Testimony of
Barry Steinhardt
Director, American Civil Liberties Union Project on Technology and Liberty
Committee on the Judiciary
Council of the District of Columbia
Concerning MPD's Camera Surveillance System
December 12, 2002
Councilwoman Patterson and the Committee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Barry Steinhardt, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Technology and Liberty. The ACLU is a nationwide, non-partisan organization with 330,000 members and local affiliates and offices in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and proudly here in the District of Columbia.
I come here today a firm believer that the District of Columbia should have full power to govern itself autonomously. The ACLU, as I am sure you know, supports statehood for the District.
What draws me here today is the knowledge that Metropolitan Police have been considering the largest, most integrated video surveillance system in the United States. The decision this Council makes will set a precedent for the rest of the Nation. It will set a precedent that will have profound consequences because the eyes of our Nation are firmly on its capital.
Video cameras, or closed-circuit television (CCTV), are becoming a more and more widespread feature of American life. Fears of terrorism and the availability of ever-cheaper cameras have accelerated the trend even more. The use of sophisticated systems by police and other public security officials is particularly troubling in a democratic society.
As we understand the Washington plans - and Chief Ramsey graciously invited us to tour the control room and to meet with him afterwards - the police are in the process of setting up a centralized surveillance center where officers can view video from schools, neighborhoods, Metro stations, and prominent buildings around the city.
Although the ACLU has no objection to cameras at specific, high-profile public places that are potential terrorist targets, such as the U.S. Capitol, the impulse to blanket our public spaces and streets with video surveillance is wrong both because it will make us less free and because it will make us no safer.
Here are four reasons why:
1. Cops - not cameras - fight crime.
The implicit justification for the recent push to increase video surveillance is the terrorist attacks of September 11. But it is far from clear how the proliferation of video cameras through public spaces in America would stop a plot like the attack on the World Trade Center. Even supporters of CCTV like the Washington police no longer press the argument that it would.
The real reason cameras are deployed is to reduce much pettier crimes, such as auto break-ins. But it has not even been demonstrated that they can do that. The United Kingdom has conducted what amounts to a massive experiment with CCTV. In Britain, cameras have been extensively deployed in public places. There are so many cameras that the experts have lost count.
Yet sociologists and criminologists who have studied their use have found that they simply have not reduced crime. The crime reduction claims being made by CCTV proponents are not convincing. Three recent criminological reports (Home Office, Scottish Office and Southbank University) have discredited the conventional wisdom about the cameras' effectiveness. In a report to the Scottish Office on the impact of CCTV, Jason Ditton, Director of the Scottish Centre for Criminology, argued that the claims of crime reduction are little more than fantasy: ""All (evaluations and statistics) we have seen so far are wholly unreliable."" The British Journal of Criminology described the statistics as ""post hoc shoestring efforts by the untrained and self interested practitioner."" In short, the crime-reduction benefits are without credibility.
A Scottish Centre for Criminology report on CCTV in Airdre was unable to rule out displacement as a factor,5 while various studies in other countries indicate that burglars and other criminals will travel long distances to commit crimes.6 Discussing the justification for establishing a surveillance system of 16 cameras in Manchester, Gordon Conquest, chairman of the city centre sub committee of Manchester Council, candidly admitted ""No crackdown on crime does more than displace it, and that's the best we can do at the moment."" 7
""Once the crime and offence figures were adjusted to take account of the general downward trend in crimes and offences,"" criminologists found in one study, ""reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre.""
In addition, U.S. government experts on security technology, noting that ""monitoring video screens is both boring and mesmerizing,"" have found in experiments that ""after only 20 minutes of watching and evaluating monitor screens, the attention of most individuals has degenerated to well below acceptable levels.""
In short, evidence simply does not support the hypothesis that CCTV reduces the crime rate. At most, what it does is to displace criminal activity to areas outside the range of the cameras. One of the features of current surveillance practice is that the cameras are often installed in high-rent commercial areas. Crime may be merely pushed from high value commercial areas into less affluent residential areas.
