Surveillance Camera Project Overview
New York City: A Surveillance Camera Town
The Making of the Map
Over the last five months, a small but dedicated group of New York Civil
Liberties Union (NYCLU) volunteers walked the streets of Manhattan in search
of video surveillance cameras. This group sought out every camera, public or
private, which records people in public space. Mostly by foot, but
occasionally by car, they covered every block in the borough. From the
records they made of all camera locations, the volunteers produced a
comprehensive map of surveillance cameras in Manhattan.
The map includes cameras that are readily visible from the city streets. This
means that the cameras may be located in private or public spaces, but record
action in the latter. However, we cannot represent that all visible cameras
are continuously functioning.
The private cameras may be inside an alcove and
pointed out, above a garage door or affixed to the wall of a private building
and pointed down a block. The public cameras may be on traffic or streetlight
poles or affixed to a public building. Cameras are labeled as either public
or private based upon the assumed ownership of the structure to which they are
affixed.
Although the group saw 2,397 cameras in Manhattan, the map they created is far
from exhaustive. As slowly as they walked and as carefully as they looked,
cameras have escaped their search. A few because the volunteers were busily
writing down the location of a camera nearby, but many more because the
cameras were hidden from sight. Whether tucked surreptitiously out of the
line of vision or small enough to escape detection, we believe many more
cameras currently watch our city streets than appear on the map. And numerous
others are continually being installed.
Creating a map of Manhattan is just the first stage of the project. The NYCLU
plans to expand the map to include all cameras that record public spaces in
all five boroughs. Then, the NYCLU will continually update the city-wide map
to reflect what we predict to be a growing number of surveillance cameras in
the city.
The Philosophy Behind the Project
Video surveillance cameras have arrived on the streets of New York City. But
it is up to us to decide if they are here to stay, and if they are, then under
what conditions. Commonplace outside private companies, storefronts and
apartment buildings, in parks and at intersections, surveillance cameras have
been passively accepted as necessary for our personal safety. At this stage
in their proliferation, we need to take an active, not passive, role in the
decision-making process that allows for the installation of video surveillance
cameras. In certain situations, cameras do afford us an important sense of
safety: when they watch the entryway of our apartment buildings or the loading
dock of our businesses. But there is an equal, if not greater, number of
situations in which cameras become not protective, but invasive. Placed in
changing rooms and bathrooms, cameras record peoples most private moments on
tape, tapes on which footage of women undressing or using the bathroom is
often reviewed by men. In these examples, the deleterious nature of video
surveillance is obvious. But in other situations the invasive presence of a
camera is not as blatant, but it is equally as intrusive.
When cameras are mounted on street corners, the vast majority of the time they
monitor people engaged in innocent and lawful activities. However, these
innocent activities may be confidential and personally damaging if the tapes
fall into the wrong hands. Public spaces often serve as meeting ground for
lawyers and clients, reporters and sources and businesspeople and politicians
who want to talk privately. Cameras also capriciously watch off-guard
moments: a cigarette break or a kiss goodbye, which, at one point or another,
most everyone has not wanted captured on video.
Even more critically, cameras prevent law-abiding citizens who hold political
or social views not accepted by the majority from expressing themselves
freely. Michael Rosano of the New York City Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence
Project feels that the installation of cameras along places like the Greenwich
Village piers, a cruising strip for gay men, will stop many same sex couples
from even holding hands for fear "that the tapes would get into the wrong
hands. " Similarly, the threat of cameras targeting certain races of people
has been raised. Will African Americans be automatically considered
suspicious to the camera, or the person behind the lens? We must address
these issues and question the motives behind decisions like that which led to
the New York City Police Department’s reported taping of large segments of the
Million Youth March in Harlem on Labor Day Weekend, 1998.
Video Surveillance cameras have arrived with effectively no organized
discussion or debate on their role in our city. Even less has been
accomplished in regards to developing and implementing uniform standards that
should apply to use of surveillance equipment. There are a slew of issues to
be raised and questions to be answered regarding the presence of cameras in
public spaces. Until these are addressed, we cannot expect that everyone who
wants to install a camera will carefully weigh the pros and cons of its
installation, the location s/he has chosen and the ultimate destination of the
video footage. Even after video surveillance is raised as a topic of public
debate, informal decisions will be ineffectual without formal guidelines to
regulate video surveillance of public space.
