A BRAVE NEW WORLD--OR A TECHNOLOGICAL NIGHTMARE? BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!

If your automatic teller machine doesn't recognize your face, it soon will--in fact, it will know all about you. Already, in major cities throughout the United States, running a red light prompts a picture being taken of your license plate--and a computerized ticket being sent to you through the mail. Cameras even record what you do in the bathroom of one particular Lake Michigan resort. And legislation is underway that will install video surveillance in the taxicabs of Toronto, Ontario. Soon you will be recorded for posterity buying a carton of milk with a credit or debit card--and the exact date and time of your purchase will be preserved.

This reliance on security video cameras highlights a growing clash between technology and the right to privacy. As Donald Haines, a specialist on privacy issues for the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington National Office, puts it: "We're on the precipice of a Big Brother society." Indeed, we already knew that Big Brother was likely to come upon us, and ever so gradually. We just didn't think he'd come cloaked in so much really nifty technology. Nor did we realize that our society would become so technologized that most people would not only accept him but welcome him with open arms.

Let's take a look, then, at some characteristic examples of this incredible technology and what it has given us.

The Tempest Over Tampa

In January 2001, more than 100,000 ticketholders entering Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, to attend Super Bowl XXXV became an unwitting part of this brave new world. Police cameras filmed them as they entered through the turnstiles and computer software sought to match their faces with those of "terrorists, troublemakers, and criminals." On the end, less than two dozen people were identified--mostly pickpockets.) Fans had no clue their faces were being silently digitized and matched up against the mug shots of known malefactors, or that fans could be questioned or detained by officials. At least they didn't know until the matter became a controversial national news story shortly thereafter.

Civil libertarian groups argue that the Tampa test is breaking new ground that could pose dangers to the liberties of citizens. "This use was relatively benign, but the next won't be. Biometrics is creeping into our lives," said the ACLU's Barry Steinhardt. He protested that there are no government regulations of the technology and few protections for citizens against misuse. For example, while use might be limited today to identifying criminals, could the same video be used in the future for more nefarious purposes (for example, could a photo of a person leaving a restaurant with someone other than a spouse be used in future divorce proceedings)?

Senator Chris Dodd (Democrat--Connecticut), who is weighing new federal privacy rights legislation as a member of the congressional privacy caucus, said the Super Bowl monitoring was the latest example of a steady erosion of privacy rights. "It's come to the point where even attending something as innocuous as a sporting event can result in people's private information--without any consent, any knowledge beforehand --being collected and gathered. This is an issue that transcends politics, ideology, and partisanship."

Indeed, this activity raises serious concerns about the Fourth Amendment right of all citizens to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. The ACLU's Tampa chapter has called for public hearings on the use of security systems that may jeopardize the public's privacy rights. The ACLU acknowledges that everyone has a reduced expectation of privacy while in public, including sitting in the stands with one's family at a Sunday afternoon football game. But, they state, they don't believe that the public understands or accepts that they will be subjected to what constitutes a computerized police lineup as a condition of admission.

The ACLU's public-records request urges the city to turn over documents detailing how the video images captured by Tampa police at this year's Super Bowl will be used, stored, and disposed of--and exactly which police databases were cross-matched with the digitized faces of thousands of unsuspecting sports fans and residents across town. The ACLU encouraged government officials to "exercise some control over the rapidly developing use of sophisticated face-identification systems before we become a society under constant surveillance."

Aside from the constitutional issues raised by the developing use of this technology, the citizens of Tampa should be given an opportunity to ask--and have answered--the many questions that naturally follow from the practice:

* Was the use of the digitized-image surveillance system authorized for the Super Bowl game? Who authorized it?

* What databases were the captured images checked against --known felons, police suspects?

* What reports, if any, did the city commission or police department review that evaluated the effectiveness of this surveillance system?

* Why did the city fail to notify patrons of Raymond James Stadium that the surveillance system would be in operation?

* What action was contemplated if the surveillance system produced a "hit"? That is, would suspects be ejected from the stadium, would they be followed, or would they be arrested--and if arrested, on what basis?

* Are the captured images public records under Florida's public records act? If so, was the disposal of those records in accordance with state law? In other words, is the Tampa Police Department compelled to retain the images of some 100,000 individuals who committed no criminal act, making those images available for public inspection?

Since the Super Bowl, reports of the use of this surveillance technology indicate that the same sort of system has recently been installed for use in the Ybor City section of Tampa. Meanwhile, the federal government is exploring other ways of using it. The State Department now says it wants face-recognition devices for security at its embassies. And the Pentagon is financing some of the university research into further refinements and adaptations.

