Realtime facial recognition cameras used at Super Bowl

[Richard Lyons]

I'm new to this list, so hello everyone.  I'm also on the other side of 
the pond, so I'm interested in what you are recounting.  Here, in the UK, 
stalking is illegal, so is recording phone conversations covertly.  But 
the police are installing a network of CCTV -- not the general 
surveillance cameras in town centres which everyone loves, but a new set 
of low-level cameras that are directed into the windscreens of vehicles 
passing.  So they can track exactly who goes where when.  I'm not sure 
what intelligence they have installed (so far).  In fact, I am not sure 
of anything about them, because they have never been mentioned in the 
media, and most people I've talked to haven't even noticed they are 
there!

I'm wondering whether to try marketing driving masks...  And whether, if 
I did, they would be outlawed (on grounds that they reduce driver vision 
and cause danger, of course).

richard

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 02-02-01, 01:21:54, Adam Shostack <adam at homeport.org> wrote regarding 
Re: Realtime facial recognition cameras used at Super Bowl:


> On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 02:34:17PM -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
> | >
> | > One of the more troubling (to me) things is Chemerinsky's comment that
> | > people have no expectation of privacy in public.  The idea that you
> | > may follow someone around with a video camera, take mm scale radar
> | > pictures through their clothes, etc, etc without their permission
> | > because they are in a public space is simply wrong.
> |
> | I think it's important to flesh out what you mean by "wrong" - if you
> | mean that he's misread US law on this topic, I agree with him, not you 
-
> | the privacy and publicity (and 4th Amendment) cases have for the most
> | part agreed that it's perfectly permissible to record (mechanically
> | or electronically) whatever's perceptible from or in a public place.

> I mean wrong as in unethical, not illegal.

> More comments to follow, if I can find some free time. ;)

> Adam


> |
> | This summary of the legal and practical history of video surveillance
> | may be of interest -
> |
> | <http://www.library.ca.gov/CRB/97/05/>
> |
> | There are a few limited exceptions - as of Jan 1 2000, California
> | criminalized surreptitious nonconsensual videotaping under or
> | through another person's clothing for sexual purposes, where the
> | victim had a reasonable expectation of privacy (CA Penal Code
> | 647(k)(2)), but that's pretty limited. There's a table of state
> | voyeurism statutes at
> | 
<http://www.law.about.com/newsissues/law/library/docs/n98voyeurlaws.htm>
> | but it's a few years old - of the 12 states listed there, I'd say
> | that only two (AK and TN) appear to even potentially criminalize
> | surveillance or recording in public places.
> |
> | I get the impression that other states may eventually criminalize
> | sexually oriented surveillance - but I anticipate the statutes will
> | be aimed at sexual or voyeuristic content, and won't touch garden
> | variety baby-brother surveillance for behavior control.
> |
> | > The free-speech-chilling nature of this technology should be clear.
> |
> | Yes, but that's a two-edged sword - the free press implications of
> | limiting recording, depicting, and describing public content are
> | also very serious - I think the people most likely to successfully
> | use a law against public recordings would be police officers going
> | after people like the ones who videotaped the beating of Rodney King.
> | There's a persistent rumor that in CA, cops act very aggressively
> | to prosecute people who surreptitiously tape encounters like traffic
> | stops - I've got no idea whether or not that's true.


> --
> "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
>                                                      -Hume