Police are increasingly using video technology as “force multipliers.” But the data created by surveillance cameras raises privacy concerns.
It all started in Britain. During the early 1990s, the Irish Republican Army was raising the stakes in its program to gain independence for Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom. Part of that program was a series of truck bombs, now called IEDs, within England, in an attempt to disrupt commerce and, hopefully, get the European Union to move its financial center from London to Frankfurt. This would do great damage to the economy of the UK.
On Saturday, April 24, 1993, a bomb was detonated in Bishopsgate, in the center of the City of London. By doing it on a Saturday, the IRA limited the loss of life, since that part of London was empty (in fact, the only fatality was one of the bombers).
But what that bombing triggered was the creation of surveillance software which has now extended its reach all over the world. These capabilities include license plate and facial recognition. They have created volumes of data about people and vehicles — data which lasts for as long as the gathering agency wishes.
“It all started with Bishopsgate,” said Inspector Vaughan Clarke of the Northamptonshire Police in the United Kingdom, one of the people involved in the introduction of a technology they call “number plate recognition” into that country. “This event created an industry.”
It is in this context that a seemingly simple request by the Hermosa Beach Police Department to install cameras in and around the Pier Plaza area has been viewed with skepticism by some who are concerned about what they believe is a slow and steady elimination of personal privacy. Yet to Hermosa Beach Police Chief Sharon Papa, the reason for the request is very straightforward.
“Police Department personnel cannot be everywhere,” she said, especially during the most active hours in and around the Pier Avenue area. So, this “force multiplier” provides the HBPD with a “quick response” option should problems occur. In addition, since some of the cameras will be located in the parking lots that flank the plaza, evidence of wrongdoing can be more easily gathered and used at trial, should the perpetrators be apprehended.
As with all technologies such as this, a single installation is only a part of a continuum that began with focused trials of a vehicle license plate reading system that would help auto theft task forces identify stolen vehicles.
A new market
The terrorist events of Oklahoma City and 9/11 provided the impetus for law enforcement, particularly in large urban centers, to look for tools which could help them gather intelligence which could assist in staving off events like those. However, as with most technology development such as that, the usefulness among agencies in smaller jurisdictions, which had more mundane requirements than “homeland security,” such as parking scofflaws, presented a fertile field for marketing and sales. As these devices became more and more affordable, and reduced in size, the more law enforcement wanted them.
Papa is well aware of the capabilities of the new technologies. They had been in use for much of her two decades at the Los Angeles Police Department. But she says cameras which will be deployed for the Hermosa Beach surveillance program will have a very narrow use.
“I’m only looking at these cameras to help me deal with a very specific situation,” she said during a recent interview. “On the plaza, if we can see things you can’t see from the ground, all of us will be better off.”
The cameras, which were approved at last week’s Council meeting, are the latest addition to the City’s camera portfolio. They also have four Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras, two on black and whites and two on parking enforcement vehicles.
Each of these systems carry the latest “hot list” from the State of California regarding stolen vehicles. When a match occurs, the driver is notified and a standard procedure is followed to confirm the plate read and the status of the warrant. If confirmed, the appropriate action is taken.
The plate readers show where and when a plate was read. No pictures of vehicle occupants are taken. Nevertheless, the plate readers are not discriminating between wanted and other vehicles. Every plate is read and recorded. All of this information goes to a database where it will reside for as long as the agency wishes to hold it. Should an authorized user wish to plot the presence of any particular vehicle, it is easily done.
Thus, its security comes down to the strictness of the rules and regulations on how this data is going to be used. Its availability is also determined by retention policies.
“We plan on keeping the Pier camera data for 90 days, but I’m thinking we may not need it more than 30,” Papa said. “After 30 days, its value diminishes rapidly.”
Another wrinkle now presents itself. The information gathered by Hermosa may be of value to other cities, if, for example, they are seeking a serial offender.
“Bad guys don’t respect city borders,” Papa said.
Better policing?
“The real power of ALPR,” according to Inspector Clarke, “is in data-mining the back-office data for anomalous vehicle movements that can be indicative of hostile surveillance activity…for example, the same license plate seen continually in the vicinity of cash-in-transit vehicles [armored cars].”
Clarke has been involved with this and other imaging technologies for over fifteen years and has seen them become a major part of UK policing, helping to substantially reduce the crime rate.
“I think we have one of the most sophisticated information sharing systems in the world,” he said. “We had to.”
Information sharing among the Beach Cities has not exactly been a strong suit. Even today, public safety units from each of the cities have difficulty communicating with each other in real time. The most recent incident was during the forced closing of Mira Costa High School due to threats posted on social media, where units had to call each other’s cell phones to get updates. The same situation existed twenty years ago, when Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach Fire Departments needed to communicate the same way.
Despite these disconnects, information sharing resources do exist and are, sporadically, being used. The largest installation countywide has been an LA Sheriff’s initiated and managed program called Coplink, as part of its Advanced Surveillance and Protection (ASAP) Unit. The software, originally developed by a small start-up in Tucson, Arizona, is now owned by IBM and is integrated into some of the most sophisticated sharing systems yet built. They are in London, New York and Stockholm, among other cities.