Recognition Technologies

Face-recognition technologies actually aren't that new. They've been around for a decade, often used for security purposes to limit access to buildings or special sections thereof. What a face-recognition system does is break pictures down into unique mathematical formulas, or algorithms, and match them with formulas stored in computer databases. Within the last four years, this technology has been adapted to many uses. Ever cheaper and more sophisticated cameras are making it increasingly easier to watch people on city streets, on mass transit vehicles, and in other places where people frequently go.

One early application was by Las Vegas casinos, which began using video cameras and face-recognition software to identify those people--such as blackjack card counters--who had been banned from the premises. "You have to do some pretty major surgery to evade the system," said Frances Zelazny, a spokesperson for Visionics, a leading face-recognition company in Jersey City, New Jersey, that developed the technology and installs it in Las Vegas, Dallas, and elsewhere.

Visionics also works in the United Kingdom with London's Metropolitan Police Department on a system that uses cameras on various city streets to identify people. Since the installation of a $3 million system in 1998 in the London borough of Newham, for example, the city council boasts that assaults on individuals there have declined 21 percent, vandalism 26 percent, and burglaries 39 percent. Information gleaned from the cameras also has led to more than 100 arrests, including three for murder, eight for stealing, and ninety for muggings.

In the city of Leichester, the Thames Valley "profile" system scans and measures the eye position and bone structure of individuals' faces against a database of known criminals. It is claimed to be correct in its analysis eight out of every ten times.

But if you're in the United Kingdom, you'd better also watch how you move; you may incriminate yourself that way, too. This is because a new security system being developed there can identify individuals by the unique way in which they walk. Unlike faces and irises, someone's gait can be spotted from a great distance with low-resolution cameras and be observed from just about any angle. It is also very difficult to mask, says Mark Nixon, a computer scientist at Southampton University's Image, Speech, and Intelligent Systems group. "When people rob banks they tend to wear motorbike helmets or some form of disguise." But you can't disguise your walk without drawing attention to yourself or impeding your escape.

Inspired by highly publicized crimes, where the suspects were caught on video but there were no clear shots of their faces, Nixon decided to find out whether a person's gait could be just as telling as a mug shot. He and his colleagues have so far adopted two approaches to the problem, getting what they consider promising results from both.

The first, after extracting a person's silhouette from an image sequence, analyzes the pendulum-like motion of the leg joints. It then measures the deviation of each joint movement from this simple harmonic motion. According to Nixon, this works because people tend to deviate in their own very characteristic ways. The second approach, published this past February, uses a data-based technique. This extracts particular features of a person's gait, such as the shape and angular velocity of a limb or the length of a joint.

At present, both techniques have their drawbacks. The pendulum approach isn't as effective as the data-based technique, but the latter is poor at ignoring flapping clothing, such as skirts, when analyzing a gait. Funding permitting, the Southampton team says it would take them six months to develop an analysis system that draws on the strengths of both techniques.

Although the initial trials involved just ten subjects, Nixon says the system proved accurate, and he is confident that his people are on the right track. Another use, says Nixon, could be to spot female shoplifters who pretend to be pregnant and walk out with a bellyful of merchandise. By using gait recognition, he says, store security could spot the difference between a genuinely pregnant woman and a fake one.

Overall, police closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance of one type or another is used extensively in the United Kingdom to cover such places as mass transit railway/platforms, the streets adjoining them, congested intersections, major shopping areas, financial institutions, and hospitals. This is supplemented even more extensively by private cameras in supermarkets and other stores and businesses--most of which cooperate fully with the police during the conduct of investigations. This usage is widely supported by the British public because of its demonstrable reduction of crime and traffic accidents through both prevention and the securing of court convictions. Moreover, there has been little expression of any public suspicion of authority because of this surveillance.

Government Eyes

According to a study by the New York Civil Liberties Union, people in Manhattan are being secretly videotaped on public streets, outside buildings, and even in their backyards by thousands of hidden surveillance cameras. "Someone is watching where you're going and what you're doing," NYCLU Executive Director Norman Siegel has told the New York Times. Most cameras are secured to rooftops, lamp posts, and building entrances; but almost 400 rotating cameras are hidden in globes that look like street lights. Yet, according to the Sun Herald, the presence of surveillance cameras for twenty-two months in Times Square resulted in only ten arrests.

