Public Privacy under the Camera: Pure Viewing or Video Sync, or neither?

Ting Ruan

Currently, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) or camera surveillance is commonly used

for multiple purposes, such as protection of property, controlling access, and crime

prevention. The primary goal of camera surveillance by the government is insuring public

safety. In general, this goal is achieved by monitoring and supervision of the general public,

which usually result in crime deterrence. This paper will primarily focus on the

government’s use of surveillance camera in public areas and the privacy issues associated

with these uses. This paper is comprised of five parts. Part One discusses the use of

surveillance cameras in various countries. Part Two outlines the benefits of video

surveillance systems. The concept of information privacy and how cameras in public spaces

affect this concept is analyzed in Part Three. Part Four discusses the types of video

surveillance system. Part Five provides some suggested “best practices” for mitigating

privacy concerns and Part Six sets forth my conclusion.

I. The Use of Surveillance Cameras by Government has Expanded in Many

Nations

Britain was the world’s first to use imaging technology on a wide-scale basis to monitor

the surrounding environment in the country. As early as 1970, the British began the

installation of CCTV in public places [1]. By the early 1990s, with the general support of the

public, nearly half of the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas were installed with video

monitors by the government. The Bishopsgate bombing in 1993 was a turning point for

London. This devastating bombing occurred in the heart of the City of London, killing one

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person and injuring 44 [3]. The bombing scene was captured by surveillance cameras. Using

the recorded footage, it only took the police three days to release a blurred image of the

suspects [10]. The government implemented what is called a “ring of steel” around the city

directly after the explosion. Later, in 1999, The Home Office Police Research Group

announced the execution of The Crime Reduction Program, which cost two hundred and fifty

million pounds to install monitors in the country, and was expected to reach the goal of

reducing crime by 30% by the year of 2004. Nevertheless, this goal was not accomplished.

According to a 2009 meta-analysis by researchers from Northeastern University and the

University of Cambridge, camera systems in public settings cut crime by about seven percent

[4]. Although the effectiveness of camera systems was not as satisfying as expected, CCTV

cameras spread dramatically in the following decades. The British Security Industry

Authority (BSIA) reported that there are now up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in the country,

which is approximately one camera for every 11 people in the nation [5].

Several cities in the United States adopted the British practice of widespread use of

surveillance cameras. Even though many New York City residents and tourists complain

about the installation of surveillance cameras, thousands of monitoring cameras have been

installed in urban parks, public streets, schools, and other public places. In Baltimore, more

than six hundred surveillance cameras have been installed to cover most intersections, streets,

and ports in urban areas [6]. In Washington DC, police have been using surveillance cameras

to monitor and patrol streets, parks and suburbs since 2006, and plan to expand the

monitoring system to other public places in the near future [7]. The city of Chicago has also

joined the list of cities that installed monitoring cameras in public places, and other cities in

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the United States are gradually doing the same.

In Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency asked the Urban Crime Prevention

Research Center to perform research on the efficiency of private residential security camera

systems, and provide a technical and legal report on how to develop a surveillance camera

system in public areas in Tokyo. Based on the report, Tokyo installed a surveillance camera

system on public streets which the goal of preventing crime. The monitoring system has now

been expanded to other regions with higher criminal rates. According to a recent report,

Japan has incorporated facial recognition technology in their surveillance systems, which can

scan and index around 36 million faces in just around one second [8].

In China, the use of video surveillance systems in public areas is very recent. However,

due to the rapid development of security industry and the society’s growing demand for

security, CCTV has been widely used in public areas. By 2013, there were more than

800,000 cameras installed in Beijing [9]. For example, there are about ten surveillance

cameras monitoring a person walking through a fifty meter long subway tunnel and one

camera on the roadside for every ten meters.

Due to the convenient and comprehensive advantages, camera surveillance has been

expanded from the public domain to certain previously private areas. This has sparked

privacy concerns by the public. For example, students complain about the installation of

cameras in school dormitories, patients complain about surveillance cameras installed in

hospitals, and criticisms against video surveillance cameras in bathroom, and many more.

II. The Benefits of Video Surveillance Systems

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After the success achieved by monitoring cameras at road junctions, video surveillance

technology has been rapidly deployed in other city public spaces, such as roadsides, public

facilities, subway and bus stations, consumer sites, residential communities and so on. As

described previously, this phenomenon exists in many advanced countries. Why are video

surveillance systems so pervasive? One answer that explains this rapid expansion of

government use of surveillance cameras is that the systems are highly effective.