The Coplink system enables intelligence information to be shared and analyzed by multiple jurisdictions simultaneously, In the past, this job fell to a department’s crime analyst, a position which, during the many rounds of budget-driven cutbacks, has often been first on the chopping block. Chief Papa has the restoration of that position as one of her highest priorities. “I want someone who is looking at the larger picture, not actively involved in information gathering,” she said.
Into the Coplink system goes all manner of data, from field interviews to number in the DVLA Number Plates. It integrates with records management and computer-aided dispatch systems. Other companies offer add-on services such as facial recognition and mobile lineups and mug shots, enabling witnesses to provide input to officers on the scene.
But use of Coplink and other information sharing systems, Papa noted, is only as good as the users. “We, frankly, haven’t used it as much as we might have,” she said. “That’s primarily due to the lack of a crime analyst.”
In Redondo Beach, with five on-vehicle ALPR systems and two mounted on trailers often used at DUI checkpoints, more information is being gathered. Camera placements have also become more prevalent as well, with installations on Artesia Boulevard used for traffic light control, at City Hall (which is in use but not being recorded as the matter is discussed with employee unions) and at the pier.
Redondo Beach also has so called “body” cameras and maintains the data for at least 30 days, unless it has specific investigative quality. However, the camera is operated by the officer, so it is his or her responsibility to turn it on or off. It can be used during field interviews or other conversations with people of interest. It cannot be used when speaking with another person in law enforcement, unless that person is specifically under investigation.
In Manhattan Beach, two cars have ALPR, Torrance has one.
El Segundo has five, three on cars and two on trailers. According to Police Chief Mitch Tavera, ALPR data is kept for one year. They also provide and receive data from ASAP and Coplink. Unlike some other police agencies, none of the data is shared outside law enforcement — including a license plate database created for police access by a company that provides ALPR to repossession companies.
“We understand the Constitution, especially the First and Fourth Amendments when it comes to this data,” Tavera said. “It is a great analytic system, and since over 90 percent of our Part I [serious] crime comes from out of the city, having this data and sharing it with adjacent jurisdictions makes a lot of sense. If you don’t share information, it won’t help you.”
While ESPD has no surveillance camera systems of its own, Tavera is working with private individuals and businesses to create a database of non-governmental surveillance, so that the police can quickly access that information should the need arise.
On top of the volume of data from more and more ubiquitous in-car video, add the growing presence of body cameras, and one can see an exponential increase in the volume of information being created.
Legitimate questions are not only asked about what is being done with it, but who controls access to it.
While rare, so far, there have been publicly reported instances of data being used in ways other than for law enforcement purposes. In late 2013, Boston had to suspend its program of license plate reading for parking enforcement when the records of 68,000 vehicles which had triggered alarms were inadvertently released to the public.
It was particularly embarrassing since some of those vehicles were recorded nearly 100 times without any action being taken against them. It naturally raised questions about the security of the data, as well as the ability of police agencies to use the data effectively. As with other high profile database leaks, this information is not immune to human error.
Another concern is how protected the data is from public scrutiny, especially if it is gathered by non-governmental providers, such as repossession companies. A decade ago, cases of traffic camera data being subpoenaed in divorce cases in Florida made it necessary for their legislature to exempt this information from their very strict Sunshine (open data) Law.
What is privacy today?
Britain, along with Israel, are the most surveilled countries in the world. The reasons for installing those systems can be easily justified. However, in the US, as the technology to gather data and share it becomes easier and easier, it is probably time to determine the relative merits. Both sides have legitimate cases to make.
For law enforcement, the issue is straightforward. Information helps stop and solve crime. To groups like the ACLU, it is not necessarily the technology, but the data storage that is troublesome. After all, a warrant is generally needed to track someone’s movements in a way that is admissible in court.
“Americans have a right to expect that their lives will not become an open book when they have not done, and are not suspected of doing, anything wrong,” according to the ACLU’s policy statement. “Even when you have nothing to hide, the government can inadvertently cause you great harm.”
Why should this potential harm be caused by the fact that one has a photo in a database, one obtained in a public space?
And here lies the crux of the dilemma. License plates are called that because the state provides it to you to show registration and insurance. There is no question about the rights of law enforcement to do real time checking of plate-associated criminal activity. It is the stored data of those who are not being sought that is at question.
The argument becomes even more complicated when the item being surveilled is one’s face. In public, there again is no question that police can recognize someone they are seeking and act on that information. But does the entry of that data into a database pass muster as “investigative data,” which is the term used to justify the saving of it?
No court has yet ruled on this. It is likely that no conclusive judgment will be made until it gets to the Supreme Court. Some cases on similar issues are pending in lower courts. This means that for years, there will be no clear decision on this. In the meantime, our movements and our faces are being entered into databases. Access to those databases is only as good as the fences around them.
As with most things, no decision, even the installation of a camera on Pier Plaza, is as simple as it seems.
