Headlines Under Surveillance: 03.31.09

* People are worried about privacy! Or at least they claim they are in this survey. Over 90 percent of TRUSTe survey respondents said online privacy is an important issue to them, but only 28 percent said they were bothered by the tracking of their online behavior for ad-targeting. So what does online privacy mean to them? [New York Times]

* Maybe this is what they are scared of: Electronic Spy Network Focused on Dalai Lama and Embassy Computers. [Threat Level/Wired]

* A judge in Pennsylvania rules that teenage sexting falls within minors' constitutional rights. [Reuters]

* Newsweek Editor and Securing the City author Christopher Dickey (who we saw speak in February) has a self-aggrandizing blog which pointed us to this article on public input being solicited by the NYPD on the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. [City Limits via The Shadowland Journals]

* Speaking of the LMSI, Brian Lehrer had Ali Winston, the City Limits article author, on his show to talk about the 3,000-security-camera Initiative. [WNYC]

* Yuck. Giving Nudists everywhere a bad name. [St. Petersburg Times]

More cameras, less cops

New York's not the only city rolling out impressive camera networks, ala the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. Chicago is getting its CCTV on too, reports the New York Times.

Thanks to a $6-million grant from the Department of Homeland Security, Chicago is rolling out a vast network of public and private cameras to aid in its police and emergency response work. The article from the NYT has the usual structure for these types of stories: an example of the cameras at work -- e.g. capturing a Salvation Army kettle thief-- followed by news of how the system will be bigger and better in the future, with an ACLU spokesperson thrown in at the end to voice privacy concerns.

Wired noted a few months back that Chicago had hoped to have 2,000 cameras linked up by 2006, but was held back by a shortage of fiber. The city refused to tell the Chicago Sun-Times how many cameras they've got in action now, but officials do say they hope to have a camera on every street corner in Chicago. That sends a mild chill down our spine, bringing back memories of our father telling us as a child to behave because he knew everything that we would do before we even thought about doing it.

Of course, turning to cameras for effective law enforcement in these troubled economic times makes sense. The fiber may be expensive but is probably less in the long run than health benefits and pensions for police officers.

Wired reports that the NYPD is cutting back on officer deployment, but is trying its best to move full-speed ahead with putting 3,000 cameras online in the financial district.

If it'll keep the Salvation Army kettles safe, it can't be a bad thing, right?

Chicago Links Street Cameras to Its 911 Network [New York Times]
Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says [Chicago Sun-Times]
NYPD Cuts Cops, Keeps Spycams for Terror Defense [Danger Room/Wired]

Privacy Prevails due to NYPD Budget Woes

In our last post, we mentioned the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative. Here are details on the Initiative from the always-helpful Wikipedia:

The New York City Police Department and private companies intend to install over 3,000 new security cameras in Lower Manhattan, as well as 100 license plate-reading devices which are intended to scan plates and compare the numbers with information in a database. Additionally, the activities the cameras are programmed to pick up on include the delivery of packages. Other features of the system include mobile roadblocks, which could swivel into the streets and block traffic, and radiation detectors.

According to police spokesman Paul J. Browne, the footage from the cameras would be monitored from a center staffed by police officers and private employees.

As I understand it, Lower Manhattan=everything below Canal Street.

Though the operation officially launched in November, things are off to a slow start due to a budget shortfall. From Newsday:

The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as it is called, is similar to the so-called Ring of Steel in London, where authorities use a network of cameras, security barriers and officers to guard against attacks by terrorists.

Kelly has warned for some time that budget woes would slow the department's plans to assign 800 cops downtown and to install 3,000 security cameras. About 300 cameras have thus far been installed.

Only 10 percent of the cameras in place. So privacy is still 90 percent intact?

According to an ABC-Washington Post poll [PDF] from 2007, almost three quarters of Americans support surveillance cameras to fight crime. Only one quarter were opposed, presumably for privacy reasons. There was an interesting breakdown for the respondents:

* Seniors are most apt to support the increased use of these cameras.

* Those under 30 are the most likely to oppose cameras.

* Republicans support cameras more than do Democrats.

* Women support cameras more than do men.

* Higher-educated people more than the less educated.

* Whites more than African-Americans.

Hmmmm. Do those who support cameras value privacy less... or trust the government more?

NYPD scales back ground zero security plan [Newsday]

Making the City more secure... but less private

Last Tuesday, we attended a presentation at the NYU Center on Law and Security: Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterrorism Force-- The NYPD, featuring Christopher Dickey, Newsweek editor and author of a recent book by the same name, and moderated by Dina Temple-Raston, NPR's national security correspondent.

Since moderator Temple-Raston covers the FBI, she kept steering the conversation in that direction, which we found a bit annoying, since we wanted to hear more about the NYPD. Given the name, we were hoping for some insight into what the NYPD does to protect the city (and the privacy trade-offs involved). There wasn't a whole lot of discussion of privacy trade-offs per se, but there was a lot of other information of interest to us.

Dickey touched on the NYPD's innovative (and recent) employment of public-private partnerships. One example is the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative (LMSI). Of the 3,000 cameras used to create a CCTV network south of Canal Street, more than half are private cameras, operated by businesses in the area who are now feeding their camera footage to the NYPD.

Dickey chose to focus on the NYPD in his book because it's huge--dwarfing the LAPD, for example-- and because New York has been the focus of "terrorism" for much of its history. The JPMorgan building on Wall Street still bears shrapnel marks from a 1920 anarchist's attack that used explosives on a horse-drawn carriage to kill 33 people, said Dickey.

We had a chance to ask Dickey a question about LMSI and why the camera network launched so recently in New York (it is officially up and running as of November 2008, whereas London's Ring of Steel has been in place since the 1990s). Dickey says common knowledge among experts is that London's system doesn't actually work that well, and has had a minimal effect on crime. New York spent longer on theirs in the hope for a more effective system. The LMSI has all kinds of "razzle-dazzle technology," said Dickey, including software that recognizes packages that sit for too long in one spot and cars that circle an area repeatedly.

Tourists who get lost in Chinatown, beware!

The room was mainly full of security and counterterrorism experts, so the question at hand was not how privacy was threatened by advances in security technologies but rather how New York's safety is threatened by a lack of greater security measures.