Traffic Cameras Used for Pedestrian Monitoring

Posted by michael on Friday September 19, 2003 @02:30AM from the slip-slip-slipping dept.

Quixote writes "A couple of days ago, there were news reports about a traffic camera near Univ. of Alabama being actually used to checkout passersby by someone at the state troopers' office. Today, there's a news report about 3 people being arrested for 'public misconduct' by the same camera (including one man for grabbing his crotch (don't ballplayers routinely do this? ;)). This story highlights an issue which most privacy advocates worry about: the extension of a surveillance technology to cover areas it was not intended to cover. This camera is a traffic camera: it was installed for monitoring the traffic conditions on the road. Now it is being used to monitor people (albeit the 'monitoring' was for some <ahem> other purposes in the beginning). I will submit that in a public place you have no right to privacy; but this yet another example of something to keep in mind when considering other 'privacy eroding' technologies."

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Re:Time to fight back... by SpaFF · 2003-09-19 04:22 · Score: 2, Informative

I will approve of ubiquitous surveillance cameras only when there is universal access to watching them.

That's how this was discovered. They are braodcasted on a cable channel here in town, and you can watch them online here

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