Spying Eyes

Rise of Security Cameras Stirs Privacy Concerns

By Stephen C. Fehr
Washington Post Staff Writer

Video surveillance cameras have eyeballed people at banks, parking lots,
shopping centers, convenience stores and workplaces for years.

Now, cheaper and more sophisticated cameras are making it even easier to
catch people doing things they shouldn't on city streets, mass transit, even
sports stadiums if you act rowdy at the new Washington Redskins' new
stadium in Landover, you could be caught on a surveillance camera and
escorted by security to an onsite holding cell.

Dozens of governments, schools and businesses throughout Washington and
across the country have embraced such cameras, believing they will help cut
crime and ease traffic congestion.

The reliance on security video cameras highlights a growing concern about the
clash between technology and Americans' right to privacy. The image of a
society in which "every movement [was] scrutinized" was a prophecy of George
Orwell's classic novel "1984."

"We're on the precipice of developing a Big Brother society. That's not a
metaphor but a reality," said Donald Haines, a specialist on privacy issues
for the American Civil Liberties Union.

But even people concerned about surveillance cameras want safer streets and
faster trips to and from work.

"We're not in the business of promoting Big Brother. We want to promote
public safety," said Richard W. Chace, a spokesman for the Security Industry
Association, a trade group based in Alexandria.

Closedcircuit cameras recently went up along U Street NW to help stop
breakins in a renewed section of the District's Shaw neighborhood. This
year, the city of Mount Rainier, just across the D.C. line in Prince George's
County, mounted cameras on utility poles at 34th Street and Rhode Island
Avenue, an area notorious for drug dealing.

"We had a choice to make as a community: whether to stand up or give up,"
said civic leader Susan Bailey, whose assessment that the area has since been
"cleaned up" is echoed by city officials.

Baltimore business leaders have installed the first 16 of as many as 200
cameras downtown, including the Inner Harbor area. Washington's downtown
business community is planning to install cameras next year on 32 blocks
between the White House and MCI Center, the sports arena being built in
Chinatown. The universities of Maryland and Virginia are experimenting with
cameras in unsafe areas on campus.

Transportation officials are boosting their investment in video cameras, too,
not only for security but also to improve traffic flow. Along busy Northern
Virginia and Maryland Interstate highways that are under surveillance,
officials who see a problem can dispatch emergency crews, divert traffic and
warn approaching drivers via electronic message signs.

Maryland officials are considering adding more cameras on the Capital Beltway
to control football game traffic from the Redskins stadium. Virginia is
extending its traffic cameras on Interstates 66 and 95 to Manassas to give
officials 30mile views from the Potomac River bridges to Prince William
County.

Montgomery County has a cable TV channel that broadcasts live pictures of
traffic conditions on major highways. And Fairfax City recently joined
Columbia in using cameras to catch redlight runners at key intersections;
from July 25 to Aug. 21, the Fairfax City camera recorded 2,872 violations,
600 of which were at Lee Highway and Old Lee Highway during a threeday
period.

"It's been extremely effective," said Todd Hoffman, spokesman for Fairfax
City. "We certainly didn't expect the number to be this high." But he said
the redlight running is "not surprising in that the city is a major
thoroughfare for commuters."

The new National Airport terminal is saturated with cameras, from the parking
garages to the ticket counters. The Metro system averages eight cameras per
station, including cameras hidden inside elevators aimed at catching people
urinating.

Then there's Tempe, Ariz., which stuck a rotating camera atop the municipal
building in December just for the heck of it.

Called "Sneaky Peak," the camera puts the images of the main downtown street
on the Internet. "It's the biggest hit on our Web page," said David Kelley,
who maintains the World Wide Web site. "People from Germany say they want to
see what a place without snow looks like."

Elsewhere, Portland, Ore., put them on city transit buses; Boston put cameras
in a public housing complex. Anchorage officials say they cut the number of
brothels from 44 to six by circulating pictures of prostitutes taken by a
video camera.

The latest surge in video surveillance began in England, where more than 300
towns installed systems. Many British residents who don't have the same
zealous privacy tradition as Americans say in surveys that they support
the use of cameras, but many also fear abuse by the authorities.

