[From Study Questions Whether Cameras Cut Crime - City Room Blog - NYTimes.com]
David Greenberg and Jeffrey Roush have published a study on the effectiveness of cameras in a privately owned apartment complex. They found:
CTV may be moderately effective in preventing minor crimes or in diverting them to distant areas. Its effects on more serious crime could not be gauged precisely from this research because there was so little of it prior to the introduction of electronic monitoring.
This is another study that shows cameras are at best lukewarm for reducing crime. However, as the post on DC noted, everyday citizens don’t believe this. I believe surveillance will continue growing rapidly in the US despite the lack of support for a connection between cameras and crime.
rshah Policy
[From Baltimore Crime Beat: Police surveillance cameras - Baltimoresun.com]
Some comments from Baltimore regarding their surveillance system, which were inspired by the study of San Francisco cameras. Here are some snippets:
Issue of image quality:
Yes, cops love to release videos showing crimes, and we call watch and are horrified. But it’s often hard to identify an acutal suspect from the video, and more often than not, only a part or the aftermath of a crime is caught on the tape.
That leaves attorneys to argue and jurors to decide what actually happened. In one case city prosecutors described to me, a witness testified to being one place on the street when the video clearly showed her standing someplace else when she saw one man shoot two other men. Defense attorneys seized on this to question her integrity, but did convict in the end.
Cameras or Cops:
“When the cameras were announced by then Mayor O’Malley and brought into the city, no one consulted with our office on how to use the cameras effectively to bolster prosecutions,” Margaret T. Burns, the spokeswoman for the city State’s Attorney’s Office, told me. “They were viewed by the administration at the time as a quick fix to violent crime.” Cooperation has improved, but Burns said questions remain. She said community members continue to tell State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, “We would just like another police officer.”
Cameras as investigative tools:
“Our preliminary results are similiar to the preliminary results in San Francisco. The cameras are not always relevant to the violent crime that is being prosecuted. They are helpful investigative tools. The footage is often used to point us in the right direction. Whether or not they have an overall affect on violent crime in the city, whether or not they are cost effective, are things we can’t speak to, but they are questions that have been raised.”
Role of Live Monitoring:
In addition, Baltimore’s live monitoring has made the cameras an effective tool to engage in targeted enforcement and to capture and sometimes even prevent violent crimes in progress. I think the San Francisco study says that camera footage was only used to help solve or prosecute 5 or 6 cases of violent crime since 2005. Baltimore has been far more progressive in that area.
rshah Other Cities, Policy
[From You Are Being Watched]
The ACLU has launched a new web site focused on video surveillance. It does a pretty good job of providing resources on the issues around cameras, state news on cameras, and a map showing some of the areas with government surveillance. If anyone needs a starting point on government video surveillance, this is as good as any.
While I don’t share the ACLU’s views on video surveillance, I am happy there is one place will all the documents/links. I have been wishing for a site like this that lets us think about this issue on a state by state basis as well as nationally. I also think the ACLU’s site may serve as foreshadowing to an increased emphasis on video surveillance issues in the next few years.
They have news section which hopefully will stay current (but it doesn’t have an RSS feed!).
rshah Policy
[From In Hard Focus: Getting San Fran Surveillance Right] & [From Schneier on Security: Two Security Camera Studies]
The San Francisco story has generated comments in the blogosphere. While I have not yet read the study, I wanted to comment on a few points.
My general impression (before the report came out) was that San Francisco was a good example of how not to do surveillance. Two significant points here are the lack of real time monitoring and the poor infrastructure. I will have more once I read the report.
Steve over at in Hard Focus points out a couple of things. First, he goes with the glass half full approach in reading the results regarding the effectiveness of the cameras. Next he emphasize that San Francisco should consider improvements in the technology in areas such as image quality, data storage, networked systems, and analytics to make it easier to use the footage.
Schneier reports on a study of Scotland Yard, which shows that “in 90 murder cases over a one year period, CCTV was used in 86 investigations, and senior officers said it helped to solve 65 cases by capturing the murder itself on film, or tracking the movements of the suspects before or after an attack.” (From the Telegraph) This is an interesting study, because it provides a different rationale for supporting cameras. The traditional focus has been that cameras can deter or reduce crime. It will take a bit more analysis and probing to think through this study and figure out exactly what is the contribution of the cameras. (Consider the economic cost of the cameras, whether the crimes would have solved through other forms of evidence, . . .) Nevertheless, it is an interesting idea that needs further research and thought.
rshah Policy
[From San Francisco Chronicle: Spy cameras no help in violent crime]
I haven’t had a chance to read the study, which is available from the Samuelson clinic. But here are some tidbits from the Chronicle.
A long-awaited study of San Francisco’s installation of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas shows that the effort fails in its primary goal of reducing homicide and other violent crime, but succeeds in reducing such offenses as burglary, pickpocketing and purse-snatching. The study found that the program, started by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2005, is hampered by a lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police tactics, inadequate technology, and what may be fundamental weaknesses of cameras as devices to stop violent crime.
The 184-page study, which was called for by the Board of Supervisors in 2006, was conducted by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. It represents one of the most thorough reports on public surveillance, a trend that has swept the nation in recent years.