A video camera’s ”electronic eye” strengthens surveillance in areas of insufficient

visibility by police. The monitors can achieve the goal of crime deterrence, making the

allocation of limited police resources sufficient to meet the demand in a certain area.

Moreover, as a crime is taking place, the monitoring camera can perform an electronic patrol

function to find hazards in a timely manner, and then inform the police so the hazard may be

removed. This function can not only initiate effective rescue of a victim, but also improves

the chance to arrest the criminal on the spot. After a crime has occurred, the monitoring

camera can be considered as an objective and reliable witness. Due to the complete

synchronized and continuous record function, the data recorded may provide sufficient

evidence to determine the identity of the criminal. The data recorded by the surveillance

camera often has strong credibility, which can reduce subjective eye-witness views and

provide an objective evidence for the process of prosecution.

According to a review published in August 2009, one crime per year is solved in London

for every 1,000 cameras. While surveillance cameras help law enforcement with

investigations, it also helps deter crimes [10]. Video surveillance has played a huge role in

crime deterrence. However, as noted by some officials, blanketing a city in surveillance

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cameras can create as many problems as it solves [11]. The primary concern is whether a

London type “ring of steel” violates the privacy of citizens.

III. The Right to Privacy in Public Spaces

A. A Brief Development of The Right to Privacy

The right to privacy is a legal concept recognized under both the law of torts and U.S.

constitutional law. As early as 1890, Samuel D. Warren, a Boston attorney, and Louis D.

Brandeis, who went on to become Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, first

advocated the concept of privacy. Two of them wrote an article entitled “The Right to

Privacy,” which was published in the “Harvard Law Review” issued in December 1890 [12].

The article first proposed the protection of personal privacy, and their views of personal

privacy inviolability. Many arguments had significant impact on the privacy invasion case

studies later in time.

In “The Right to Privacy,” Warren and Brandeis characterized privacy as “the right to

life” and “the right to be left alone.” The concept of “the right to be left alone” was derived

from Thomas Cooley, who was a Justice and a Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court

between 1864 and 1885 [13]. Warren and Brandeis claimed the general object is “to protect

the privacy of private life, and to whatever degree and in whatever connection a man’s life

has ceased to be private, before the publication under consideration has been made, to that

extent the protection is to be withdrawn [12].” They believed that privacy is essentially the

right to control the disclosure of personal information. This right initially protects

information such as personal identifiable information, personal writings, and all other

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personal productions to prevent misuse of personal information by others [12].

As technology advanced, digital information became a major part of the “personal

information” defined earlier, and information privacy is attracting more and more attention.

From the courts and the public, information privacy includes the following concepts: An

individual should have autonomous control of their personal information as to when it may be

disclosed; to whom and to what extent it may be disclosed; and in what manner. Therefore,

widespread surveillance cameras in public places threaten citizens’ information privacy.

B. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Public Areas and Characteristics of Public

Spaces

In 1967, the United States Supreme Court, in Katz vs. United States, formulated the now

well-known reasonable expectation of privacy test. There are two circumstances that must

exist to satisfy the Katz test. First, an individual must exhibit a subjective expectation of

privacy, and second, this privacy expectation must be deemed reasonable by society [13].

One common argument that supports the use of surveillance cameras is that when people

voluntarily enter a public place they give up their privacy rights that they originally had when

they were in a private place. Since you voluntarily stepped into the public’s attention your

choice has given others the right to collect your personal information. Consequently, you

should bear the privacy risks associated with this collection of information. This view

suggests that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Therefore,

installation of the surveillance cameras will not violate people’s privacy, because a camera

installed in a particular place is equivalent to a passerby on the street; nothing more than an

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additional pair of eyes. In other words, citizens’ do not have standing to complain against

monitoring and collection of personal data, because all data collection was done in a public

area.

I disagree with the argument described above. As early as 1900s, Thomas Cooley

claimed the concept of privacy is the “the right to be left alone [14].” As surveillance

technologies advances, I believe this concept of the right to be left alone should also be

applied to public places. While individuals are in public spaces, they may not have as full a

privacy expectation as they would in a private space, such as a home. However, people can

still have a certain level of reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Public places

provide a basis for informal social, civic, and public lives [15]. People are able to see and

hear non-specific people in a public space at any time. It is true that an individual needs to

bear the possibility of being seen and heard by others when he decided to enter public places.

Though, it is not true that this action of voluntarily entering public places means he agrees to

expose himself completely in full view at all times.

First, not all acts in public places are completely visible by others. Some behaviors occur

in enclosed or semi-enclosed spaces. The structural characteristics of public spaces such as

walls, curtains, buildings, and distance factors establish physical barriers which allow

individuals to enjoy the opportunity to be free from public eyes or being recorded by others.