In England, a man bought surveillance tapes from governments and security
firms and produced "Caught in the Act," a video showing not only people
committing crimes but also people having sex.

With wide publicity, cameras were tried in the United States in the late
1960s and early 1970s as freeflowing federal crimeprevention money financed
surveillance systems. They were tried first in the town of Olean, N.Y., and
later in Mount Vernon, N.Y., followed by a handful of other cities. But the
practice didn't catch on.

The cameras used then had trouble spotting people at night, and they often
needed repair. They also didn't significantly lower crime, so they weren't
worth the expense. Neither Olean nor Mount Vernon uses surveillance cameras
today.

As anyone who has recently bought a video camera knows, the clarity of the
picture has improved markedly. Cameras can shoot nighttime scenes in a wide
range of lighting. And the cost of setting up video surveillance of a city
block is about $10,000, far less than paying a police officer to patrol
there.

"The use of cameras is going to explode because the technology is getting
better and the price is coming down," said Chris Hertig, who teaches security
management at York (Pa.) College.

Although the advantages of cameras seem clear criminals are caught
redhanded, for one thing law enforcement officials are split on whether
video cameras in public places deter crime.

"We didn't catch anyone," said Kenneth Glassman, former police chief in Miami
Beach, where cameras were trained on two crimeridden streets from 1981 to
1984. "There was a slight reduction in crime but an increase on the adjacent
streets. We moved it, but we didn't eliminate it."

Aided by cameras, Baltimore police recently nabbed three suspected car
thieves; overall, crime in the area under surveillance dropped 33 percent.

But most cities offer only anecdotal evidence that the cameras scare off
troublemakers. Fredericksburg, Va., police say drug dealing subsided in areas
where they'd installed cameras in the last two summers, but no arrests came
out of the watch, and police have since stopped using the cameras.

University of Maryland police have recorded a drop in crime since cameras
were installed last year, but they also attribute it to increased police
patrols.

"You can't determine if the cameras are a deterrent because you don't know if
someone has noticed the cameras or the saturation patrols," said Tanisha
Edmunds, who supervises the campus video surveillance program. Students
monitor the university's cameras at a control center after completing
training in which they're warned that they may not spy on fellow students.

The potential for abuse by those watching the cameras is what worries many
legal analysts. The late Supreme Court justice William J. Brennan Jr. warned
as early as 1963 that "electronic surveillance makes the police omniscient,
and police omniscience is one of the most effective tools of tyranny."

The high court has consistently held that, in public places, there is no
"reasonable expectation" of privacy. Video surveillance for public safety or
transportation purposes would not appear to face constitutional obstacles,
legal analysts said.

But there is an absence of laws covering such issues as who watches the
cameras and what becomes of the tapes. Some agencies keep tapes for months,
others for only 24 hours.

For example, the ACLU asks, would African Americans automatically be
considered "suspicious" by those watching? Could the tapes be used to build
electronic dossiers on people? What happens if the person watching the screen
sees someone he or she knows playing hooky from work or walking with a
mistress?

"It's a quintessential American right to move around with privacy," said
Haines of the ACLU. "The rise of surveillance cameras in public places
significantly interferes with our enjoyment of that right."

Keshia White, a Howard University law student helping to put together the
surveillance along U Street, said: "Our freedom is taken more from us now by
our fear of crime. Cameras are not a restriction on freedom unless you intend
to do something wrong."

College students or nonpolice volunteers monitoring cameras, however, may
not be capable of judging when a crime or "something wrong" is taking place,
some analysts said, noting that even police officers often have difficulty
identifying illegal activity on small blackandwhite TV screens. And who can
expect someone to watch a parking lot or an intersection steadily for several
hours?

"It was the most boring TV show in town," said Glassman of Miami Beach, which
used volunteers to monitor its camera pictures. To keep them engaged, "we fed
them and gave them pop, but you can't look at a TV screen for four or five
hours. Their biggest concern was when they were going to get their
sandwiches."

Staff writer Leef Smith contributed to this report.

_ Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company