Surveillance in Washington DC And At Bookstores

dioscaido writes: "From reuters: 'Washington police are building what will be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall Street Journal said on Wednesday.'" Aragorn_2002 writes "I found this new article on Salon.com about how feds are subpoenaing book-purchasing records. Just imaging if they start to use DMCA and the new Anti-terrorist bill to subpoena someone buying books on breaking encryption." If you've ever ordered from Amazon, this might concern you. Update: 02/13 21:30 GMT by M : The full WSJ article is available on MSNBC.

Comments

Re:Human Rights

[coreman]

Unless they paid money for it like all the big marketting firms do. This information has been available for sale for years. Amazon already keeps a history profile on us and markets it. How do you think they do the recommendations and the context sensitive banner ads. That information stopped being private years ago. You're just fighting it being given away for free.

Re:1984..

[Buadach2]

I live in Brixton, London and the whole area is covered by cameras that can track a pedestrian or vehicle throughout the area. I used to be really pro privicy and anti police survailance until the cameras caught some police beating up a local black guy and they got caught - nice justice :) This area used to be really rough and violent but now is pretty much the same as the rest of London so it has helped reduce violent crime which has to be a good thing but the thought that someone in authority can track my movements without my knowledge is still worrying and invasive. BTW: the shoe bomber Richard Reid came from Brixton and our network of cameras didn't make one iota of difference so I still doubt the effectiveness as an anti-terrorist measure.

Re:Living in Britain

[Muad'Dave]

I guess You've not read this article in the current Issue of Scientific American. I block-quote the following for your perusal (emphasis mine):

In the camera-filled U.K., the London borough of Newham claimed its pilot scheme produced a 21 percent drop in crimes "against the person" and unprecedented decreases in criminal property damage, vehicle-related crime, and burglary. In August 2001 the U.K. approved a further £79 million (about $114 million) for 250 new CCTV systems. Simon Davies, a fellow at the London School of Economics and the founder and director of Privacy International, estimates that the country has at least 1.5 million CCTV cameras now in place.

Jason Ditton, professor of law at the University of Sheffield in England and director of the Scottish Center for Criminology in Glasgow, is one of the few academic sources of CCTV information. His research, funded by the government's Scottish Office, shows that the cameras are not cost-effective and that they reduce neither crime nor the fear of crime. His 1999 study of CCTV in Glasgow's city center revealed that although crime fell in the areas covered by the cameras, the drop was insignificant once general crime trends were taken into account. Even worse results were in Sydney, Australia, where a $1-million system accounted for an average of one arrest every 160 daysa quarter of the Glasgow rate, which Ditton thought was poor.

Moreover, it is not clear how much of a role the displacement effectthe shifting of crime from one area to anotherplays. A Sydney city council's report indicates that the cameras probably displaced some crime to areas outside the lens's view. And therein lies a fundamental design conflict. For the cameras to be an effective deterrent, everyone has to know they're there; however, to be effective in spotting criminals they need to be covert.

It's article 12

[jeti]

I wasn't sure if privacy is really mentioned in the
human rights. To safe others the work of looking it
up:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Re:Yes in the US there *is* a right to privacy.

[Anonymous Coward]

idiots. a few quickies - Roe v. Wade is one of the biggest pieces of legal garbage ever written, regardless of your view on abortion. It lacks any form of logic and even some of the most pro-choice of legal scholars will admit that. The idea of a right to privacy is implied in certain actual rights that are actually granted - see the 3rd, especially the 4th, and the 5th amendments for more details. But there is no actual 'right' to privacy itself. The right to privacy is a in fact just concept fleshed out by actual laws. Thus actual laws against people videotaping you going to the bathroom or against wiretapping are specific laws that could be described as enforcing the right of privacy - but the legal basis for those laws does not come from any constitutional right of privacy.

Re:Jack B. Nimble is better than Uncle Fester

[renehollan]

You miss the point.

The titles of those two books are now associated, with you, the reader. That could be construed as reasonable suspicion to arrest you for drug dealing and confiscate all your property under the asset forfeiture laws.

No, you don't get your property back if you're innocent.

On Librarians

[tiltowait]

The confidentiality of library records (like what books you've checked out) is one of the most staunchly defended rights in the recent history of librarianship (anther being freedom to access library materials, such as the Satanic-inducing Harry Potter or Internet sans censorware).

It goes back to the MaCarthy era inquisitions of practices such as FBI requests of who had "dangerous" materials checked out. Thankfully we now have 48 states with laws prohibiting the disclosure of library records.

In most cases, nobody - not your parents, police, or spouse - can access your circulation record without a specific court order. Remember that Florida librarian who phoned the police to say she recognized the hijacking terrorists as library users? Well she broke the law in doing so.

This statement by the American Library Association addresses their continued vigilance in protecting privacy in light of current events.

Not so

[dachshund]

I think this article is more about how the rights are being successfully upheld rather than taken away.

Actually, it's about both. It mentions that the first (widely known) attempt to obtain customer records occurred as recently as 1998, when Ken Starr attempted to subpeona a bookstore in DC. A court agreed with the bookstore on 1st amendment grounds, but didn't quash the subpeona... Opening a gateway for a number of requests over the past few years-- requests that might not previously have been made.

Does that count as attempting to "take away" a right? I'd need to know a lot more about the case history to be precise, but on the surface, it seems that there's a definite movement to challenge something that's at very least an assumed right/protection.

Also notice that in a number of the cases mentioned, the courts did not actually find in favor of the bookstore. In a number of these cases, either the case was dropped, or the purchaser voluntarily cooperated. The Tattered Cover lawsuit is still on appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, with the most recent decision still in favor of enforcing the subpeona. If you're forced to appeal to the State Supreme Court in order to have your rights upheld, then you clearly haven't had your rights successfully upheld by the rest of the legal system.

Re:Yes in the US there *is* a right to privacy.

[Macrobat]

In their house is just that, nothing more. Anything I can't see or hear without going in. Once again, technology has rendered it virtually meaningless.

Actually, the Supreme Court ruled just last year (Kyllo vs. United States) that infrared technology could not be used to snoop inside a residence. The police had used IR traces to detect heat lamps he'd used to grow cannabis. The wording of the judgement also said that Kyllo had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his home because the technology revealed information "that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion."

"Previously unknowable" is telling; a low-tech standard has been set as the measure against which the suitability of surveillance technologies will be judged. So, no matter what the capacity for the police to gather data will be, home will still be home and unreasonable use of technology will still be unreasonable search. (We hope; the courts may rule against freedom in future cases, but that's always been a risk.)