NYC Eyes in Sky

2 Pages·2021·0.07 MB·English

NY Tour Turns Evil Eye on Surveillance Cameras

By Andy Sullivan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bill Brown stands in the middle of a crowded
Manhattan sidewalk, gesturing obscenely toward the sky.

"You've got no right to do this! I think you're a
coward!" he shouts at a video camera staring
back at him from four stories up.

Unusual behavior for a New York tour guide,
but Brown is offering a view of the city that few
visitors or natives see. His "Video Surveillance
Tour of Manhattan" scans rooftops, storefronts
and utility poles for some of the thousands of surveillance cameras
perched across the city.

On this recent tour, he doesn't have to look hard to find them. Brown has
so far discovered eight other cameras within steps of the midtown hotel
where the tour started, and he has mapped a total of 239 in the
neighborhood. Like an avid bird watcher, Brown points each one out and
almost lovingly describes its capabilities and limitations.

At the corner of 34th Street and 8th Avenue, a futuristic globe mounted
next to street lights keeps an eye on traffic. Across the street, a "Web
cam" posts images of the street to the Internet. Half a block away, a small
tube poking out of the side of a building scans patrons entering a Wendy's
restaurant, as well as pedestrians walking by, with infrared, heat-vision
technology to cut through fog and rain.

"What do they need that for? I think they're paranoid," Brown says.

It's a charge he's heard more than a few times himself. With a single-
minded vision, Brown has led weekly video-surveillance tours of
Manhattan neighborhoods since November 2000, pointing out the
locations of police and private security cameras and questioning whether
they do any good.

Brown conducts the free tours for the Surveillance Camera Players, a
seven-year-old New York group that protests against the cameras in
public places.

The cameras are a clear violation of privacy, Brown maintains, enabling
hidden voyeurs to peek down women's blouses, scope out "suspicious"
young men, and track citizens going about their daily business.

LITTLE DETERRENT SEEN

They do little to deter crime, he says, as law-enforcement agencies have
decided it is not cost-effective to staff monitoring centers, and private
businesses are more interested in deterring employee theft and
documenting accidents for insurance purposes.

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"The idea that someone is watching in real time and can stop a rape, a
robbery or a murder has been completely abandoned," he says.

No matter their effectiveness, the cameras are unlikely to come down any
time soon.

Downtown Chicago boasts an average of three surveillance cameras per
block, while police in Washington, D.C., have sought the ability to
augment their surveillance system by tapping into private cameras. Traffic
cameras in London can match license-plate numbers with car owners,
enabling police to easily track drivers and automatically issue tickets for
traffic violations.

In Manhattan, the New York Civil Liberties Union counted 2,397 cameras
in 1998, and Brown says the number of cameras in high-profile spots like
Times Square has tripled since then.

Brown would like to see laws requiring operators to buy licenses or be
forced to justify their cameras before putting them up. But the first step, he
says, is to raise awareness through his weekly tours.

This afternoon, he wins at least a few converts. Three passersby lean in to
hear his analysis of the two cameras perched above a hotel entrance,
then pick up handwritten maps pointing out camera locations in the
neighborhood.

Hector Cruz says he finds the map troubling. "Our right of privacy and
our freedom of speech are going down the drain," he says.

His friend Hector Carrion agrees, saying that police using surveillance
cameras have mistaken a handshake for a drug transaction. "The camera
can't see what's in your hand," he says.