D.I.Y. Panopticon

Quasi-private protection services have come to a Baltimore neighborhood called (cough) Pigtown, with a local group -- the rather Jacobin-sounding Public Safety Committee -- installing 16 surveillance cameras and nearly 20 wrought-iron gates. The effort is independent of the city government but not of the government itself: The committee receives city, state, and federal grants.

Comments

[Keith]

Joe - There is an operational difference - A cop placed on a corner decided to be there (or a superior decided to place them there) based on a human judgement call. Two factors in play here which I like as a fan of liberty: First, scarcity. A human cop ought to be a valuable, expensive and limited resource, which should drive his or her placement to specific cases with high benefit to cost, not as a 24 by 7 prophylactic. Second, accountability. The decision to place the officer should be available to review after the fact, either via the legal system or political system, and in the case of overreaching, the decision-maker's job/election ought to be at risk.

In the case of surveillance cameras, both of these are lost.

For such things as red light cameras, I am wary of them (especially the cut off the top that Lockheed Martin gets from municipalities), but if states explicitly bundle acceptance of these systems to the driving privilige, it shortcuts my argument since a private citizen can decide whether or not to participate - "driving" has always been construed as a privilige, unlike my right to be secure in my person and effects.

Lazarus - Not sure of how an open society/"glass house" situation invalidates my claim that my image has an economic value to me. Does an open society allow for anyone to be shown without compensation, for example, in a product endorsement? Please post any web links that may elaborate.

Also, if you watch or record me in a public space, and if you're not the government and don't have a profit motive, I (and most people, if they even thought of it) wouldn't be troubled enough by the loss of what you've seized from me spend further effort towards satisfaction. In contrast, a member of a religion that believes iconography captures souls might feel differently. If it turns out you had a profit motive after all (when you sell my footage to "When Animals Attack" or whatever), I may decide at that point that it is worth it to me to take effort to shut you down or get a cut.

Lazarus and Joe - As it has developed, it's my sense (I'm not a laywer) that profit motive really drives permissible use of private person images - so you need a release to show a person's image on COPS (syndication revenue), but not on the nightly news (a private "service", although it's financed by ad revenue).

[Lazarus Long]

Keith: It doesn't invalidate it, but shows there also other values to consider. I guess I am confused on your economic argument bcause I don't see how you can "own" your image as property. It may be good business for shows like Cops to pay you for your image. But just because you see value in your image doesn't mean someone is "stealing it" by taking a picture or looking at you.

[Croesus]

Jesse Walker,

Its interesting that even in the 19th century prisons in Britain that adopted this technique (and the type of building Bentham recommended), total observation was not possible.

Another style of British prison - where prisoners were isolated in a cell for 23 hours a day (the other other hour was spent in a religious service; and the prisoners were moved from their cells to the pulpit in hoods, so they could not see their fellow inmates) was also a disaster (people tended to go insane there at alarming rates). Oh, and when the prisoners were at service, they were crammed into cubicles, out of which only the front of their faces poked. It was a nightmarish existance.

British prisons also employed a paddle-wheel like device on which prisoners would run (often it powered a grist mill or similar machinery), sometimes to their deaths. The British tried all sorts of strange things to create model citizens in their prisons.

As a friend of mine who is a prison administrator says, "Its hard to learn how to be free in chains." Which goes along with the theory of the prison being a "school for criminals" I guess.

[Lefty]

http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/scotus_thermal010611.html

This is a pretty fair discussion of a Supremes case regarding infrared imaging of a home by the police to get a warrant for a guy using heat lamps to grow his herb. In a 5-4 vote it was determined that the infrared scan was not, by itself, acceptable as probable cause.

Left unsaid, but certainly implied, is that once outside your home you are fair game.

[Croesus]

Lazarus,

Most states have laws which prohibit the use of your image without your permission. The genisis of these laws was a case out of NY in the early part of the century (1905), where a flour company paid a photographer for the negatives of a woman who had here picture taken by the photographer for family photos (she never was asked or agreed to their release). Anyway, the NY Court of Appeals (the state's highest court) found that at common law there was no "right of privacy" in one's image, etc., so the NY legislature (at the behest of the court) quickly passed a law to remedy this issue, and made such activity liable on civil and criminal grounds.