So, this past January, with dozens of uniformed police officers looking on (not to mention those who might have been watching on a video monitor in the precinct house) more than 200 New York City residents rallied in Washington Square Park against the Giuliani administration's increasing use of surveillance cameras to fight crime. Under a plan announced a year ago by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Howard Safir, surveillance cameras have already been installed in some housing projects, and the mayor and commissioner have pledged that more cameras are coming soon to other public spaces. Demonstrators said the cameras would destroy the kind of privacy in public places that New Yorkers have come to expect, eroding the quality of life for law-abiding city residents far more than the cameras would help catch and prosecute criminals. "Once you give them the okay to do this, they will take it and run with it," warned Tonya D. McClary, director of research at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. "We've pretty much allowed them a green light to put these cameras in parks, in public schools, in the subway system, and in city buses."

On January 25, 2001, the ACLU also protested cameras being installed in Boulder, Colorado, public schools. The Boulder County chapter of the ACLU says it doesn't want "Big Brother" watching high school students. According to the Daily Camera, the Boulder Valley School District plans to spend $840,000 for new security cameras in schools. The ACLU called the cameras unnecessary, ineffective, and a violation of student privacy rights. "We want to be sure the rights of privacy of students are protected," said Judd Golden, the vice-chair of the Boulder County chapter. But Boulder High School Principal Chris King said the cameras are "a valuable resource" for school officials.

Now, in Gulfport, Mississippi, surveillance cameras are slated for mounting in public areas to be monitored by the Gulfport Police Department--if the department's request for federal funding is approved. The police department says the cameras will help police monitor high crime areas and would function as a deterrent to criminals. The ACLU of Mississippi counters that the mounting of government-monitored cameras on telephone and light poles violates a citizen's right to privacy. Mississippi ACLU Executive Director David Ingebretsen recently told the Sun Herald, "I think people are too ready to see the latest gimmick because of their fear of crime, without considering the constitutional example it sets." He added:

   We must urge lawmakers to create real remedies when CCTV is used for
   political surveillance or to target people of color, women, and sexual
   minorities. Our open records and freedom of information laws will also need
   to be amended to take into account governmentally organized CCTV campaigns.
   In short, we have every reason to believe that police will use video
   surveillance to target those who they think are more likely to commit
   crimes and even entrap those they believe have a predisposition to criminal
   behavior. Police recording of persons exercising their constitutional right
   to speak can have a chilling and intimidating effect.

Meanwhile, city officials in Huntington Park, California, are seeking to install surveillance cameras along popular streets while openly acknowledging that such actions might infringe on citizens' constitutional right to privacy. The cameras--to be funded by a local entrepreneur and run by the city--represent the most intense use of outdoor surveillance in southern California. In response, the ACLU told the city: "If you let the police put cameras in this place and that place, then they will be everywhere." It seems almost a given that the increased use of cameras will raise the likelihood of abuse by government officials. If the cameras are a success, city officials say, they will expand the program to cover the entire six-block shopping area of Huntington Park.

This trend is expanding all over the United States. Officials in Portland, Oregon, have installed surveillance cameras on city transit buses. In Boston, Massachusetts, cameras have been put in the city's largest public housing complex. And Anchorage, Alaska, officials say they managed to cut the number of brothels from forty-four to six by circulating pictures of prostitutes taken by a video camera.

Canada has experimented extensively with automated photo radar. Radar cameras mounted on vans and positioned on two-, four-, and six-lane highways detect motorists' speeds and, if excessive, photograph the vehicle's license plate, resulting in a ticket being mailed to the offender. In 1993, Bill 47 was passed in Ontario placing on the books a law allowing Ontario police to use photo radar. The pilot program has since been terminated but the law remains. In British Columbia, a photo radar program is operated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but run by the insurance council. Edmonton, Alberta, has used photo radar since 1995 and reaped more than $50 million in revenue from fines--a percentage of which it paid to Lockheed Martin (which conveniently awarded the Edmonton police department "for service well done"). U.S. authorities are watching these programs with great interest.

Ontario has also instituted its first video toll road. Highway 407's toll system operates using a transponder on those vehicles which subscribe (transport trucks are required to carry responders) and takes pictures of other vehicles' license plates. The toll amount (calculated every hundred meters) is computed and the registered owner of the vehicle is billed bimonthly.

Speaking generally, police cars in North America routinely carry video cameras to record officers at work as well as record the public with whom they interact. The most modern jails and prisons, which now have inmates in glass enclosures rather than in concrete cells with bars, use video surveillance with great efficiency, reportedly reducing or eliminating prison rape in many institutions. Some government offices have video cameras watching employees--especially at treasury departments and in taxing offices. Museums at various levels of government feature video security systems observing patrons. And video cameras not only monitor border crossings but are secretly stationed well in advance of the customs booths to observe those people who pull over and rearrange things in their cars before getting in the queue to cross.

