Rick Morbey <rmorbey@morbey.com>, wrote: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>, wrote: David.K.Leucht.1@gsfc.nasa.gov, wrote: Privacy International says that in Britain, there are an estimated 300,000 CCTV surveillance cameras in public areas, housing estates, car
parks, public facilities, phone booths, vending machines, buses, trains, taxis, alongside motorways and inside Automatic Teller (ATM) Machines. Originally installed to deter burglary, assault and car theft, in practice most camera systems have been used to combat 'anti-social behavior'. including many such minor offenses as littering, urinating in public, traffic violations, obstruction, drunkenness, and evading meters in town parking lots. They have also been widely used to intervene in other 'undesirable' behavior such as underage smoking and a variety of public order transgressions. Other innovative uses are constantly being discovered.
These 'military-style' cameras are often installed in high-rent commercial areas. Crime statistics rarely reflect that crime may merely be pushed from these high value commercial areas into low rent residential areas. Richard Thomas, Acting Deputy Chief Constable for Gwent, in his interview with 20/20, said "Certainly the crime goes somewhere. I don't believe that just because you've got cameras in a city center that everyone says 'Oh well, we're going to give up crime and get a job".
In one survey commissioned by the UK Home Office a large proportion of respondents expressed concern about several key aspects of visual surveillance, says Privacy International. More than fifty per cent of people felt neither government nor private security firms should be allowed to make decisions to allow the installation of CCTV in public places. Seventy-two per cent agreed "these cameras could easily be abused and used by the wrong people". Thirty-nine per cent felt that>people who are in control of these systems could not be "completely trusted to use them only for the public good". Thirty-seven per cent felt that "in the future, cameras will be used by the government to control people". They already have. British CCTV surveillance systems were used by the Chinese government at Tienamen Square to suppress the student Democracy movement.
The fact is that FastGate and CCTV surveillance systems represent the tip of the technological iceberg. It is already far too late to prevent the invasion of surveillance and database systems which are getting faster, smarter, and cheaper every year. Innovation and miniaturization have created systems which can take pictures through the walls of your building and record every sound you make with satellites and blast the information to the other side of the world in a millisecond. Computers may already hold the financial, educational, medical and DNA records of each and every one of us. If not, they soon will. Strangers may already be collecting information on our whereabouts and cruising through our most personal information with impunity. We may have already created a world in which nothing is private.
Do we try to protect Democratic freedoms by legislating safeguards against the abuse of private data? Must we accept that the mightiest individuals and institutions cannot be held accountable, and there is no use in trying? Or do we simply acquiesce, and accept that privacy is an outdated concept when cheap technology makes everyone vulnerable, wolves and lambs alike? The choices are not easy, but in the words of David Brin, "asking questions can be a good first step".
One of the possible instruments needed to thwart such surveillence is the adoption of 'masks' which are socially acceptable for public use. Ideally they should all look alike, sort of something out of The Prisoner. Once a certain threshold of adoption has been passed the only option for law enforcement will be to remove the offending devices or declare maks illegal for public use (a real stretch for civil liberties).
I was living in Malaysia at the end of the 70's. I was told by locals, that people were prohibited, by law, from wearing motorcycle helmets (or similar headgear) which had tinted facemasks. The rational was that a significant number of bank robbers had worn the helmets to obscure their faces from cameras and eye-witnesses at the time of their robberies.
It is true that many countries and many US states (e.g., California) prohibit certain forms of dress. The logic seems to be that the state has a more significant interest in public safety than citizens do in their apparel. It is noteworthy that, in the US, the wearing of masks is tolerated during Halloween. Also, Moslem woman aren't forced to disrobe or uncover their heads. I'm confident that if a new-age religeous sect took to wearing masks it would be difficult for law enforcement, at least in the US, to overcome. --Steve