NYC Police Comm'r: Privacy Is 'Off the Table' After Boston Bombs

An anonymous reader writes "New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly thinks that now is a great time to install even more surveillance cameras hither and yon around the Big Apple. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers were famously captured on security camera footage and thereby identified. That just may soften up Americans to the idea of the all-seeing glass eye. 'I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table,' Kelly gloats."

Comments

Who watches the watchers....

[gandhi_2]

... drinking big gulp sugary drinks?

Re:Who watches the watchers....

[Spy Handler]

Google glass-wearing hipster overlords will watch them.

Another thought: if every citizen walking around is wearing his own personal camera and recording everything, and nobody has access to the recording but the owner, maybe we don't need police surveillance cameras everywhere. In a clear case of public danger such as the Boston marathon bombing, citizens will be glad to provide their footage to the police. Otherwise they can refuse to hand it over to anyone.

no problem

[zlives]

as long as camera's are also installed inside police department in every office and interrogation room and are completely accessible by public.
  'I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table,'

Re:no problem

[lgw]

You have no privacy in public spaces.

So pitting camera in PUBLIC space is, by definition NOT an invasion of privacy

Bullshit. I can expect plenty of privacy in public places. I can expect anything I do that's not too attention-getting to be ignored and forgotten. Only children think in terms of absolutes: "it's not absolutely private so it must be absolutely public".

There's a huge loss in privacy between having a searchable archive of ubiquitous surveillance, and what people normally see and remember. Privacy is valuable, because it's an important part of dignity. I'm not going to give up any privacy without getting a large and proven increase in security, and maybe not even then.

Re:no problem

[dgatwood]

The bombers were taken because of footage from cameras, most of which were owned by private individuals. Those cameras don't have the same privacy concerns as government-owned cameras because no single entity has access to all of them except under extreme circumstances where everyone universally agrees to make that footage available. And this is the way that it should continue to be done. This bombing provides no justification for any changes whatsoever. The system, as designed, with privacy built in, mostly worked.

Incidentally, to the extent that the system did not completely work, it failed in a way that more cameras—particularly publicly accessible cameras—would exacerbate. If the public had access to more cameras, more often, we would have more incidences of false accusations like the one that led to the (presumed) suicide of Sunil Tripathi. The whole reason for limiting access to video from lots of different sources is that it greatly increases the probability of misidentification by greatly increasing the perceived confidence in the evidence (regardles of whether the public or police are doing that identification). Thus, the Boston bombing incident plainly demonstrates why the use of video evidence as a starting point, in the absence of other evidence tying someone to a crime, is an extreme solution that should be used only in extreme circumstances, where there is a serious public safety concern. Based on what happened here, IMO, giving the police access to more cameras more often is only likely to ruin a lot of innocent people's lives.

Put another way, I think any question about Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's common sense has really been taken off the table.

Rights are off the table

[roman_mir]

Never mind privacy, all of your rights are off the table. I imagine that fighting this is a bit like fighting windmills, but all this oppression does is it creates more negativity and more negativity will cause more violence.

What we learned...

[Anonymous Coward]

What we learned from Boston was that there is no reason for centralized surveillance. Privately owned cameras (around businesses) provided enough coverage. And the police were then able to provide warrants to acquire the video. It worked perfectly from a privacy standpoint and in providing necessary information to law enforcement.

Since the ones we have were sufficient...

[NixieBunny]

Since the cameras we have in place already were sufficient to identify the suspects, we obviously need more cameras.
We call this "logic".

Huge Difference

[eldavojohn]

Kelly dismisses critics who argue that increased cameras threaten privacy rights, giving governments the ability to monitor people in public spaces.

“The people who complain about it, I would say, are a relatively small number of folks, because the genie is out of the bottle,” Kelly said. “People realize that everywhere you go now, your picture is taken.”

There's a stark difference between a store knowing I am in their store and a centralized location storing all of my visits. And then there's an even further jump when it's a government doing that. I'm fine that I go into Gamestop and Gamestop gets tapes of me looking at games. I'm fine that I go to Chipotle and there's a camera on the cash register. I'm fine that I then walk by the entrance to an electronics store and I'm on their cameras passing by. That's cool, if they want to put together the odd footage they have of me going there, I'm not really concerned about that. And that's the stuff that ended up helping catch the Boston suspects.

