Surveillance Camera Rights - Glenn Reynolds Op-Ed - Watching the Watchers - Popular Mechanics

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Shannon McElyea [shannonm () gmail com]
Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 8:10 PM
To: David Farber; Dewayne Hendricks
Subject: FW: Surveillance Camera Rights - Glenn Reynolds Op-Ed - Watching the Watchers - Popular Mechanics

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4237005.html
Watching the Watchers: Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street
If governments and businesses can keep an eye on us in public spaces, we ought to be able to look back.


By Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Published in the January 2008 issue.
Suddenly, cameras are everywhere. As this month's cover 
story<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4236865.html> notes, the recent boom in video 
monitoring—by both the state and businesses—means we're all being watched. It's like something out of George Orwell's 
1984. Except that, unlike Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith, we can watch back—and plenty of people are doing just 
that. Which makes a difference.

The widespread installation of recording devices is not all bad: ATM cameras helped prove that Duke students accused of 
rape couldn't have committed the crime. And we all sympathize with the goals of preventing terrorism and crime, though 
it is not proven that security cameras accomplish this.

Nonetheless, the trend toward constant surveillance is troubling. And even if the public became concerned enough to 
pass laws limiting the practice, it's not clear how well those laws would work. Government officials and private 
companies too often ignore privacy laws. (In a notorious recent case, Hewlett-Packard executives were caught spying on 
the phone records of reporters covering the company.) Besides, the technology of surveillance is becoming so 
advanced—biologists are now attaching tiny cameras to crows' tail feathers to observe the birds' tool use in the 
wild—that in reality there's not much we can do to ensure privacy anyway.

Maybe that doesn't matter. Privacy is a recent phenom­enon. For most of human history, people lived in small tribes or 
villages where everyone knew everyone else's business. Ubiquitous surveillance may be just a case of the past as 
prologue.

There's a difference, though. In the old days, ordinary people didn't have much privacy, but neither did big shots. By 
contrast, today's government officials and big corporations often want to watch us, but they don't want to be watched 
in return. Shopping malls are full of security cameras, but many have signs at the entrance telling customers that no 
photography or video recording is allowed. Police cars have dashboard cameras, cities and counties are posting 
red-light and speed-limit cameras, and it seems that the dream of many government officials is to put every public 
space under 24-hour video watch. But try shooting photos or video of police or ­other public officials as they go about 
their business and you might find yourself in wrist restraints.

In recent months such cases have been piling up. Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was a passenger in his friend's car when 
the police pulled the vehicle over for speeding. When Kelly began videotaping, he was arrested and charged with 
violating a state wiretap statute and thrown in jail overnight. Charges were dropped when the district attorney 
recognized that recording police in public isn't much like wiretapping. In addition, the DA said that the police had no 
expectation of privacy when they themselves were recording the incident. Michael Gannon, of Nashua, N.H., faced similar 
charges when he used a front-door security camera to record what he considered to be overly aggressive behavior by a 
detective. The charges against Gannon were dropped. That's the eventual outcome in most such cases, though sometimes 
photographs and video are lost in the process.

Of course, it's understandable that police might be skittish. Ever since the Rodney King case, police have known that 
video images—whether recorded by citizens or by the authorities themselves—can provoke controversy. With video 
technology spreading so rapidly, such images are coming to light more often. In October 2007, an elite unit of the 
Chicago Police Department was disbanded after video emerged of its members shaking down barroom customers. A policeman 
in Puerto Rico is under FBI investigation because video—uploaded to YouTube—apparently shows him executing an unarmed 
man. And a Baltimore woman recently won a $180,000 false arrest and imprisonment lawsuit based on police videotape 
evidence that confirmed a different but similarly dressed woman was the one buying drugs.

Supporters of widespread surveillance often argue, "If you're obeying the law, you have nothing to fear." Why shouldn't 
the same go for police officers? The cases above all involve accusations of extreme misconduct or errors on the part of 
police. Let's hope those are rare. Far more common, I suspect, are cases where the existence of a video record helps 
protect honest cops from false charges. The "don't Tase me, bro" case became a YouTube sensation after footage emerged 
of University of Florida police using a Taser on an obstreperous student. But ultimately that same footage was 
instrumental in clearing the officers of charges of wrongdoing.

Under the law, citizens have no right not to be photographed in public places. So why should people who make their 
living on the taxpayers' dime enjoy greater freedom from public scrutiny than the taxpayers themselves? Civil liberties 
groups have begun supporting the trend toward a video-enabled populace. The Eastern Missouri chapter of the American 
Civil Liberties Union sends out volunteers with cameras, though they have faced police hostility at times.

Over the long haul, such efforts may be superfluous. The widespread availability of digital cameras and video-capable 
cellphones means that ubiquitous surveillance on the part of the little guys is moving, if anything, even faster than 
ubiquitous surveillance on the part of the big boys. And distribution tools like YouTube make it easier to get the 
footage to a large audience.

I think that's a good thing. Today's pervasive surveillance may seem like something out of 1984, but access to 
technology has become a lot more democratic since Orwell's time. Big Brother had a network of security cameras, but 
could that oppressive regime have survived a network of cellphones?

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