ACLU Has No Case Against Private Video Surveillance

Yesterday at F&M, Mary Catherine Roper of the ACLU talked about surveillance. She talked at length about whether or not systems are worth it, talked about efficacy of surveillance cameras, etc. Cited examples. Fine examples.

But I wasn’t there to hear about whether or not cameras work, or whether they are costly or not. I don’t care if they work.

So I asked this: what are the Constitutional arguments against the constant, general surveillance of the general population? And what about by a private organization?

None. Apparently. Or none that they want to test in court.

So Lancaster, PA, apparently is the host of broad, privately run, highly unaccountable, constant general surveillance, and it’s perfectly ok to the ACLU from a legal perspective.

Wow.

LCSC Lack of Accountability, Truth Examined in Video

Sunday News Puff Piece

The Lancaster Sunday News, which is owned by surveillance funder Lancaster Newspapers (LNP), published several profile articles today. I suspect this is in response to the scrutiny by the national ABC News and NBC News visits over the past two weeks, which should lead to shows this week.

It also might be in response to the information Renee Baumgartner received through an open records request to the City, which included information never revealed before like the LNP $2 million no-interest line of credit provided to LCSC.

We’ll publish all of the documents on this site once copies are made. We provided a full copy to a Sunday News reporter, who was not given the assignment though he had covered the cameras about a dozen times in the past. Today’s articles were not much more than a brochure for the LCSC.

Tomorrow we expect there will be a bit of reporting on the opposition to the cameras, but I wouldn’t expect a investigative piece from LNP. Hopefully they prove us wrong and highlight some of the salient details from the documents and the specific reasons for opposition.

Sunday News: Cameras Need Governance

No kidding. Gil Smart today published a column on the cameras–his second. This time he came around to the realization that there’s no public accountability with the surveillance–constant, general surveillance of the general population by a private company unaccountable to citizens.

It’s a problem–a big one. Stay tuned this week for more developments.

Councilman Joe Morales: “Social Experiment”

A Reasonable, Rational Framework for Surveillance?

I talk a lot about accountability, oversight, and transparency when talking about LCSC. LCSC is a private company, nonprofit, mostly funded by wealthy individuals from Lancaster County, with some funding by the City and County. There are all kinds of conflicts and implications about that, but that’ s another post.

The Constitution Project is an effort to develop legal frameworks for reasonable and rational use of high-tech tools–it’s bi-partisan and has some heavy hitters on its board. Bill Adams sent the info to me and I spent some time reading it over the weekend.

I don’t necessarily agree with its recommendations or conclusions. But in Lancaster, we have no legal or regulatory framework for the responsible planning, decision-making, deployment,  management, monitoring, and uses of the cameras and surveillance footage.

The surveillance is constant, private, general surveillance of the general population–by a private, not public, organization. As LCSC Board member Jack Howell said at one of the LCSC “community” meetings, they have no obligation to tell us anything.

City Council has never voted on it. The City has never approved the cameras. But apparently Charlie Smithgall signed the deed allowing the LCSC or its predecessor to lay the fiber (when we get a scan of the document we’ll post it) without City Council approval (which wouldn’t be the first time he had skirted the process).

The Mayor touts a poll  that shows the majority of people support surveillance cameras, as though the wisdom of the crowd should govern matters like this.

The point is this: in this country, we have a number of components to our democracy. One is the popularity contest–we vote for things and majority wins. Another is protection from de Tocqueville’s ”tyranny of the majority”; this protection is embodied in the Constitution, precedent-setting judicial rulings, and a body of law that further clarifies and applies the principles.

Individuals have significant rights in our democracy.

In Lancaster, though, these rights have not been honored by the enablers of the surveillance cameras. Decisions were not made in public by public organizations, and were not held up to the scrutiny of the public or the law.

I’m not a Constitutional scholar or a lawyer. I’m not qualified or objective enough to decide what should or should not be considered constitutionally sound. Neither is the Mayor, neither is City Council, and neither is LCSC. But it should be analyzed formally.

Which is why we need help from outside Lancaster to deal with this rationally and with the fundamental principles of our democracy in mind. Unfortunately, because of the City leaders’ abdication of its responsibilities as stewards of our rights, we’re left to only the blunt instrument of legal action.

Please contact us if you would like to help fund the legal examination of the constant general surveillance of the general population–by private or public entities.

