Then, Thursday, police made an arrest. We hope they’re on the right trail and have arrested one of the culprits, but we don’t know that for sure yet either.
It’s also important to remember that the video images the cameras captured might not be of any use at all if the victim hadn’t escaped and told police what to look for in the recordings. The cameras certainly didn’t prevent this crime, and even if they did capture images of the truck near the scene of the crime, they apparently didn’t get video of the actual abduction.
So how “great” are the cameras’ benefits, really?
Then there’s the fact that one of the main original reasons the Department of Homeland Security put up the money for the cameras in the first place was that they were supposed to be useful in the event of a terrorist attack or an evacuation of the city. That raised civil liberties concerns because the plans called for networking the cameras in nine Greater Boston communities, and it raised questions over who would control the cameras and the data they collected. As a result, civil libertarians organized and won votes against them in both Brookline and Cambridge.
The ACLU doesn’t oppose video surveillance in specific sensitive locations where it can be helpful to keep people safe or enforce the law, such as entrances and exits to transit systems, stadiums, or for a limited time in a particular area as part of a specific investigation — but there are serious concerns about the cost of surveillance cameras, their lack of effectiveness, and a lack of control over how they are used. In our case, going after criminal activity with video surveillance doesn’t require the kind of infrastructure that Homeland Security was putting in place.
The fact is that video surveillance is not a magic solution to crime, and government surveillance of citizens in the name of security has been a hallmark of totalitarian societies throughout the world. We really need to consider how far we want to move in that direction.
You can learn more about what’s wrong with public video surveillance here.
There may well be benefits to surveillance cams of public spaces. I think the feeds should themselves be public.
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p>These are, after all, public spaces. There is ZERO expectation of privacy. I therefore think the privacy argument is a non-starter. I can and should be able to take whatever photos or videos of any intersection I choose to, and so should any government agency.
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p>I am far more concerned about government abuse of the feeds than the feeds themselves. It is far too easy to manipulate a “message” by selective editing, cropping, and enhancement.
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p>The best antidote is to put the live cam feeds on the web, for free, where any person or organization who chooses can do whatever they wish with them.
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p>This has the added advantage that it also provides an effective way for private citizens and groups to ensure that public officials do not abuse their own privileges. Archived video feeds of the Snelgrove and Woodman episodes might well have added insight and value to the investigations that followed. More mundanely, too many police cars spend too much time parked in crosswalks and no-parking zones while their occupants get their morning coffee and breakfast.
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p>In my view, these surveillance cams are a valuable public resource that should therefore be available to the public.
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p>Just my two cents.
I also think people have to remember that, like any other evidence, this would be challengeable in court by the defense.