Corporate Eyes

Video cameras have been commonplace for years inside banks and at ATM machines. In a recent development, however, Wells Fargo banks in Dallas, Texas, are installing 860 models of a new generation of automatic teller machine that relies on face-recognition technology to recognize customers and identify those who have defrauded the bank in the past.

Video cameras continue to be found in the hallways of numerous corporate offices, in the lobbies and hallways of major hotels, throughout major amusement parks (including digital photos of roller coaster riders that are offered for purchase), throughout major supermarkets, in convenience stores, in shopping malls, at temporary storage facilities, and in many other sorts of businesses. Some companies have surveillance of employees, particularly those handling money. Surveillance cameras also overlook many private parking lots and parking garages. And, of course, television news stations are famous for capturing significant events on video, using cameras both obvious and hidden, on the ground and in the air.

With the Internet, a new wrinkle is the webcam. When a user logs onto the websites of many convention bureaus or chambers of commerce, he or she will be treated to a periodically changing image of some local tourist attraction. Leading resources for finding a vast variety of webcams include EarthCam.com and webcam.com, which link to the sights and sounds of city streets, business offices, college campuses, churches, hotels, nightclubs, parks, resorts, beaches, and so on all over the world. Web surfers are treated to both outdoor and indoor views, sometimes involving multiple cameras, 360-degree panoramic views, or continuous streaming video. Added to this, Internet sex sites often feature views from cameras located at nude beaches and frequently claim to have hidden "spy cams" in public restrooms, clothing store changing rooms, and the like--though most of these latter are shams, given their generally illegal nature. All of this combined, however, serves to popularize the idea of video voyeurism and may even increase its general acceptance as a regular part of modern life.

Private Eyes

It started with VCRs and people simply taping shows off their televisions. Then there were camcorders and digital cameras. Now, as they have become smaller and easier to carry, these latter devices are ubiquitous in our society--appendages as commonplace as cell phones. You'll recall that it was a camcorder that captured the police beating of Rodney King. These devices have been used in many other instances as well, for purposes both good and ill.

Added to this are the numerous cases of parents purchasing and setting up spy devices, such as phony desk radios that hide a surveillance camera, in order to secretly watch babysitters, nannies, and others. This seems to be legal in some states and illegal in others. Some professional home security systems involve video cameras that record who is on the property. But any homeowner can set up his or her own surveillance cameras--and in some cases may even point them at a neighbor's property without legal consequences.

Then there is the whole home computer webcam phenomenon where people set up cameras that send images to their websites. These can involve everything from tiny webcams in their own bedrooms to camcorders hidden in backpacks and carried about in public places, recording whatever goes on and whoever happens to be present.

Surveillance As a Cultural Phenomenon

Clearly, we are living in a society that is becoming increasingly tolerant of, used to, and even positive about the widespread presence of video surveillance. Some of the credit for this public conditioning belongs to the mainstream media, which has effectively trained people not only to accept this sort of eavesdropping (as with "reality" television shows like Cops) but to love it (as with the Survivor television programs and their ilk). Thus the fanciful scenario depicted in the movie The Truman Show is gradually becoming more truth than fiction.

Yet it wasn't that long ago that the very idea of so much surveillance was considered utterly unacceptable and the mark of an oppressive society. In 1989, the people of Rumania rose up and overthrew Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, the communist dictators who had harshly ruled the country for twenty-four years. Even the Soviet news agency Tass had labeled the Ceausescu regime "one of the most odious" of the century. And what was considered a signature example of that government's abuse of power and iron control over the people was the presence of police video cameras on the street corners of major Rumanian cities.

How much has changed in a mere dozen years! Hence my fear that Big Brother has too effectively crept up on us; that his clever disguise and slick promotion has already been our undoing; that his ability to make us feel safer, more secure, and better entertained has beguiled us into a lethargy and acceptance that, but a short time ago, would have been unthinkable.

Of course, not all uses of this technology are harmful. But some definitely are. Which is why we need to make clear, reasoned distinctions so, as we pursue better ways of accomplishing our goals through technology, we don't give up our rights and freedoms in the process.

One organization in particular is dedicated to waking the public up before it's too late. I thus urge anyone who cares about preserving individual privacy and maintaining protection from searches without just cause to join the American Civil Liberties Union immediately.

Barbara Dority is president of Humanists of Washington, executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censorship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force.