ELECTRONIC EYES PLEASE RETAILERS, POLICE AND POLITICIANS

To Curb Trafficking. Some Worry Video Will Infringe on Rights

If people want to avoid surveillance cameras, then public streets aren't
the place to go, a Montreal law expert says.

"The street is a public place, and open to surveillance by police, whether
on foot, horseback, motorcycle, patrol car" - or video camera, Marie-Andree
Bertrand, law professor at the Universite de Montreal, said yesterday. "If
you're out in a public place and looking for privacy, then you are in the
wrong place."

The city of Montreal, in collaboration with police, yesterday detailed
plans to install surveillance cameras near Berri Square and the Quarter
Latin on a four-month trial basis to curb drug trafficking in the area.

The pilot project has sounded alarm bells at the province's Human Rights
and Access to Information commissions.

Surveillance cameras infringe on a person's right to privacy and should
only be used in extreme need and under strict conditions, noted Ginette
L'Heureux, spokesperson for the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

The Access to Information Commission is expected within weeks to publish
new stringent rules for the use of surveillance cameras, following a public
consultation on the issue last year.

"In the best of worlds, you wouldn't need surveillance cameras," commission
researcher Laurent Bilodeau said yesterday.

The growing use of electronic surveillance by police forces and
municipalities within Quebec and outside should be of concern to citizens,
he said.

"It's important (before installing cameras) that all other alternatives
have been tried, and that it is absolutely necessary."

Bertrand said Ville Marie borough has made a good case for surveillance
cameras.

The devices are already commonly found in businesses and stores, she noted,
and other municipalities in North America and Europe use them to monitor
criminal activity as well as sports events and public rallies.

(In London, England, the average citizen can expect to be filmed 300 times
a day, a study has found.)

"Drug dealers might see cameras as a disaster (for business)," Bertrand
noted. "But the merchants and residents are worried about their
neighbourhood, and I side with them - they have a right to live in peace."

McGill University law professor Ron Sklar said he would welcome
surveillance at intersections to catch Montreal drivers who run red lights.
But he has misgivings about cameras trained on streets and sidewalks.

"You run the risk of having a chilling effect on legal conduct," he said,
adding it is "dubious" the cameras will do more than drive drug dealers
around the block.

"In a free and democratic society, we are concerned about giving police too
much power," Sklar said. "There should be a clear benefit (from electronic
surveillance), and I'm not convinced of the benefit."

But officials in municipalities that have adopted electronic surveillance
say cameras are effective at improving safety and a public sense of well-being.

"Our objective was not repression, but preventing and discouraging (crime),
and that's what we got," Daniel Chamberland, public security and fire
director for Baie Comeau, said yesterday.

The municipality of 23,000 installed two surveillance cameras in its
shopping district in May 2002. That was just prior to disbanding its
municipal police force and contracting for services with the Surete du Quebec.

A private security company monitors the cameras 24 hours a day; taping
takes place during limited hours, under agreement with the Access to
Information Commission.

The town installed the cameras following complaints street gangs were
scaring people away from downtown. The shoppers are now back and the
merchants are happy, Chamberland said.

Sherbrooke residents have been under electronic surveillance since 1990,
when officials set up cameras to monitor hooligans spilling out of bars
late at night and assaulting passers by.

"The results have been positive," said Gilles Veilleux, assistant director
of security for the city of 143,000. "In the first years after installing
the cameras, we saw a 22 per cent drop in crime."

The city now has 14 cameras trained on streets and outdoor parking lots,
and four in parks. Public security employees monitor the screens, and
contact police in the event of a crime.

Following recommendations from the Access to Information Commission in
1992, security employees hit the record button only after witnessing a crime.

In Kelowna, B.C., the RCMP monitors the city's single surveillance camera
24 hours a day.

"We're very satisfied with it," city manager Ron Born said yesterday.

Initially installed in a waterfront park beset with drug dealers, the
camera has now been trained on the 3 a.m. "bar flush" of a busy nightclub
strip, Born said.

The camera is a useful tool but doesn't replace RCMP patrols, he noted.
"It's another set of eyes on the street."

Former federal privacy commissioner George Radwanski challenged the RCMP
camera in B.C. Supreme Court in 2002, but the suit was withdrawn the
following year by Radwanski's successor, Born said.

"It's being well handled and monitored by police - it's not as if we were
putting them everywhere."