What is the right level of digital surveillance?
How much is too much surveillance? In a recent article in Crain’s Cleveland Business, it touched on the potential abuse of power between law enforcement, the City Council and its citizens.
Recently, 300+ people implored the City Council to ensure the surveillance systems won’t overstep boundaries in surveying people and their vehicles. This is after the city received an order to raise surveillance on the Cleveland’s streets and bordering neighborhoods. Flock Safety Contracts, a technology company, has offered its services to the council on potential security cameras placed, in order to reduce potential crimes.
From burglar alarms to license plate camera readers, it could increase the amount of data necessary for review by the police. Greater data visibility will deliver more proof required for lawyers prosecuting any cases. What’s the drawback? The potential abuse of power by law enforcement. For example, if someone’s tracking license plates, and they come across one with a previous record, they might show unfair scrutiny upon that vehicle. This would not be legitimate proof but more, just raising a vehicle as suspect - before even assessing the driver or the vehicle itself. Another concern, surveying license plates and tracking their locations - for example, if someone travels to another state to have a procedure done that’s illegal in their home state, they’d overstep their power to indict them by finding loopholes for restrictions.
Another example, a person travelling to another state for something that’s not illegal there but illegal in their home state - could trigger tracking and logging by public surveillance cameras. Law enforcement officers tracking that person, could then charge them with a potential violation once they return home. This type of scenario is one of the reasons why citizens worry about the increased use of enhanced surveillance. These surveillance systems can collect data on specific citizens that they may deem unlawful, frequently scanning them and their locations - all without their knowledge.
So on top of civilians’ concerns for the pending order of additional surveillance equipment, they’re also questioning if the City Council will install protections in place, to avoid having devices overstep civilians’ privacy rights. There hasn’t been a set decision yet, but the main point is the balance of omnipresent security cameras versus weaponizing them.
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To learn more about our solutions, visit: Physical Security — SpaceBound
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