Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Every week (or so), two Torontoist staffers square off to debate an issue that's important to our city. We invite our readers to join the debate in the comments section following the post.
Way back on December 18 2006, video surveillance cameras were placed in 3 locations near Dundas Square in downtown Toronto in an experiment to see if they would serve as a deterrent against crime. Last week, after less than a month in place, the cameras were removed. While some people felt that the cameras were intrusive and intimidating to shoppers, others (including the Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Association) liked the idea and have asked Mayor David Miller to have the cameras reinstalled on a permanent basis. Read on as Torontoist wades into this contentious issue.
KEN HUNT When it comes to the design and operation of Dundas Square, there are a lot of things to complain about, but the presence of surveillance cameras is not one of them. The last few years have seen a massive proliferation in the number of ways our images are captured. We are photographed whenever we drive our cars on the highway, or get in a cab, or use a bank machine, or purchase a six-pack at The Beer Store. At a mall, or, heaven-forbid, a casino, no one is ever off camera except in the bathroom. Add to this the hundreds of webcams that are pointed at public spaces all over the world you quickly realize that you never know when you might be on camera. Yet, despite this massive epoch shift in the control we have over our own image, what harm has come? Who has been hurt? I mean other than Star Wars kid, and he taped himself. On the other hand, we can certainly point to a lot of individual cases where catching the bad guys on camera has helped solve crimes. From the London subway bombings to the James Bulger kidnapping, to the recent case where Hamilton police posted a security video on YouTube and the suspect quickly turned himself in. Of course, it’s difficult to say how much crime is stopped by cameras and how much it is just moved around. Some studies claim massive drops in overall crime, others claim no difference. What we do know is that cameras certainly make people feel safer and they also help us catch the criminals when crimes do occur. When we’re talking about a square that is supposed to be a centre for public life and a major tourist destination, then making people feel comfortable in that specific location is at least half the point. Now, there are those who will claim that police surveillance of public spaces is just the first step in a government plan that will end, inevitably, with RFID microchips being implanted in our necks. This is a bunch of libertarian sheep dip. There is no form of surveillance more tightly regulated than that done by the state. Your neighbour could point a webcam at your front door and keep track of your comings and goings; the mall could track your every movement from store to store and sell that information to the highest bidder, and you would never know about it. On the other hand, when the police monitor Dundas Square, not only do they have to put up notices stating that the area is under surveillance, but the entire operation is overseen by the Police Services Board and Ontario’s Privacy Commissioner, all of whom ultimately answer to the public. If you’re looking for the real threat to public space in Dundas Square don’t point to the cameras, look instead to the massive posters of Photoshopped supermodels looking down on everyone, trying to sell perfume or jeans. That’s Big Brother in my book. | PATRICK METZGER Permanent closed circuit cameras in Dundas Square? No thanks. Sure, between banks, businesses, buildings and every teenager with a cell phone, we’re already videotaped plenty, but that’s not an argument for being comfortable with it. We have the option of avoiding businesses that use cameras if we don’t want to be on tape, but surely we shouldn’t have to keep away from public streets and parks to maintain some degree of privacy. Choosing hermitdom (hermitry? hermitness?) is not the answer. Moreover, do you really, really trust the government or the police with those tapes? Currently there is a legal grey area around the use of the materials; do you want your drunken but harmless New Years mooning to end up on YouTube and in your moms’ inbox? That said, it’s not just that I don’t enjoy being enveloped in the uterine warmth of the mommy state. The most compelling argument against closed circuit cameras is that they simply don’t work. In the UK, there are about 4.2 million cameras filming constantly, including more than 400,000 in London alone. In spite of all this expensive and obtrusive technology, a meta-analysis by the British Home Office found that the cameras had no meaningful effect on violent crime. Even the stupidest of criminals understand that the lens can’t see through baseball caps and hoodies. There’s also evidence of a substitution effect, where crime simply moves to areas immediately outside the view of the cameras. Although there have been highly publicized cases where closed circuit cameras have been of value in solving crimes, it’s invariably after the fact. Cameras did hasten the identification of the London Transit bombers in 2005, but did nothing to prevent the bombings themselves. During the brief period that the cameras were up in Dundas Square, they even captured images of a shooting, but police have as yet neither identified nor arrested the gunman. It’s been demonstrated that the most effective tools in actual crime reduction are simple - effective lighting, a visible police presence, and an alert and conscientious citizenry. More philosophically, what does all this say about us as a society? When did we agree to hand over the responsibility for the maintenance of civilization to machines? There was a time when it was assumed that people would behave in a reasonably enlightened manner in public spaces, and encourage others to do the same. Now we’re content to pass off the responsibility for our safety to video cameras and minimum wage security guards. Have we become so morally flabby that in the face of public confrontation we mill around like escaped cattle on a freeway, observing the commotion with bovine incomprehension until someone in a uniform shows up to rescue us? Let’s hope not. |
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A TPSC campaign to address the issue of police cameras in public spaces just received official approval the other night. I'll be sure to do a post when the campaign's web page goes up.
