Say No to Video Surveillance

State-of-the-art video cameras may be coming to your neighborhood.  Look for them perched atop 27-foot-high utility poles. 

Studies have found that public video surveillance don’t significantly reduce crime nor make people feel safer, but the use of sophisticated video cameras is nonetheless on the rise in Northern California and across the nation.

This technology represents an invasion of our privacy and offers the potential for new forms of abuse.

In July 2005, San Francisco announced a “pilot program” to install two public video surveillance cameras in the Western Addition neighborhood. This program has quickly multiplied, with no end in sight for how many cameras will be installed.

Discussions are currently underway about placing surveillance cameras around the perimeter of the downtown San Francisco to monitor driving and assess tolls.  Under this proposal, networked wireless video cameras would be supported by the forthcoming municipal wireless Internet system.

The latest cameras, with their DVD-quality video footage, are ready-made for abuse. Surveillance cameras have a 360-degree view and record 24 hours a day. They can zoom in close enough to record the title of the book you are reading, the name of the doctor's office you are entering, or the face of the person you are talking to or kissing goodbye.

Footage can be watched and controlled over the Internet, and some cameras can record sound as well as pictures. Everything the camera sees and hears can be stored in perpetuity on a hard drive or in a database.

Video surveillance does more than imperil our privacy.  The cameras create an easy new tool for inappropriate monitoring, discriminatory targeting, voyeurism, stalking, or blackmail.

A British study of surveillance cameras showed that the cameras focus disproportionately on people of color, women, and those who look or act “slightly different.” One in 10 women were monitored entirely for voyeuristic reasons.

From Scotland to Sydney, studies have shown that the installation of video cameras does not prevent crime. The crime simply moves from where the cameras are to where they aren't.

Community policing programs, not cameras, prevent, reduce, and solve crime. Video cameras only provide the illusion of deterring crime.

It is not far-fetched to think that face recognition technology will soon be used to connect surveillance footage with information about our personal lives. The Los Angeles Police Department has been testing camera equipment with face recognition technology. Though the government may not have a database of digital photos yet, the Real ID Act would make that database--and this technology's threats to personal privacy--a reality.

Don’t sacrifice privacy--and public funds—for misguided video surveillance programs.  Let your city council know that this invasion of privacy is not the answer to fighting crime.