As a result, people can still be comfortable in social life in public places, and they can move

around without having to expose themselves completely and be tracked by a digital record.

These features help to develop a free and democratic society, which allow individuals to

seclude from external factors.

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In addition to the physical barriers exist in public places; there are also non-physical

barriers which can moderately define boundaries between individuals in public area. For

example, one would expect a larger “safe zone” while interacting with a stranger than with a

friend or family. These rules affect the way we interact with others under different situations.

Due to both the physical and non-physical barriers, individuals can develop enough

confidence to retain interests such as remaining unnoticed, undisturbed, and not recorded

even while present in a public space. These interests allow citizens to behave freely and

enjoy public life. Individuals should be able to maintain anonymity in the crowd if desired,

and they should have the right not to be noticed by the government at all times; unless the

individual themselves do or say something that invites the government’s attention such as

committing a crime or becoming a public figure.

Given the characteristics of openness in public places, an actor should foresee the risk of

been seeing and heard by others. However, if a person’s behavior clearly exhibits the desire

to protect his privacy, then his privacy rights should be protected even where the behavior

occurs in public places. For example, private conversations in public spaces are very

common, and one would have reasonable expectation of privacy. Imagine two people sitting

on a bench in a public park, whispering to each other and there is no other person near. They

would have reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of their conversation because

their actions have clearly expressed that they intentionally want to protect this private

conversation. Currently, surveillance cameras only record video; thus recording only the

images of this conversation may not be invasive to one’s privacy. However, surveillance

cameras in public spaces can be incorporated with facial recognition and voice recording

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technologies, which mean everything we say and do in public spaces could be documented.

In this case, surveillance cameras will be much more invasive to citizens’ privacy rights.

C. Surveillance Cameras in Public Places Implicates Citizens’ Information Privacy

Surveillance cameras are much more than “an additional eye” in a public area. Video

cameras create a potentially permanent record, whereas the passerby’s observations are

fleeting. Also, surveillance cameras can transmit videos, images, records of external

representations and personal features of pedestrians, creating a record that can be easily

accessed, stored, and copied. For high-resolution screen monitors, the cameras can collect

detailed information such as skin pores and even fingerprints using the telescopic lens zoom

function. This information certainly falls into the scope of personally identifiable

information. According to the information privacy right, an individual owns this information

and should have the right to control the disclosure and use of this kind of personal

information.

Police using monitoring cameras may also disturb other citizen interests in public spaces,

such as the interest to be anonymous and the interest to be unnoticed or secluded.

Furthermore, there are concerns that surveillance cameras installed in public places may

greatly affect the way people behave in public areas, because it may indeed change the

characteristics of the original public spaces. To reduce these concerns, some proponents of

video surveillance suggest that police only use the “pure viewing” form of monitoring instead

of what is referred to as “video sync” monitoring.

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IV. The Different Types of Video Surveillance

The “Pure Viewing” Monitoring System

The “pure viewing” operation mode means that surveillance cameras monitor without

data collection. Since the video is not saved or analyzed, then much of the controversy over

privacy violations can be resolved, because what the monitoring camera sees is the same as

what others in the same public space can see. Nevertheless, I believe that the “pure viewing”

form of monitoring still maybe invasive of one’s privacy for two principal reasons.

First, the barriers in public spaces allow individuals to express different self-images, as

well as to share different quality and quantity of information in order to establish social

networks. With the “electronic eyes” everywhere in public spaces, people cannot avoid been

watched, or know whose eyes are watching them and how many eyes are there behind the

cameras. This fact certainly deprives citizens the right to control the disclosure of

information about themselves.

Second, although the monitoring video is not recorded and information is not collected,

this government monitoring still constitute an infringement of fundamental rights. The

reason is that comprehensive monitoring can certainly impose a strong psychological stress

on citizens which produces the “threat effect.” When individuals know they are being

constantly watched, they will instinctively imitate the watcher’s point of view, and then

incorporate it into their behavior. For example, if drug abusers are aware of the monitoring,

they will purposely hide the characteristics of drug usage in public areas. This effect on

behaviors freedom will severely affect premises such as assembly, procession, religion,

migration, and performance in public spaces. In the long term, this constant stress may affect

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a citizen’s internal and external behavioral freedom, and be detrimental to informal civic life.

Surveillance cameras make social contexts ambiguous by blurring the spatial and

temporal bounds of these contexts. This transformation of public places may individualize

people, causing them to protect their privacy in ways that undermine the potential for social

interaction and thereby the value of these places [15]. Therefore, even if police only use the

monitoring cameras to simply watch and deter crime, it will also generate a psychological

constraint in law-abiding citizens, forcing them to only behave in ways the watchers believe

is legitimate, reasonable, and sensible. This in fact, will seriously reduce the meaning of

freedom.

