BIG BROTHER VS. TERRORIST IN SPY CAMERA DEBATE

WASHINGTON - Amid uncertainty about whether surveillance cameras should be
used to control crowds, detect terrorists or scare off drug dealers, the
authorities in the nation's capital are debating rules intended to keep
them from becoming a tool of Big Brother spying on citizens.

The Metropolitan Police Department has only 14 cameras in use, at places
like the Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue and the
neighborhood of DuPont Circle, and officials insist they have no current
plans to install more. But other institutions, like the school system and
the metro, use cameras.

At a five-hour City Council hearing on the issue last week, Margaret
Nedelhoff Kellems, deputy mayor for public safety and justice, said that
while there were no plans to expand the police surveillance, the "efficient
way is to access the cameras of others."

Michael J. Fitzgerald, executive assistant chief of police, said at the
hearing that the police had tested links that would access a few hundred
surveillance cameras in the city's schools and the subway system. Mr.
Fitzgerald said the cameras had been used only for crowd control during
demonstrations and to move police units to places where violence might
break out.

As to other uses, Stephen Gaffigan of the department suggested that
terrorism was another concern, saying, "Sept. 11 began to put pressure on
us to expand the capability." Mrs. Kellems said the downtown sites selected
"were thought to be the highest risk targets for terrorists."

But she said they might also be used for "crime detection."

In addition, Councilman Adrian Fenty said his constituents were eager to
have cameras in neighborhoods so they could discourage drug sales.

A few hundred more cameras, over which the city authorities have no
influence, are maintained outside federal buildings.

Representative Constance A. Morella, a Maryland Republican who is
chairwoman of the Congressional subcommittee that oversees the District of
Columbia, held a hearing on the issue in March and said in a recent
interview, "We found at our hearing that there were no standards" on where
cameras could be installed, who looks at their pictures and how long data
is kept on file.

"We were rather startled that they admitted they didn't have any," Ms.
Morella said.

Issues of control were the focus of the Council hearing that generated
heated discussion of fears about loss of privacy.

"This whole Big Brother is watching you is scary," Councilwoman Carol
Schwartz said.

An even more alarmed witness, Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership
for Civil Justice and the National Lawyers Guild, said, "The D.C.
government is already spying on us when we go out of doors or stand by a
window."

Mr. Fitzgerald said the cameras had been programmed to black out any views
of windows.

Mr. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Kellems insisted that the cameras were not actually
in use on the day of the hearing, and that even when they were used, there
would be no tape-recording of the closed-circuit television pictures until
the department's regulations had been settled.

Miss Schwartz and Kathy Patterson, who heads the Council's Judiciary
Committee, both sharply criticized the draft of those regulations as being
too vague. As to the purpose of the cameras, the draft said that they would
be used "to safeguard the District of Columbia," that they represented "a
valid use of a government's power to protect its citizens" and that they
would help the police "prevent crime and fear of crime."

Miss Schwartz said she could not tell from the regulations "how much of
this is related to terrorism" and "how much of this relates to the drug
dealers in the community." She told Mrs. Kellems, "I am not going to give
you carte blanche to do anything with these cameras." Ms. Patterson said
that any broadly based surveillance system "needs to have a specific law
enforcement purpose."

Witnesses attacked the potential uses of the cameras as objectionable or
ineffective. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center, said requests under the Freedom of Information Act had
shown that cameras had been used by the federal authorities to put
political demonstrations under surveillance, and Ms. Verheyden-Hilliard
said the Washington police used them for that purpose, too.

Washington's mayor, Anthony A. Williams, has cited the cameras in London
and in Sydney, Australia, as systems this city should emulate. But Steven
Block, legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that
with 150,000 cameras in use in London in an effort that was begun to combat
attacks by the Irish Republican Army, "there is no record of these cameras
being involved in the apprehension of a single terrorist."

Mr. Rotenberg said the cameras used for crime prevention in Sydney had
produced only "one arrest in 160 days." He said: "The District of Columbia
is beginning a process of building a system of hi-tech police surveillance
for a city that has long cherished freedom. I urge you to proceed with
great caution."

The mayor's office appeared to agree. Mrs. Kellems, the deputy mayor for
public safety and justice, assured the subcommittee that the police were
very conscious of privacy issues.

As to procedures for the cameras controlled by the federal government, a
spokesman for the National Park Police, Sgt. Scott Fear, said it would have
written rules in force before its cameras were put into operation, which he
said would be around the Fourth of July.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's nonvoting delegate in Congress, said
the Congressional hearing in March showed that "nobody is tending to the
store when it comes to surveillance cameras."