« DHS under attack for vacancies, high number of politicos | Home | The numbers on how we’re losing fight against terror »
NYC surveillance/sousveillance
By WDavidStephenson | July 10, 2007
Which should we have to thwart terrorists: the increasingly common video surveillance by authorities, or less-known, souveillance by empowered and informed citizens (or a combination of both)?
New York City plans to follow London’s lead 
by mounting 100 surveillance cameras downtown, the first phase in a comprehensive program to reduce the threat of a terrorist attack in midtown Manhattan.
By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will monitor traffic, the beginning phase of a Lower Manhattan Security Initiative modeled on London’s “Ring of Steel.”
Later components would include:
- license plate readers
- 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street
- center staffed by the police and private security officers
- pivoting gates that would swing out to block traffic
Still under discussion is whether to include controversial facial recognition software (hmm.. we haven’t heard much about that technology in the past few years, have we?).
The system would be a dual purpose one, to also help enforce Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed congestion pricing, which would impose a fee on drivers entering the downtown area during rush hour. The entire system would be in place by 2010.
London authorities, who began implementing the system in the 1990s to deal with IRA bombers, credit it with helping find the London subway bombers and those in the botched bombing attempt earlier this month. However, critics say the UK system violates the country’s Data Act, meant to protect privacy rights, and New York Civil Liberties Union attorney Christopher Dunn says:
“This program marks a whole new level of police monitoring of New Yorkers and is being done without any public input, outside oversight, or privacy protections for the hundreds of thousands of people who will end up in N.Y.P.D. computers.”
Dunn fears that no one knows how the police would handle the images once archived, and who else might have access. Could they, for example, be used to detain protestors? A police spokesman countered that the cameras would be in “‘areas where there’s no expectation of privacy’ and that law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear.” I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that I don’t waive all rights to be left alone simply because I’ve left my house — a gray area, but important nonetheless.
Respected conservative homeland security analyst James J. Carafano also weighed in with concerns:
“There is little evidence to suggest that security cameras deter crime or terrorists, said James J. Carafano, a senior fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington.
For all its comprehensiveness, London’s Ring of Steel, which was built in the early 1990s to deter Irish Republican Army attacks, did not prevent the July 7, 2005, subway bombings or the attempted car bombings in London last month. But the British authorities said the cameras did prove useful in retracing the paths of the suspects’ cars last month, leading to several arrests.
While having 3,000 cameras whirring at the same time means loads of information will be captured, it also means there will be a lot of useless data to sift through.
‘The more hay you have, the harder it is to find the needle,” said Mr. Carafano.’”
As for me, especially in NYC, the city that’s taken the lead on empowering citizens using cameraphones, etc. to attach photos to 311 or 911 reports, and where citizen activists track pollution, I’d like to see less surveillance, and more sousveillance, the concept by which empowered individuals both keep officials honest by documenting possible malfeasance, but also can report suspicious activity on the street without calling attention to themselves.
Yes, this practice is also prone to abuses, but I’m convinced that with a combination of public education and interactive processes that make it clear frivolous/malicious reports will be prosecuted, sousveillance can and must be part of a comprehensive anti-terror detection system, and might well reduce the need for the Orwellian surveillance cameras.
Technorati tags:
homeland security War on TerrorMichael Bloomberg terrorismantiterrorism networked homeland security government IT collaboration civil liberties location-based services web 2.0 New York City Ring of Steel London CCTV surveillance sousveillance
Topics: technology, empowering public, policy and politics, civil liberties, networked security | |
