Secret Cameras Recording Baltimore’s Every Move From Above by Monte Reel.
Unknown to the citizens of Baltimore, they have been under privately funded, plane-based video surveillance since the beginning of 2016.
The pitch to the city:
“Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.”
You need to read Monte’s article in full and there are names you will recognize if you watch PBS:
Last year the public radio program Radiolab featured Persistent Surveillance in a segment about the tricky balance between security and privacy. Shortly after that, McNutt got an e-mail on behalf of Texas-based philanthropists Laura and John Arnold. John is a former Enron trader whose hedge fund, Centaurus Advisors, made billions before he retired in 2012. Since then, the Arnolds have funded a variety of hot-button causes, including advocating for public pension rollbacks and charter schools. The Arnolds told McNutt that if he could find a city that would allow the company to fly for several months, they would donate the money to keep the plane in the air. McNutt had met the lieutenant in charge of Baltimore’s ground-based camera system on the trade-show circuit, and they’d become friendly. “We settled in on Baltimore because it was ready, it was willing, and it was just post-Freddie Gray,” McNutt says. The Arnolds donated the money to the Baltimore Community Foundation, a nonprofit that administers donations to a wide range of local civic causes.
I find the mention of Freddie Gray ironic, considering how truthful and forthcoming the city and its police officers were in that case.
If footage exists for some future Freddie Gray-like case, you can rest assured the relevant camera failed, the daily data output failed, a Rose Mary Wood erasure accident happened, etc.
From Monte’s report, we aren’t at facial recognition, yet, assuming his sources were being truthful. But we all know that’s coming, if not already present.
Many will call for regulation of this latest intrusion into your privacy, but regulation depends upon truthful data upon which to judge compliance. The routine absence of truthful data about police activities, both digital and non-digital, makes regulation difficult to say the least.
In the absence of truthful police data, it is incumbent upon citizens to fill that gap, both for effective regulation of police surveillance and for the regulation of police conduct.
The need for an ad-hoc citizen-based surveillance system is clear.
What isn’t clear is how such a system would evolve?
Perhaps a server that stitches together cellphone video based on GPS coordinates and orientation? From multiple cellphones? Everyone can contribute X seconds of video from any given location?
Would not be seamless but if we all target known police officers and public officials…, who knows how complete a record could be developed?
Crowdsourced-Citizen-Surveillance anyone?