Video surveillance is bad deal for DC's neighborhoods, both because running these systems will be expensive - soaking up resources that could be better used for community policing - and because it is likely to shunt crime away from the monitored areas into the neighborhoods.
A cop not a camera makes far more sense.
2. CCTV is susceptible to abuse
One problem with creating such a powerful surveillance system is that experience tells us it will inevitably be abused. There are five ways that surveillance-camera systems are likely to be misused:
Criminal abuse
Surveillance systems present law enforcement "bad apples" with a tempting opportunity for criminal misuse. As I am sure you know better than I in 1997, for example, a top-ranking police official in Washington, DC was caught using police databases to gather information on patrons of a gay club. By looking up the license plate numbers of cars parked at the club and researching the backgrounds of the vehicles' owners, he tried to blackmail patrons who were married. Imagine what someone like that could do with a citywide spy-camera system.
Sometimes, bad policies are set at the top, and an entire law enforcement agency is turned toward abusive ends. That is especially prone to happen in periods of social turmoil and intense conflict over government policies. During the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, for example, the FBI - as well as many individual police departments around the nation - conducted illegal operations to spy upon and harass political activists who were challenging racial segregation and the Vietnam War.
While I have every confidence that Chief Ramsey is an honorable man, who will not abuse his power, times change and leaders change. Massive video surveillance will be a powerful tool in the hands of those who would abuse their power.
Powerful surveillance tools also create temptations to abuse them for personal purposes. An investigation by the Detroit Free Press, for example, showed that a database available to Michigan law enforcement was used by officers to help their friends or themselves stalk women, threaten motorists after traffic altercations, and track estranged spouses.
Video camera systems are operated by humans who bring to the job all their existing prejudices and biases. In Great Britain, camera operators have been found to focus disproportionately on people of color. According to a sociological study of how the systems were operated, "Black people were between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half times more likely to be surveilled than one would expect from their presence in the population."
The racially biased used of these cameras ought to be of special concern to this Council, which has a proud history of protecting the civil rights of DC residents.
Experts studying how the camera systems in Britain are operated have also found that the mostly male (and probably bored) operators frequently use the cameras to voyeuristically spy on women. Fully one in 10 women were targeted for entirely voyeuristic reasons, the researchers found.
Unfortunately, history has shown that surveillance technologies put in place for one purpose inevitably expand into other uses. And with video technology likely to continue advancing, the CCTV systems will pose an increasingly danger to our liberties..
Our visit to the Washington police department's new central video surveillance center suggested that the system currently consists largely of long-range cameras focused on traffic and public buildings that are not suitable for identifying individuals. But the infrastructure for a far more sophisticated and integrated system is being established. Now that the surveillance facility has been put in place, the department will be in a position to increase the quality of its technology and the number of its cameras - and will inevitably be tempted or pressured to do so. Do we want the authorities installing high-resolution cameras that can read a pamphlet from a mile away? Cameras equipped to detect wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, allowing night vision or see-through vision? Cameras equipped with facial recognition, like those already installed in airports and even on the streets of Tampa, Florida?
The growing presence of public cameras will bring subtle but profound changes to the character of our public spaces. When citizens are being watched by the authorities - or aware they might be watched at any time - they are more self-conscious and less free-wheeling. As syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum has pointed out, ""knowing that you are being watched by armed government agents tends to put a damper on things. You don't want to offend them or otherwise call attention to yourself."" Eventually, he warns, ""people may learn to be careful about the books and periodicals they read in public, avoiding titles that might alarm unseen observers. They may also put more thought into how they dress, lest they look like terrorists, gang members, druggies or hookers."" Indeed, the studies of cameras in Britain found that people deemed to be ""out of time and place"" with the surroundings were subjected to prolonged surveillance.
Like any intrusive technology, the benefits of deploying public video cameras must be balanced against the costs and dangers. This technology (a) has the potential to change the core experience of going out in public in America because of its chilling effect on citizens, (b) carries very real dangers of abuse and ""mission creep,"" and (c) would not significantly protect us against terrorism. Given that, its benefits - preventing at most a few street crimes, and probably none - are disproportionately small.