The point is that you have state recognized (either at common law or state statute or both) protection of your image as far as its use in a commercial circumstance (some states go even beyond this also). And these rights are especially important for actors and the like who don't want the stock value of their image to collapse due to negative or frivolous use (these are generally known as publicity rights). Actors also have rights, or the folks that film them do (depends on whether there is a work for hire issue involved), in certain expressions, poses, etc. For example, whoever owns "Silence of the Lambs" owns "Lecter's hiss," while the guy who played "Norm" has rights in his character. As these involve BIG BUCKS, such rights are litigiously and vigorously protected.

[Croesus]

Lazarus,

There are important 1st Amendment exameptions, however.

[Jon B.]

I have to say that I found Lazarus' argument compelling...

Except for one thing...

(and please, weigh in with a response. Laz. You are a smart guy and I am here to learn)

Isn't this a private camera network. (not the government) watching public places?

[Lazarus Long]

Jon B: I still don't see how this would be unconstitutional either. Perhaps there is an accountability issue though (the citizens getting a say through city govt about private cameras in the city's public spaces etc).

[David Moynihan]

A lot of this has to do with certain qualities of the area. Pigtown (yes, they did used to herd pigs through the streets on the way to slaughter), is a heavily white, lower-middle class part of Baltimore... the only such enclave on the west side of the city.

Just north of Pigtown, once you cross Lombard Street (where Russell Baker lived), and especially Hollins Street (where HL Mencken lived), you get into a heavily black neighborhood--among other things, the location for the HBO series "The Corner."

Following some brilliant public policy moves (they tore down the high-rise projects at Fayette, but then didn't really have anywhere for the people to go), the neighborhood next to Pigtown (Sowebo), "destabilized"--meaning all the artists left, and all the businesses closed or fell down suspiciously, a lot of very not nice people moved in, semi-decent residential apartments for students and such were given over to the section 8 voucher crowd.

I don't really like cameras all over the place, but it's bad out there, really really bad--would be a lot worse if it wasn't for Baltimore's great medical centers like Hopkins and Shock Trauma-- this neighborhood is trying to defend itself after being screwed over by all the "experts," and one wishes pigtowners the best of luck in their quest to one day leave and move to Arbutus.

[Lazarus Long]

Seems more like subcontracting than DIY

[Lazarus Long]

...not that there is anything wrong with that.

[Croesus]

Bentham's "Panopticon" was a prison. Are you implying that this is also a prison? Or are you using "panopticon" in the little "p" sense? BTW, I think Bentham coined the term specifically to refer to his type of prison, and I don't know if it has gained any added meaning since the 18th century when it was coined. Oxford Press's "The History of the Prison" is a nice anthology that discusses Bentham's notions about how a prison should be run, etc.

[Croesus]

And you can of course read Foucault's seminal work, "To Discipline and Punish," which has spurred numerous scholars to tackle his ideas and debunk them as well. 🙂

[Charlie]

I believe the point of using the term "panopticon" and making the references you identify comes from the quotation of Baltimore police Officer David Milburn: "As soon as they see the cameras, if they were thinking about doing a crime, they'll think twice." That is the supposed effect of panopticism ... to make people self policing.

Of course, it doesn't work. Otherwise 24 hour convenience stores would be perfectly safe at 3 am.

Check out http://www.notbored.org/the-scp.html for a far more considered response to the proliferation of surveillance cameras. I don't agree with everything Bill Brown says, but it's worth a read.

[Lazarus Long]

Why do they believe privacy in public places is constitutionally protected?

[Jon B.]

Thus we continue our slide from the 20th century to the 15th, with walls and gates and guards.

Or cross 1984 and Neuromancer and look what you get.

Thanks for the link to the SCP. Is the 404 error in the faq permanent? (haha)

Lazuras- if there isn't an expectation of privacy in public places would you mind being followed every time you leave the house. Try it on someone else and you'll get arrested. Why isn't this stalking? 'Cause you can follow the movements of a lot of people at once?

[Keith]

Off the top of my head, a person's image and likeness (if one were an actor, very much true; consider a Surveillance Camera Player being in this category for the economic argument) has a nonzero economic value. For the average joe, it may be small and hard to pin a value on, but I assert that it is not negligible. And for commercial use, private citizens have to sign release forms, which I view as a barter arrangement, exchanging the economic value of my image for an item of comparable economic value: the satisfaction of possibly getting my face on television. Again, hard to value, but I assert not of zero value.

