Many authorities on modern technology admit that privacy is becoming a thing of the past. Internet spying and identity theft are one issue. But increasingly, surveillance cameras in public places have also become a concern. They mean that someone is watching us almost everywhere we go outside our homes. We aren’t aware of the problem until we’re accused of doing something we don’t think we did, like running a red light. How much of this loss of privacy is a serious problem, though? Experts disagree.
Looking at three different authors, we see three different attitudes toward CCTV (closed-circuit television) and similar types of visually-based electronic surveillance technology. At one extreme, Wendy Kaminer argues that this technology is definitely a threat to our civil liberties and is an ineffective means of protecting us from terrorism to boot. At the opposite extreme, Sebastian Mallaby argues that this technology is highly effective in protecting us not only from terrorism, but from crimes and misdemeanors of a more ordinary nature. (He even mentions that it helps protect us from bad drivers.) Moreover, Mallaby argues that it’s no threat to our civil liberties because we can spy on the police as easily as they can spy on us. (In other words, he says, the pervasiveness of this technology will keep anyone from abusing it.) A more balanced view is offered by Christian Parenti, whose discussion of CCTV technology in Washington D.C. and in Great Britain reveals both the potential benefits and the problems of its use.
Kaminer sees this new technology in a historical context, arguing that Americans will use it to stereotype and unnecessarily persecute racial minorities. She points out that anti-communist phobia in the early 20th century led to persecution of Russian immigrants and anti-Japanese sentiments led to the internment of innocent Japanese-Americans in World War Two . Therefore, she argues, technology that enables us to closely track the movements of suspect foreigners will only encourage more of this kind of racial stereotyping of unpopular groups. We might counter-argue that modern facial recognition technology is more sophisticated in its ability to recognize individuals. But here Kaminer responds that this technology doesn’t work . Computers designed to recognize faces are making silly errors a human observer would never make, such as confusing male and female faces. Essentially, Kaminer argues that there’s simply no substitute for the individual human eye, which is why she believes in screening all checked bags and carry-on luggage for every airline flight. Finally, she talks about the misuse of this technology, pointing out that police in Florida, Michigan, and Great Britain have been known to use it to follow minorities, peek up women’s skirts, or even stalk individual females.
But Kaminer’s complete rejection of CCTV technology is unhelpful. Surely if this technology is helping police harass women or racial minorities, the problem is that we’re hiring the wrong police, not that we’re using the wrong technology. After all, we don’t want these police using ordinary police powers to stop women or African or Arab Americans and charge them with speeding when they aren’t. Moreover, Kaminer ignores the possibility that we might have learned something from racial profiling in the past; particularly the internment of Japanese Americans in World War Two, which we now consider a blot on our national honor. As to the criticism that facial recognition technology doesn’t work well, the obvious response is that new inventions never work perfectly when they’re first applied, and the only way to perfect them is to actually use them, not leave them on the shelf. As for the idea that people can check every individual bag for every boarding passenger of every airplane in the U.S., or every container entering the U.S. at every port, this is simply not practical. The economy would grind to a halt. Besides, if individual human inspectors do all the work, how well does that address the problem that they might make bad decisions based on racial profiling? Consider how hurried these inspectors will be. Wouldn’t we be imposing on these people near-impossible working conditions that invite this type of error?
At the opposite extreme, Sebastian Mallaby argues that this technology is clearly superior to human observation for many reasons: Cameras are objective. They don’t lie. They don’t stereotype or profile. By recording public events, they make it unnecessary to “detain hundreds of innocents for questioning” or have “biometric scanners check the irises of passersby” until one suspect is found. Clearly he assumes that if CCTV technology is not perfect now, it eventually will be—and probably sooner than we think. Once it’s perfected, it won’t be possible to use it to track the wrong people simply because of their race or ethnicity. Besides, Mallaby says, this technology will eventually be cheap and universally available; therefore, ordinary citizens will be able to use it to track the efforts of the government to police us. This is what happened when an amateur videographer taped Los Angeles police beating Rodney King, creating a scandal that forced major changes in the department.