On the contrary, cameras actually make people feel less comfortable and make public spaces less pleasant. Additionally, police cameras do not encourage political demonstration and even deter it: in a democratic nation, this is unacceptable.
Having done the research, Jonathan could certainly speak to this better than I.
My biggest concern is actually that the government forcibly maintains some very unpopular and unjust laws, and cameras are often used to enforce them, especially throwing innocent drug users in jail.
kevin, i just want to point out that arugments that have the phrase "innocent drug users" are not good ones to make. Thier not innocent because drug use is still a crime. A much better choice would be non-violent, the idea that they and thier use is not harmful to others.
I maintain that otherwise innocent drug users are innocent people. Innocent in the "free from evil or guilt" sense, not the legal sense; when the laws are unjust we are obligated to break them, and the word "innocent" gives off a "victim" vibe that "non-violent" never could. These people are the victims of overzealous policing, failed prohibition and conservative ideologues, and they must be freed from prison.
I'm not comfortable with the blanket assertion that all drug users are innocent victims of unjust laws. While I'd agree that the recreational use of marijuana is considerably less harmful than alcohol, drugs like crack and crystal meth destroy users, families, and entire communities.
Now, there are those who will claim that police surveillance of public spaces is just the first step in a government plan that will end, inevitably, with RFID microchips being implanted in our necks.
Perhaps someday you might bother to provide the first and last names of three actual living human beings who have put forth this opinion?
Next time we have a shooting or a terrorist attack downtown, you're going to wish we had those cameras. If you've got nothing to hide, why are you worried?
If you've got nothing to hide, why are you worried?
After all, what stalking victim wouldn't want to have a convenient permanent record of all her comings and goings? What political dissident who barely escaped being killed in a totalitarian dictatorship could object to a massive database that shows who they associate with in public? What random person could possibly mind becoming masturbation fodder for someone who's put a camera in the bathroom for "security" purposes?
(I thought that last one was a crazy-talk idea from an episode of Torchwood, at least until I googled for "camera bathroom" just now. On the other hand, Torchwood was realistic enough that even though the camera's image quality was good enough for a bouncer to jerk off to, it still didn't stop vast numbers of innocent people dying....)
(some of my comments on the subject compiled from elsewhere)
There is an enormous difference between being in public and being under surveillance. Sure, you're out on the sidewalk and you can see everyone and everyone can see you, but they're not recording you from a bird's eye view for future scrutiny and analysis and profiling, and they can't reconstruct your every movement from the moment you parked your car or stepped off the bus.
The cameras that are already catching us every day are privately-owned and there for the insurance of the business/building that installed them. Sears is not the Toronto Police, Not Just Noodles is not a branch of the government.
Given the choice between more cops on the street and cameras, I'd go with the cops. Why? Well, have you ever seen a camera chase down a suspect, or take down an armed attacker? Neither have I. The cameras can't point everywhere, and the response time of a cop near the scene will always be higher than one 3 minutes away when the dispatcher calls.
And cops can be held accountable, you can see them in action. You often aren't aware of the cameras around you, you can't tell who's zooming in on whom, where that footage is going... Public surveillance cameras are, at best, a gross intrusion into our privacy rights. At their worst, a tool for abuse and future oppression.
Would you mind if the cops recorded all incoming and outgoing calls from your cell phone while you're in public? You're not planning bank robberies right, so what have you got to hide? You still have privacy rights in public.
As predicted, we're deep into X-files territory now. The government conspiracy theories abound.
Anticorium believes that there will be a permanent database made, tracking everyone's comings, goings and associations. He refers to bathroom cameras being installed in the name of security, and points to google. Yes, if you google 'bathroom camera', you'll see that private individuals and businesses have done this in the past. Not our government.
And rek is right. The Toronto Police are not Sears or Not Just Noodles. They are also not joe six-pack tying to get his jollies by watching girls go pee pee. He asks if we'd be alright with our phone calls being monitored: Of course we wouldn't and that right has been repeatedly protected by the courts. The idea that monitoring a public square with a camera and eavesdropping on cell phone calls made in public are in any way comparable is an absurd slippery slope analogy on its face.
Private individuals or businesses could act badly when it comes to surveillance and we would usually have no way of knowing. The surveillance done by the Toronto Police is overseen by the Ontario Privacy Commissioner, the Police Services Board and the Government of Ontario. How any data is being used would be public information, obtainable by the media, or anyone else through the Freedom of Information Act. We have a lot of safeguards in place.