The “Video Sync” Monitoring System

Another monitoring mode is “video sync” monitoring, where the surveillance system

synchronizes and records what the camera sees. Compared to the “pure viewing” mode,

“video sync” monitoring creates a record of personal information that can be stored and used

for future purposes. The data recorded can help to trace the crime and provide significant

help for crime investigation and prosecution. However, this monitoring mode also potentially

violates citizens’ fundamental rights to a further extent than the “pure viewing” mode of

monitoring.

As mentioned in previous sections, personal observations degrade over time, because

information stored in one’s memory becomes increasingly blurred and less accurate over

time. Compared to personal observations, mechanically recording information via video

cameras provides a real-time, complete, continuous, and permanent record. Therefore,

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surveillance cameras turn an original short-term memory into a permanent record. If the

police monitor and record one’s behavior, they can establish a personal profile for every

citizen, and can extract this data anytime in the future. For instance, an individual goes to the

drug rehab center to treat his drug additions during his college years. The surveillance

cameras on public streets capture his visits to the drug rehab center, and this record is

permanently stored. This permanent record may come back to haunt him years later. In this

case, the CCTV system may deter individuals from seeking certain treatments. Also,

individuals would have to be even more careful about what they say and what they do in all

public areas, because one careless action may become a permanent psychological shadow

within the next few seconds.

Therefore, both the “pure viewing” and “video sync” monitoring directly constitutes

infringement of citizens’ fundamental rights. Even more, it also in-directly violates the

information privacy act and behavioral freedom. Regardless of the monitoring mode used, to

minimize the privacy issues, several “best practices” need to be built into the surveillance

system.

V. Suggested “Best Practices” for Mitigating Privacy Concerns

A. Big Brother Monitoring Should be Avoided

Surveillance cameras are often referred to as “electronic police”. Police uses these

“electronic eyes” in order to improve the effectiveness of public administration without

requiring a large police force. With terrorist activities becoming more rampant, arranging an

appropriate police force and a reasonable amount of “electronic police” is necessary to ensure

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public safety and citizens are the primary beneficiaries. However, mass surveillance of the

general public should be avoided. In addition, the surveillance cameras equipped in public

places should only be used to monitor the space, rather than a specific person. When an

individual enters the monitoring space, the video surveillance cameras need to be used to

generate an objective record of the space, not the individual. To reduce the risk of invasion of

personal privacy, regulations need to be established to prevent targeting an individual with

one or more surveillance cameras.

Also, guidelines are needed to regulate the type of the surveillance cameras used. I

believe the “video sync” monitoring system should only be used in areas with high criminal

rates or high crowd flow. In such areas, video footage recorded by the cameras can be a

valuable resource for criminal investigation or population control. In areas with low criminal

rates or low crowd flow, the “pure viewing” monitoring method should be implemented.

Regulations are also needed to limit the incorporation of other technologies in

surveillance cameras. For instance, audio recording technology should be prohibited in all

surveillance cameras. Citizens need some privacy when they are having a private

conversation in public spaces. Incorporating cameras with audio recording technologies may

be a severe detriment to a citizens’ free civic life. On the other hand, the implementation of

facial recognition technologies in a CCTV system should be allowed because it significantly

increases the efficiency of data analysis, especially under emergency circumstances. Facial

recognition technologies can automatically mine surveillance footage for information, such as

a specific person’s face, and create a giant searchable database, making security-camera

images more valuable to law enforcement [12].

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B. The Collection, Use, and Storage of the Recorded Data Should be Regulated

The monitoring cameras cannot distinguish between offenders and non-offenders;

therefore, the majority of people who are the target of data collection and long-term

surveillance are innocent citizens. In addition to the violation of their information privacy,

citizens’ behavioral freedom is also affected. While storing the collected data, there is always

a risk of data breaching or unauthorized access, which can lead to harmful consequences,

such as breach of personal information, reputation harm, financial lose, and sometimes

mental harm. Therefore, regulations need to be established to prevent misuse of or

unauthorized access to the collected data. The collection of the data should be only done by

the police, and the use of the data recorded by the surveillance cameras should be only

accessible by the law enforcement for legitimate reasons. The recorded data should not be

accessible by third parties such as insurance companies, financial firms, or any other private

parties. The recorded data should be deleted after a certain period of time from the date of

collection (i.e. 2 years). This will reduce the risk of data breach, because the data is only

stored for a limited period of time. While storing the records, the data needs to be encrypted

to prevent unauthorized use and data breach.

