Watching Big Brother

[Kris]

January 17, 2004

Watching Big Brother

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/17/nyregion/camera.1842.jpg
Bill Brown by a security camera, which looks more like a light fixture, on West 16th Street in Manhattan.

http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/2004/01/17/nyregion/camera.large4.jpg
Bill Brown, second from left, shows his tour group a security camera at a New York University building.

To the list of must-see attractions in New York - the skyscraper tour, the literary tour - add one more. Because Bill Brown wants to take you on the Surveillance Camera Outdoor Walking Tour (Scowt for short).

On a frigid afternoon last Sunday, Mr. Brown gave out photocopies of hand-drawn maps to a small but dedicated audience, most of them New Yorkers. The maps marked the locations of surveillance cameras in the Washington Square Park area.

The cameras lurked on the perimeter of the park, disguised as street lamps, he told his followers. They dotted the walls of a new building on West Fourth Street, in the form of decorative bulbs. One even peeked out of the frame of a painting on the wall of a popular Greenwich Village cafe.

What is more, their numbers are growing.

"Like mushrooms in a forest," Mr. Brown said, his eyes narrowing to a conspiratorial squint. Spying eyes, he warned, were everywhere.

As the cameras watch, Mr. Brown, a 44-year-old legal proofreader from Brooklyn, stares right back. Over the last five years he has made it his business to spot and map surveillance cameras in New York City. The goal of his research is to help New Yorkers gain a sense of how much of their lives - from a jog in the park to some secretive hand-holding - is actually being recorded by somebody.

From an apartment in Flatbush that he shares with his partner, Susan Hull, and six cats, Mr. Brown has been refining his maps of 12 Manhattan neighborhoods.

By his count, the number of surveillance cameras in Manhattan has tripled during the last five years, driven by an increase in private cameras. His method - more art than science - involves walking neighborhood streets and scrutinizing walls and doorways. In the five years since the New York Civil Liberties Union counted 2,397 cameras in the first formal survey in New York, Mr. Brown estimated that the number of cameras jumped to 7,200.

Mr. Brown is a slight man with a big appetite for politics. At 13, he raised money for the presidential campaign of George McGovern. Later in life he went into academics, earning a doctorate in American literature. He gave up teaching, and since the mid-1990's he has been proofreading and performing.

For Mr. Brown, the presence of the cameras is a sign of creeping control by the authorities. He contends that they lull people into a sense of security that dulls vigilance among city residents and weakens communities.

"We don't worry for ourselves anymore," said Mr. Brown. "There are specialists that do the worrying for us. This is warping human beings."

But though he warns that Big Brother is watching, the network of cameras in New York is by no means centralized. The police do maintain several clusters of cameras, for example, in Washington Square Park and in some public housing developments, but the vast majority of cameras on the city streets are privately owned, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.

"Surveillance is ubiquitous, but it's not all tied together," Mr. Steinhardt said. "There are millions of private cameras" in America, but their use by the authorities "has not taken off."

Civil libertarians like Mr. Brown are concerned that, in the not-too-distant future, the different camera systems could all be linked.

Mr. Brown first began watching the cameras in 1996. He decided that wry humor would be the best form of social protest. Two years later, while working at an anarchist bookstore called Blackout Books, since closed, he assembled a group of performance artists to act out silent plays in front of cameras around the city.

He abandoned early efforts at literary performances that became unwieldy and sometimes baffling to onlookers. Now, the group, known as the Surveillance Camera Players, performs shorter acts of Mr. Brown's creation. In one, called "God's Eyes on Earth," actors perform in front of cameras at St. Patrick's Cathedral. In another, they tell the watcher "something interesting is going to happen any minute now."

In winter, when it is too cold for plays, Mr. Brown conducts the tours. They are free, held rain, snow or shine, and offer surveillance tourists a primer on how to spot cameras.

"Almost all cameras you see today do not look like cameras," Mr. Brown said last Sunday on the Washington Square Park tour. "They're disguised to look like lamps or ornaments."