With the rapid advance of technology, the importance of these guidelines
becomes even greater. Each video camera does not operate in isolation. Vast
networks tie tens, even hundreds, of cameras together, allowing footage from
many sites to be compiled, watched and stored at a central database. In the
private sector, Citibank's video infrastructure sets a new standard in
networking. From a central hub in Midtown, workers monitor cameras located at
every branch in the city and its suburbs, cameras under which a quarter of a
million New Yorkers pass everyday. Publicly, the New York City Department of
Transportation brags of its Vehicular Traffic Control System. DOT employs 55
cameras to watch over Manhattan’s major arteries and one Advanced Traffic
Management to control all the cameras and traffic signals to avoid congestion
in the city. After being trapped in Manhattan gridlock for an afternoon, one
begins to question the effectiveness of these methods for traffic control and
starts to wonder what other purpose these cameras may serve the government.
Since the inception of vast databases of video footage, software companies
have been designing and marketing facial recognition software, a biometrics
technique through which a computer can identify people on tape. Visionics,
one of the leading companies in the market, boasts that its software, FaceIt,
can atomatically locate faces in complex scenes, track and identify who they
are totally hands-off, continuously and in real-time. Software and
Systems International touts it software, Mandrake, for its ability to identify
faces taking into account "head orientation, lighting conditions, skin color,
spectacles, make-up and earrings, facial expression, facial hair and aging."
And each of these identification software can be used covertly, and legally,
without the consent of the individual being tracked.
The use of video surveillance equipment, the formation of networks and the
employment of facial recognition software heighten fear on our streets. An
innocent person walking in public has no control over his own actions: who may
record them and what the monitor may do with the tape. With the current
ubiquity of cameras, the actual ends of individual tape becomes a moot point.
The fear of being watched has already been instituted. The city grid morphs
into a modern panopticon, a circular prison conceived by the 18th-century
philosopher Jeremy Bentham. From his tower at the center of the prison, the
watchman can always peer into every cell, although not simultaneously.
Because of his ability to do so, the threat of surveillance becomes as great
as the surveillance itself. Our modern panopticon is making prisoners of us
all, as we are constantly under the gaze of the camera. Whether it is acting
alone or as one in a vast network, we cannot tell, we can only safely presume
the latter. We can only presume that the watchman, whoever or wherever he may
be, is watching us now.
The Status on the Streets
Two thousand three hundred and ninety seven cameras patrol the streets of Manhattan.
On average, 200 cameras watch over every community district in the borough.
Approximately 2,000 of the cameras are stationary. The stationary cameras are
usually either cylindrical or three-dimensional rectangular devices about the
length of one’s forearm. Although often made of an off-white plastic, they
can also be found in black.
The stationary cameras can be found in doorways
and alcoves, above garage doors and affixed to the fronts or corners of
buildings, usually between the first and second stories. They can also be
found on the rooftops of buildings, pointing down at the street, or on free-
standing poles. The other type of stationary camera that we saw less often,
either for its size or for the number that are employed, is a 2" cube, also
made of off-white plastic. The cube is predominantly used in doorways,
looking out into the street.
The balance of the 2,397 are rotational and
globe cameras. Rotational cameras look very similar to the stationary
cameras. The body of the camera is essentially the same, a three-dimensional
rectangle, but the bracket by which it is affixed to a building is distinct.
The bracket is larger, holds the camera farther away from the wall of the
building and rotates the entire device. In contrast, the globe camera
resembles a streetlight. The top half of the sphere is usually made of white
plastic and the bottom half, through which the camera sees, is a dark, but
translucent, plastic. Inside the sphere, a camera rotates and records out of
sight of its subjects. The globe camera is often found on light poles in the
streets or in the parks. The full sphere, and a smaller half-sphere version,
are also found on corners of buildings and outside of stores, apartment
entrances and restaurants.