C. Citizens Should be Informed about the Monitoring Facilities in Public Places

The resources of police are limited; thus, to maximize the efficiency of surveillance

cameras, trust and support from the general public is essential. It is important for people to

understand that the purpose of using surveillance cameras by police is to deter crime, ensure

public safety, and help provide more effective services not track their movements or

otherwise spy on them. Furthermore, there should be signs to inform people that a facility or

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space is equipped with monitoring cameras. This will express government’s respect for

citizens’ privacy rights.

D. Surveillance Cameras Should be Prohibited in Certain Private Places in Common

Areas

Although law enforcement are allowed to install monitoring cameras in certain public

places, a citizen’s privacy in public settings should not be completely deprived. In order to

protect people’s legitimate privacy in public places, the installation of surveillance cameras

must be prohibited in places such as public dressing rooms, shower rooms, nursing rooms,

toilets, doctors examination rooms, and other public places that are designated for intimate

behaviors. To protect the will of people and to ensure fair competition, surveillance cameras

should also be prohibited in certain areas that engage political, cultural, and sports activities.

Such places may include voting areas, cultural performance makeup areas, rest areas for

sporting athletes and staffs, etc.

Also, since the use of surveillance cameras is to ensure the safety of the public, cameras

should be prohibited if they create new security threats. For example, the primary goal of

installing surveillance cameras near a bank ATM machine is to protect both the customers and

the ATM machines. However, the monitoring cameras must not be able to view the password

pad. Thus, in order to ensure the safety of customers’ financial passwords, cameras with

rotating lens on ATM machines must be banned.

E. Annual Reports on Usage Should be Required

Law enforcement that uses this technology should be required to make annual reports on

usage. Since citizens are willing to make a concession on their privacy in public spaces, the

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government should be responsible to inform the public whether surveillance cameras are

really worth the sacrifice of citizens’ privacy. To do this, the government can create a

transparent system by releasing annual reports on how the surveillance cameras were used in

the past year, and how effective they were in crime prevention and prosecution. The report

should include contents such as criminal rate analysis, how many persons arrested because of

video surveillance, the cost, and the new implementations to current surveillance cameras.

The report also needs to address public’s primary concerns such as do cameras in public

spaces deter crime? If yes, how many persons are arrested because of video surveillance?

The law enforcement also needs to report to the public about any new implementations to the

surveillance cameras, such as the facial recognition technology or the voice recording

technology.

VI. Conclusion

Overall, the use of video surveillance in public areas has a double-sided nature. Intense

surveillance of citizens in public spaces violates the right to privacy described in the Fourth

Amendment, but video surveillance also has some important positive effects that should not

be fully excluded. Before further implementation of a complex CCTV surveillance network

in the U.S., legislation should be enacted to regulate video surveillance in a way to minimize

the violation of citizens’ privacy rights. Any legislation should incorporate the privacy “best

practices” regarding the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces.

Reference:

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[3] “1993: IRA bomb devastates City of London,” BBC, [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/24/newsid_2523000/2523345.stm

[4] D. Lepeska, “Are crime cameras really worth the money?” 2011. [Online]. Available: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2011/12/crime-cameras-worth-the-money/693/

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[6] Baltimore City Police Department, “Locations of Baltmore Police Surveillance Cameras/CCTV cameras,” Jan. 2013, [Online]. Available: http://chamspage.blogspot.com/2012/04/locations-of-baltimore-police.html

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[9] M. Riggs, “Intense smog is making Beijing’s massive surveillance network practically useless,” Nov. 2013, [Online]. Available: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/11/intense-smog-making-beijings-massive-surveillance-network-practically-useless/7481/

[10] K.M. Heussner, “Big Brother: Are Surveillance Cameras Worth it?” ABC News, May 2010, [Online]. Available: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/big-brother-surveillance-cameras-worth/story?id=10573110

[11] H. Kelly, “After Boston: The pros and cons of surveillance cameras,” April, 2013, [Online]. Available: http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/tech/innovation/security-cameras-boston-bombings/

[12] Warren, and Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” December 1890, Harvard Law Review, Vol. IV.

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Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cCbywZcE6k&index=4&list=PLpbtRdN7xWUewU654n2GIaO0PHtXkOjlc

[14]Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, “Thomas Cooley,” [Online.] Available: http://www.micourthistory.org/justices/thomas-cooley/

[15] J.W. Patton, “Protection privacy in public? Surveillance technologies and the value of public places,” Ethics and Information Technology, 2: 181-187, 2000.

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