With private surveillance we have no oversight and no guarantees. Yet people are not up in arms about private surveillance, just the evil police and the totalitarian state.
This is not a totalitarian regime we live in. We have every reason to believe that we can trust the police and government to use this privledge wisely. If they didn't, if they showed even once that they couldn't be trusted, I would be the first one screaming for the cameras to come down.
In the meantime, can anyone demonstrate any realistic harm that would come from surveillance cameras to offset the potential good that would come from making people feel safer, deterring crime and catching the bad guys more easily when drime does occur?
It's a new age, fellas. Why not consider weighing your paranoia against the greater good of catching taggers, shooters, bankrobbers and terrorists? Honestly, nobody is going to care about you picking your nose on Yonge Street. The cameras are there to supplement the police force. Anticorium, you should feel flattered that someone might jerk off to you.
As predicted, we're deep into X-files territory now. The government conspiracy theories abound.
And, of course, we're still short the names the actual people who believe the crazy things you said in the first place, Ken. Why, it's almost as if they don't exist! (If it will make you feel better, I will right now take the daring stance, which you have yet to prove isn't shared by absolutely goddamn everybody, that Stockwell Day has no plan to put RFID chips in everyone's forearm.)
And now you have a new claim: you're fighting the good fight against all of these libertarian cuckoo birds who are only about government-run cameras and have no objection whatsoever to untraceable private surveillance which answers to nobody. Well, name three actual people who believe this. You make some big accusations, but you seem to find it unimportant to prove a single one of them. And that's bullshit.
(I'm also very pleased to know that the police are constrained by laws and regulations, and therefore there is nothing to worry about. Certainly the idea had never occured to me before, what with my crazy conspiracy-theory antics. Why, I'm so crazy that I think that people might abuse a position of authority sometimes! Man, what next, I believe in Bigfoot, or computers that can copy bytes from one file to another?)
You're being immature here, Ken, and you're ignorant too. It should tell you something that the only person who has weighed in on your side has just managed to degrade his argument down from the importance of preventing a terrorist attack to catching people who...
...uh...
...write their name on the sidewalk.
That's right, the value of cameras is that they will keep people from drawing on the ground in Dundas Square. I certainly feel ashamed that I ever thought surveillance issues could involve civil liberties or freedom of speech and assembly, you betcha.
Anticorium,
Thanks again for participating in these Torontoist debates! Your level of discourse and your unique insight, as always, raise the debate to new levels. We really like that you feel so passionately about your positions, but if you call me or anyone else 'ignorant' or 'immature' again, your comments will be deleted. Let's try to keep things civilized, shall we?
Same goes for the profanity. Some of us here aren't protected by pseudonyms. We are debating issues out in the open under our real names. Our current and future employers can read the things we write and we refuse to be drawn into profanity and personal attacks.
I didn't respond to your 'name names' thing before because I thought you were joking. Now I realize that you just don't get it. My reference to RFIDs was rhetorical flourish meant to encompass all the crazy conspiracy theories and slippery slope arguments people invariably trot out when we talk about something like this. (Like massive databases being compiled of people's comings and goings and associations, masterbation-aiding bathroom cameras, tapping cell phone conversations, etc. etc.)
Now, before I go, I'd just like to point out the irony of someone who posts to a web forum using a pseudonym demanding that 'the first and last names of people' be brought out as evidence. That cracks me up.
I think my key point is being overlooked here - cameras don't reduce crime. Check the literature.
Governments like the idea because a camera is a lot cheaper than a cop, and they give people a warm and fuzzy while they're up there doing nothing much. If and when they do come in handy, it's in tracking down the thug who already shot you, which i suppose will be comforting for your family but not so much for you. Even that's not likely unless you've got monitored high-res zoomable colour cameras, for which I bet the city of Toronto doesn't plan to pay.
Even if the privacy infringement is theoretically minor, I don't think it's a reasonable trade-off.
@Ken:
Damn, you were making it up all along? That's a shame. It's too bad I wasn't making up bathroom cameras used to spy on people for sexual purposes or huge automated cell phone activity databases. (These, by the way, are just two examples. If you asked me to provide three more, I'd take you seriously... and be able to do it.)
@Patrick:
Governments like the idea because a camera is a lot cheaper than a cop, and they give people a warm and fuzzy while they're up there doing nothing much.
I'm probably not telling you anything new by mentioning Bruce Schneier, who really is probably the world's leading expert on these issues -- I'd put his work on privacy right up there with Matt Blaze on government cryptography, Avi Rubin on e-voting. He's thought a lot about this stuff, and he calls this sort of warm fuzzy security theatre: actions and countermeasures that look like they're making us more secure, but really aren't. (Every time you take off your shoes at Pearson, that's security theater... and you should be really glad that Richard Reid was the "shoe bomber" and not the "enema bomber".) His book Beyond Fear is all about the necessary tradeoff between power and liberty. It's also eminently readable, because Bruce is one hell of a writer.
