Under the watchful eye of the LCSC’s cameras, I attended a rally in Lancaster to protest the installation of privately-run, privately-monitored surveillance cameras around the city. Charlie Crystlec, a local entrepreneur, blogger, and activist was a speaker at the rally, and he’s posted his speech to his blog. It’s an important read for anyone who is concerned about this issue. Charlie focused on many of the ways the camera system can be abused by those in power, especially for political purposes. If we can’t expect duly-appointed and duly-sworn government employees to use their power ethically and objectively, how can we expect a group of anonymous, unsupervised volunteers?
Here’s an excerpt:
There was a man a few years ago who was upset by the war and decided to do something about it. He joined with others and formed a small group to exercise his Constitutional right to protest. They spent 12 months preparing to protest the war at the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. They were arrested before they even got there, and held during the convention, not charged, and then released.
The FBI and NYPD had tracked them for 12 months. The DOD had labeled protests low-level terrorism, and by extension, labeled protesters as low-level terrorists. Anything in the name of freedom, right? So they prevented a number of peaceful protesters their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and free speech. And they used a wide array of surveillance tools to deny them their rights.
And before anyone scoffs at the possibility of such abuses happening here, lets’s remember the peace protesters in Lancaster who were detained when Bush came to town, or the press refused entry to a McCain rally last year.
Systems of all types are abused for a wide range of reasons and as a result freedom and democracy suffer. Martin Luther King reminds us that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere, if it happened in New York, or San Francisco, or Hazleton, it can and will happen in Lancaster and likely has already.
By summer’s end, Lancaster PA will be covered in a network of 165 CCTV cameras. These cameras will be monitored by the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition, a private entity with no governmental oversight or accountability. The LCSC is staffed with volunteers, and lead by a board of directors comprised of politicians and businesspeople, many of whom do not live within the city limits. The LCSC has published no public standards for discrimination, record keeping, record reporting, confidentiality, volunteer background checks, or internal discipline.
This post will discuss how dangerous a system like this can be.
What Could Go Wrong?
There are plenty of things that you do on the streets of the city that are perfectly legal, but could still be dangerous if used against you. This information would not be readily available to a normal citizen, and would be difficult for them to collect in secret. The volunteers at the LCSC have access to this information, and the resources to get more. The LCSC gives us no tools to ensure that this information, which is far more than could be gathered by an individual, is not used against the citizens or tourists of Lancaster.
Political Uses
How easy would it be for a member of the LCSC to use their footage to embarrass and discredit a public figure running for reelection? If the tapes weren’t true, or they were misinterpreted, how easily could the public figure prove that point in the press?
“Mr. Senator, how to you respond to the tapes of your daughter making 4 trips to Planned Parenthood this year?”
“Sheriff, 10 years before you ran for the office, you made daily trips to Downtown Adult Books for a period of 3 months- how do you explain this?”
“Judge- back when you were still practicing privately, you spent a lot of time at the Tally-Ho, leaving most nights around 2, never alone. What is the meaning of this?”
We all know how politics work, and even if there are reasonable explanations for any of these scenarios, it would be impossible for a public figure to recover from them.
The published statements of the LCSC indicate that their tapes will only be released to police, or under subpoena. But with no transparency programs in place, if a tape DOES leak out of the LCSC, there is no way to determine the source of the leak.
And what’s to stop the LCSC from using their cameras to give special attention to their political opponents?
Confidentiality
Even if the tapes are kept under rigorous lock and key, there are still ways for the information to get out. What is to stop an LCSCwatchperson from discussing who they saw, and what they saw them doing? Doctors and lawyers are not allowed to discuss who their patients are, or how often they visit. The LCSC knows those things- are they bound by the same constraints? Every woman who visits Planned Parenthood is considered “at risk,” and Planned Parenthood must protect their patients, who could easily be targeted for violence. Does the LCSC respect that? Does every single person who watches the Lime Street camera respect that? Will every person who ever watches the Lime Street camera respect that?
Stalking
A network of video cameras makes it very easy for someone to secretly stalk someone else for weeks, months, or years. Is it safe to put this surveillance power into just anyone’s hands? If someone had been taping your every move outdoors for 5 years, you’d want to know who they are, and you’d want to file a restraining order. When they are safely locked away behind the LCSC’s doors, with their anonymity intact, you have no protections.
Planning Crimes
How many children walk to and from school every day inside the city limits? How many of their routes are captured by the LCSC’s cameras? Every corner, every street- exactly where they will be at 7:45, at 2:58. Is mom’s car in the driveway when they get there? This is incredibly dangerous information in the wrong hands. Who would you trust it to?
We’ve all seen enough films, and read enough crime reports to know that effective robberies often involve an “inside man.” Why spend time infiltrating the staff at a jewelry store when you can monitor the outside of the store 24/7 as an LCSC volunteer? One thief mans the cameras and learns the jeweler’s vulnerabilities, and then makes the cameras “look the other way” while his partner runs the smash & grab.
It’s no secret that their is a high concentration of racism, sexism, and homophobia in Lancaster. A skinhead could use a monitoring post to dispatch his buddies any time he spots an easy target walking into one of the LCSC’s blind spots.
