Maynard Riley IFSM 304 Camera Surveillance and Privacy: Legal, Technical & Psychological Considerations

Abstract: Privacy is an under-protected right in the United Sates. Privacy is not protected constitutionally, leaving it to be protected legislatively. There is an intense push by government at all levels to vastly expand camera surveillance in public places. Coupled with other tracking technologies, surveillance in general can aggregately track a person through all of their public movements. The federal government has a vision to merge commercial and governmental databases, thus linking surveillance data with all available personal information existing in the info-sphere. The psychological effects on the human psyche is damaging and dehumanizing.

Legal Considerations: Cameras are a ubiquitous feature of our public landscape. They are on streets, in stores, schools, and even in the sky. Cameras are so pervasive, the public hardly notices their presence. When cameras first appeared in public, one envisioned a security guard sitting at a desk with a monitor that could switch between several cameras. What we have today, and will increasingly have in the future, is a vastly more disturbing situation. Privacy is an important component in defining the self as an individual. Privacy is necessary for proper development of intimate and human relationships. Western liberal thinking and Constitutional law places the individual at the center of interest (Regan, 1995. p 24). Unfortunately, legal protection of privacy considerably lags both the technology that invades privacy, and, the eagerness of the government to use that technology. The right to privacy is not explicitly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, although most Americans believe it is. The Constitution has been interpreted by courts to include the right to privacy when there is an "expectation of privacy," and, when that expectation is

"reasonable" (University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, n.d.). Constitutionally, it is difficult to support the expectation of privacy in public places. Our system of government is a shared responsibility between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches. Additionally, citizens themselves play a role in oversight. The executive branch is the most brazen violator of privacy through the actions of its agencies. Privacy is not guaranteed judicially, which leaves only the legislature to protect privacy, spurred on by an activist citizenry. U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and John Edwards (D-NC) recommended the establishment of a commission to set standards on video surveillance implementation, protection, and storage, according to Clymer (2002). Their efforts have not produced any legislation.

Technical Considerations: The maxim, technology outpaces law, applies to surveillance, auxiliary tracking methods, and, the associated databases and networks. Surveillance cameras, coupled with auxiliary tracking methods such as cell-phones, financial transactions, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS), enable the tracking of almost anyone in public. Today, there is insufficient legal protection to prevent the onset of a panoptic society. Camera surveillance technologies enabling a total-surveillance future are evolving quickly and include:

Face-recognition software; there is government sponsored competition amongst vendors

to develop robust face recognition software (FRVT, n.d.).

Cameras exist that are able to track a person seamlessly by handing off an individuals

image from camera to camera as they move (Princeton Instruments, 2005).

Very Large-Scale Integration (VLSI) of face-recognition mobile devices that access

remote databases with response times of under one second are being developed (Nagel, 2005). Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy promoted their Jini software as a way to interconnect any and all devices, from cameras to computers, as long as that device has its own unique identifier (Biegel 2001). Taken together, cameras are an integral component of a networked surveillance society. In the future, as in the past, military technologies are likely to migrate from military to civilian applications. An example would be infrared surveillance cameras and the more futuristic pan-spectral devices. Instead of video recording in the visible spectrum, panspectral cameras will gather images using a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. (Ball, 2003). This is a shift from the Panopticon to the Panspectron view of a spied-upon society. These advanced sensors are already implemented in satellite imaging and are being developed in both academia and government laboratories. One such a sensor is the Hyper-spectral Imaging Sensor, developed at MIT. As reported by Shaw and Burke (2003, page 16) the number and variety of applications for hyper-spectral remote sensing are potentially quite large. The sensor scans the earths surface using a broad spectrum of electromagnetic energy. The captured image is not immediately capable of being interpreted visually, rather, a hierarchy of software processing categorizes image areas into background and areas of interest. Additionally, temporal comparisons may be made to detect target (people) movement. Drones (aircraft without pilot), have been used by the military for years in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US military operates 3,500 drones, 700 of which are in USA. Drones have also been considered for border monitoring

