Ernie raised the issue of video surveillance of public spaces in a post. He thought it was a good idea. I have concerns that it is a further step along the path to Big Brother.
There seems to be a continuous erosion of privacy in the digital age. As the means of recording and storing vast amounts of data becomes easier and the costs less onerous, huge amounts of personal information can be captured, maintained and searched. The trauma of terrorism has caused citizens to be much more amenable to impositions on their freedom and their privacy in favor of greater protection. Law enforcement agencies have used this opportunity to increase their capabilities at the expense of individual privacy.
It is hard for the average citizen to become exorcised over creeping loss of privacy. We have become so inured to seeing video cameras and offices, banks, public buildings, that their existence on a public street or in a public park does not raise much anxiety. People may even feel safer walking through a public space which they know is under surveillance. There is also the mantra that "if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you worry that you are under surveillance". These attitudes prevent the issue from gaining the political momentum necessary to institute appropriate controls and balancing of interests.
In Canada, violent crime has been declining. The need for greater infringement of personal freedoms in favor of crime prevention is difficult to demonstrate.
Canada's former Privacy Commissioner had taken a strong position against such surveillance. Different cities had set up video surveillance of public spaces at the behest of security or police forces in hopes that the surveillance would reduce crime. The Privacy Commissioner considered this issue as a result of a complaint.
The complaint arose out of the RCMP's proposed installation of surveillance cameras in the downtown core of the City of Kelowna, British Columbia. The video was recorded 24/7 and was retained for six months. The Commissioner held that the surveillance was a breach of federal privacy legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
In the ruling, the Commissioner stated:
"Section 4 of the Privacy Act states that 'No personal information shall be collected by a government institution unless it relates directly to an operating program or activity of the institution'. It is a tenet of the Act that an institution can collect only the minimum amount of personal information necessary for the intended purpose. There must be it demonstrable need for each piece of personal information collected in order to carry out the program or activity."
"This type of wholesale monitoring or recording certainly runs afoul of the requirement to collect only the minimum amount of personal information required for the intended purpose. Moreover, the broad mandate to prevent or deter crime clearly does not give police authorities unlimited power to violate the rights of Canadians. They cannot, for instance, compile detailed dossiers on citizens ' just in case.' They cannot force people at random to identify themselves on the street. They cannot enter in search homes that will, without proper authorization."
"It is equally clear, in my view, that police forces cannot invoke crime prevention or deterrence to justify monitoring and recording on film the activities of large numbers of the general public."
The commissioner relied on previous reasoning by the Québec privacy commissioner arising out of similar surveillance activity in the City of Sherbrooke in 1992. He also relied on the reasoning of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Wong, where the Court stated:
"...to permit unrestricted video surveillance by agents of the state would severely diminish the degree of privacy we can reasonably expect to enjoy in a free society...we must always be alert to the fact that modern methods of electronic surveillance have potential, if uncontrolled, to annihilate privacy."
The RCMP responded by suggesting that they would cease recording the video. They would run the cameras but not make a record.
The commissioner rejected this alternative. He commented:
"If we cannot walk or drive down the street without being systematically monitored by the cameras of the state, our lives and our society will be irretrievably altered. The psychological impact of having to live with the sense of constantly being observed must surely be enormous, indeed incalculable. We will have to adapt, and adapt we undoubtedly will. But something profoundly precious -- our right to feel anonymous and private as the go about our day-to-day lives -- will have been lost forever."
The Commissioner did not feel there was persuasive evidence that video surveillance was an effective deterrence to crime. Even if it were effective, the need to make so great a sacrifice of privacy in favor of such deterrence had not been demonstrated.
The Commissioner went so far as to institute a subsequent court challenge against the RCMP, alleging that the video surveillance violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
After the Commissioner resigned, the new Commissioner withdrew the court challenge on July 4, 2003.
Think about it...
"The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinised." George Orwell, 1984
10:47:39 PM 
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