Washington Plans Unprecedented Camera Network

REUTERS ^ | February 13, 2002 08:10 AM ET | Reuters

[goldylight]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington police are building what will be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.

The system would eventually include hundreds of cameras, linking existing devices in Metro mass transit stations, public schools and traffic intersections to new digital cameras mounted to watch over neighborhoods and shopping districts, the Journal said.

"In the context of Sept. 11, we have no choice but to accept greater use of this technology," Stephen Gaffigan, the head of the police department project, told the Journal.

He said city officials had studied the British surveillance system, which has more than 2 million cameras throughout the country, and were "intrigued by that model."

One of the first uses of police surveillance cameras in Washington was April 2000, when authorities set up a network to monitor protests during a meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, the newspaper said.

On Tuesday morning, in response to the latest terror alert issued by the Justice Department, police activated a $7 million command center that was first used on Sept. 11. The command center, which has dozens of video stations for monitoring cameras, will remain in use until federal officials end the alert, the Journal reported.

Cameras installed by the police have been programmed to scan public areas automatically, and officers can take over manual control if they want to examine something more closely.

The system currently does not permit an automated match between a face in the crowd and a computerized photo of a suspect, the Journal said. Gaffigan said officials were looking at the technology but had not decided whether to use it.

Eventually, images will be viewable on computers already installed in most of the city's 1,000 squad cars, the Journal said.

The Journal said the plans for Washington went far beyond what was in use in other U.S. cities, a development that worries civil liberties advocates.

Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, noted there were few legal restrictions of video surveillance of public streets. But he said that by setting up a "central point of surveillance," it becomes likely that "the cameras will be more frequently used and more frequently abused."

"You are building in a surveillance infrastructure, and how it's used now is not likely how it's going to be used two years from now or five years from now," he told the Journal.

[nunya bidness]

There's always a way to bring attention to the cameras and have fun while doing it.

Click on the pic to learn how to start a chapter in your home town.

[Travis McGee]

Don't you think that's futile?

[nunya bidness]

Probably. But it's funny as hell.

And it makes me feel better knowing that people are aware of the cameras and drawing attention to them.

[Don Joe]

Do your ducts seem old-fashioned, out of date?

"We do the work, you do the pleasure."

Do all the camera-feeds end up at Information Retrieval?

[Don Joe]

Isn't that something out of Alice's Restaurant?

[Don Joe]

The scary thing is that there is a palpable allure to these cameras. While I am troubled at the realization that they're going up all over the place in the cities, I'd dearly like to have one on the light pole across the road, aimed at my house, covering and recording everything that goes on here.

I have had my fill of "rural crime". I'm fed up with scumbags who come on to my property to steal and destroy my stuff. I can honestly say that if the cops were to put a camera up that recorded everything going on here, I'd be their biggest fan.

So, all the hysteria (and valid 1984 comparisons) aside, how do we address the real concerns that make these things attractive to many people?

[FreeTheHostages]

You write: Washington, D.C. is a different kind of place, all right. And it high time we cut off funding for it. BTW, your crime rate is due to your gun laws.
Actually, agree with all of that. I'd add there's more than just the gun laws at work, but that might be a part of it.

[Resplendent]

Lets seee....congress is signing off on anti-free speech legislation called campaign finance reform, and GW will sign it all of which limits the right of the public to speak out in elections....Next, the federal government is still in freak out mode, so it is planning to spend billions on a camera spy network with face recognition software to scan the faces of everyday Americans going about their daily lives.

Future dictators will really love these new tools. Spying on the general public has become the main focus of federal alphabet agencies.