LA Times on brinworld, complete with nothing to hide quote
Major Variola (ret)
mv at cdc.gov
Tue Feb 8 17:47:10 PST 2005
Article Published: Sunday, February 06, 2005
- 7:14:24 PM PST
Who's got an
eye on you?
Secret
cameras are
everywhere
By Andrea
Cavanaugh,
Staff Writer
Smile!
If you're
making your
way around
Los Angeles
-- or any
metropolitan
area in
America these
days -- there's
a good
chance your
movements
are being
recorded by a
surveillance
camera.
Once limited
mostly to
banks and
convenience
stores, the
beady eye of
the surveillance camera has appeared nearly
everywhere over the past
decade. Cheaper surveillance systems and
heightened fears of terrorist
attacks have created a world that is
increasingly captured on camera.
"If you're outside doing anything, you're
being recorded 50 percent of the
time," said Paul Ramos, vice president of
sales and marketing for Fairfax
Electronics, a Los Angeles company that sells
security systems.
"If you're shopping or attending an event, it
goes up to 90 percent. Yes,
Big Brother is there, and Big Brother is
strong."
Perched on rooftops and under eaves, cameras
discreetly rake shopping
centers, stadiums, office buildings and
parking lots.
Police say surveillance cameras, whether
installed by businesses,
homeowners or local governments, act as a
powerful law-enforcement tool
and crime deterrent. Law-abiding people have
nothing to worry about, said
Lt. Paul Vernon of the Los Angeles Police
Department.
"When people start talking about Big Brother,
I say, 'I've got nothing to
hide.' Those cameras aren't looking into my
home, and if they were, it
would be pretty boring."
Although law-enforcement agencies hail the
technology as a labor-saving
device that allows them to patrol much larger
areas with fewer sets of eyes,
many civil libertarians view surveillance
cameras as a creeping erosion of
privacy rights.
"How would you like to be followed around by
a slimy guy in a raincoat
who records everything you do? It's a
technological version of a slimy guy
in a raincoat," said privacy expert Lauren
Weinstein, who is producing a
radio series about technology's impact on
society.
"The difference is, you can't see it, you
don't know what it's pointed at, or
how long the images are going to be stored."
The mostly unregulated recording takes place
with a tacit nod from the U.S.
Supreme Court, which has indicated again and
again that people have no
reasonable expectation of privacy in public
places.
Government agencies across the United States
are installing cameras in as
many public areas as possible, but they are
still behind the curve compared
with European cities, Ramos said.
In Los Angeles, surveillance devices
increasingly are used by government
to patrol public places. Several recently
installed cameras along Hollywood
Boulevard scan stretches popular with
tourists and criminals alike.
And, buoyed by the success of a surveillance
program at crime-plagued
MacArthur Park west of downtown, the LAPD
recently unveiled a camera
system capable of scanning thousands of
license plates per hour and
employing controversial facial-recognition
software to pinpoint known
criminals.
Once clunky and obtrusive, some surveillance
devices are now so small
they're nearly undetectable. And the days of
scratchy, black-and-white
images recorded on videotape are long gone.
Advances in technology
mean crystal-clear digital pictures that can
be reviewed in real time -- as
they occur.
"These are beautiful tools," said Ramos,
whose company sells 20 to 30
surveillance systems each month. "It's the
ability to be anywhere in the
world and see what's going on, and also
review what happened yesterday,
or last week, or last month."
Although the cameras raise the hackles of
privacy advocates, most people
don't mind being recorded everywhere they go,
said A. Michael Noll, a
communications professor at the University of
Southern California.
Graduate students polled about privacy issues
routinely rank surveillance
cameras nearly at the bottom of a long list
of concerns, he said.
"Most people just don't care about being on
camera," Noll said. "In Los
Angeles, they probably enjoy it. They
probably see it as a screen test."
Northridge resident Rochelle Matthews sees it
as an invasion of privacy.
The 37-year-old insurance agent said she
doesn't like being under constant
scrutiny.
"What are they looking for? I don't think
everything needs to be patrolled.
People need and deserve privacy."
Chatsworth resident Leanne Vince said she
doesn't mind being recorded
when she ventures out in public. Only
criminals need to worry about being
under surveillance, the 35-year-old music
company executive said.
"It doesn't bother me at all because I'm not
doing anything wrong," she
said. "If I'm at the grocery store and
they're following me, so what? It's
technology. You take the good with the bad."
But Weinstein cautioned that constant
surveillance can cause the shadow
of suspicion to fall on the innocent when
innocuous activities are
misinterpreted.
"A lot of people don't care, but they haven't
thought about it," he said.
"The dark side of this stuff isn't
discussed."
The benefits of surveillance cameras, such as
capturing Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh on film just before he
picked up the rental truck
used in the bombing, far outweigh the privacy
concerns, Noll said.
And the concerns of those "screaming about
Big Brother" may be
overblown, Noll said.
"If someone were tracking me down the street,
I might care," he said. "But
there aren't enough people at the other end
to be watching all this
surveillance."
Armed with that knowledge, experts are now
developing software that
alerts authorities when certain types of
behavior are detected.
Weinstein cautioned that the practice of
recording people in nearly every
public place could escalate out of control.
"It's always a balancing act," he said. "It's
not to say you have a total
expectation of privacy in public places, but
there shouldn't be none.
"Unless we want to live in a pervasive
surveillance society where all of
your moves are tracked and recorded, we'd
better start putting rules in
place."
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