Snoop Camera Use Spreads

Newsmax | Aug 2 2006

Smile, you're probably on camera, co-starring in a video you didn't even know exists.

Big Brother has his eyes trained on public spaces all over the place - show up and you'll become an instant mug shot.

According to Scripps Howard News Service, Americans are under watch by between 10 and 100 cameras a day - depending on where they live. Warns Scripps, the way things are going, unless you're home or in a public restroom or locker room, you're probably on some snoop's camera.

A Scripps probe found that "at least 200 towns and cities in 37 states now employ video cameras - or are in the process of doing so - to watch sidewalks, parks, schools, buses, buildings, and similar community locales.

That number excludes the approximately 110 other municipalities that use traffic cameras to catch speeders and red-light runners." But that's not all.

The private sector is getting in on the act, installing their own security cameras.

Scripps says this is now a $9-billion industry, projected to more than double to $20 billion by 2010, according to security experts. Adds the news service, "an estimated 5 million video surveillance devices are in use nationwide today - and that number is forecast to double in only five more years."

Yet, while the cameras are watching Americans at work and at play, nobody seems to be watching the cameramen.

One of the dangers, experts cite, is the use of so-called face recognition technology. According to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) "The first step for a facial recognition system is to recognize a human face and extract it from the rest of the scene." But EPIC warns that the "technology is inherently susceptible to error given that the computer is extrapolating a three-dimensional model from a two-dimensional photograph."

EPIC cites the city of Tampa, Fla. It uses the technology to scan the faces of people in crowds at the Super Bowl, comparing them with images in a database of digital mug shots.

Privacy International subsequently gave the 2001 Big Brother Award for "Worst Public Official" to the city of Tampa for spying on Super Bowl attendees. "Tampa then installed cameras equipped with face recognition technology in their Ybor City nightlife district, where they have encountered opposition from people wearing masks and making obscene gestures at the cameras.

In August of 2003, the Tampa Police Department scrapped Ybor City's facial-recognition system, citing the system's ineffectiveness as bearing heavily on their decision.

Scripps quoted former Texas Rep. Dick Armey, an outspoken opponent of law-enforcement-by-video camera when still a member of Congress: "It seems like we need to be giving surveillance to the surveillance. I would hope somebody in the House or Senate would raise the privacy issues."

Another critic, Philadelphia Police Staff Inspector Thomas Nestel III, who Scripps said played a major role in his city's recent referendum on the installation of video cameras, has warned that the lack of oversight is an ill-advised invitation to trouble.

"Forging ahead with reckless abandon by providing no written direction, no supervision, no training and no regulating legislation creates a recipe for disaster," Nestel wrote in a March research thesis on the phenomenon.

"The technology is way ahead of the law," James Ross, assistant criminal justice professor at the State University of New York-Brockport told Scripps who identified him as an authority on privacy and security issues.

Critics are troubled by what Scripps called "the even greater absence of local, state or federal laws that specifically govern police-video surveillance of Americans, who are suspected of no crime, as they go about their daily business.

"Equally rare are enforceable regulations on such matters as who or what can be watched, how long images can be kept, who can see and share them, where a person's "zone of privacy" begins, and what recourse and punishments exist if that privacy is abused," Scripps wrote.

Yet the snoop camera craze continues, thanks, Scripps observes " to technology advances that are cutting the cost of the systems and to a bountiful spigot of federal anti-terror funds available to pay for them," with the cities of Spokane, Wash.; Kissimmee, Fla.; South Bend, Ind.; and Hazelton, Pa., deciding either to seek funds for cameras, or giving the formal OK to use them, or began installing a system, in June alone.

"In May," Scripps recalled "Philadelphia voters by a nearly 4 to 1 margin backed the use of cameras, and Milwaukee, Wis., joined the city-camera fraternity."

The question of the crime-fighting potential of the cameras remains open.

Scripps cites specifics:

In Britain, one of the world's most watched countries, a government study released in February found that the estimated 4.2 million cameras arrayed across that nation have done little to reduce crime in the decade they have been in use. As a result, officials there have decided not to install any more cameras.
A University of Cincinnati study in 2000 found that crime in Cincinnati dropped initially after the eight cameras were deployed but then rebounded.
In Minneapolis, overall crime actually increased a bit during the 11 months after cameras were installed, according to a May 10 report by city of St. Paul's mayor's office.

In St. Petersburg, Fla., police officials said images from cameras there had not "been successfully used in prosecution" of any crime in 15 years, according to researcher Nestel's study.
Notes Scripps, critics fear the government's soon-to-come "ability to construct dossiers of suspected criminals and innocent individuals alike, using networked cameras and other databases to document every aspect of a person's life and track his every move.

In Beijing, China, where 260,000 cameras scan the city and thousands more are on the way, authorities are doing just that."

David Keene, head of the American Conservative Union told Scripps "Today, every bit of information can be collated, marshaled, can be used."

"The question is: How much of our civil liberties do we want to trade?" New York professor Ross told Scripps. "Are we getting a fair payback [from the video cameras] for giving up our freedoms?"

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