Privacy Digest

National Privacy Standards Needed for America’s “Cammed Nation” - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:

Washington, D.C. recently joined the club of cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, that conduct live monitoring of citizens through closed circuit television cameras (CCTV).

Hundreds of millions of dollars granted by the Department of Homeland Security to state and local governments has greatly expanded the use of CCTV in the U.S. since 2001. Yet there are no national standards to ensure that video surveillance programs are effective and do not trample our right to privacy and other civil liberties. In light of the questionable efficacy, and a myriad of privacy concerns associated with CCTV, the leadership within DHS needs to step up and take the lead in implementing appropriate use policies.

The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has followed the national trend of greater surveillance in public areas. It has installed 73 CCTV surveillance cameras since August 2006, and as of November of 2007, has been live-monitoring 54 of them. And in 2008, it will use $630,000 of DHS grant money to replace 18 cameras in the downtown area. D.C. officers can rotate angles for a different view, zoom in on faces, and pick up license plates from cars several blocks away. Live monitoring has been widely criticized due to the large number of criminal and institutional abuses that have taken place. Widely noted abuse cases have sprung up both in the U.S. and around the world where officers have gathered evidence through CCTV ogle women, look into bedroom windows, watch couples in romantic situations, to target minorities, and monitor political activities - just to name a few.
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(Read Original Article - Via CDT - PolicyBeta.)