As the number of cameras increase, there are virtually no laws that govern their use, said Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant whose clients include government agencies and private companies. He said difficult legal questions are being raised. For example, he said, how should the law treat families whose cameras watch nurses caring for elderly parents or nannies caring for babies?

"The general rule is what goes on in public has no reasonable expectation of privacy," Mr. Gellman said. "I can walk in front of your house and take a picture. But suppose I put a surveillance camera in front of your house 24 hours a day? No one has addressed that in any particular way."

Critics of the cameras say they are ineffective in reducing crime. Watchers quickly tire of staring at empty street corners, the argument goes, and begin peeping at people, such as attractive women. A camera at a foreign consulate was found to have been trained on a nearby apartment, Mr. Brown said.

"The watchers get bored after 20 minutes," he said. "But they are working for seven hours, so they start amusing themselves."

The police, however, say the cameras work. A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said that since the department first installed camera systems in several city housing developments in 1997, crime has fallen in those areas, in part because of the monitoring. Currently, 15 developments throughout the city are monitored. The areas are marked with signs that warn people about the cameras. The police have also used recordings from private cameras to investigate crimes.

In the United States, camera use by the authorities is not widespread. But in England, its use by the authorities has exploded since the early 1990's, after London's financial district was hit by terrorist bombs.

Jeffrey Rosen, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, who has studied the English system, said an August 2002 government report found that the cameras reduced crime in parking lots but had little or no effect on public transportation or in other public areas in the center of the city. Even so, people liked the cameras, because they made them feel safer.

"The cameras are extremely popular," said Mr. Rosen. "Civil liberty objections have not been accepted by a majority of the public."

Mr. Brown, on the other hand, has an instinctive distrust of authority. The sound of a helicopter during Sunday's tour caused him to look quickly skyward. He announced a Black Hawk helicopter sighting.

"Do they go so far as to try to pick up conversations?" asked one man. (No, Mr. Brown replied. In most cases, the law strictly regulates the taping of talk.)

Mr. Brown's mapping has become widely known. He has been invited to map in England, Austria and Germany. He has plans for Zagreb, Croatia. In the United States, he has mapped parts of New Haven, Chicago, Providence, R.I., and Portland, Ore. This spring he will map cameras along the Freedom Trail in Boston, ahead of the Democratic National Convention to be held there in July.

Watchers sometimes emerge from buildings to respond, Mr. Brown said.

After a performance last summer in Times Square, in which the Surveillance Camera Players were walking counterclockwise around a camera, performing what Mr. Brown called a vanishing spell, the group was told that an alert had been raised among the National Guard. "They've turned us all into performers," Mr. Brown said, smiling.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[Kris]

April 23, 2006
Ideas & Trends
The Camera Never Blinks, but It Multiplies
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/23/weekinreview/23fountain.600.jpg
Street Scenes Public and private security cameras record the action in Midtown Manhattan.

IT'S spring, and a new crop of police surveillance cameras is sprouting in cities big and small. New York is installing 500 on street corners; Chicago is upgrading several thousand; and even the city of Dillingham, Alaska, has 80 — one for every 30 residents.

Many of these newer cameras can pan, tilt and zoom, and are networked through the Internet, so video images can be viewed and stored centrally. They are often purchased with homeland security funds, meant for use against terrorism as well as street crime.

But it is impossible for a police department to continuously monitor 2,000, 500 or even, in the case of Dillingham, 80 cameras. So other than producing mountains of visual data — and raising the inevitable questions of privacy — how useful are they?

Law enforcement officials argue that just putting up a camera in plain sight can deter crime. And some see a future in which software will analyze video for possible signs of terrorist activity, like someone placing a suitcase in front of a building.

"We have seen significant dividends as a result of implementing this program," said Andrew Velasquez III, director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in Chicago. Drug trafficking has been reduced in areas where cameras have been installed, he said. And the city is starting a pilot program to see whether automated analysis can be effective.

But some security experts say the cameras are of limited value — largely in helping investigators after a crime — and are not cost-effective. They point to a large study by the Home Office in Britain, which has perhaps the world's most videotaped population, that found cameras to be ineffective in reducing crime, except in locations like parking garages. And even scientists involved in the development of visual recognition software acknowledge that the programs do not work well enough yet.

"Cameras make people feel better," said Bruce Schneier, an expert on security technology and the author of "Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World." "But they really don't make sense. At best they move crime around a little bit."

For a business, a camera that makes crime go elsewhere might be valuable, Mr. Schneier said. "If I put a camera in my store and the mugger goes to the store next door, that's a win for me," he said.

But for a city, moving criminals to the next camera-less block doesn't reduce crime. And for the nation as a whole, moving terrorists from one city to another that has less surveillance doesn't make sense either. "Why would I spend millions of dollars to move terrorism around?" he said.

Paul Browne, a deputy police commissioner in New York, said that so far the department had installed 52 cameras, clearly marked as police equipment, in areas that had seen spikes in crime. Once more policing has stabilized the situation, Mr. Browne said, "cameras can be helpful in preventing a return of crime."

But Scott Henson, director of the police accountability project of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said cameras can skew how limited police resources are allocated. If cameras are monitored by officers, he said, "resources are more likely to be dispatched to places where cameras are."

"It lets technology usurp the role of police management," he added.

Often, however, no one is actually watching the cameras. Officials in Dillingham admit this on the town's Web site, and Mr. Velasquez acknowledges it, too. "We know we are going to have monitoring challenges," he said.

Chicago is beginning a trial project using software that will sift through thousands of hours of video, trying to recognize unusual behavior, like leaving behind a suitcase.

Such software is largely unproven, noted Elaine Newton, a fellow at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society. "These things are going to have error rates," she said.

Face recognition and other biometric applications are particularly difficult, and often the results depend on the quality of the image or the lighting. "Typically surveillance cameras are pretty low quality," she said. And they are often exposed to heat, which degrades image quality even more.

As a result, Ms. Newton said, "real-time analysis of lots of cameras isn't something that's going to be invested in." Instead, the analysis may become more selective.

For instance, she said, surveillance images can be used to compile gross statistics, like numbers of people coming into an area at a given time. Or software might be used for simpler recognition tasks, like distinguishing one kind of vehicle from another.

"They're probably going to do things that are intelligent uses of data," Ms. Newton said. "It really depends on what somebody is trying to get out of it."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[Marksix]

Welcome to our world. Here in the UK we started out with a few cameras, then vehicle congestion (charging) cameras and now we are the worlds most surveiled state.

It leads to each individual being forcibly biometrically registered, details entered onto state databases and compulsory ID cards which can have to be carried at all times and can be tracked covertly by the state by their RFID tags. This is the United Kingdom in 2006.

See my posts on ID Cards Coming to America.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8868

[nick-taylor]

Firstly if CCTV cameras are the only measure of 'surveillance' then no we are not the most 'watched' population - that title goes to South Korea. Secondly surveilance has a far broader definition than just CCTV and I suspect that there are a few billion people in the world who would laugh at you for suggesting that somehow Britain is more watched than their own country. Take a boat tour in Rangoon - then you know how scary surveillance really is.

I do believe that there has to be control over CCTV - ie its illegal to put them in toilets, changing rooms, etc... I do though believe that they are beneficial when installed in and around stadiums to ensure possible hooligans are spotted. For example the Portsmouth-Southampton derby down in Portsmouth 2 years ago went awkward and after the match, people decided it would be great to smash up the stadium and surrounding streets. Now had there not been CCTV, the individuals (who were all caught in the act of hitting other supporters, attacking police and smashing up property on CCTV) would not have all been caught. Yet because of CCTV, all were in court 1 month later and were fined or sent to jail.When I went to see Portsmouth-Bolton, people began to throw bottles at the Bolton away supporters. The result: 1min later police came along and because of the CCTV in the stadium, were able to escourt to exact idiotic people out of the ground before they actually hurt someone. Again had there not been CCTV, innocent people could have been thrown out of the stadium because of a mix-up with the stewards.

