Watching Our Privacy Disappear

(And I also posted here.)

This LA Times story from last Sunday tells us the following (a little late with this due to historic events in Iran, the Metro crash story and the doings of a philandering Southern governor)…

Reporting from Lancaster, Pa. -- This historic town, where America's founding fathers plotted during the Revolution and Milton Hershey later crafted his first chocolates, now boasts another distinction.

It may become the nation's most closely watched small city.

Some 165 closed-circuit TV cameras soon will provide live, round-the-clock scrutiny of nearly every street, park and other public space used by the 55,000 residents and the town's many tourists. That's more outdoor cameras than are used by many major cities, including San Francisco and Boston.

Unlike anywhere else, cash-strapped Lancaster outsourced its surveillance to a private nonprofit group that hires civilians to tilt, pan and zoom the cameras -- and to call police if they spot suspicious activity. No government agency is directly involved.

Perhaps most surprising, the near-saturation surveillance of a community that saw four murders last year has sparked little public debate about whether the benefits for law enforcement outweigh the loss of privacy.

"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues."

Yeah, what a hoot - maybe you have...

In 2001, a local crime commission concluded that cameras might make the city safer. Business owners, civic boosters and city officials formed the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, and the nonprofit organization installed its first camera downtown in 2004.

Raising money from private donors and foundations, the coalition had set up 70 cameras by last year. And the crime rate rose.

Officials explained the increase by saying cameras caught lesser offenses, such as prostitution and drunkenness, that otherwise often escape prosecution. The cameras also helped police capture and convict a murderer, and solve several other violent crimes.

…

Mary Catherine Roper, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, says the coalition's role as a self-appointed, self-policed gatekeeper for blanket surveillance of an entire city is unique.

"This is the first time, the only time, I've heard of it anywhere," she said. "It is such a phenomenally bad idea that it is stunning to me."

All I ask is that you keep in mind that, for the most part, these are a few of the people who keep sending Pancake Joe Pitts back to Congress every two years, which explains more than a little bit as far as I’m concerned.

And though I think allowing some local poobahs to form a “safety coalition” of busybodies trying to act like the morality police is indeed “a phenomenally bad idea,” there is actually an argument to be made that cameras can help fight crime, as noted here (as long as the people doing the spying work in law enforcement, though I’m not at all sure that that will remain the case)…

BUFFALO, N.Y.--The same night this city attached a surveillance camera to a light post in a crime-ridden neighborhood, a convenience store across the street fell prey to a pack of looters.

Police saw it all happening in real-time video from their new command station and arrived in time to make five arrests.

"It's had an immediate impact," Capt. Mark Makowski said of the wireless video surveillance solution provided by Firetide and Avrio Group, a 60-camera network that cost the city more than $3 million. "I'd say it's been money well spent."

Buffalo is among a host of cities that in the last few years have deployed wireless video surveillance systems in the fight against crime, says Mark Jules, president of business development at Avrio Group.

"If you look back to three or four years ago, we only (provided wireless video surveillance for) one city," he said. "Last year, we did three cities. So far this year, we've already done 18."

This New York Times story tells us that there is definitely a civil liberties argument to be made against this type of surveillance, though, including the following…

LOS ANGELES — A growing number of big-city police departments and other law enforcement agencies across the country are embracing a new system to report suspicious activities that officials say could uncover terrorism plots but that civil liberties groups contend might violate individual rights.

Here and in nearly a dozen other cities, including Boston, Chicago and Miami, officers are filling out terror tip sheets if they run across activities in their routines that seem out of place, like someone buying police or firefighter uniforms, taking pictures of a power plant or espousing extremist views.

…

Civil liberties advocates praise the transparency of the police efforts in Los Angeles and a few other cities. But they also cite problems in places where police or other law enforcement officials have overreached — examples they say will multiply if the program to report suspicious activity expands.

In September 2007, a 24-year-old Muslim-American journalism student at Syracuse University was stopped by a Veterans Affairs police officer in New York for taking photographs of flags in front of a V.A. building as part of a class assignment. The student was taken into an office for questioning, and the images were deleted from her camera before she was released.

Also that year, a 54-year-old artist and fine arts professor at the University of Washington was stopped by Washington State police for taking photographs of electrical power lines as part of an art project. The professor was searched, handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car for almost half an hour before being released.

Police officials acknowledge that problems need to be worked out.

So in addition to the civil liberties argument (suppose watching someone commit a crime leads to the apprehension of an innocent person anyway?), there is the cost argument to be made against this type of surveillance; how long will it take before the criminals get wise to knocking out the cameras before they commit a crime, and how much will it cost to replace them? Also, what about the cost of litigation in response to the treatment described above as well as any wrongful prosecution that could result?

