Eye Spies

Watch Video
A nanny feeding a baby
while under secret observation.

"The fewer cops we have, the smarter we have to be about how we monitor crime and maintain security," says Los Angeles Police Department Captain Jodi Wakefield ’93. "The technology helps us with the lack of resources we have. With the cameras we can monitor perhaps 40 intersections at a time, with two officers in the control room. That enables patrol officers on the street to concentrate on other areas."

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh '83, J.D. '92 says that cameras on a public street are nothing more than extensions of the eyes of the police. "If police want to plant a hidden camera in your home, that's a search, and it requires a warrant. On the other hand, if they want to put a camera on a lamppost, they are entitled to do that, just as they are entitled to put an officer — including a plainclothes officer — on a street corner [and] it's a lot cheaper to put up lots of cameras than it is to hire lots of police officers."

Watch Video
A driver running a red light,
captured by a cop-cam.

THIS IS NOT A TREND THAT WARMS THE HEARTS of civil libertarians. The use of hidden cameras, asserts Nicole Ozer, policy director of technology and civil liberties for the ACLU of Northern California, "undermines civil liberties. The cameras are multiplying, and there are no enforceable guidelines for how they are to be used and to prevent rampant abuse, and there is no end in sight for how many cameras ultimately will be put up."

Watch Video
Employees smoking in the company's
nonsmoking women's room.

THERE IS NOTHING LEGALLY WRONG with taking pictures of someone in a public space. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly 40 years ago in Katz v. United States, and reaffirmed in many subsequent cases, that individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they are in public, thus taking pictures of someone walking on the street or necking in a park — or selling crack cocaine, or striking a child — does not violate any constitutional protections. Nor is privacy violated if you are seen cavorting within the confines of your own backyard from, say, the window of an adjacent high-rise or by a police helicopter or even a passing satellite with a high-resolution surveillance camera that can read the serial number on a dollar bill.

There are some laws on the books that govern the use of hidden cameras. Thirteen states (California among them) expressly prohibit the installation or use of hidden cameras in private places without the permission of the people being photographed or observed. Several other states have laws that prohibit the use of hidden cameras in only certain circumstances, such as in locker rooms or restrooms, or for the purpose of viewing a person in a state of partial or full undress. At the federal level, the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004 makes it a federal offense to knowingly photograph a naked or partially clad person on federal property with a camera phone or other hidden recording device.

But we're OK with it, remember? So there is no urgency, let alone public outcry, to rework existing laws or write new ones. At a bare minimum, suggests Sen. Bowen, "lawmakers have a responsibility to debate government surveillance issues publicly, ask questions, and look at how surveillance affects people's civil liberties and personal privacy. If we don’t talk about it publicly and start asking questions, we’ll never get to the answers."

Published Jul 1, 2006 12:00 AM