Another example of the benefit of CCTV has been on London Transport. Yes it didn't stop the July bombers, but then not much would have. However CCTV has had a positive effct on the network. Firstly the incidences of accidents like people being stuck in the doors and dragged along is pretty much non-existant thanks to the presence of CCTV along all platforms. Secondly assaults on staff and passengers have dropped dramaticaly; the reason: people were to scared to report the people, but CCTV was used as evidence and resulted in these same idiots being kicked off the trains, hence the network is safer. Thirdly acts of vandalism have gone down because you'll be caught on camera doing the deed.

Also I do not see the problem with the London Congestion Charge - we should be expanding it for several reasons:
- It forces more people on to public transport which is far more efficient and allowed for shorter bus journeys due to higher speeds obtained
- Protects our buildings from corrosive fumes
- Opened up London to become a more pedestrian friendly city
- Air pollution levels are lower meaning public health is better and lower cases of asthma
- More money for public transport meaning newer buses and trains
- Road accidents have fallen meaning less injuries and deaths

Also speed cameras like it or not have been a benefit to this country and that is even though Britain has some of the safest roads on the planet. In areas where they have been used, they have cut speeds and thus cut accidents, hence fewer road fatalities and casulaties. What better way but to observe from the pro & anti-camera camps:


http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/2473/00015zm.jpg




Yes we need controls, but for the most part CCTV has been a good thing. People might think that its being used against them, but once again where is the evidence to suggest this has happened? Yes there have been instances were rogues have put cameras in changing rooms - but last time I looked this was down to some odd fetish that can be found in any country. Remember: CCTV doesn't necesarily stop the crime from happening, it cuts it by being used as evidence to put away the individuals. This is why successful convictions of criminals is far higher in Britain and also why the number of people wrongly convicted is far lower than it is in almost any other country on the planet. And let us not forget that CCTV can also be used to prove our location (ie if someone said you were robbing a bank, you could say I was on the other side of the city and you'll probably be picked up on CCTV) to ensure the right people are sent to jail.

[Marksix]

I have personal experience of CC Brunstroms police officers. I live in Liverpool and myself and a group of friends regularly take our bikes to enjoy the mountain roads in his area over the border in North Wales. On weekends and holidays he instructs his officers to set up "road side checks" on the popular routes into his force area in which all bikes are pulled in and one by one are gone over for discrepencies. We once counted 48 bikes in one layby, some who been detained for several hours waiting to be "checked". Officers will tell you to your face that you are not welcome in Wales. Seriously, they are like the mythical "southern red neck sherrifs" of movie folk lore.

An explanation for CC Bunstrom's attitude may be that he was a keen biker himself, being a motorcycle traffic officer. He was riding behind his daugther who was on another bike and witnessed her being killed in a traffic accident. It is widely believed that this tradgedy led him towards his messianical, obsesive attack on anyone who dares speed. Meanwhile, his force has an abysmal crime detection rate:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/3111049.stm

It was before my time but I seem to remember that LA (ex) police chief Daryl Gates had proposed a satellite in geostationary orbit at the same latitude as LA constantly watching the city for signs of disorder. He regarded the city and South Central in particular as a war zone into which his officers would enter as an invading army. I only vaugely remember this and and it may be urban myth but perhaps it gives insight into the attitudes of policing which are to be resisted.

[ablarc]

The more I read about the police in Britain, the worse it seems.

[Fabrizio]

It´s very worrying.

[nick-taylor]

How is it worse! Is there some weird fetish going on here wanting more road deaths, more congested streets, more vandalised public transportation and more assaults against the public?

[ablarc]

^ Law and order.

[czsz]

Every social contract attempts to achieve a balance between order and liberty. At no conrete point can one merely point at exclaim that society's freedom is completely lost or jeopardised.

[czsz]

Check this out:

http://www.gothamist.com/attachments/Jen%20Chung/2006_04_nypdcam.jpg

[nick-taylor]

The City of London's Ring of Steel has something similar but is far more advanced. Drivers are forced to slow down into a chicane.




The highly successful Congestion Charge cameras that have seen a reduce in road accidents, casualties, fatalities, pollution and congestion, as well as an increase in bus speeds, pedestrian dominated roads and shorter travel times.

http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/ANPR_B_%21.jpg




The new Hawk-Eyes (notice the three cameras - one to judge a further distance, the other to judge a closer distance and the other to take a picture of any speeding motorists) in use around the UK have seen a massive reduction in road fatalities ensuring that Britain retains its position as one of (if not) the safest road networks of any large developed nation.

http://www.road-angel-uk.co.uk/images/SPECS-800.jpg




All look scary but all work: save lives and improve the efficiency of the already crowded roads.

[Ninjahedge]

Well, put them in and raise the speed limit to something that people drive now.

IOW, up it to 65 on a 55, but make the tickets happen at 67MPH instead of 15 MPH over the limit.

Whatever you want.

The scary thing is having these systems out watching you with the possibility of them being reprogrammed or used in another means if another group comes to power.

[MikeW]

If they ever brought that nonsense over here, a paintball gun would make short work of that type of thing.

[czsz]

...and send the feed of you destroying it quickly back to those watching the monitors...

[Ninjahedge]

If they ever brought that nonsense over here, a paintball gun would make short work of that type of thing.

Nah, it would be difficult to get into range.

You would need to fire quite a few shots, and if they did that in a populated area, you could be facing a heap of trouble pretty quickly.

You could also just stand out in the middle of teh road at night to get a better shot at it.... But I don't think that would be, well, smart!

[nick-taylor]

Ninjahedge - The reason they are in is to lower speed limits to levels that drivers can handle. Reckless driving is the reason for higher journey times because reckless driving causes accidents that clog up the roads. Hence the balance: a low speed limit to reduce accidents to ensure shorter journey times.

They can't be reprogrammed for say monitoring people, they are only able to take monochrome pictures of number plates and the only way to adjust them is to adjust the speed limit at which they take the pictures....but nobody has done that.




MikeW - I wouldn't call reducing accidents, cutting the number of casualties and fatalities and improving journey times as 'nonsense'. Afterall this is from the country that gave the world the roundabout and cat's eyes (I think you'd call them botts dots): more efficient and safer driving is a British excellence. That said using a paintball against these things doesn't do much, hence why some idiots have taken to blowing them up, tying them to a lorry, burning tyres, etc...

[MikeW]

I'm skeptical on reducing accident. It's more like enhancing revenue collection. And besides how seriously can we take a country that drives on the wrong side of the road.

I've always wondered why British drivers put up with all nonsense that the goverment imposes on them (ridiculous gas taxes, the Gatsco's, etc.). I would think if the bunch of you got together, and got right up in the face of your local MPs, some of the crap would go away. But judging from you, maybe your all just masochists who enjoy getting stomped on.

The paintball gun idea is the low impact way of dealing with them. Even if you got caught, you'd only get a slap on the wrist. And if it takes them a few days to figure out that the cameras are blocked, you saved a few hundred motorists from getting hit with a road tax. But I'm impressed with the guys who take them out permanently.


MikeW - I wouldn't call reducing accidents, cutting the number of casualties and fatalities and improving journey times as 'nonsense'. Afterall this is from the country that gave the world the roundabout and cat's eyes (I think you'd call them botts dots): more efficient and safer driving is a British excellence. That said using a paintball against these things doesn't do much, hence why some idiots have taken to blowing them up, tying them to a lorry, burning tyres, etc...

[nick-taylor]

MikeW - Well what better evidence than a comparison between one county that uses speed cameras, and the other that doesn't:


http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9461/00018yt.jpg


Still sceptical?


Also I think you'll find that being on the 'wrong side of the world' is actually a legacy of horse riders (who were required to be ready for combat) and the Roman Empire. Interestingly countries that drive on the left also have fewer accidents, for example per head only Cyprus in all of Europe has fewer accidents than Britain (and guess what - its a left hand driving country).


The reason we have ridiculous petrol prices is because if they weren't high, the roads would be even more clogged. Also I tend to think that the UK actually cares for the environment and thats probably why Britain has met its Kyoto obligations even though its population and economy has grown. Unfortunately when oil runs out, the US will be the first country to pay due to its dependency upon it.