The report was critical of the way a hodgepodge of city agencies combined to administer the program. It said the program had no dedicated manager, and that officers and attorneys got no training on how to view the footage. The clarity of the footage, the study said, could be greatly improved if San Francisco bought more data storage space.
The report raises the idea of using the program more aggressively, perhaps integrating cameras with gunshot detection devices called ShotSpotters or buying so-called smart cameras that are capable of sounding an alarm if a gun is brandished, a fence is jumped, or a person falls down.
rshah Other Cities, Policy
[From CCTV camera pushes crime into blind spot @ SecurityInfoWatch.com]
A story that illustrates the classic displacement effect. This occurred in Flint, MI using a 2 camera system.
To those living in view of the police security camera at Cecil and Jewell drives on the city’s north side, the camera has really cleaned up the neighborhood.
But residents who live just out of the camera’s range tell a completely different story.
“Now what happened is the drug dealers have went on the side streets because the camera just does not get down those side streets,” said Curtis Baker, president of the Northeast Carpenter Road Neighborhood Association. “We have a drug house on just about every street now.”
rshah Other Cities, Policy
[From Don't like speed cameras? Use them to punk your enemies ]
Students in Maryland have discovered that by printing a Maryland plate template on a sheet of glossy photo paper (using a license plate character font) they can then trick speed cameras. The students tape the faux plate over their own and purposefully speed in order to be caught by the speed camera, causing the real owner of the license plate to receive a citation in the mail.
Similar tricks have been used with facial recognition cameras. The larger point of this story is to remember that smart camera systems can be fooled. Its important to consider this in the design of the system and the larger organizational scheme the camera is used in. We can’t be mesmerized by these “smart” systems. There are many ways to trick them and we should plan for this possibility.
rshah Policy
[From Surveillance Unlimited: How We've Become the Most Watched People on Earth]
A new book that discusses surveillance technologies. Its from the other side of the pond, so I didn’t find it available on Amazon. Here is a summary:
Your car is satellite-tracked, your features auto-identified on video, your e-mails, faxes and phone calls monitored. You are covertly followed via transmitters implanted in your clothes, via your switched-off mobile and your credit card transactions. Your character, needs and interests are profiled by surveillance of every website you visit, every newsgroup you scan, every purchase you make. Big Brother is here, quietly adding to your files in the name of government efficiency and the fight against organised crime and terrorism.
As Keith Laidler argues in this urgent, important book, the potential for abuse is far-reaching and formidable. Surveillance can indeed fight crime. But, he asks, at what price? If we want zero crime, can we accept its price of zero freedom? Is the deployment of such technologies even legal? What will be their effects on the fabric of society? And what can we do to prevent the worst excesses?
rshah Policy
[From Newsmax.com - Chicago Worst City for Personal Freedoms]
A Reason study ranked Chicago as the worst “nanny-state” based on its regulations in eight areas: “alcohol, tobacco, sex, guns, gambling, drugs, freedom of movement, and a catch-all category of food and “other.” Within each category, we looked at criteria ranging from helmet laws to restrictions on alcohol sales to how aggressively police target recreational activities such as drug use, prostitution, and gambling.”
According to the study, Chicago was the worst:
Chicago finished in the bottom half of all eight categories. The Windy City’s litany of meddlesome laws range from a tax on bottled water to a ban on serving alcohol at all-nude strip clubs. Local gun controls and a public smoking ban are among the most restrictive in the country. (That smoky Chicago blues joint of yore is now just a movie cliché.) There’s a primary seat belt law, meaning motorists can be pulled over for not buckling up, and a ban on using cell phones while driving. The city is second only to New York in the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces and has more red light cameras than any metropolis in the country.
For more on this check out the author of the study has an article in the Tribune, that has led to responses by the Sun-Times and a response by the the author, Radley Balko.
I am bringing this up, because the articles on this topic suggest that the proclivities for camera systems are not entirely about crime, but the type of relationship between government and citizens.
rshah Chicago, Policy
[From Plan to use private cameras to help city surveillance :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Politics]
Mayor Daley is sponsoring an ordinance that would authorize the “city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications to reach out en masse to private businesses and sign agreements with them to share video from their privately-owned surveillance cameras.”
This type of partnership has been done in other countries, but I don’t know of any large scale programs in the United States. There are a number of issues that need to be addressed if the government is monitoring private cameras, which may be focused on either public or private areas.
From a technology side, it will be interesting how this is implemented (and how much it costs). It appears to rely on a hardware based VPN system. The city has said:
The public-private hook-up was made possible by software tied to Operation Virtual Shield. That’s the security grid that linked existing fiber optics into a single network and paved the way for hundreds more surveillance cameras, sophisticated software capable of spotting suspicious behavior and for mass transit cameras to be monitored by the 911 center.
“You’ll have a piece of network gear that will talk to a piece of network gear from us and, through software, we’ll establish that point-to-point relationship on a dedicated pipe that’s talking language only you and I can talk….What we’ll do is ride the Internet. It’ll be fully-encrypted video” that cannot be compromised by hackers, Argiropoulos said.
As with other efforts by Chicago, if this is successful, expect other cities to follow. I hope to follow this more closely and provide a legal/technical analysis of this issues as they arise.
rshah Chicago, Policy
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