He also spends a lot of time on his blog detailing the surveillance society, and Bruce is scrupulously honest about documenting every single time the press reports that an active camera caught a criminal after the fact. But he never has written about a camera interrupting or preventing a crime. I suspect that's because he's so scrupulously honest that he's documented every single time it's happened... which is zero.
My concern is that by playing up stopping terrorism and preventing the next Jane Creba, we'll end up with a system that doesn't actually stop terrorism or prevent random shootings, but does make it a lot easier and cheaper for the police to overreach their authority. I still think it's pretty telling that it didn't even take two posts for rocco to shift from "when the terrorists blow you up you'll wish there were cameras there" to "what, you have a problem with tracking down taggers?". (Along with a creepy little sidenote about how flattering it should be to be some stranger's masturbation fodder, which really did make me snicker at Ken's fainting spell over my level of civility....)
And really, his position makes sense, if you just think things through.
It's obvious that these cameras aren't going to stop terrorist attacks. (If they did, then why wasn't July 7, 2005 just another day that nothing happened? Hell, the subway bombers were even caught on tape doing a dry run -- which you can find out on Schneier's site because of that aforementioned honesty.) It's also obvious that terrorism doesn't happen that often in the first place, and Toronto's got one of the lowest crime rates of any North American city.
So the odds that we're going to film a terrorist act are pretty close to zero, and for right around 360 of the past 365 days, cameras on every corner of Yonge and Dundas wouldn't have captured a single shooting. So what would we do with these cameras the other 99% of the time? The idea that the police would just not use the cameras when no violent crime occurs isn't even given the respect of being laughed at. We go straight to having a great new investigative tool for finding and punishing graffiti artists.
Never mind that I don't think there's a single person that thinks this would be even remotely close to an issue worth all that money, though if anyone would qualify it'd probably be that anon troll on the "hope." thread who seemed to me to be stalking Sharon Harris. Never mind the idea that our police are so underworked that they're going to go out and arrest taggers after the fact. The point is that now we will have these capabilities anyway, and we're going to use them, even if only selectively. Maybe we'll even end up sending out dozens of citations a week for street graffiti once facial-recognition software gets good enough to automate the process. (This isn't a far-fetched idea; it's basically photo radar, just with better software.)
Even the best-run, most sunshine-prone public process won't undo the fact that this is going to be a new intrusion on public space and privacy. I don't want rek to be ticketed in the first place, and even if I did, I wouldn't want tools that make it easier to ticket him to be installed under false pretenses. But that's what we're getting. Even Lisa Simpson's magic rock kept away tigers; the surveillance society doesn't even do that much.
Ken - Calling valid concerns over privacy a conspiracy theory doesn't mean they are gaa-gaa koo-koo impossible. I think it was Anticorum's point that you were the one to invoke RFID implantation as some sort of see-how-stupid-arguments-against-cameras-are fallacy. He called you on it and exposed how ludicrous your position is. And I never specified how police cameras might be abused, let alone imply fodder for masturbation or cast dire warnings about Big Brother in the bathroom stall. If I were in the journalism field I wouldn't want that kind of sloppy misrepresentation coming up in a potential employer's Google-check...
With private surveillance we have no oversight and no guarantees. Yet people are not up in arms about private surveillance, just the evil police and the totalitarian state.
We may not have oversight or guarantees, but it would take quite a sea change for The Sony Store to start arming its employees and granting them the authority to kick down doors and drag people off to jail. We don't have to worry about The Sony Store following us down the block and having an eye on us on days we're nowhere near. We also have the choice not to patronize The Sony Store because of their cameras (I don't mean the crappy ones they sell). Avoiding public space is a bit more difficult.The police already use photographers to try identifying people in protests. When someone cautions that police cameras may be used to profile and monitor people, it's not so far-fetched. In fact, it's the next logical step after using footage to identify someone who fired a gun or smashed a window: follow them back in time to where they first came in range, note where they went, who they talked to, what they did. I'd be surprised to find out they don't already do that. None of this is X-Files territory. It's not even magic-computer CSI Miami territory.
Promising that the state will keep itself in check and not diminish our rights is no counter argument. It's easier to stop the installation of infrastructure that permits abuse than it is to stop the abuse once it has begun. Particularly when the abuse can become policy, in the name of fighting crime or terrorism or helping the economy or whatever they'll use to sell it. To analogize: I'd rather have freedom of speech than Free Speech Zones.
(Re: Recording cell phone calls. Let me ask you another question: Could it have been rhetorical?)