[Fabrizio]

Perhaps this is why Britain is considered the "road rage" capital of the world:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3146781.stm

http://www.racfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=174&Itemid=35

[nick-taylor]

Yet even with that road rage, Britains roads are far safer. Fewer people killed, shorter journey times and yet only a few more angry drivers: something I can live with.

[Fabrizio]

One can understand why they´re so angry....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3831659.stm

[nick-taylor]

And? Poorer service stations doesn't detract away from the point that Britain's roads are safer!

Anyway whats this chip on your shoulder you have with Britain?

[Fabrizio]

I have no chip with Britain.

But none of my dear Brit friends talk like mindless shills for their country.

This is a forum largely about New York. Most of the posters here absolutely love NYC.... yet you also hear them bitching and moaning about the city as well.

You instead, sound like a disembodied voice from some nightmare propaganda film. It´s irritating and unreal.....and suspect....as if, yeah....maybe Britain really is that bad.

[MikeW]

Maybe Britons are happy being serfs to their government. This is why the call themselves British Subjects.

American have no intention of allowing that relationship with our goverment. We hold to the idea that we control the government, not the otherway around (even if this is a bit of a fallacy at times). This is why Americans don't like taxes. It's why we do like guns. And since a lot of this country grew up around the automobile, it's why we get very prickly about the goverment telling us how to drive. And you know what? If that increases the body count a bit, we'll put up with it.

Back in the '70's, they imposed a national 55 MPH speed limit. It was universally despised. It took twenty years, but we finally got rid of it.

Oh, by the way, none of this holds for New Yorkers. New Yorkers love to have the goverment tell them what to do. Actually that isn't quite correct. They love having the government tell other New Yorkers what to do. I'm stuck here for personal reasons. But when those go away, I'm soooo gone.

[ZippyTheChimp]

We hold to the idea that we control the government, LOL!
New Yorkers love to have the goverment tell them what to do.I'm sure the people of Kansas city are comforted to know that they have the government by the balls.

[nick-taylor]

I have no chip with Britain.

But none of my dear Brit friends talk like mindless shills for their country.

This is a forum largely about New York. Most of the posters here absolutely love NYC.... yet you also hear them bitching and moaning about the city as well.

You instead, sound like a disembodied voice from some nightmare propaganda film. It´s irritating and unreal.....and suspect....as if, yeah....maybe Britain really is that bad.You find it irritating because it dispells either your 'friends' or your opinion of Britain. Fact is, every point you come up with there is a figure behind my argument that displays the true story.




MikeW - We're not serfs and I'm content with living in a society that actually has a long-term view of being free and not being dependent upon a commodity that is a) Running out; b) Located in politically unstable regions; and c) Increasingly controlled by other countries such as Russia and China. I'm also glad we don't have legalised gun usage, because we don't have the weekly habit in the US of killing classmates or office co-workers or the great social divide between rich and poor, the dead and the living and so forth. Britain isn't perfect, but society wise its in a far more stable situation.

[krulltime]

MTA TESTING BUS CAMS


By TODD VENEZIA
August 3, 2006

Smile, bus riders - the MTA is getting ready to put you on camera.

NYC Transit said yesterday it will equip 400 buses in Manhattan with onboard video-surveillance equipment, under a $5.2 million camera-test project.

The agency is hoping the cameras will make bus riders safer - and, if the plan works, it intends to install the watching eyes on all 4,500 buses in the city fleet.

"Video surveillance has clearly been shown to deter criminal activity on buses," said NYC Transit President Lawrence Reuter.

"We also believe that it will be extremely valuable in investigating accident injury claims."

Under the plan, each bus with be equipped with a digital video recorder, multiple interior cameras and a camera facing forward from the driver's point of view.

The first camera-equipped buses are expected to roll out over the next few weeks.


Copyright 2006 NYP Holdings, Inc.

