Chicago: Still keeping an eye open for "public ownership"

[Kenneth Campbell <kkc@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These Daley chaps sure seem to be uni-focused, huh? I usually only hear
about them when it involves installing police presences a la 1968. But,
then, maybe the media only reports on them, nationally, when a Daley
does this sort of things? We have correspondents in Chicago who could
perhaps address that...

The article mentions London's use of CC cameras. (The reason you see all
those "bad driver" reality shows is, I believe, because the English have
been selling their tapes of astoundingly stupid road maneuvers.)

What I wonder about is the acceptance that the streets really belong to
the city, as Mr. Daley is suggesting. What does that even mean? Can the
city resell images it captures from anyone who dares use the street?
(Not surprisingly, the English courts have had to grapple with this one
sooner.)

Ken.

--
The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets
and we own the alleys.
          -- Richard M. Daley
             Mayor of Chicago, 2004


--- cut here ---

Chicago Moving to 'Smart' Surveillance Cameras

By STEPHEN KINZER
The New York Times
September 21, 2004


CHICAGO, Sept. 20 - A highly advanced system of video surveillance that
Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of
the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley says it
will also make them much safer.

"Cameras are the equivalent of hundreds of sets of eyes," Mr. Daley said
when he unveiled the new project this month. "They're the next best
thing to having police officers stationed at every potential trouble
spot."

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about
2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250
cameras under the mayor's new plan is not a great jump. The way these
cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police
whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and
other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in
circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the
shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it.
Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city's
central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers
to the scene immediately.

Officials here designed the system after studying the video surveillance
network in London, which became a world leader in this technology during
the period when Irish terrorists were active. The Chicago officials also
studied systems used in Las Vegas casinos, as well as those used by Army
combat units. The system they have devised, they say, will be the most
sophisticated in the United States and perhaps the world.

"What we're doing is a totally new concept," said Ron Huberman,
executive director of the city's office of emergency management and
communications. "This is a very innovative way to harness the power of
cameras. It's going to take us to a whole new level."

Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along
streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras
has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software
that will be central to Chicago's surveillance system is designed to
direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening.

Mr. Huberman, a 32-year-old former police officer who is also what one
aide called "a techno geek," said this new system "should produce a
significant decrease in crime, and from a homeland security standpoint
it should be able to make our city safer."

When the system is in place, Mr. Huberman said, video images will be
instantly available to dispatchers at the city's 911 emergency center,
which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to
tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times,
in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera's
range to another's.

A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was "really a huge expansion
of the city's surveillance program."

"With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being
marketed and implemented," Mr. Yohnka said, "it really does raise
questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how
intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives."

The surveillance network will embrace cameras placed not only by the
police department, but also by a variety of city agencies including the
transit, housing and aviation authorities. Private companies that
maintain their own surveillance of areas around their buildings will
also be able to send their video feeds to the central control room that
is being built at a fortified city building.

The 250 new cameras, along with the new system dispatchers will use to
monitor them, are to be in place by the spring of 2006. A $5.1 million
federal grant will be used to pay for the cameras, and the city will add
$3.5 million to pay for the computer network that will connect them.

This project is a central part of Chicago's response to the threat of
terrorism, as well as an effort to reduce the city's crime rate. It also
subjects people here to extraordinary levels of surveillance. Anyone
walking in public is liable to be almost constantly watched.

"The value we gain in public safety far outweighs any perception by the
community that this is Big Brother who's watching," Mr. Huberman said.
"The feedback we're getting is that people welcome this. It makes them
feel safer."

One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest
R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action,
said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were "having
an impact, no if's, and's or but's about it." Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins
said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to "infiltrate
people's privacy in the name of terrorist attacks."

"I just personally think that it's an invasion of people's privacy," Mr.
Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. "A large increase in
the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market."

City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces.
Rather than curb the system's future expansion, they have raised the
possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on
the city's street-sweeping vehicles.

"We're not inside your home or your business," Mayor Daley said. "The
city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys."