Should US cities try a London-style camera network?
New York plans to install a permanent, extensive system for lower Manhattan by year's end.
from the July 11, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
"That accelerated the investigation, and they were able to reassure the public that the perpetrators of this particular attack aren't still on the run," says Jenkins. "That has the effect of reducing the fear and terror that the attackers hoped to create."
But critics of such extensive surveillance say the deterrent effects are exaggerated.
"It just doesn't work," says Bruce Schneier, a security technology expert based in Minneapolis. "If you own a 7-Eleven and put a camera in your store and a robber robs the liquor store next door, that's money well spent. But if you're the town police, that's money wasted. You haven't reduced crime: You've just moved it around." As for New York's plan to emulate London's "ring of steel," he says, "At best, the terrorists would go bomb Boston instead."
Cost estimates for New York's complete system are $90 million. The first phase, which covers lower Manhattan and includes a surveillance center, will cost $25 million.
New York is "taking a page out of the London playbook, ... enamored with the idea of 'doing no small thing,'" says David Gaier, a public transportation security expert. But "the information overload will mean a lot of wasted time and effort that would be better spent elsewhere," he warns. Resources would be better spent employing more police and bomb-sniffing dogs and improving overall intelligence, say Messrs. Gaier and Schneier.
But advocates of camera surveillance argue that the cameras are a wise investment – a cost-effective equivalent of putting a police officer or London bobby on every corner or at every subway stop that needs one.
An ever-present eye
Concerns about cameras' intrusiveness – and how law-enforcement officers will use the images – remain paramount for civil libertarians and privacy advocates. Cameras today, they note, far surpass a police officer's ability to see the surroundings: They can rotate 360 degrees, zoom in on license plates hundreds of feet away, and see in the dark. They create a video record for police to archive and data-mine for decades. When used aboard helicopters and blimps, they can blanket large swaths of a city with live surveillance. All of this, they say, is open to abuse by government officials.
The New York Civil Liberties Union, in a report on the NYPD's use of video surveillance during the 2004 Republican National Convention, notes that officers aboard a helicopter who used infrared technology to videotape a nighttime demonstration spotted a couple embracing on a rooftop and filmed them. The four-minute footage eventually made it onto the Internet.
Jeffrey Rosner, one of the two in the tape, is quoted in the report as saying, "When you watch the tape, it makes you feel kind of ill. I had no idea they were filming me. Who would ever have an idea like that?"
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