Governing Magazine/August 2002

FEATURE: SURVEILLANCE

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU

Electronic surveillance systems make some law-abiding citizens feel
safer. They make others very nervous.

By Anya Sostek

Palm Springs, California, was practically built on an economic base of
movie stars and television cameras. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and
Lucille Ball all lived there; Bob Hope still does. So even the town's
less famous residents are accustomed to having their picture taken
once in a while.
 At the moment, they are getting ready for a whole new round of
photography. This time, however, it won't be tourists taking the
pictures. It will be the local government. Palm Springs is installing
police surveillance equipment all along the town's main commercial
corridor. Within a few months, 14 cameras will be keeping an eye on
the cars and pedestrians cruising Palm Canyon Drive, sending the
pictures to emergency dispatchers who will watch them from a command
post.
 Palm Springs, wealthy and attractive to transients, actually wanted
to do this a couple of years ago. But plans were tied up in part by
resistance from citizens and city council members, who considered the
cameras an assault on personal privacy. Last year's terrorism took
care of that. "September 11 really seemed to change the dynamic in
terms of people's thinking on security cameras," says City Manager
David Ready. "Since September 11, there's been very little opposition
in the community."
 It's not that Palm Springs is a particularly dangerous place; the
crime rate there is actually rather low. The purpose is almost
entirely to quell public fears. Although the cameras may help in some
shoplifting cases or car accidents, they are mainly for peace of mind.
"It's certainly not Big Brother," says Ready. "I like to think of it
as a little friend."
 Police surveillance cameras go back as far as the mid-1960s, when
cities used them to monitor public housing projects and other high-
crime locations. But they are experiencing a revival at the moment,
not just in cities with obvious national security concerns, such as
Washington, D.C., but in smaller and quieter cities more like Palm
Springs.
 The value of surveillance as a crime-fighting tool remains a matter
of dispute. The earliest camera systems--in Hoboken, New Jersey, in
1966; Mt. Vernon, New York, in 1971; and Dade County, Florida, in
1982--were generally unsuccessful: Criminals simply avoided areas
covered by the cameras. Later efforts, in a housing project in Camden,
New Jersey, and in downtown Dover, Delaware, resulted in more arrests
and convictions. In a few instances, surveillance cameras have helped
solve high-profile cases, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.
But for most of the past decade, there has been more skepticism than
enthusiasm. A few big cities, among them Detroit and Oakland, decided
either to remove existing camera systems or to scale back plans to
implement surveillance because of ineffectiveness and privacy
concerns.
 The best data on the effectiveness of surveillance cameras comes from
England, which has far more of them than any other place in the world.
Initially intended to fight terrorism by Irish militants against the
London financial district, the cameras have multiplied to the point
where there are now more than 2.5 million around the country, with
systems in place in three-quarters of British towns. The cameras were
credited in part for a 19 percent decline in street crime nationwide
between 1993 and 1996. In the past year, however, street crime in
London has risen 40 percent, and the effectiveness of the cameras,
both for deterrence and crime-solving purposes, is again being
questioned.
 The current renewal of surveillance in this country is being
accompanied by vocal criticism from groups concerned about privacy and
civil liberties. Such groups, frequently raising the specter of an
Orwellian police state, believe that no matter how helpful the cameras
may be in fighting crime, the government should not be watching
citizens as they go about their daily routine. "Frankly, there are
some areas where perhaps you could be a little bit safer," says Mihir
Kshirsegar, policy analyst for the Electronic Privacy Information
Center. "But do you really want to hand over to the government the
right to collect knowledge on you without your consent?"
 Proponents of the cameras see the privacy argument as an
overreaction. "The controversy is so unfounded," says Neil Trugman,
law enforcement intelligence coordinator for the D.C. Police. "Just
going to the neighborhood Wal-Mart, you'll be watched by about nine
cameras in the parking lot."
 Other critics of the cameras are less concerned about crime
surveillance and more concerned about the government making the
pictures too freely available to other interested parties. "What
citizens fear is misuse of information," says John Firman, research
director for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. "They
don't want to see themselves on a TV show because somebody decided to
hand a tape off to Channel 7."
 In the annals of video surveillance, such fears are not unfounded. In
England, in 1996, a "bootleg" tape was sold with footage taken from
police surveillance cameras of robberies, couples having sex, and even
a shot up Princess Diana's skirt. When 80,000 copies of the tapes were
sold, the incident became a worldwide scandal.
 To avoid similar problems, surveillance supporters stress the need
for strict policies governing what can be shown to whom. Such policies
cover access to the recording system, permission to analyze the tapes
and rules for how they must be stored. "The complexity is not the
cameras," says Firman. "It's the other stuff: policies, procedures,
maintenance, storage."
 Because of the vigilance of privacy activists, public sensitivity and
potential for misuse, police departments without firm policies are
likely to get burned. "You have to really try to think things
through," says Richard Chace, executive director of the Security
Industry Association. "Security is very psychological."
 Some cities have learned that lesson the hard way. In Washington,
D.C., police started planning to install a network of surveillance
cameras following the World Bank/IMF protests in 2000. The system,
scheduled for a test run on September 18, was rushed into action last
September 11. The police department has now set up 14 high-tech
cameras, and has started to build a network that will link together
surveillance systems already in place at numerous agencies, including
the National Park Service, the Metro transit system and D.C. public
schools. The result will be the most comprehensive local surveillance
system anywhere in the United States.
 The centerpiece of the Washington system is the police department's
Joint Operation Command Center. The room, filled with rows of computer
terminals, TV screens and American flags, resembles NASA's mission-
control facility.
 Before assembling its state-of-the-art system, however, the police
department did not develop a written policy or consult the community.
Although the JOCC is currently only used for major events, such as
protests or the State of the Union address, and the cameras do not
currently record, privacy groups are outraged. The result has been a
series of combative hearings in front of the city council and a U.S.
House committee. "D.C. had put the cart in front of the horse," Chace
says. "It made it difficult for them politically."
 As a way of preventing similar situations, the Security Industry
Association and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have
released a joint set of guidelines for establishing video surveillance
systems. The recommendations include consulting with the community in
advance, discarding videotapes not specific to a particular case and
designating an oversight officer to monitor police compliance. The
report also advocates clearly labeling all cameras, both to deter
crimes and to ease public fears. "The only time you should use a
covert camera is if you have a court order," Chace says. "Nothing is
gained by not telling people."

