You walk down a parking lot, or swim at your neighborhood pool. No matter where you go, you feel like someone is watching you: a silent, invisible eye, tracking your every move. That eye has watched over the public for almost a century. In 1942, the Nazis invented a system to track their ballistic missiles. They called their creation Überwachungskamera, or surveillance camera. Soon, CCTV (closed-circuit television) became available in the U.S for both government and commercial use. Today, surveillance systems exist in almost every public space, and give an almost omniscient power to the law enforcement behind them. With the already massive amount of cameras everywhere, adding more would give law enforcement dictatorial power, may break the Fourth Amendment, and give racial bias to statistical information.
Adding more cameras would give law enforcement dictatorial power. Because footage taken by law enforcement can be used as legal evidence, cameras are an extremely powerful tool. While the footage may not be tampered or mismanaged in any way, the unethical or incorrect use of footage could shed a false light on someone. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S Constitution prohibits this explicitly. Also, with the rise of facial recognition programs, law enforcement can track anyone, anytime, anywhere. This, again, is a violation of our privacy, and is listed in the Fourth Amendment, which states that an invasion of personal belongings, residence, and privacy requires “a warrant, which will not be issued without probable cause.” Another example lies in body camera footage used in 3 illegal gun cases from 2016 to 2020. The cases were based on factual evidence, and in a case where camera footage was not present, would have resulted in a verdict favoring the law. Because the footage was framed in a bad light, the court dropped the case.
More cameras may break the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment states that “children under the age of 13 are protected against any data collection, surveillance, and/or social crimes unless warranted by a violation of law or presentable parental consent.” This means that any child (under the age of 13) being specifically watched through a security camera will have every right to sue local enforcement for invasion of privacy. Not only does surveillance invade people’s privacy, they instill fear on those who don’t deserve it. IBM announced the week of June 6, 2020 that it would stop supplying facial recognition resources to law enforcement, a decision that came as the company’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, told Congress in a letter that the technology was being used to, “violate basic human rights and freedoms, and that would be out of step with the company's values.” Following suit, Amazon and Microsoft both pulled their facial recognition software from the police usage.
More cameras target people of color an intolerable amount more than those with paler complexions. Twitter exploded the weekend of June 27, 2020 as a viral photo of NVIDIA’s StyleGAN turning former president Barack Obama’s face into what appeared to be a paler and “whiter” version of him. If not a major bias in your mind, it must be a demonstration that the training sets for A.I like StyleGAN are biased. This means that increasing the resolution of images on security cameras may result in a completely incorrect photo of a suspect. This primarily raises concerns that crime rates by race may be incredibly faulty and disproportionate. The Robert Julian-Borchak Williams case that was released this weekend angered activists around the globe. A “black” man stole about 3000 USD worth of timepieces from a high end boutique, and simply walked out. Mr. Williams was at his job as an accountant, nowhere near the boutique at the time of the crime. However, Mr. Williams was wrongfully arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, instead of the true felon, due to an error in facial recognition and matching technology. The prosecutor did apologize, but agreeably stated that nothing could make up for the hours that Mr. Williams wasted in jail. The more biased technologies like facial recognition are used, the more wrongful arrests will be made.
The push for more cameras will problematically lead to law enforcement having dictatorial power, breaking the Fourth Amendment, and people of color being wrongfully targeted for crimes they did not commit. A large proportion of the U.S constitution protects the privacy of individuals, and adding more cameras would undermine the foundation that was laid by our founding fathers. Rise, take matter with these growing problems, and help those whose lives were broken by the extensive use of cameras. Stick your head out of your hole in the ground and give support to the people that were crippled by surveillance you should.
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