Something neither of you stated is how the video is being watched. If it is being monitored by police in real-time just looking for crimes, than it is totally unconstitutional and an infringment on our rights to privacy.
Or is it is being captured just for storage in case a crime is committed and the police have to look at footage to hlep determine who the perpetrators were. This is certainly less obtrusive, but as it was pointed out, it doesn't really help deter crime.
The talk of cameras helping us stop terrorists is kinda silly. In London, it didn't stop the attacks, it only helped identify the bombers.
I believe more cops walking the beat is better than cameras. Cameras don't stop the crimes -- they only help move the crime to another place. More community policing will help bring crime levels down much more effectively than a video camera.
Matt - In London it's gone from the latter (watching after the fact) to the former (active watching in realtime) and beyond. Now they have speakers and microphones so the cops can hear you (they also have software to detect "hostile vocalizations" or something like that) and yell at you to move along.
Matt:
Since I know that you are well informed on this issue, I was hoping that you could explain in more depth why you believe that monitored real-time surveillance is a violation of charter rights, put that simply recording the information might not be? I'm interested in your thinking here.
The most in-depth legal analysis of this issue (that I've seen) was done in 2002 by Supreme Court Justice La Forest. (he was VERY critical of surveillance) for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/media/nr-c/opinion_020410_e.asp
Note: this is not a court decision, merely an opinion, but it does show the most in-depth legal thinking on the matter and how it applies to Canadian law.
La Forest thinks that surveillance whether recorded or not is likely a violation of Section 8 of the Charter. He also states, of course, that one's expectation of privacy on a public street is highly attenuated, but he still thinks it's a violation.
Interesting that most people here seem to be fine with more cops instead of cameras. La Forest sees live cops watching everyone in a public square as the signs of a police state and he's very much opposed to that.
Of course I'm not bringing up La Forest here to help 'my side' (I didn't really have a strong opinion on the matter until I sat down to write my argument... the nature of this sort of debate), but because I think it really helps us get to the bottom of the philosophical/legal ideas being batted around here.
The lawyers I've spoken to on this issue tend to disagree with La Forest, saying that the expectation of privacy in a public space is so low that even if surveillance cameras were found to violate Section 8, that there would be a good reason to save it under Section 1 of the Charter (the reasonable limits clause.)
"Shootings outside a night club in the entertainment district
Toronto - Police are looking for witnesses after two men were shot early Sunday morning outside a night club in Toronto's entertainment district. Police tell 680News shots were fired around 2:45 a.m. outside the Union Lounge, near the Duncan and Richmond area.
A 20-year-old man received gunshot wounds to the chest and groin, but is expected to survive. A second victim, a 21-year-old man, was also found shot in the wrist. Police say a man was seen running from the scene. He is believed to be armed with a silver hand gun."
And having had a camera to identify the shooter would be infringing the criminal's privacy how? Shall we ask the victim what he thinks about his attacker's privacy? You guys are on the cutting edge, this issue is going to be huge in the coming decades. My point? The minute you decide to shoot someone or abduct a child or commit any crime really, you forfeit all your rights and any tools we can use to stop you are valid
Rek:
This is the problem with tossing around all these hypothetical situations, isn't it, the debate then becomes about which hypotheticals are absurd and which are not. This is why I wanted to try to avoid getting into the whole 'how will this data be used' argument in the first place. I think it's better if we stick to how the information is actually being used and to point out that we have safeguards in place to prevent abuse. Hypotheticals just mire us down.
I don't think it's dangerous to allow the 'installation of the infrastructure' with the potential for abuse when that infrastructure would be so easy to dismantled if it ever was abused. Those cameras in Dundas Square came down pretty quickly and easily.
Yes, the police have used photographers in the past to try to identify protesters, but they weren't doing this to make a big database of everyone who was at a particular protest, rather, they were trying to identify people who broke the law at a protest. There is a huge difference between these things. We don't live in a scary state. The police want to stop crime, they have no energy, funding, desire or mandate to just try to figure out the names of everyone at a peaceful protest. At a protest that has the potential to turn violent though, a police presence (with whatever monitoring they need) is justified, not only to protect the public, but to protect many protesters who are behaving civilly and could be hurt in a riot or other violence.
The last thing I would want to do is to discourage protests against the state. Protest is one of our most cherished and fundamental rights. But, I also think that people who attend protests should conduct themselves in a civilized and lawful manner. Emotions run high at a protest though and protesters who might want to start throwing things, lighting things on fire, etc., are kept in check by a police presence. This is a good thing. We don't want people getting hurt. This is not a police state, this is a state where everyone's freedoms and personal security are important, even in the middle of a protest against the state that is trying to provide those things.
@Ken:
This is why I wanted to try to avoid getting into the whole 'how will this data be used' argument in the first place.