Stallworth Son Protected–Opinion by Brian Coulter

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d8111aaf4&template=without-video&confirm=tru

Here’s another example of how surveillance systems will never benefit working class people like us. The whole system is designed to benefit the rich, or officers of the law, NEVER and I mean NEVER  will we be able to reap any benefit of our own loss of privacy. This millionaire struck a pedestrian while drunk, and possibly high, and of course the video footage won’t be released. This guy is son of the great John Stallworth, born into money, has had numerous run-ins with the law, and still is not being treated like a criminal. Oh, I guess it was an accident, he didn’t mean to kill that guy, it just happened. There are countless stories of video footage suppressed by the police force and not distributed to the public because they know if everyday people like you or I saw the footage we’d know the truth. If anyone feels safer with video surveillance, it’s because they’re rich or working for the law and will not be convicted, not because something awful has happened to them and criminals were reprimanded.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye

Hey, here’s the story by Naomi Klein from Rolling Stone about the Chinese Gov’t Surveillance. I feel it’s important to let the locals know what is going on in other countries because they won’t find out for themselves. They’ll call us “conspiracy theorists” or “paranoid” when they don’t realize that it is actually happening! The Chinese dictatorship looks alot like our free republic. We have to tell them,”NO!”, “Not in this City, not in these United States.” I believe our greatest gifts by our founding fathers were our Bill of Rights, and I believe they gave them to us for this specific purpose. We have to utilize every tool before the ruling class gets too comfortable oppressing our rights. We need to get the mindless, unmotivated masses to get behind us and make them realize their own potential. Is it too late? Will the people stand up and say no? Or will they go back to sleep, in front of their televisions, numbing themselves with the very conveniences that enslaved them? Read the article and thank you for listening to my rant.

P.S. This is my first blog on this site I hope I did everything correctly

McCaskey Student Alan Nitchman’s Speech

Hello everyone. My name is Alan Nitchman. I am a senior at McCaskey High School. I was asked to speak here today to give my input, as well as a teenager’s perspective, on the issue of the surveillance cameras here in Lancaster.

First, I would like to thank everyone for coming out today. It’s really great to see that, although many people are indifferent or apathetic, there are some people in this wacked out city that care about this issue.

As a teenager and as a Lancaster citizen, I oppose the Lancaster Community Safety Coalition (LCSC) and I feel that the use of 165 surveillance cameras in our city is both excessive and unnecessary.

This past school year I had to read an independent reading book for my English class. I was able to choose the book as long as it had some literary merit. So I consulted my sister on what book to choose. She recommended George Orwell’s science fiction novel, 1984. She said not only is it an interesting read buy it is very relevant in today’s world. Now that the city I live in has more surveillance than any other city in the entire nation, I am already beginning to realize the novel’s pertinence.

In 1984, George Orwell describes a futuristic society in which privacy no longer exits because of a repressive, totalitarian regime. Every household contains a television set with a surveillance camera that is monitored by the Thought Police. In the novel, citizens are always reminded that Big Brother is watching.

A world controlled by heavy surveillance? Cameras everywhere? A total loss of privacy? Sound somewhat familiar? Are we not also losing our privacy and our rights due to the LCSC?

People will argue that there is no privacy in an open, public area. When we go out in public, we need to realize that people can see us and watch us, and privacy should not be expected. But how does that justify 165 cameras? People say that there is no difference between a camera and a human, and that these cameras are just an extension of the human eye. But when there are cameras on virtually every city block and corner and when these cameras can track us, monitor us as we travel through the city, watch what restaurants and houses we go in and out of, see who we all me meet in a day, then I start to think that there might be a difference between a camera and just a human.

Imagine for a moment, if cameras were actually people, what kind of people would they be? What sad, creepy lives would they live–constantly snooping around on the streets, spying on groups of people, and stalking the people they view as suspicious. If cameras were people they would not just be people, they would probably be the biggest stalkers out there. You cannot ask a camera to stop staring. You cannot keep a network of cameras from tracking you. You cannot get a restraining order for a camera. So if you ask me, I don’t appreciate being watched wherever I go.

And this makes me wonder…who are the people watching us? More importantly, who is watching the watchmen? Because the LCSC is a non-profit organization that is not regulated by the Lancaster Police force or the government in any way, how do we, as a community, know when the footage is being abused? Any peeping toms on the LCSC?  How do we know? We don’t know and there is no accountability. These people watching us every day are not trained professionals — they’re just Lancaster residents, who I feel have too much power. Joe Morales, the executive director of the LCSC, describes the organization’s work as “neighbors watching out for neighbors.” To me, it’s more like Lancaster spying on Lancaster.

