“There was,
of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any
given moment.... You had to live—did live, from habit that became
instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard,
and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell,
1984
We live in a
surveillance age.
From the
biggest city to the smallest town, we have succumbed to the
siren-song promise that surveillance cameras will not only stop
crime, they will actually make us safer.
New York City,
for example, is estimated to have over 4,000 surveillance cameras.
Other big cities using these cameras include the District of
Columbia, Boston, Baltimore and Chicago. The Mayberry-size town of
Bellows Falls, Vt., with its eight full-time police officers, plans
to install 16 surveillance cameras. Even the quaint college town of
Charlottesville, Va., where I live and work, is considering
installing 30 surveillance cameras in its small downtown mall area
to monitor its citizens.
Peering at
passersby from their mounted positions on street poles,
closed-circuit television systems (CCTVs) are the most common type
of surveillance cameras. These pole cameras are usually monitored by
police officers, retired police officers and sometimes private
citizens. Although less common, Portable Overt Digital Surveillance
Systems (PODs) are much more mobile and recognizable by their
flashing blue lights. Often referred to as “footballs” for their
easy mobility, PODs are monitored via transportable devices that
look like briefcases.
In an era of
webcams and reality TV shows, the presence of surveillance cameras
on public streets may not seem like much of an intrusion. After all,
having already given up so much ground when it comes to our privacy
rights, it might seem almost unreasonable to expect it in public.
And as I’ve had pointed out to me countless times, constant
surveillance shouldn’t make a difference to a law-abiding citizen
with nothing to hide.
Yet whether or
not you’ve done anything wrong, when you’re the one being watched,
life suddenly feels more oppressive. And it won’t stop with
surveillance cameras on the streets. As Rob Selevitch, president of
the security company CEI Management Corp., predicts, “Cradle to
grave, you’re going to be on camera all the time.” Imagine having
every conversation you’ve ever had or every place you’ve ever
visited tracked by someone behind a camera. It’s a chilling
thought—or at least it should be to anyone who values their privacy.
Under such
constant surveillance, you will find yourself becoming painfully
conscious of being observed, recorded and judged. Without realizing
it, you will begin to censor your own actions—in regard to even the
most innocuous of things. Unfortunately, once these 24-hour
sleepless snoops have been installed and taxpayers presented with
the hefty price tag (it cost Baltimore about $10 million; the
cameras being considered in Charlottesville are expected to cost
around $300,000), it will be too late to consider the ramifications
of living in a surveillance society.
What reason
would be compelling enough to cause a nation of people who claim to
value their privacy to relinquish it without a fight? Is it because
these cameras are effective at fighting crime? Or is it because they
make us feel safer? Bruce Schneier, founder and Chief Technology
Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, seems to think it’s the
latter. As he remarked in an interview with Business Week, “A lot of
security measures are very much of a feel-good nature. They’re not
effective but are meant to look effective. We demand our public
officials do something, even if it does no good.”
Since the
September 11th terrorist attacks, Americans have become easy targets
for almost any scheme that promises to make us safer. Kept in a
state of constant unease by color-coded terror alerts and vague
government reports of foiled terror plots, we have been primed to
meekly accept that government officials have our best interests at
heart and are doing their best to keep us safe. And we have been
assured that giving them access to our every move on the streets
will reduce crime and prevent terrorism.
We have been
sold a bill of goods.
A 2005 study
by the British government, which boasts the most extensive
surveillance camera coverage in the world at approximately 4 million
cameras (one for every 14 people), found that of all the areas
studied, surveillance cameras generally failed to achieve a
reduction in crime. Indeed, while these snooping devices tended to
reduce premeditated or planned crimes such as burglary, vehicle
crime, criminal damage and theft, they failed to have an impact on
more spontaneous crimes such as violence against the person and
public order offenses such as public drunkenness. Surveillance
cameras have also been found to have a “displacement” effect on
crime. Thus, rather than getting rid of crime, surveillance cameras
force criminal activity to move from the area being watched to other
surrounding areas.
And while a
surveillance camera might help law enforcement identify a suicide
bomber after the fact, as Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy
Information Center notes, “Cameras are not an effective way to stop
a person that is prepared to commit that kind of act.” Rotenberg
points to the 2005 terrorist subway bombings in London as an
example. He explained that surveillance cameras “did help determine
the identity of the suicide bombers and aided the police in
subsequent investigations, but obviously they had no deterrent
effect in preventing the act, because suicide bombers are not
particularly concerned about being caught in the act.”
Human nature being what it is, no
amount of technology will completely prevent people, especially
terrorists, from doing evil. And, in the end, it’s the law-abiding
citizens who will suffer because in a society where there is no
right to privacy and surveillance cameras are the eyes and ears of
government, we are all suspects.
Constitutional attorney and
author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford
Institute. He can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org.
Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at
www.rutherford.org.
