Angelo J. Pompano
While much of the public may be accepting of video surveillance, others feel that safeguards are needed. As with so many things that are good for the general welfare, there is always a risk of abuse. The surveillance equipment in Baltimore has been termed a minimally intrusive system because it is in a non-residential area. The cameras are fixed in public areas and not set up to view into windows. While that system may be responsibly operated, the potential for abuse exists and has become increasingly common. With each advance in technology the possibility that surveillance can get out of hand grows. Mark Hansen in an article in the American Bar Association Journal entitled No Place to Hide asks the question:
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Would we tolerate the prospect that police might someday be armed with a device that would enable them to conduct the functional equivalent of a strip search on some unsuspecting citizen from a distance of up to 60 feet away?
According to the article, a new generation of cameras, which can “see” through clothing and even building materials, is not far off. These devices will be capable of not only revealing if a person has a weapon under their clothing, but can produce a precise image of intimate anatomical details.
We do not have to look to the future to find cases of abuse of video surveillance equipment. Serious problems exist today.
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In Florida the general manager of the Apalachicola Times' newspaper extended a legitimate system to include a hidden video camera in his employees' bathroom. It was found that the camera was not against the law.
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Employees of the Dunkin' Donuts chain used its video-surveillance technology to listen in on customers. The company was forced to remove the cameras.
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The management at Boston's Sheraton Hotel was recording workers as they changed clothes in a locker room on the pretext that it was investigating suspected drug use by its workers.
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In Concord, Calif., a JC Penney employee discovered that a guard was showing videotape in which he zoomed in on her breasts. He made the tape with the store's ceiling cameras.
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In England - the most videotaped society in the world because of IRA terrorism- B-grade filmmakers have raided footage from public video cameras to make risqué movies, often featuring unsuspecting couples
It is no wonder that critics of the use of this technology by law enforcement agencies feel that the harm outweighs the good. In fact, some police departments such as in Oakland, California have rejected the idea of video surveillance when officials proposed installing video cameras very similar to those now in use in New Haven.
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The police department withdrew the proposal, concluding that they could not find credible evidence that video surveillance was effective in fighting crime and that the negative impacts would outweigh any benefits," says John Crew, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who worked on the case.
What irks the critics most is that as laws now stand, there are few restrictions on monitoring the activities of others with the use of a video camera.