Our city has been gaining a lot of publicity lately, especially after Bob Drogin’s LA Times article entitled “Lancaster, PA, keeps a close eye on itself.” Lancaster has recently made it onto MSNBC’s “World’s worst countdown” and last week, comedian, Craig Ferguson, mentioned Lancaster on his late night television show on CBS. Our city is being made fun of!

And rightfully so.  It is absolutely absurd, ludicrous even, to think that Lancaster City of all places should be the most surveilled city in the nation! Some cameras outside of crime-ridden neighborhoods or outside of businesses are examples of when the use of cameras is reasonable, but 165 cameras all throughout the city is just overdoing it. Do we really need the 3 or more cameras located here in Binn’s Park alone?

There were two quotes in the LA Times article I mentioned earlier that really surprised me. One was by Keith Sadler, our police chief, who said quote:

“Years ago, there’s no way we could do this. It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and ‘1984.’ It’s just funny how Americans have softened on these issues.”

Well we are here today, Keith, because there’s nothing funny about it and because many of us have not softened on this issue!

The second quote that annoyed me was from Scott Martin, a Lancaster County commissioner who wants to expand the program. “No one talks about it,” he said in the article. “Because people feel safer. Those who are law-abiding citizens, they don’t have anything to worry about.”

Really? No one talks about it, Scott? Because this issue has been a pretty popular topic of discussion lately. What do you think we’re doing today? We’re talking about it! And I’m sure a lot of us don’t exactly feel “safer.”

Now, why would I feel safer knowing that wherever I go, other Lancaster residents I don’t know can monitor me? I feel not a sense of safety, security, or community. If anything I feel a sense of fear and I worry about how these cameras are being used. With cameras everywhere, we need to worry about racial profiling, racism, and agism.

What is stopping the people monitoring us from racial profiling or targeting groups of individuals simply because they are teenagers? I feel that as a teenager, especially in this conservative city, there is already a preconceived idea that we are up to no good. And I speak from experience.

Last summer, one year ago, I was taken into custody and given a citation for curfew violation when a group of friends and I were walking home through Musser Park on Chestnut St.. I was just a teenager walking after hours and that itself (evidently) is reason enough to call the police.

On a weeknight, the curfew for a minor here in Lancaster is 10 PM. Not 11 o clock like most cities, but 10 PM. This means that if you’re a teenager, you’re not with a parent or a legal guardian, and you’re out past 10, you’re breaking curfew. Even in the summer, the curfew never changes. Not a lot of people know that, and if you think about it, that really limits what a teen can and cannot do in this city. The movies on Thursday nights here in Binn’s Park that don’t start until 9 pm? Technically, if I go and stay for the end of the movie, I’ll be breaking curfew.

People will say that there is no need to worry about these cameras if you’re doing the right thing, if you’re a law-abiding citizen. Well . . . what if the laws themselves are completely unreasonable? What if the laws themselves should not be enforced because the laws themselves should not exist? I believe that as a teenager, I should be allowed to stay out past 10 PM in the summer, but in this ridiculous, backwards city, I would be in violation of curfew ordinance. And now that our backwards city has 165 cameras to back up this extremely stupid law, life as a teenager in Lancaster is really going to start sucking.

With the convention center finally up and running, Lancaster City is hoping to increase its tourism revenue. But who in their right mind would want to vacation in a city gone mad where its crazy residents are literally spying on each other?

Speeches from Lancaster Protest Against Cameras: Charlie Crystle

Yesterday’s protest was attended by about 150 people; some from the press covered it. Unfortunately the media focused on some of the extreme views and caricatures, and failed to capture the complicated issue.
Sadly, none of the press covered the speech given by McCaskey student Adam Nitchman, which was passionate and substantive.

There were two protesters I didn’t know holding signs I felt were inappropriate. One compared Joe Morales to Adolph Hitler, and the other said something about “commys (sic)” and voting for Charlie Smithgall. The media of course focused attention on these people.

I want to repeat something I said at the top of my speech–that kind of villification is unhealthy for the debate and dehumanizes supporters of the cameras as much as the cameras dehumanize us. Joe Morales is a good, intelligent man somewhat conflicted by his own role in the cameras, and Charlie Smithgall enabled and supported the cameras when he was Mayor, and I support Mayor Gray in the Fall election.