Problem is, these are not "absurd hypotheticals". They're already happening (links provided above, more on request). And, unless computing power and data-mining technology suddenly stops progressing altogether, some of the things that are absurd hypotheticals today will stop being absurd, and once they do they can stop being hypothetical.
You said the police don't maintain a database of protesters because they don't have the "energy, funding, desire, or mandate" to do so. But what do you think would happen if we fixed those issues? Improve the facial-recognition software that we're using for passport photos to work on arbitrary photographs or video (not a particularly amazing idea), and the energy will just be more electricity for the server room, and the cost will sink close to zero.
At that point, do you think the police will still lack the desire to compile lists? Will it be that difficult for them to get a mandate, considering it's so low-cost and it would be so easy to argue the public safety benefits? ("Why are we so concerned about the rights of the guy who threw rocks at the police?")
We're already halfway there. Police forces are already doing trial runs of face-scanning to match a crowd against a photo database. (And this wasn't at a protest where there's a convincing public safety argument. It was at a football game!) The only missing piece is building a database whlle we're doing the scanning. (It doesn't even have to be complete. A database that doesn't match names and faces can still be used to run off a page of photos of repeat protesters.) And building that database just takes hardware and software.
(Note, by the way, that I haven't even brought up corruption and abuse. All of this could be done by an unimpeachable police force to protect public safety.... more on that topic below.)
Interesting that most people here seem to be fine with more cops instead of cameras.
There's one benefit of having more cops on the street instead of more cameras on the walls: there is a practical limit to the number of cops who can be on the street. It's physically impossible to hire enough police to watch everywhere at once. But adding enough cameras to blanket the city is just a matter of spending, and automating them is just a matter of software.
The UK, who are the poster child here (for both sides), have gotten to the point of having one camera for every 14 people. This Times of London story about the "aggression-recognition" software rek mentioned makes the bold, though undocumented, claim that the average Briton is filmed by a camera 300 times a day.
And by and large they're not being filmed to stop murders.(Good thing, too; the homicide rate in the UK has been flat for ten years now.) If this system goies into wide-scale deployment, these cameras will be used to swoop down on people who sound like they going to fight. The article claims 70 "genuine" alarms during a six-week trial, so obviously there were false positives, but they don't bother to say how many. And how many people were arrested? Four. The net effect was one arrest every 10.5 days.
Whenever we give people in a position of authority the ability to collect vast amounts of data that they couldn't before, the whole point is how the data will be used. And the simplest, most effective way to prevent abuse (through corruption, or through simple mandate creep) of that data isn't to have a thoroughly-documented public process and heartwarming faith in the inherent goodness of the system. It's to not grant these powers in the first place!
If you're basing your argument on the inherent absurdity of all of these claims, you're already on very shaky ground. (Again: links provided above and more on request.) And if you're basing your position on the present-day inherent absurdity of just the CSI magic-camera claims (thanks, rek!), well, Moore's Law trumps wishful thinking every time.
One reason that I'm vehemently opposed to cameras is that they will take people off the streets. Not because they're all being arrested but because many people have little interest in standing around being filmed, no matter what they're doing.
I want people to loiter on Yonge Street at three in the morning. I want them there because, generally, they aren't causing problems and they'll be the presence that deters crime.
Jane Jacobs talks about this concept in detail but, essentially, it isn't a camera or the occasional police officer on a stroll that will stop people from committing crime. It's that there are people looking at and caring about the street. They'll intervene if something bad is happening or call the police.
Of course there are exceptions -- the Boxing Day shooting in 2005 being one of them -- where there are people who no matter who or what is present will commit a crime. This point is even more relevant since there was a shooting right at Yonge & Gould a few days after the cameras went up.
Police maintain they will be able to use the surveillance footage to assist them in finding the shooter in that case, however, no picture of a suspect has been released and, so far as I can tell, no arrests made. This leads me to believe that the police were overstating the usefulness of the images captured on camera.
Unfortunately, the sense I get is that these cameras will become part of our lives, whether we like it or not. There is clearly no will in the Mayor's Office to put these cameras on ice, probably for fear of a wedge issue Miller won't win.
So if I'm thinking constructively there are a few pieces of policy that would make me slightly less opposed. None of them can mitigate my concerns about losing real, live people from places with cameras.
First, a comprehensive and transparent policy on how, when, where and by whom video surveillance can be used. My preference would be that it instructs that an officer with a higher rank (more accountable) and specific training on privacy law be present when viewing all tape; that a specific reason and time of incident be logged prior to viewing and that only tape from within so many minutes/hours of the time be made available to an investigation; that all tapes be stored and viewed in a central location; and that the location of cameras undergo a thorough community consultation process that is transparent, accountable and accessible to call community stakeholders.