I'm not okay when one centralized location stores that data and my complete movements can be tracked. If a Gamestop employee got my address from a purchase and wanted to search my house, he'd have only the time I'm on camera to do it. If my whole trip is detailed, it could be done covertly quite easily.

Decentralizing the stores of this video information has its own merits and disadvantages but I think there is a very small group of people that are uneasy with being videotaped at a grocery store by the grocery store yet a large group of people (once they think about what their tax dollars are being spent on) that would be uneasy about a government system centralizing this and putting individuals in charge of it.

What worked here is that businesses realized they each had a piece of the puzzle to solve a heinous crime. This commissioner's claim that technology exists that would have prevented these attacks had it been a government controlled and centralized effort is largely horseshit and what benefits that pretends to provide are insignificant compared to the possible evils it could unleash.

By the way, if this topic interests you then you should be watching Germany closely.

If public places are not to be considered private

[dmomo]

Then, any cameras being placed should be openly accessible to the public in real time. I won't like the presence of cameras, but at least this is consistent with the sentiment that public places are not to be considered private.

Don't bring NCIS into this business!

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU LEAVE ABBY OUT OF THIS!

That will not happen.

[khasim]

When they talk about "privacy" they mean the privacy of the people who are not the police and not the politicians. They still get all the privacy they want.

Because of, you know, "national security" and "terrorists".

Re:That will not happen.

[Minwee]

You provided the per-capita murder rate. Can you also provide the per-capita for people beat up by police and for illegal searches?

According to publicly available police records, both rates have been at or below zero since 1776.

Re:That will not happen.

[Hatta]

Remember there was more than one explosion caused by criminals last week. Is "privacy off the table" for fertilizer plants too? Fifteen people died in West, Texas. Why have there been no arrests yet?

Re:Pathetic

[SpaceManFlip]

It's all the media's manipulation of what people pay attention to. If you talk to individuals who can process thoughts within their own mind, it isn't unlikely that they can see the rational reality that the Boston Bombings were really not That Big of a Deal in the grand scope of things. More people are killed and injured on a daily basis just driving or riding in their fabulous automobiles.

PRIVACY? OFF THE TABLE!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Liberty? OFF THE TABLE!
Freedom? OFF THE TABLE!
Justice? OFF THE TABLE!

You are now safe from the threat we created for you.

Re:PRIVACY? OFF THE TABLE!

[anagama]

You are now safe from the threat we created for you.

But still not safe.

America will gladly take the tattered bits of the constitution and pulp them over what is realistically a tiny threat. But when lax zoning laws coupled with almost zero oversight (e.g. holding 1350x as much ammonium nitrate onsite and not reporting it or being inspected) lead to an industrial disaster (*) in which more people were injured and killed almost concurrently with Boston .... the owners might face some kind lawsuit, but you don't hear the public clambering for a police state nor do you hear politicians gladly acquiescing.

Or pick any random refinery explosion, which often kill workers and are often due to aged equipment not being replaced (**).

Now, I don't think industrial accidents should warrant pulping the constitution, but the response we take in such instances should at least be instructive -- there is the potential for criminal and civil charges all of which will take place in the context of a trial conducted under the normal rules of evidence and procedure pertinent to the type of proceeding.

But when many fewer people are hurt or injured by a bomb, we go on a self-destructive freeforall.

(*) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/texas-fertilizer-plant-fell-through-cracks-of-regulatory-oversight.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
(**) http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=9717

Re:Privacy?

[zzsmirkzz]

If strangers have the right to "see" me with their eyes as I walk the street and walk in to a store, is it so different if that "seeing" is recorded?

Yes, obviously. There would then be permanent documentation of every move everyone makes while in public which can be accessed now or at any time in the future for reasons which will not be made clear and will be subject to change at any time.

I think what the "privacy" crowd wants is a right to "anonymity". And I'm not sure we have a right to "anonymity".

No, what they want is their right to not be harassed upheld. Their right to not have every moment of their public activities stored as part of a permanent record. It is not unreasonable.

Re:Privacy?

[Belial6]

You are a good example of someone who is 80% down the slippery slope. Anonymity is one type of privacy. It is an important type of privacy. It may very well be the most important type of privacy. It is the type of privacy that you get when you mark a box on a ballot.

Re:Privacy?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I have read several different science fiction stories based on real technology, where face recognition tracks individuals and stores it in a database, along woth car tracking.

One story even did a Google Earth kind of things and tracked you inside buildings as well. Type in a name, boom! Exactly where you are, and were, is known and logged.

We do not want to give government this power.