The cameras have also been categorized by private or public proprietorship.
Public cameras are those on federal, state or city buildings, on streetlights
or in parks. All other cameras are considered private. Overwhelmingly, the
cameras in Manhattan have been installed, and are staffed, by private companies
or individuals. Of the 2,397 cameras, approximately 2,100 are private and
less than 300 are public. The situation is very different than the one George
Orwell predicted in Nineteen Eighty Four. Big Brother, at this point, is
doing about 11 percent of the watching. It is more likely that a private
company, your employer, your landlord, your coworker or just about anyone who
wants to install a camera, is watching you.
This is especially true in Community Boards 1 and 6. In CB 1, the area of
Manhattan south of Canal Street and west of Pearl Street, 440 cameras patrol
the streets. In CB 6, the area between 14th and 59th streets East of
Lexington/Madison, 517 cameras watch us everyday. On the west side, over 70
cameras were reported in a single three block area between West 32nd and
West 35th Streets..
The Recommendations
The intent of our map, the website and this narrative is to raise awareness of
the prevalence of video surveillance cameras in New York City, explain the
threat they pose to our individual freedom, begin a long overdue, much needed
dialogue on the topic and recommend ways to curb cameras infringement on our
right of anonymity and to move and associate freely.
In order to achieve these primary goals, we must invoke public dialogue
outside of the Civil Liberties Union. Media coverage of the map we have
created and the issues it raises will bring the topic to a wider audience. We
encourage those who see our map and read about the pros and cons of
surveillance cameras to bring the topic up at meetings of local civic,
religious and professional groups and/or community board meetings.
We are creating localized maps of the cameras in individual community boards
in Manhattan that can start or supplement a discussion. These maps are
miniature versions of the Manhattan map and include the total number of
cameras, whether they are rotating or stationary, and whether they are public
or private. Maps are a wonderful tool for presenting statistical information,
but they are only part of the initiative. We hope that each person who sees
the map will think about it the next time s/he leaves home and walks into the
street, and will look around her/him at the cameras s/he has walked
unknowingly by every single day. Moreover, New Yorkers need to call or email
the NYCLU and inform us where the cameras are so that we can expand and update
the maps. Only then will a community discussion on surveillance cameras
become a discussion of every individuals civil liberties.
We call upon our government officials to address the prevalence of video
surveillance cameras in public spaces. We encourage them to go to their
constituents, go to their local communities and call upon individuals to find
out how the people feel about the cameras. Community Board leaders, City
Councilmen and State Legislators need to hold public hearings to encourage
people to speak openly about the surveillance cameras, and show the people
that they too believe in a country where we are free to criticize a government
for its actions. Our government officials must then open the same topic for
discussion with their peers, for it is through the government that
surveillance has the potential to expand, and the ability to be curtailed.
The NYCLU supports, at a minimum, city and state legislation that would limit
the use of video surveillance cameras in public spaces. Clearly, the cameras
are already here. We cannot realistically hope to eliminate them altogether,
nor would we probably want to eradicate them from all public areas. But we do
need to regulate them. Legislation should limit the number of hours recorded
material, which contains no criminal acts, is retained before the tape is
either recycled or erased. It should also limit the distribution of, and the
access to, recorded material. The legislation should require signage
notifying anyone who may be recorded on the videotape that they are under
surveillance. Lastly, all video surveillance cameras in public spaces should
be registered with an appropriate governmental agency, such as the Public
Advocate's Office.
NYCLU Surveillance Camera Project -- 1998
- Norman Siegel, Executive Director
- Ibrahim Rubama, Board of Directors
- Chris Johnson, Coordinator
- Bradley McCallum, Artist-In-Residence
- Greg Bezkorovainy
- Allyson Bowen
- Mark Ghuneim
- Caroline Hall
- Rebecca Kelley
- Greg Loftis
- Leigh Ann Mahler
- Matt McGuinness
- Kirsten O’Malley
- Kay Sirianni
- Arthur Kimball Stanley
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