Yet Mallaby ignores the importance of the human element in the application of any technology. Videotapes are only as good as the people who read them. Mallaby speaks as if cameras totally eliminate the need for human observers with their human motives and biases. But they don’t. Moreover, maybe it shouldn’t comfort us that ordinary citizens will be using this technology as often as the government does. Sometimes that leads to good things, like the exposing of police brutality. But there are already signs that the ordinary public may be even more inclined to abuse this technology than the police are. Husbands and wives hire private investigators to follow spouses suspected of cheating. Parents of teenagers hire them to track their children and listen to their conversations with other teens. Parents of younger children use surveillance cameras to monitor babysitters and nannies. Bosses use them to spy on their workers. Landlords even use them to spy on their tenants. In most states, all these activities are legal. But they aren’t always necessary, and they aren’t always done from appropriate motives.
Of these three writers, Christian Parenti offers the most balanced view of the merits and dangers of CCTV technology. To begin with, Parenti focuses on how this technology will work in the future. He explains its potential rather than ruminating about temporary glitches as Kaminer does. According to Parenti, the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. “will be able to read license plates and track cars as they move through the city, zoom in on individuals, read newsprint from hundreds of feet away, and send real-time images to the laptops of the department’s 1,000 police cars”. They will also be equipped with night vision and biometric facial-recognition software, though the police say they won’t use the biometrics until the technology improves. The technology will eventually be used in almost every public place, not just on the street. For example, it will be used in all D.C. public schools.
However, Parenti also points out that the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has raised many questions about how this technology will be applied. These questions include the following: “Who will monitor the video? When will the system be complete? How long will the tapes be kept and by whom? What agencies will get access to the tapes? And what steps will be taken to prevent video voyeurism or racist or anti-homeless profiling?” These questions suggest that the ACLU is deeply concerned about inappropriate use of this technology to harass innocent people, for any one of a number of different reasons. Parenti says this concern is not misplaced. For example, he points out that “police in Detroit and DC have used CCTV to stalk personal foes, political opponents, and young women.” Parenti also notes that CCTV technology has also already been used in the way we all most fear—to track and silence political opposition to the current administration. It has been used to monitor protests outside NATO meetings and World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Funds) meetings. It has been used to track protesters at both Bush inaugurations. It was even used to track the Million Man March. Most disturbingly, police with surveillance cameras have sometimes been used in conjunction with police snipers, whose rifles were trained on the demonstrators. Presumably they were poised to shoot if they saw something they didn’t like.
Parenti notes that the British have far more experience with CCTV technology than we do. The record from Britain about the use of this technology, he says, is mixed. But it should give us pause. For example, he points out that crime declined initially when the system was first deployed, but has risen again since then. He also says that “no terrorists were ever caught using CCTV,” but he says this because he’s writing in 2002, with outdated information. In July of 2005, the technology did perform well in helping police catch the London subway bombers. However, one thing that was true of the British CCTV system in 2002 is still true, and was also observed in the aftermath of the London subway bombings. According to Parenti, “leading British criminologists have found one clear trend: CCTV does lead to racial profiling.” In July of 2005, it led to more than just profiling. It led to the execution-style killing of an innocent Brazilian plumber because he was dark-skinned, dressed like the terrorists, and in a moment of panic made the bad decision to run from police.
Parenti concludes with a focus on the negative, quoting Jeffrey Rosen of the George Washington School of Law, who says, “Surveillance cameras are technologies of classification and exclusion”. By this, both writers are suggesting that surveillance technology is meant to keep track of individuals not as individuals, but as members of social and political groups. In short, this technology will give a whole new meaning to the old maxim, “You’re judged by the company you keep.” However, it could be that Parenti would feel differently if he read what Sebastian Mallaby has to say about the way this technology can empower individuals to fight government—even a government that finds it useful to track our movements and keep us in line
Click on pen to 
Recent Comments