My hope is that those four strategies will ensure an accountable system if the decision-makers decide that cameras will be implemented (again, my first, second and third choice would be to not have cameras at all.)Second, the Police Services Board setting up a sub-committee or special purpose body composed of citizens that ensures: the policy developed is being followed; immediately inform the TPSB of any breech of the policy; and recommend any changes or additions to the policy.
Third, an annual report to publicly declare the number and nature of cases in which the cameras were used, the number and nature of any breeches of the policy, and the fiscal and organizational resources used as a result of surveillance cameras.
Fourth, following the first year and subsequently every second year, produce an independant audit of the logs to ensure records are being properly kept.
I'm curious to hear of any other ideas people have for proper oversight of surveillance cameras in public places.
Can we get away from the "I don't like being watched" argument and focus on the more concrete "cameras are expensive toys that provide little or no benefit to the city"?
As a libertarian, I don't like the idea of being stalked by the police either, but as a citizen and taxpayer, I refuse to stand by and watch millions of dollars spent in an effort to make me "feel better" while real solutions to crime prevention like community policing and youth investment are being ignored.
The TPSC is going to fight this and if you want to help, feel free to get involved and lend a hand.
So Anticorium, let's get this straight:
IF the price of cameras drop drastically so they can be installed everywhere, and IF photo identification technology gets better, and IF it gets cheaper, and IF the police get a mandate to make a general database of people in a public space, contrary to all Canadian law and precedent, THEN we should be worried. OK. Fine. IF all those things happen, I will be opposed to the police using technology in this way.
If you ask me though, you'd be better off sticking with the practicality arguments raised by the likes of Daniel and Patrick. That's the real reason we might not do this, not because we are in danger of sliding into a techno-fascist police state.
Adam C-F,
You've produced the most intelligent post in this thread so far. I don't think all these guidelines are really necessary, but I think that's a good starting point for discussion about how to balance people's privacy concerns with people's security concerns. I also think that after a little while people will realize that this small additional infringement on their privacy (when compared to all the surveillance done already) is simply no big deal.
Let's try out the cameras. If they have no effect on crime and they seem too expensive for the benefit we seem to be getting from them, then we'll take them down.
I'd rather have red light cameras mounted on street cars than have surveillance cameras in Dundas Square.
IF all those things happen, I will be opposed to the police using technology in this way.
You're a brave man to bet against cameras getting cheaper and computers getting faster. It'd be too crazy a coincidence to make up, but while I was looking through David Pogue's blog at the New York Times today (mostly to find out exactly how rabid Mac fanboys were misreading his columns), I found his mention of a consumer-grade digital camera that does face tracking -- basically indicating, in real time, what parts of the image are the subjects' faces.
If you'd asked me last night about that particular part of the equation, I can promise you that my answer would not have included the phrases "$399 from Amazon.com" and "overnight shipping available".
If you ask me though, you'd be better off sticking with the practicality arguments raised by the likes of Daniel and Patrick.
I've been arguing the practicality angle all along: Cameras will not prevent crime, but they will enable abuse. On top of that, over time they'll get better at abuse but no better at prevention. At best a comprehensive camera network will sometimes enable an audit trail after a crime's been committed, but that's it. Patrick already pointed to the Home Office's meta-analysis, based on widespread CCTV networks in the United Kingdom dating back to 1994. They're the world experts on the issue, and they say it does nothing for the purpose. Why doubt them?
Cameras in Dundas Square won't give us any real benefits over more cops on the beat. They will be open to abuse, even without much technology backing them. (Though I'm glad to report that as far as Google knows, "stalker uses CCTV to keep tabs on his victim" is still a hypothetical.) And they'll help shift public attitudes when more effective, automated, database-backed monitoring -- what Schneier calls "wholesale surveillance" -- does become affordable. You're throwing around phrases like "a small additional infringement on their privacy" and "no big deal" today. Why wouldn't you throw those phrases around tomorrow, after you've gotten used to being on camera 24/7 anyway?
Right now, these cameras are just a waste of money, and in the future, they'll be a threat to our liberties. Why do we want our tax dollars to fund either of these things?
Anticorium,
In your valiant hunt to find cheap cameras on amazon.com, you've forgotten the most important thing that would have to happen for your hypothetical to come to pass: the complete overhaul of Canadian law and precedent.
We live in a country where just installing passive surveillance cameras treads the fine line between legal and not. We have numerous protections, not just in terms of oversight, but also the Privacy Act and the Charter. So before you put too much faith in Moore's Law, how about showing a little faith in Canadian Law.
So, can we finally stop talking about hypotheticals now, and concentrate on the real issues surrounding this debate?
