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The Lancaster Voice
LCPJ-PO BOX 274
Lancaster, PA 17608-0274
631.512.3018
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Protest Against Lancaster's Surveillance Cameras
view pictures of this event...
June 27, 2009
 This
past Saturday a Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice
working group staged a demonstration to oppose the blanket video
surveillance of Lancaster and to express their issues with this
form of surveillance. Bob Drogin, an award winning
investigative reporter and author for the LA Times, wrote a
now well publicized article regarding Lancaster's video
surveillance's published in the June 21 edition. An article
that while accurately describing Lancaster's situation regarding
video surveillance , it failed to mention local organized
resistance. This organized opposition was visible Saturday to
an audience estimated to be approximately 125. The group
assembled and presented a program including four speakers, Alan
Nitchman a senior at McCaskey representing Lancaster Youth for
Peace and Justice, Renee Baumgartner a representative of
Restore Liberty and the Campaign for Liberty, Charlie Crystle a
technology entrepreneur and the CEO of Mission Research, and
Mary Bonventre an Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU's
Technology and Liberty program.
The video
surveillance program originated in 2003 when the creation of the
Lancaster Community Safety Coalition was announced in the Crime
Comission's Final Report to The People of Lancaster. Joe Morales, the
LCSC Executive Director, was quoted in a article appearing in the
Lancaster newspapers as describing Lancaster as the “most watched
city” in the country. It was this article that coalesced individuals
concerned with video surveillance into the LCPJ working group and
focused the attention of a nation on Lancaster. Crystle was long
aware of the proliferation of the video cameras. On Saturday he
remarked “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. Think
of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, protections against illegal
search and seizure, protection against warrant less surveillance”.
The issue of video surveillance's constitutionality along with the
lack of oversight and the way in which this program was brought to
fruition constitute the LCPJ's concerns.
Crystle's comments
reflect one of the reasons the group was formed. Video surveillance
is based on the presumption that everybody needs watching because they
may commit a crime. An implicit assumption of guilt. Using an unknown
profile, Doug Winglewich an experienced camera operator, narrows
down who he watches. He said he "can pretty much tell right away if
someone's up to no good." Nitchman commented “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.”
The reason video
surveillance of public space exists to the extreme it does today in
Lancaster is because of a void in our laws. Recording of audio has
protections that are clearly defined. Video surveillance has no such
rulings. The laws have not kept pace with advances in technology.
Cities like Lancaster are exploiting this crack in the belief that
video provides an easy inexpensive answer to crime prevention and
provides savings in prosecution costs. Mary Boventre said at
Saturday's rally “the impulse to blanket our public spaces and streets
with video surveillance is wrong both because it will make us less
free and because it will make us no safer.”
Morales also
expressed regrets for making the statement about Lancaster being the
“most watched city” saying “I'm not even sure it's accurate. This
raises questions of the veracity of Morales's other statements such
as the cameras deterring crime. The FBI UCR crime statistics show
crime increasing in Lancaster since 2004 through 2007, the last year
these statistics are available for, not decreasing. Meta studies
averaging many communities experience statistically were done by the
Home Office in the UK where approximately 4.2 million cameras have
been watching the populace for many years. These studies show video
surveillance does not deter crime. Video surveillance does displace
crime from the view of the cameras to the area outside the view. At
the rally, Charles Lane recounted a conversation he just had with Rick
Gray with the Mayor telling Charles about a mugging that recently took
place in Lancaster. The Mayor immediately called the LCSC to find out
if any part of the mugging was caught by the cameras. The operator
checked and no trace. Career criminals know where the cameras are and
plan the crime and escape route accordingly. Residences of Lancaster
living outside of the view of the cameras, be prepared for more crime
in your neighborhood. You may be tempted to think more cameras are
the solution, but they aren't. Carried to the logical conclusion
implied by that assumption would have the whole country bathed in
video surveillance.
Rather than blanket
the whole country with video surveillance, the lesson of the UK should
be learned rather than ignored by those who chose to promote the use
of video surveillance here. Once the cameras are installed and become
ubiquitous, the accepted norm, they will be much more difficult to
remove.
Video surveillance
lends itself quite well to enhancements such as the addition of
biometric based facial recognition and its proliferation needs to be
brought to halt. On Saturday, Renee Baumgartber said “as we allow
these cameras ----- down the road, we may also be looking at a camera
with facial recognition software --- where it won't be just the camera
spying on you, but a camera that knows when it sees you - exactly what
your name is, your address and all of your private information”. An
Orwellian future that we need to carefully consider before we leap
towards it.
As part of the group
continuing action, it will sponsor a town hall meeting on July 12, at
2:00 PM in the Unitarian Universalist Church, 538 W Chestnut Street,
Lancaster, PA. We will present both sides of this issue as well as
field questions from those in attendance. There will also be a
petition available to sign calling for increased transparency of the
LCSC and urging City Council to hold public meeting regarding the
installation of cameras on city and county property. People of
Lancaster, this is one of the most important issues impacting your
lives now and and in the future learn more and take action.
Pictures of the Anti-surveillance camera rally
June 27, 2009
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