The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost…if you keep it a secret! Why didn’t you tell the world, eh?!

- Dr. Strangelove from Dr. Strangelove, 1964

The Yonkers Downtown/Waterfront BID reported that the City of Yonkers plans to install a network of surveillance cameras with behavior recognition software in the downtown and waterfront area.

While to my knowledge no one has answered several important questions about these cameras and their intended uses, installing cameras in situations like these is bad idea for many reasons:

First, surveillance cameras do not deter crime unless they are highly visible and their presence clearly announced all around the area surveilled (and even then surveillance cameras frequently lose what little deterrent capabilities they have as people in the areas under surveillance become inured to the presence of cameras.) It’s simply common sense: if someone intent on committing a crime doesn’t know he’s under surveillance, there is no deterrent. If the city plans on “camouflaged” these cameras - as most are - than any deterrent effect is lost.

Next, surveillance cameras are frequently misused to circumvent the 4th Amendment clause against unreasonable searches. While the concept of the expectation of privacy is ever evolving, such rights do in fact still exist.

Moreover, these are wireless cameras whose signals are easy to intercept. Anyone could view the cameras for whatever purpose, and many nefarious one’s immediately spring to mind, from simple voyeurism to identifying vulnerable targets for violent crimes. It is possible to encrypt and/or modulate the wireless signal, but this will not necessarily stop a determined criminal (and assuming the city has thought to encrypt the signal in the first place).

Finally, there’s the principal of the thing. To folks who would say, “if you’ve nothing to hide, why would you mind cameras watching you?” I would ask: do you leave the stall door open when you take a shit? It’s a perfectly legal activity, a natural activity, one nearly everyone does every day. Do you leave your bank statements lying on the coffee table when guests are over? Why not, something to hide in there? Do you leave your medical records on your computer screen at work when you go out to lunch? The list of legal activities we’d all like to keep private is much longer than any list of crimes someone might want to hide.

Security is always a trade off; let’s make a reasonable one and not waste money invading the privacy of our city’s citizens for a false sense of security.

-Kieran Michael

n.b.: I am attempting to ascertain several important things about these cameras by calling the Mayor’s office, the Downtown and Waterfront BID and perhaps even the camera’s manufacturer:

    Who will own them
    Who will operate them
    Will their presence be prominently posted or will they be hidden
    Are their signals encrypted
    Who owns the stored data (on DVD) and who can access it.

I think the public deserves an answer to these questions as quickly as possible.