(More on that later... I have other deadlines I need to start paying attention to or editors around the city are going to install surveillance cameras in my house to make sure I'm getting my work done...)
the complete overhaul of Canadian law and precedent.
Once again, you're using "hypotheticals" when you mean "historical precedents".
Or, as a wise man once put it: "Just watch me."
Ken:
I don't think it's dangerous to allow the 'installation of the infrastructure' with the potential for abuse when that infrastructure would be so easy to dismantled if it ever was abused. Those cameras in Dundas Square came down pretty quickly and easily.
The abuse I'm more worried about isn't Johnny Law sneaking into the tape archive to get his jollies off, it's Johnny's bosses and bosses' bosses deciding the cameras should be doing more. Put the cameras up and see how they fail to prevent crime or catch people, and then when the taxpayers balk at the wasted investment or Outraged Mothers United Against Street Crime (or NAMBLA) starts shouting, try justifying it by pushing for policy changes in the name of safety and terrorism to give the camera operators new directives.
Yes, physically removing the cameras is easy; undoing the political will that put them there, and new mandates on their operation, is not.
Yes, the police have used photographers in the past to try to identify protesters, but they weren't doing this to make a big database of everyone who was at a particular protest, rather, they were trying to identify people who broke the law at a protest.
They do in fact build a database of known protesters and their associates. Act in even a vaguely threatening manner (which includes stepping of the sidewalk) and you'll find a picture of yourself at the border crossing and your name on a list. I know people this has happened to.
Interesting that most people here seem to be fine with more cops instead of cameras. La Forest sees live cops watching everyone in a public square as the signs of a police state and he's very much opposed to that.
If made to choose between more cops and cameras, I'd choose cops. I don't want SWAT-like encampments on every corner, checking papers, but I also don't want a thousand electronic eyes on every corner, checking faces.I think what this issue is really boiling down to is whether or not you trust the cops and government. Violent coups aren't the only way for a nation to turn despotic and oppressive; the gradual slide into authoritarianism may come in the form of policy changes and the removal of restrictions placed on the government (by the government).
Adam C-F:
Second, the Police Services Board setting up a sub-committee or special purpose body composed of citizens that ensures: the policy developed is being followed; immediately inform the TPSB of any breech of the policy; and recommend any changes or additions to the policy.
IF we're to go ahead with cameras, I want the entire department and oversight committee out from under the TPSB. I want the cops, with approval from a judge, to apply to see particular footage (exact location/cameras and timeframe). Put them under the auspices of the IPC itself, independent of law enforcement.Outraged Mothers United Against Street Crime (or NAMBLA)
Dammit, rek, you just keep on giving, even when you steal your material.
They do in fact build a database of known protesters and their associates. ... I know people this has happened to.
Whoa, really?
If you're telling the truth here, that sort of scares me, because I really did fear this could someday happen, but only when it became cheap and easy and if public opinion was taken care of. What sort of people are being treated this way, and what sort of trouble are they running into? And most of all, where could I learn more about this?
(Re: police building databases of protesters):
If you're telling the truth here, that sort of scares me, because I really did fear this could someday happen, but only when it became cheap and easy and if public opinion was taken care of. What sort of people are being treated this way, and what sort of trouble are they running into? And most of all, where could I learn more about this?
I don't have any sort of official or linkable source specific to these protesters in particular, but see below. This was told to me by a former acquaintance in Ottawa who is very involved in the protest and homeless rights scenes there. Associates of his have been stopped at the border because of their outspokenness at demonstrations.
CSIS, RCMP, and local police share database of protesters, delay foreign protesters at border:
Behind the scenes, law enforcement agencies are directing their efforts
at organizations and individuals who engage in peaceful demonstrations,
according to civil rights experts. The targets are not extremists, but
ordinary Canadians who happen to disagree with government policies...
And in what some consider blatant intimidation, RCMP and CSIS agents are
showing up unannounced on the doorsteps of people who voice opinions
critical of government policy or who plan to take part in
demonstrations...
By the end of the [APEC] summit, the TAG database had swelled to almost 1,200
people and groups, including many activists and protesters. Ms. Russow's
photo appeared in a report alongside the pictures and dates of birth of
several other people. One is described as a "lesbian activist/anarchist"
considered "very masculine." NYC police build anti-war protester database (then destroy it).
European Union [pdf] builds "suspected protester" database to block movement between countries.
Pentagon builds database of Quakers, student groups, and other nonviolent anti-war protesters.
(Re: or NAMBLA)
Dammit, rek, you just keep on giving, even when you steal your material.
To be honest I don't watch the Daily Show more than maybe once a month, so credit should go to Torontist first.
(Crap, the html is botched! Preview lied!)
rek: HTML fixed. You just forgot to put quotes around your HREF tags (I'd private-message ya, but I don't know your real email address).