So here’s the speech in its entirety–not my best but it gets some important points across.

REFERENCE: Map of Cameras(PDF) (note the one planned for Lancaster Ave and W. Chestnut St–across the street from my house).

Google Map of Cameras

INNOCENCE IS A WEAK DEFENSE AGAINST A DETERMINED GOVERNMENT

My name is Charlie Crystle. I’m a technology entrepreneur, CEO, capitalist, investor, and a Democrat, and an American. I’ve joined with an interesting group of people to organize opposition to these cameras; most of them I’d never met before. There’s a libertarian, a Republican, a communist, and a capitalist. You know you’re onto something when you get such a diverse mix of worldviews agreeing on something.

I’d like to thank the police for their service; few of us know the day to day life of an officer and they serve the public with the tools they are provided by the city and serve in the context of a city that struggles to pay its ever increasing healthcare bills, sports a 25% poverty rate, 33% dropout rate, and where 80% of the kids in the city schools are growing up below or just above poverty level.

It’s a tough job—especially when you’re sent by camera operators to bust a guy having a beer on the corner. High crimes, indeed.

So–The Top 5 differences between a cop and a network of cameras taking and storing digital video

· You can’t have a relationship with a camera—unless you’re the camera operator.

· The cop can’t stalk you across the city and stay employed

· The cop can’t take his image of you and transmit it to friends across the internet

· Cameras can’t walk the beat and get to know the neighbors

· Cop can’t store what he sees for ongoing personal or political reasons.

But this is a serious, complicated issue, which is why some of are here. Many people sent regrets because of work. Many others are afraid to speak out or even show up. They fear losing their jobs, they fear disapproval by their social networks, and it’s not just that the cameras are creepy–they fear for their democracy.

So do I. This isn’t a convenient issue for me and makes me unpopular in certain circles. I’m running for school board and a recent poll showed that most polled favored the surveillance—so speaking out about this isn’t a great campaign strategy.

But this is a critical issue for the city and our country, so here we are today—thank you for coming.

As a city we have a lot of fear. We fear crime. We seem to fear the poor, and people we don’t know. We fear the possibilities of what can happen. The city has tough problems. City leadership is struggling with them. Poverty is the root of a lot of the issues—drugs, drug-related crimes, dropouts, high unemployment, 25% poverty rate, etc.

I understand fear. My house was burglarized almost 5 years ago. 4 guitars, a video camera, and a TV were stolen. I couldn’t sleep well for months, I got a security system. Still couldn’t sleep. Even got cameras –but never installed them (see me if you want mine). I feared getting burglarized again, or worse. It’s an unsettling feeling to wonder when they would be coming back, and what I’d do about it if they did.

But I’m here today because I don’t want to live in a country that puts the general population under constant general surveillance. That’s not what I bought into when I was sold a bill of rights.

And while I like and respect the Mayor, City Council, and people who support cameras, I am not willing to accept that they alone will decide for me, you, and the rest of the country whether we should—or even can have constant general surveillance like this and still function as a democracy. They aren’t qualified to make that judgment, and neither am I.

I think of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, protections against illegal search and seizure, protection against warrantless surveillance, and even equal protection. We really need this examined by constitutional experts and legislators.

Some people ask me, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about? And I respond, if I’m not doing anything wrong, why are you tracking me? Why are you recording my movements across the city? Are you presuming guilt? Do you have a crush on me? Are you also going through my trash? Accessing my bank records? Correlating all of this with EZ Pass and my library reading list? Exactly what story are you building around me and others you don’t agree with?

Let me tell a story. There was a man a few years ago who was upset by the war and decided to do something about it. He joined with others and formed a small group to exercise his Constitutional right to protest. They spent 12 months preparing to protest the war at the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004. They were arrested before they even got there, and held during the convention, not charged, and then released.

The FBI and NYPD had tracked them for 12 months. The DOD had labeled protests low-level terrorism, and by extension, labeled protesters as low-level terrorists. Anything in the name of freedom, right? So they prevented a number of peaceful protesters their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and free speech. And they used a wide array of surveillance tools to deny them their rights.

And before anyone scoffs at the possibility of such abuses happening here, lets’s remember the peace protesters in Lancaster who were detained when Bush came to town, or the press refused entry to a McCain rally last year.

