day crimes that just so happen to be caught on tape and future crimes that will always be caught on tape because just about every public area has a camera on it? So, even if the government doesn’t install cameras itself, just about every citizen is going to be able to record a Rodney King style incident. Every time a government official abuses their authority, then we’ll have proof.

Banning the cameras simply allows the rich and powerful to use them, while the average citizen goes to jail for doing the same thing. Secret surveillance will give some group or other so much power that they will essentially run the country. The only answer is to blow open the secrecy and have two-way surveillance. The government officials watch us, we watch them, everyone watches each other. Transparency is the solution.

20

This is the question I would ask: Would it be legal and ethical to put a cop watching where the camera is? If the answer is “yes” then, I prefer a camera since it is cheaper and has better memory.