By most accounts, London is the city with the greatest number of public video surveillance cameras in the world. The Orwellian motto for the London system, in signs posted by law enforcement authorities, is that “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.” But is that really true? As more and more American cities and communities decide to follow London’s lead and install their own surveillance cameras, Americans need to ask themselves this question. 

Interestingly, law enforcement professionals – the people who operate these public cameras – understand the threats to privacy rights posed by these cameras better than most of us. Recently, one of us -- the Constitution Project’s senior counsel Sharon Bradford Franklin -- had the opportunity to speak on a panel at the first National Fusion Center Conference – an effort by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and various offices of the U.S. Department of Justice to promote information sharing with state and local law enforcement officials. She served as a panelist for the Privacy and Civil Liberties break-out session and discussed the Constitution Project’s Guidelines for Public Video Surveillance with the audience of state and local law enforcement officials.

She describes her experience this way:  

I began my presentation by asking the law enforcement officers to raise their hands if they believed that video surveillance cameras can be an effective law enforcement tool. As I expected, most raised their hands. Next, I briefly described the power of modern technology that might permit a system of cameras to track an individual around town and create a digital dossier of his or her daily life. But, noting that this was a very “law abiding crowd,” I then asked how many of them wouldn’t mind if their entire daily lives were captured on film for government officials to review. Not one person raised a hand.

Since this crowd likely has no criminal activity to hide, I had expected a substantial number to raise their hands, and had planned to continue by noting some of the potential pitfalls involved. My next questions would have been to ask “Think about whether you have – or maybe someone you know really well has – ever entered a psychiatrist’s office, or a fertility clinic, or an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or maybe the meeting or some non-traditional political or religious group? Now you don’t need to raise your hands this time, but I want you to think again: how many are REALLY comfortable having your entire daily life captured on video footage for government officials to view?”

But I never got to these questions. I never had to point out to this law enforcement crowd that there are plenty of perfectly legal activities that most of us prefer to keep private – even though we may need to enter public spaces to engage in these activities. 

Although they had been taught that, under the law, people have “no legitimate expectation of privacy in public places,” the law enforcement officers attending the FusionCenter conference fully understood the dangers to privacy rights that video surveillance poses. They knew that the powerful technology of video surveillance cameras is subject to abuse, even by well-intentioned officers.

The Constitution Project’s Guidelines for Public Video Surveillance sets forth a series of practical recommendations to help protect our civil liberties and privacy rights in these situations. This report contains the bipartisan consensus recommendations of the Project’s Liberty and Security Committee – a group of experts from across the political spectrum. As our report notes, although existing studies raise serious questions about the effectiveness of surveillance systems in preventing crime, there is some anecdotal evidence that such footage may be helpful in investigating and prosecuting criminal acts.   Thus, if state and local officials decide to establish video surveillance systems, they can follow the Constitution Project’s guidelines to minimize the intrusion on individual rights and establish systems that will only capture the footage that law enforcement officials really need. 

Most importantly, we recommend that communities use publicly accountable procedures for establishing any public video surveillance system. When a community seeks to establish a permanent system of cameras, this process should include a full public comment period, and a cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the surveillance system is designed to fit the community’s law enforcement needs, its available staffing, and its budget. For specific emergency law enforcement investigations, a judicial approval process can provide this accountability instead. Our guidelines also recommend a series of rules to regulate the use of systems once they are up and running. For example, law enforcement should be required to obtain specific approval before using technologies that are more intrusive on individual privacy rights, such as automatic identification or tracking of a given person.

Our video surveillance report also includes model legislation to enable communities to easily enact the guidelines into law. With such rules in place, communities can ensure that any public surveillance cameras will only serve legitimate law enforcement purposes – so that law abiding residents really will have nothing to fear.