(Levin, 2006). Their use is being tested by the Los Angeles Police Department to, give officers a bird's-eye view of a break-in or a lost child (AP, June 19, 2006). A company by the name of Akela Inc. has developed a through-the-wall radar that can detect people at 12 meters through three normally constructed walls. Their technology also detects people through reinforced concrete at lesser distances (Hunt, n.d.). Akelas target market is both military and police. Hunt also claims the technology is rapidly changing (iterpret as improving). When a company collects marketing information on its customers buying habits, it may evoke angst in some people, but there is little harm in it except for the junk mail it generates, unless the information is sold, compromised, or appropriated by a federal agency. The danger is not that a business entity stores a customers personal information, the danger is in the networking with the entire info-sphere. Both UK and US governments have huge ambitions concerning the integration of personal information of the population. (Ball, 2003 page 147). Consider the Federal Office of Information Awareness Total Information Awareness (TIA) program. The program had as a goal the removal of barriers between commercial and government databases. This would give the government access to medical records, travel patterns, banking and purchasing histories, and telephone calls made and to whom (Healy, 2003). Congressional funding was withheld because of public outcry in September 2003. The program has predictably reemerged as a classified program elsewhere in the secret federal bureaucracy having the name Tangram (Schneier, October 2006). Secrecy-oriented government agencies such as the NSA, FBI, CIA, BATF and DARPA, were historically independent interests and operated within their own silos. Many divisions of these agencies are cloaked in secrecy, accountable to no one, and consider

themselves above investigation because of national security. The vision of a Total Awareness program, whatever it be called, is to funnel all intelligence information into one vast data machine. Intelligence would come from all available sources, governmental and commercial.

Psychological Considerations: The panopticon is a prison design first proposed by British philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785; all inmates are visible by a guard while the guard himself is not visible. French philosopher Michel Foucaults book, Discipline and Punish, likened modern society to a panopticon through its controlling structure of teachers, social workers, probation, daily living, and workplace organization. Foucault connects knowledge to power, theorizing that knowing everything about another person, creates a means to control that person. (Natsios 2001). Foucaults death in 1984 prevented him from seeing additional tools of panopticism evolve, namely through technology and the advent of the computer age. Bentham said the key to the panopticons success was the uncertainty the prisoner felt; he also held that the panopticon was adaptable to any environment which involved some level of supervision (Warriar et al., 2002). Professionals have hypothesized the psychological effect of surveillance on the individual, but no real data through scientific research exists. Many of their arguments are persuasive. A recurring theme regarding the psychological effect of constant surveillance are the loss of spontaneity, passivity, fear, loss of dignity, punishment for trivial crimes, and the feeling of already being a criminal. Certain groups may be affected psychologically much more than others; women may feel they are being recorded for voyeuristic reasons, while minorities may feel they are being profiled for criminal activity.

According to Riley (2001), video surveillance serves as the best symbol of a wider endemic problem facing humanity, the increasing dehumanization effects that new technologies are having on all of us. According to Ball (2003), in a panopticon society, in which everyone is on camera all the time, is like a prison without walls. Society has a carceral texture and deepens into a disciplinary society (page 6). Jay Stanley of the ACLU believes that surveillance discourages free expression and protest at demonstrations (Stanley, 2002). Canadas Privacy Minister, George Radwanski, in a Letter of Finding, states, The psychological impact of having to live with a sense of constantly being observed must surely be enormous, indeed incalculable (2001); Canada sees fit to protect its citizens right to privacy.

Conclusions: There are many reasons why the public should be wary of the spread of surveillance, camera and otherwise. Technology is evolving rapidly and government agencies are eager to employ it. Although the psychological implications are not fully understood, at the very least people should feel threatened. Most worrisome regarding a total surveillance society are:

The likelihood of abuse through social sorting. This is the categorization of people for

some behavioral attribute, whether it be propensity for criminal activity, or the likelihood of antisocial conduct. This is accomplished by viewing a subject in public, then analyzing the situation and information on that person in the info-sphere.

