There is an interactive poll on the website for CNN which asks us whether we feel electronic surveillance is a “valuable tool in fight against crime and terrorism” or an “unjustifiable intrusion into our lives”. There have been lots of votes and the proportion stays firmly set at 50-50. I feel the same way.
A few weeks UVM co-ed Michelle Gardner Quinn’s body was found in Huntington Gorge. She’d been brutally murdered. Shortly after that suspect Brian Rooney, who was seen by a surveillance camera with Quinn just before her disappearance, was arrested. Almost as soon as the taped image of Rooney was broadcast by local media, other women came forward and accused him of having violently assaulted them. Apparently they had been so afraid of him that they’d said nothing previously. He was first arrested on the basis of these allegations while police processed the evidence which led to his later being charged with Quinn’s murder.
Assuming that these allegations are true (he is still entitled to a trial and a presumption of innocence), the speedy arrest of Rooney may well have saved other women. It might not have happened without the surveillance camera. Moreover, the evidence from the surveillance camera, although it does not show a crime taking place, may be important in Quinn’s eventual trial. Do these good ends justify the means? Are we better or worse off with surveillance cameras in place?
Also from CNN is a story that there are an estimated 4.2 million security cameras in the UK and that the average Briton shows up on 300 images per day. We’ve all seen the UK surveillance images which led to speedy identification of the terrorists who attacked London’s transit system. UK crime novels now start with the surveillance tapes and work from there. Are all these cameras an unwarranted intrusion? Or are they a necessary and welcome weapon against crime and terrorism?
Vermont television station WCAX quotes Allen Gilbert of the Vermont ACLU:
“What we're concerned about is that cameras are both intrusive in that they make everybody feel like a suspect, and they're also often ineffective. The first thing that's likely to happen is the crime is going to move somewhere else in the community. Just because you've stopped crime in one particular place doesn't mean you're necessarily stop it in other places.”
Not a very helpful quote. The cameras do help catch criminals. Catching criminals prevents future crimes. I don’t feel like I’m a suspect just because I know there’s a camera any more than I feel like a suspect whenever a police car goes by (unless I see it in my rear view mirror and I’m speeding).
But I’m still not quite comfortable with surveillance. Preserving liberty means assuming, almost to the point of paranoia, that some future government will NOT respect civil liberties. Do we want that government to have an archive of tapes showing every rally we ever attended, every person we ever spoke with on the street?
There’s not a constitutional issue with surveillance in public places where there is no expectation of privacy. There could be a policeman or a fellow citizen watching you directly, not much legal difference if they’re doing it indirectly through a camera. It’s not as if you were in your home where you do have an expectation of privacy. But do we want the government placing an increasing number of cameras in public places?
There’s a common-sense compromise as far as government cameras are concerned. Unless there is an ongoing criminal investigation or they are about to be used in a criminal trial, the records of surveillance should be automatically destroyed after a short period – say seven days. There will always be cases where we’ll wish we’d kept them longer; but there has to be some point where the risk of government accumulating data outweighs the gain from keeping it. Moreover, I don’t think government-made tapes should be available for use in civil cases. Divorce and liability lawyers should not be able to subpoena them.
Given these safeguards, normal civil and political processes should decide whether or not a town deploys cameras. Some towns in Vermont apparently want them, some don’t. No reason this can’t be debated in town meeting the way a new police cruiser is.
However, the camera that taped Rooney with Quinn was private; it was mounted on a jewelry store as an anti-theft device. What should its legal status be? Well, we all have a right to take pictures in public places or on our own premises. It seems to me that there should not be any law against automatic cameras which do this. Citizens should have the right to provide or withhold the images they take subject to ordinary subpoena processes.
Glad they didn’t have all these cameras when I was a kid, though.