Systems of all types are abused for a wide range of reasons and as a result freedom and democracy suffer. Martin Luther King reminds us that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere, if it happened in New York, or San Francisco, or Hazleton, it can and will happen in Lancaster and likely has already.

So, when you tell me that if I’m doing nothing wrong I have nothing to worry about, I’ll remind you innocence is a weak defense against a determined government, or a powerful politician, or an empowered private contractor.

And when Joe Morales gets $9,000 from the citizens of Lancaster and $90,000 from the Surveillance crowd, well, let’s just say I’d prefer an outside opinion on whether that’s a conflict of interest.

And when a Bosch employee is on the board of this private surveillance corporation that uses Bosch cameras exclusively, I think they’ve developed a successful business model that they can and will spread throughout the country, imposing this undemocratic system on other Americans.

And I say, Take THE CAMERAS DOWN.

And they’ll argue that cameras can be an effective tool. In a few significant cases, video surveillance has helped exonerate the innocent and put some offenders in jail, and not just the guy drinking a beer on the corner.

And I say TAKE THE CAMERAS DOWN.

Throughout our history, the government has applied a variety of tools to further its causes. So have powerful private individuals and politicians. FDR rounded up Japanese Americans and imprisoned them. Johnson recorded phone calls. Nixon had the Watergate raided and wiretapped his political opponents. J Edgar Hoover used the FBI to put citizens he didn’t like under surveillance, including Martin Luther King and others who dissented with the status quo.

Reagan & Bush facilitated private funding of the former Nicaraguan dictator’s Contras in their war against a democratically elected government, funneling money through the nonprofit Americares, using the CIA, USAID, Southern Air Transport, and US Embassies to give support. I don’t know what Clinton did—I imagine something.

And Bush II and Cheney–well, there’s a long list, starting with the Patriot Act—voted for by Democrats and Republicans to give vast powers to the government at the expense of individual liberties. The administration denied due process to citizens, locking them up without benefit of counsel or trial for months. It engaged in warrantless wiretapping, intercepted emails of citizens, built a list of hundreds of thousands of Americans they suspected to be terrorists, and skirted constitutional protections.

So our federal government has a long history of abusing power. And you can find plenty of examples of abuses at the state and local levels as well with a simple query to the internet, though you might want to install privacy software first.

The point is, assurances by local officials and the LCSC that everything they are doing is for the common good– are far from adequate. We’re still at war. We still live under the Patriot Act. An unknown number of people have been indefinitely imprisoned but not charged.

But that can’t happen here. Right?

And the Mayor, and Joe Morales both have said they’ll do something if there’s an abuse. Really? How would we know? What is an abuse? Who determines what an abuse is? When there’s an abuse, what happens? How many abuses have there been?

Have the cameras been used for personal purposes? For personal vendettas? How many times have friends of the operators, Board, or leaders been let off the hook? How many times have political opponents, intellectuals, and activists been tracked?Have women been stalked? Some of this is simply creepy.

Another troubling fact is that the cameras have largely been funded by very wealthy private individuals and private foundations controlled by private individuals. But these private funders are also very politically active in ways only the rich enjoy—by moving massive amounts of money into campaign coffers, quasi-public projects like the trolleys and convention center, and others.

They sit on boards of important nonprofits, and control significant streams of capital that buy all kinds of influence in range of ways. They have more power than you or I. A lot of good people dependent on that support are afraid to speak out against the cameras because they fear losing the funding for their nonprofit missions. It’s had a chilling effect on their free speech.

We have no idea whether that same influence has been used to further personal or political aims through this private network of cameras, but there are no protections against such abuses and we would have no way of knowing—there is no accountability here.

And I’d submit there are other ways to engage problems areas. I’d like to see the Mayor commit to ending poverty in the city in 10 years. We need manufacturing jobs and better education, police on the street and out of police cars, and an engaged citizenry and not a detached network of surveillance cameras that marginalize people and frankly make the city look creepy and a lot more crime-ridden than it is. I’m guessing the cameras will hurt tourism, not help it.

If you can’t guarantee they won’t be abused, then TAKE THE CAMERAS DOWN.

We need a judicial ruling. We need a legal framework. We need Constitutional scholars to engage in high-minded debate about this. We need Congress to debate it and develop a legal framework. We need the Supreme Court to rule on whether they can be used, and if so, under what circumstances and with what framework of protections for citizens that reflects the content and intent of the Constitution and the rights therein.

Until that happens, TAKE THE CAMERAS DOWN.