[lofter1]

I saw an ad for this from the folks at Disney on the TV last night ... kind of creepy:

http://disneymobile.go.com/portal/images/popup_DisneyMobileLogo.gif

DisneyMobile (http://disneymobile.go.com/disneymobile/includedServicesandFeatures.do?method=viewIncluded ServicesFeatures#null)

Family LocatorTM

http://disneymobile.go.com/portal/images/cms/FamilyLoc_Pop_188x170.jpghttp://disneymobile.go.com/portal/images/spacer.gifhttp://disneymobile.go.com/portal/images/spacer.gif

With Family Locator, you can find and map the location of your child's phone right from your handset or from the Family Center section of the disneymobile.com website.

Using the latest in GPS satellite technology, Family Locator tracks the location of your child's phone. And rest assured, Family Locator is a password-protected application and only adult family members have the ability to locate children on your Family Plan.

Every month each calling plan will receive 5 Family Locator searches to share across adult family members. All location searches after the first 5 cost $.49 each. Or, you can purchase an Unlimited Family Locator package with unlimited locates for $12.99 per month.

[Kris]

December 14, 2006
Civil Liberties Group Worries as City’s Electronic Eyes Multiply
By JAMES BARRON

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/13/nyregion/600_camera.jpg
There are at least five times as many cameras being used for surveillance in Manhattan as there were eight years ago, a report said.

Street-level surveillance cameras have proliferated in Manhattan since 9/11, with nearly 4,200 cameras found below 14th Street, more than five times the number counted in 1998, the New York Civil Liberties Union said yesterday.

The figures were part of a report by the civil liberties group that said the surge in cameras had outpaced a thorough discussion of the way they are being used and regulated. The group has been involved in a court battle with the police over the use and distribution of videotapes made at demonstrations.

The report described “a massive video surveillance infrastructure” and warned that it was being developed with “virtually no oversight or accountability.” The City Council is considering requiring video cameras at nightclubs that have cabaret licenses. And last month, the first two city buses with surveillance cameras were on the streets as part of a $5.2 million project that New York City Transit said would “offer a visible crime deterrent.”

But the report disputed the notion that such surveillance reduces crime or terrorism. “While video images may assist in criminal investigations after the fact,” it said, “there is a dearth of evidence that supports the contention that video surveillance cameras actually prevent or deter crime.”

As for terrorism, the report said that cameras in London’s subway system did not stop terrorists from placing the bombs that ripped through three trains in July 2005. Another bomb was placed that same day on a double-decker bus. In all, more than 50 people were killed.

While the civil liberties group described a surge in the number of cameras since its last tally, in 1998, the latest report did not say exactly how many there are. The civil liberties group found that it could not count the cameras in all of Manhattan, as it had done eight years ago, because there are now so many cameras that it did not have the personnel to do so, said Donna Lieberman, the group’s executive director.

So the group concentrated on four areas. Even then, its totals did not include large numbers of cameras, including roughly 3,100 of them in 15 public housing buildings.

Going area by area, the biggest increase in cameras was in Greenwich Village and SoHo, where the report’s count was 2,227, compared with 142 in 1998.

In the East Village, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, the report found 643, compared with 181 eight years ago. In the financial district, there were 1,306, up from 446 in 1998.

The report also found 292 cameras in central Harlem, with more than 80 on West 125th Street. The group did not count the cameras there in 1998.

“Cameras are popping up on building facades, storefronts and light poles,” Ms. Lieberman said.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly mentioned cameras after an antiterrorism conference yesterday. He called them “a valuable tool in protecting the city,” adding that “we’re certainly committed to cameras, more cameras.”

He said the importance of cameras had been reinforced by a drill conducted last year, when New York police officers tried to approximate the distance that the London bombers had traveled on their deadly mission. The New York officers drove to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., from Albany, then took a train to Grand Central Terminal.

Mr. Kelly said the drill was “basically an attempt to see what defensive measures were in place; what would perhaps capture the movements of a terrorist group, a terrorist cell.” He said police officials wondered “if they would be affected by the presence of law enforcement in any way.”

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said in a statement responding to the report that cameras were “a highly effective crime-fighting tool, responsible for a 35 percent reduction in crime in public housing soon after their installation in public spaces there.”

Al Baker contributed reporting.

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