A serial rapist could use an LCSC monitoring post to learn a young woman’s nightly route home from work, and lie in wait in a blind spot. How long before we figured out that he was using the LCSC cameras to plan his attacks?
Discrimination
We have to trust the LCSC to report all crimes equally. We have to trust them to monitor all citizens equally. When we can’t even trust governmental bodies like the police or TSA not to use racial profiling, how can we trust an untrained, unsupervised, unaccountable civilian?
Conclusion
With no standards, and no mechanisms to enforce them, the LCSC is empowering a select group of citizens. Those citizens do not have badge numbers to report or oaths to uphold. They do not need warrants, and do not need to sign off on testimony. Just as they could be noble, upstanding citizens, they could be sexual predators, racists, queer-bashers, thieves, or political agents. I refuse to be monitored through a one-way lens by an anonymous neighbor who could use their power against me with impunity.
Lancaster, PA is becoming the most-watched city in America. By summer’s end, it is planned to have more cameras per capita than any other city in the world. All of these cameras belong to a private organization, the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition. The cameras are monitored 24/7 by volunteers who call the police if they see anything suspicious. The LCSC has no governmental oversight, and no public standards regarding their training procedures, ethical guidelines, or internal discipline.
In this post, I will respond to some of the arguments I have heard made in favor of the LCSC’s self-appointed, unpoliced panopticon.
“They Save The Taxpayers Money”
This argument is true, but it is morally and ethically flawed. How much would you sell your PIN for? How much is your child’s route home from school worth? We can’t make economic arguments about our rights. If we allow the “it saves money” argument to prevail, we can use it to justify any number of breaches of our liberty. Torturing suspects will lead to quicker confessions and shorter trials. Allowing police to shoot suspects unprovoked would cut the courts out altogether. Warrants cost the taxpayers money by tying up judges’ and officers’ time- letting police search any home, vehicle, or person they like would be much cheaper. To co-opt another slogan: “Freedom isn’t Free.” Liberty is often expensive- and if you treasure your cash more than you treasure your basic rights, you need to rethink your priorities. How much would you sell your neighbor’s privacy for? How much would you expect them to ask for yours?
“They Help Solve Crimes”
This may also be true. There are several examples where the cameras have helped lead to arrest. However, there is no way to prove that the crimes which were solved with the cameras’ help could not have been solved without them. This argument also does not support the round-the-clock private, local civilian monitoring used by the LCSC. Unmanned cameras could produce the same evidence for police, without the need for anonymous watchdogs.
“There is No Expectation of Privacy When Out in Public”
This is simply not true. While we expect less privacy when out on the street, we still expect some. We expect that civilians will not walk up to us, unzip our backpacks, and rifle through the contents. We expect to have some privacy when at the ATM. We expect not to be continuously followed and tracked. If a citizen violates that privacy, we expect to have some recourse. We can ask the police for help, or we can simply walk away from the person who is listening in on our conversation. We cannot simply walk away from these cameras, and we cannot ask the police’s help in
preventing the LCSC from violating our outdoor privacy.
Secondly, aren’t we setting a dangerous precedent by telling citizens “if you don’t like it, stay inside?” Can we start stopping everyone who “looks suspicious” for strip searches, because they forfeited their privacy when they left the house?
“They Will Help Deter Crime”
This is difficult to prove, and there is already evidence, both anecdotal and documented, to suggest it is not so.
Violent Crime
Violent crimes such as assault and murder are carried out in one of two ways: in passion, or premeditated. An assault that arises from an argument outside a bar is performed in the heat of rage, when the assailant simply does not care who is watching. If someone is mad enough to stomp their ex-girlfriend to death on a street corner, they simply will not stop to think that cameras are watching.
In the case of a premeditated beating or murder, the criminal will simply plan their deed so as not to be spotted by the cameras. They’ll just pick a different corner to perform their stabbing.
Property Crime
Cameras may help deter property crimes like theft and vandalism. But even if it were proven that they did have a distinct effect on lowering property crime, we are back to the economic argument in my first point. Is your car stereo worth more to you than the collective privacy of 55,000 people?
If you live in Lancaster, PA, someone is recording you when you go to your doctor’s office. Your lawyer’s. There are tapes of your comings and goings at Planned Parenthood. At the gay bar. At the adult bookstore. It’s not the police. It’s not the FBI. It’s a private group with no accountability, no oversight, and no transparency. The tapes belong to them, and the only way to get them is through a subpoena. And the person watching the screen could be your stalker, your ex, or a predator learning your patterns. Read more…
Boyfriends is another project from the monstrously talented guys behind Lancaster stalwarts 1994!. Here they are playing at the Lizard Lounge, and that’s your Humble Correspondent screaming “Wowy Wow Wow Wow” at the end. Check out the MySpace here, for two recordings and more info.
The live show was amazing, and I’m really in love with this band as a musician and as a listener. Mike is doing amazing things with his mad scientist 3-amp + looper rig, and Chris’s vocals are surprisingly perfect. Bean blasts away at a minimized set, and knows just where to sit in the mix. Fantastic stuff. It’s some epic and fevered mix of Hot Water Music, Minus the Bear, and waking up on a beach after the most important night of your life.
