Surveillance technology raises privacy concerns
Hannah Stern is policy associate at the ACLU of Rhode Island.
The surreptitious governmental adoption of surveillance technology sounds like a narrative best left for George Orwell. However, in just the past two months, at least three municipalities in Rhode Island — Cranston, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket — were revealed to have implemented and begun piloting systems of expansive surveillance technology misleadingly known as automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. This action should be of concern to anybody wary of expanded government interference in our lives.
The defenses for this surveillance program tend to assert similar claims — that if you aren’t a criminal, you have no reason to be concerned; that the capabilities of the technology are limited in scope; and that these cameras aren’t really compromising anybody’s privacy.
Yet, the numbers don’t lie. In just the first few weeks of the pilot program in Cranston, that police department conducted over 2,000 searches within the database and compiled searchable information on over two million vehicles. The normalization of such massive databases, storing the time, date, and location of drivers, should worry all of us.
The reality is that within these massive databases, there’s no way of remaining inconspicuous by virtue of a crowd. Supporters of this surveillance suggest that the cameras are innocuously capturing only license plate numbers, but a quick glance at the Flock Safety website – the company that operates and owns the cameras – disproves this. Flock Safety’s website actually boasts the ability to search the database not only by such features as the color and make of the car that has been photographed, but even by the bumper stickers that are displayed.
The privacy implications of this system are enormous. The policies that determine the fate of the collected information are in the control of a private company and municipal police departments – not the community. And the opaqueness with which these cameras were installed begs the question of why, if these systems are as harmless as their advocates claim, they were installed in complete secrecy.
Even Flock Safety encourages police departments to implement their technology alongside measures that provide for public transparency and community rulemaking. These safeguards have been noticeably absent in Rhode Island. When the cameras were installed, not one of these municipalities had put forth a policy or proposal for public review, nor had they even informed public officials, much less the community, of the impending pilot programs. Further, by keeping the locations of the cameras secret, their installation can only prompt legitimate speculation whether they will be targeted at communities that are already over-policed.
It simply is not sufficient to claim that these programs are needed to deter crime, or that no innocent resident should be concerned. All this does is imply a false choice between public safety and protecting privacy. But public safety is the result of community-based tools and systems that directly and tangibly support residents – it is not, and has never been, a consequence of indiscriminate, 24/7 surveillance. While it is unfortunately true that camera surveillance is all too pervasive in our society already, that should be a caution, not an excuse to expand it even more.
The capacity that these systems have to create an oppressive government structure in a free society impacts all of our communities. It should be of deep concern when law enforcement agencies feel empowered to implement intrusive surveillance technology without any community approval or publicly enforceable standards. Anybody who is concerned about the future of privacy should demand an end to these programs. Rather than give police free rein to monitor our movements, local and state policies should be adopting strong standards and limits to regulate this technology. Otherwise, we are all at risk for the consequences of unbridled overreach of government authority that makes Big Brother feel at home.
Gloss