“Problems need to be worked out,” indeed.

This other item of interest appears in the Times story…

A branch of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring the national pilot program that in addition to Boston and Los Angeles includes police departments in Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Seattle and Washington, as well as state intelligence fusion centers in Florida, New York and Virginia. Nearly two dozen other cities have expressed interest.

However, as noted here a couple of days ago (second item), “The Obama administration plans to kill a controversial Bush administration spy satellite program at the Department of Homeland Security” (the National Applications Office by name) – no word, though, on the future of the National Geospatial Agency (NGA), about which we know the following (from here)…

Aug. 09, 2007 In the pre-dawn hours of Sept. 1, 2005, a U-2 surveillance aircraft known as the Dragon Lady lifted off the runway at Beale Air Force Base in California, the home of the U.S. Air Force 9th Reconnaissance Wing and one of the most important outposts in the U.S. intelligence world. Originally built in secret by Lockheed Corp. for the Central Intelligence Agency, the U-2 has provided some of the most sensitive intelligence available to the U.S. government, including thousands of photographs of Soviet and Chinese military bases, North Korean nuclear sites, and war zones from Afghanistan to Iraq.

But the aircraft that took off that September morning wasn't headed overseas to spy on America's enemies. Instead, for the next six hours it flew directly over the U.S. Gulf Coast, capturing hundreds of high-resolution images as Hurricane Katrina, one of the largest storms of the past century, slammed into New Orleans and the surrounding region.

The U-2 photos were matched against satellite imagery captured during and after the disaster by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Relatively unknown to the public, the NGA was first organized in 1996 from the imagery and mapping divisions of the CIA, the Department of Defense and the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that builds and maintains the nation's fleet of spy satellites. In 2003, the NGA was formally inaugurated as a combat support agency of the Pentagon. It is responsible for supplying overhead imagery and mapping tools to the military, the CIA and other intelligence agencies -- including the National Security Agency, whose wide-reaching, extrajudicial spying inside the United States under the Bush administration has been a heated political issue since first coming to light in the media nearly two years ago.

The NGA's role in Hurricane Katrina has received little attention outside of a few military and space industry publications. But the agency's close working relationship with the NSA -- whose powers to spy domestically were just expanded with new legislation from Congress -- raises the distinct possibility that the U.S. government could be doing far more than secretly listening in on phone calls as it targets and tracks individuals inside the United States. With the additional capabilities of the NGA and the use of other cutting-edge technologies, the government could also conceivably be following the movements of those individuals minute by minute, watching a person depart from a mosque in, say, Lodi, Calif., or drive a car from Chicago to Detroit.

And, as noted here from last month, though the NAO has apparently bitten the dust, there is no word of future funding for the secretive “National Reconnaissance Office” (NRO), of which the NAO was a part under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (or ODNI – more follows)…

Among the firms in the running to land ODNI/NRO new spy satellite contracts are: BAE, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. All of these corporations according to the Project on Government Oversight's (POGO) Federal Contractor Mismanagement Database (FCMD) have "histories of misconduct such as contract fraud and environmental, ethics, and labor violations."

Unsurprisingly, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE and Northrop Grumman lead the pack in "total instances of misconduct" as well as fines levied by the federal government for abusive practices and outright fraud.

…

Unaccountable federal agencies and corporations will continue the capitalist "security" grift, particularly when it comes to "black" programs run by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Despite a documented history of serious ethical and constitutional breeches, these programs will persist and expand well into the future. While the Obama administration has said it favors government transparency, it has continued to employ the opaque methods of its predecessors.

From the use of the state secrets privilege to conceal driftnet surveillance of Americans, to its refusal to launch an investigation--and prosecution--of Bush regime torture enablers and war criminals, the "change" administration instead, has delivered "more of the same."

And I’d like to believe that, while our government continues to reward corporate bad actors as they develop ever-more-sophisticated-and-opaque ways to intrude into our lives (and for ever bigger bucks, as noted here), we won’t become more and more a nation of Gladys Kravitzes (the reference is here for non-Boomers out there), forming Community Safety Coalitions to find out who is suspected of criminal mischief but maybe…just maybe…using all of this whiz-bang technology suddenly at our disposal to execute some petty reprisal in the name keeping everybody safe (“Wow, the schoolteacher and the alderman just checked into the Dew Drop Inn…funny place to discuss an appropriation for a new study hall”).

And I’d also like to believe that the instances when cameras are used effectively by law enforcement professionals will far outweigh the times when the technology is abused (and I’d also like to believe that this new technology won’t incur additional costs when the cameras are damaged, used for “profiling” – with resulting litigation – or used to force police to make “vice” busts that, by comparison to worse offenses, don’t represent an efficient use of their time).

But sadly, I know better.