Whatever the disagreements about surveillance ethics, there is little
doubt that the cameras are constitutional. Courts have ruled that as
long as citizens do not have a "reasonable expectation of privacy,"
silent video surveillance is legal. Police are permitted to use
electronic surveillance on a street corner or inside a government
building, although they cannot do so in a public bathroom or inside
someone's home.
 There are some aspects of video surveillance, however, that have yet
to be tested in court. The ACLU, for example, believes that when
judges established the "reasonable expectation of privacy" standard,
they did not envision surveillance cameras as sophisticated as the
ones in place today. If the D.C. City Council does not set a policy
limiting the cameras, the ACLU is likely to challenge the
constitutionality of the camera system both as a violation of the
right to privacy and as an unreasonable search.
 In the end, the most persistent questions about video surveillance
may be practical rather than constitutional. Surveillance cameras are
expensive, not to mention the cost of additional personnel and
equipment needed to monitor and analyze the results. Each of the 14
cameras installed by the police department in Washington, D.C., cost
$15,000, about half the annual salary of a new police recruit. Those
figures inevitably will lead to complaints that using the money to
hire officers would have a greater impact on crime.
 But for many cities considering new surveillance systems, the crime
rate itself isn't exactly the issue. What they are responding to is
less tangible--the desire of residents to feel safe and the need to
convince visitors that they are safe as well. "I can't say that we
have a crime problem," admits David Ready in Palm Springs. "The idea
is just so that tourists have a greater sense of security."

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