The fitting of all individuals into risk categories based on their associations with other

people. For example, you may have coincidentally stayed at the same hotel as a suspected terrorist three times in the past year, simply because your travel plans coincided and you preferred the same hotel. Now you become a person of interest.

It is imperative that privacy and the limits to information gathered be defined through thoughtful legislation and spy-agency oversight. But do Americans have the mettle for a battle like this?

References: Associated Press Los Angeles (June 19, 2006). Los Angeles Police Uses New Surveillance Drone. Retrieved November 2, 2006 from: http://cbs13.com/tech/local_story_170174722.html Ball, K & Webster, F. (2003). The Intensification of Surveillance: Crime, Terrorism and Warfare in the Information Age. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press Publishers. Biegel, S. (2001). Beyond Our Control?: Confronting the Limits of Our Legal System in the Age of Cyberspace. p 93. Cambridge MA: MIT Press Publishers. p 93. Clymer, Adam (August 2, 2003). Surveillance Rules Are Needed to Save Privacy, Senators Say. The New York Times Online. Retrieved October 22, 2006 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/politics/02PRIV.html? ex=1164344400&en=0744348c828fc621&ei=5070 FRVT (n.d.). Face Recognition Vendor Test. Accessed October 12, 2006 at http://www.frvt.org/FRVT2006/default.aspx Healy, G. (January 20, 2003). Beware of Total Information Awareness. The CATO Institute Online. Retrieved November 2, 2006 from: http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-20-03.html Hunt, A. R. (n.d.). A Wideband Imaging Radar for Through-the-Wall Surveillance. Akela, Inc. Research paper. Retrieved November 2, 2006 from: http://www.akelainc.com/pdf_files/SPIE0404.pdf Levin, A. (August 6, 2006). Safety a concern as drones catch on. USA Today. Retrieved November 2, 2006 from: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2006-08-06drones_x.htm Nagel, J. (September 26, 2005). Algorithms and VSLI Architectures for Low-Power-Mobile Face Verification (Doctoral Dissertation, Universite De Neuchatel). Retrieved October 9, 2006 at http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,40,4,20060228114033-EW/1_these_NagelJL.pdf Natsios, D (August 21, 2006). Reversing the Panopticon. Invited Talk at the 10th USENIX Security Symposium. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from: http://cartome.org/reversepanopticon.htm Princeton Instruments (2005). Commercial Web-site. Retrieved October 15, 2006 from: http://www.piacton.com/security/ Radwanski, G. (October 4, 2001) Privacy Minister of Canada. Letter of Finding on video surveillance by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Kelowna, British Columbia. Retrieved October 12, 2006 from: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02616.html

Regan, P. M. (1995). Legislating Privacy: Technology, Social Values, and Public Policy. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press Publishers. Riley, T. B. (August 30, 2001). New Technologies: The Changing Nature of Society and the Emergence of New Rights. The Riley Report. August 2001. Retrieved November 2, 2006 from: http://www.rileyis.com/report/aug01.htm Schneier, B. (October 31, 2006). Total Information Awareness Is Back. Schneier on Security WebLog. Retrieved November 23, 2006 from: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/total_informati.html Shaw, G. A. and Burke, H. K. (2003). Spectral Imaging for Remote Sensing. MIT Lincoln Laboratory Journal, Volume 14, Number 1, 2003, p16. Retrieved November 11, 2006 from: http://www.ll.mit.edu/news/journal/pdf/vol14_no1/14_1remotesensing.pdf Stanley, J. (March 22, 2002). Monument Surveillance. The Washington Post Online. Retrieved October 22, 2006 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/liveonline/02/metro/metro_aclu032202.htm University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Exploring Constitutional Conflicts: The Right of Privacy (n.d.). Retrieved October 11, 2006 from: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html Warriar L., Roberts A. and Lewis J. (2002). An analysis of Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault. Middlesex University. Retrieved November 23, 2006 from: http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/ybenfou.htm

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