Private Cameras Will Hurt Privacy - But is There a Solution?

[ProSense]

Private Cameras Will Hurt Privacy - But is There a Solution?

By Jay Stanley

The ACLU has long opposed the spread of government video surveillance in American public life. We published this piece, The Four Problems With Public Video Surveillance, way back in February 2002 for example, and we had been saying similar things long before that...Since then, we have seen networked camera systems, operated by the government, begin to spread like algae throughout many of our cities—often, like so many surveillance technologies, fueled by grants from the Department of Homeland Security.

But at the same time we've also seen a dramatic acceleration of cameras in private hands. Today, much of the population carries a video camera in their pocket or purse at all times. That trend will only accelerate. Dashboard cameras will probably become commonplace as they are in some other countries such as Russia. More people are putting cameras on places such as their bicycle helmets or the outside of their homes. Google of course is marketing cameras people can affix to their face, and if that finds any success at all, we will no doubt see a whole product category emerge. The police are increasingly wearing lapel cameras, and it would not be surprising if civilians adopt the technology for certain uses as well.

This trend toward what has been called "Little Brother" surveillance will certainly have negative effects on our privacy. People will have to adjust to the fact that anything they do is susceptible to being broadcast to an audience much, much wider than the audience they thought they had when they quarreled with their paramour or picked their nose or did a funny spontaneous dance in a quiet corner of a park. That will have definite chilling effects...unlike the trend toward surveillance cameras that are part of a centralized system and run by the government, I think the trend toward Little Brother surveillance is probably unstoppable. Not least because the courts have consistently (and rightly) found a First Amendment right for citizens to photograph the police and anything else in public spaces. (Many of those cases defending photographers' rights have been ACLU cases.) Polls are also showing strong support for surveillance cameras in densely populated public areas, with 41% supporting more such cameras, 42% saying the current number is "about right," and only 14% saying they would like fewer such cameras.

Although the proliferation of private cameras will have some negative effects on privacy, I cannot think of any acceptable policy that would prevent those negative effects. (In some countries like Spain it is actually illegal to install a private surveillance camera where it can view public areas. I don't think that would fly in the U.S., and in any case doesn't apply to mobile cameras such as those in phones.)

But there is a big difference between distributed Little Brother surveillance and centralized government surveillance.

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https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-free-speech-technology-and-liberty/private-cameras-will-hurt-privacy-there

Interesting piece.

[phantom power]

1. wayyyy back in the 90s...

David Brin wrote an essay about surveillance technology, and his thesis was more or less:

1) The technology is going to continue to improve and miniaturize
2) It will eventually become ubiquitous and effectively undetectable
3) Nothing is going to stop (1) and (2)

... and so ...

4) The best hope is for *everybody* to have it. The alternative is for only the powerful to have it, which would be Very Bad.

We can already see this starting to happen, what with the police throwing a tantrum about citizens photographing and filming their abuses with cel phones. We need to make sure they lose their fight to try and stop this.

[geek tragedy]

2. nothing to stop it, and honestly I'm not that alarmed by it.

There's no expectation of privacy when you're in public.

Our apartment building has security cameras that monitor the building entrance and the sidewalk in front of it. And that's not oppressing anyone