OK if you buy that let's go to the 4th Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

My likeness is mine, I own it. Whether we call it my person or my effect, the government can't take it without a warrant.

[Charlie]

Am I only to expect privacy at home? Should I assume that the moment I leave my property or emerge from my car that I submit to being tracked and recorded? Since when is privacy linked to property? People in a public space do not surrender their rights to privacy, that is why we have search and seizure laws.

Finally, I believe the right to privacy is constitutionally protected because the Fourth Amendment guarantees "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures ..." I take my "person" everywhere I go. Even into public spaces.

[Lazarus Long]

Jon: I don't mind if a person follows me, especially if it as pretty girl. But my argument wasn't about preference, it is about rights and and their applcation under law.

Keith: Not buying the "value" argument, as their is also value to having an open society - the "glass house" argument - as well as being aware of ongoing activities in public spaces.

Charile and Keith: I am not convinced that an image of a person is the same as the person. I am not convinced that it is an effect (physical property) either. Is it illegal then to take a photo? Or sketch the likeness of a person?

Or better yet, watch you with my own eyes? If I watch you in a public space I am creating an image in my brain. Do you own that image? Have I searched or seized anything?

[Jesse Walker]

Croesus: One of the central ideas of the panopticon is constant surveillance. I was alluding to that.

[joe]

Keith and Charlie,

I'm not so sure this counts as a search. Do you have a problem with a cop standing on a corner, keeping an eye on things? Why is this different? Does it make a difference if the camera is recording, vs. transmitting live to a watcher?

In a larger sense, what differentiated a search from everyday observation? Is it intrusiveness? The level of data that can be gathered?

Like the national id card, cameras in public places make me feel vaguely uneasy, but I've yet to hear a compelling argument than why they're any more constitutionally objectionable than a state diver's license or a cop walking a beat.

[Omnibus Bill]

It's easy to joke about Baltimore and treat the locals' actions like the acts of an incipient fascist dictatorship when you don't live there. The fact is that crime has been totally out of control for a long time in large chunks of the city.

Part of the problem is the thoroughly permissive treatment of drug addicts and dealers. Baltimore has the highest rate of heroin addiction in the country, and there are open-air drug markets (heroin, crack, and pot) all over town. Junkies commit a lot of the crimes, committing petite larceny to fund their drug habits, and dealers commit a lot of the crimes too.

Recently, a women who was unhappy about all the junkies and dealers in her neighborhood formed a neighborhood watch group. Local dealers set her house on fire shortly thereafter, burning her to death along with her 7 children. Anybody standing up to the dealers is likely to suffer retaliation. The local dealers are also involved in a blood feud with the cops. A number of Baltimore cops have been killed in the last year, on and off duty, more or less execution style - bullet to the face. While there are some decent neighborhoods, a lot of Baltimore's neighborhoods are totally out of control. Moreover, since it's pretty much illegal to carry a weapon within city limits, law abiding citizens don't have any recourse.

It seems to me you could legalize the drugs and fix part of the problem - the police wouldn't have to hassle the local dealers, who would now be legitimate businessmen. Of course they'd still be heavily armed, scummy thugs with a propensity for massive violence.

Even if you could get rid of the street dealers and bring in a reputable pharmaceuticals firm to sell the drugs over the counter, this wouldn't deal with the secondary crime committed by drug addicts. Most are too debilitated from their habits to work regularly, yet they need money for their fix so they commit crimes. You could subsidize the drugs, but that would be statist. You could throw their asses in jail with really draconian sentences... but that would be just as bad as subsidizing their habit, and probably more expensive. You could authorize the locals to shoot people committing crimes, which are mostly burglary, car radio theft, strong arm mugging -- this would be a good libertarian solution, but probably is a little excessive for property crimes. "Just let 'em take drugs and die if they want" sounds like a good solution, but addicts don't go easily into that good night, they usually wreak havoc in their community for a while before they auger in.

I suppose that I am just humor deficient; I just have trouble viewing this neighborhood's actions as oppressive or Stalinistic, and I don't see a lot of good options short of a major crackdown on the illegal drug trade. It worked for Giuliani in New York...

[Legesse Dan]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 11:02:55
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