DETROIT FREE PRESS LIVE STREAM LICENSE

This concern is especially justified since we are in some respects enduring a similar period of conflict today. During the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, for example, the FBI - as well as many individual police departments around the nation - conducted illegal operations to spy upon and harass political activists who were challenging racial segregation and the Vietnam War. That is especially prone to happen in periods of social turmoil and intense conflict over government policies. Sometimes, bad policies are set at the top, and an entire law enforcement agency is turned toward abusive ends. Imagine what someone like that could do with a citywide spy-camera system.

DETROIT FREE PRESS LIVE STREAM LICENSE

By looking up the license plate numbers of cars parked at the club and researching the backgrounds of the vehicles' owners, he tried to blackmail patrons who were married. In 1997, for example, a top-ranking police official in Washington, DC was caught using police databases to gather information on patrons of a gay club. Surveillance systems present law enforcement 'bad apples' with a tempting opportunity for criminal misuse. There are five ways that surveillance-camera systems are likely to be misused: One problem with creating such a powerful surveillance system is that experience tells us it will inevitably be abused. government experts on security technology, noting that 'monitoring video screens is both boring and mesmerizing,' have found in experiments that 'after only 20 minutes of watching and evaluating monitor screens, the attention of most individuals has degenerated to well below acceptable levels.' 'Once the crime and offence figures were adjusted to take account of the general downward trend in crimes and offences,' criminologists found in one study, 'reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre.' A 2005 study for the British Home Office also found that cameras did not cut crime or the fear of crime (as had a 2002 study, also for the British government). In Britain, where cameras have been extensively deployed in public places, sociologists studying the issue have found that they have not reduced crime. But it has not even been demonstrated that they can do that.

The real reason cameras are usually deployed is to reduce much pettier crimes. But suicide attackers are clearly not deterred by video cameras - and may even be attracted to the television coverage cameras can ensure - and the expense of an extensive video surveillance system such as Britain's - which sucks up approximately 20 percent of that nation's criminal justice budget - far exceeds the limited benefits that the system may provide in investigating attacks or attempted attacks after the fact ( see fact sheet on Surveillance Cameras and the Attempted London Attacks). The implicit justification for the recent push to increase video surveillance is the threat of terrorist attacks. VIDEO SURVEILLANCE HAS NOT BEEN PROVEN EFFECTIVE Capitol, the impulse to blanket our public spaces and streets with video surveillance is a bad idea. In lower Manhattan, for example, the police are planning to set up a centralized surveillance center where officers can view thousands of video cameras around the downtown - and police-operated cameras have proliferated in many other cities across America in just the past several years.Īlthough the ACLU has no objection to cameras at specific, high-profile public places that are potential terrorist targets, such as the U.S. The use of sophisticated systems by police and other public security officials is particularly troubling in a democratic society. Fears of terrorism and the availability of ever-cheaper cameras have accelerated the trend even more. Video cameras, or closed-circuit television (CCTV), are becoming a more and more widespread feature of American life. © 2019 Detroit Lions, Ltd.The Four Problems With Public Video Surveillance No portion of this site may be reproduced without the express written permission of the Detroit Lions.

Detroit free press live stream