Town of Antigonish, Nova Scotia

The Town of Antigonish, NS uses closed circuit cameras on its sidewalks to allow the police to monitor the public. It's unregulated, uncontrolled. Why is this bad?

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Letter to the Town August 12, 2004

Article from the Halifax Herald of July 28, 2004

Describes how this Nova Scotia town intends to install additional CCTV cameras in the downtown area. Apparently these cameras or their video feed are monitored by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Federal law prohibits the RCMP from installing their own cameras, so they are delighted to have private and municipal government owned video.

The Town's Councillor responsible for this says she hasn't heard any negativity and says that people are pleased and that advertising the camera locations would defeat the purpose.

I am planning to visit the area and to create a web page showing the location of all of the cameras and will likely write letters again to various officials. I will focus on the fact that the federal police are not permitted to install CCTV but that they apprently are doing just this, by proxy, thereby fraglantly flaunting federal law.

Article from the Halifax Herald of October 22, 2003

Announces the plan to isntall cameras to monitor the sidewalks of Antigonish

Town website

Letter to the federal Privacy Commissioner read

On October 22/03 I posted the following article in the usenet newsgroup hfx.general
(Here's a link to the thread in Google Groups)

What do folks think of the proposal to have RCMP monitored cameras in
downtown Antigonish? If it goes through, it will be the first police
monitored public camera in the province.

Here's the newspaper article

Article responses:

If people are not doing anything illegal, I don't see why anyone would
complain.
As someone who works in the CCTV industry, I would like to point out that
most of the systems sold these days are not monitored 24/7 by big brother.
The manpower costs would be very high. In case of an "incident" the recorded
data can be reviewed for information. Also, data is overwritten on a looped
cycle, not stored in some governement vault. I think if a situation demands
it, a CCTV system can be a good deterrent and a good tool in finding guilty
parties. As I say, I speak from years of experience in the field. Never
once have I seen these systems used in an "Orwellian" method. Just my .02
If people have nothing to hide, then why not publish the camera data to a public
web site as well. Why not let the public monitor it too. Let me guess that
would be too much of an invasion of privacy...
.. Look hun, the Hendersons just went into Tims..
The more the better and if you don't break the law there is nothing to fear.
I think there should be cameras everywhere to cut crime. It also cuts
response times Ah its great.
They're used quite extensively in the UK. There are strict rules
governing the use of them by the police. There was quite a scandal in
the early 90's because somehow come of the photos ended up in the
daily rag.
The argument is basically that it would be legal for a cop to be on
every corner with a camcorder filming public spaces...whatever one
does in public is well in public and not private. As long as the
cameras aren't perring into backyards / windows..etc there's no
problem. Many public spaces are already covered by cameras and
recorded....no big deal
...no big deal.
True, but over time, alot of no big deals add up to a deal!
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~ Benjamin Franklin
There's no empirical evidence that I'm aware of to show that CCTV cuts
crime in any significant way. Several studies conducted in the
CCTV-infested UK suggest that CCTV is not nearly as effective at
fighting crime as its proponents say it is. If you ask me, alot of the
hype over CCTV is coming from the people who manufacture and sell the
cameras (and for obvious reasons).
Also, if the gentleman who works in the CCTV industry is correct in
affirming that most CCTV footage is viewed retroactively and is not
monitored in real-time, then saying that CCTV cuts down on "response
time" is pure nonsense.
Studies in the States and the UK have also shown that after about 15
minutes, agents monitoring the cameras tend to "zonk out" and are no
longer very alert to what's happening on the screens. Even if we could
afford the manpower, it would probably be a waste of money.
However, a number of firms are currently developing software that
would automatically detect "suspicious" on-screen behavior so that an
agent's attention could be drawn to it.

See: SMART SOFTWARE LINKED TO CCTV CAN SPOT DUBIOUS BEHAVIOUR -
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993918
Excerpt: "It could be the dawn of a new era in surveillance. For the
first time, smart software will help CCTV operators spot any abnormal
behaviour."

One danger of developing a dependence on such technology is that,
should the software fail to detect behavior that truly is worthy of
suspicion, the person monitoring the screens might miss it because
they're relying on the software to point it out, or are being
distracted by the software to another (possibly harmless) activity on
another screen. On the flipside, the software could incriminate
perfectly innocent people by identifying their behaviour or appearance
as "abnormal", and hence, suspicious.

The technology to network surveillance cameras and to identify
individuals based on the way they walk and on facial recognition
techniques has been under development for a number of years.

If such projects are successful and surveillance technology continues
in this direction, it's not inconceivable that within a couple of
decades, humans will mostly be "policed" by machines controlled by
"intelligent" software. We're already seeing signs of this, what with
highway surveillance cams being automated to take pictures of the
license plates of speeding vehicles (after which a speeding ticket and
a photo of the vehicle is sent to the address of the car owner).

For further reading:

SMILE, YOU'RE ON IN-STORE CAMERA
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,54078,00.html

BIG BROTHER GETS A BRAIN - THE PENTAGON'S PLAN FOR TRACKING EVERYTHING
THAT MOVES
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0328/shachtman.php

SANDIA TEAM DEVELOPS COGNITIVE MACHINES
http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2003/comp-soft-math/cognitive.html

BIGGER MONSTER, WEAKER CHAINS: THE GROWTH OF AN AMERICAN SURVEILLANCE
SOCIETY
http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=11573&amp;c=39

TOTAL INFO SYSTEM TOTALLY TOUCHY
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,56620,00.html?tw=wn_story_related

CONGRESS PUTS BRAKES ON CAPPS II
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60600,00.html

SENATORS WANT JETBLUE PROBE
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,60885,00.html

LOUDER CALL FOR ECHELON PROBE
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,44841,00.html

>data can be reviewed for information. Also, data is overwritten on a looped
>cycle, not stored in some governement vault. I think if a situation demands
>it, a CCTV system can be a good deterrent and a good tool in finding guilty
>parties. As I say, I speak from years of experience in the field. Never
>once have I seen these systems used in an "Orwellian" method. Just my .02
>

What Nova Scotia really needs are guidelines to ensure that CCTV in
public areas will only be used in an appropriate and responsible
manner. The provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have been
publishing such guidelines for years:

Guide to Using Surveillance Cameras in Public Areas (Alberta) -
http://www3.gov.ab.ca/foip/other_resources/publications_videos/surveillance_guide.cfm

Public Surveillance System Privacy Guidelines (British Columbia) -
http://www.mser.gov.bc.ca/foi_pop/main/video_security.htm

Leaflet on video surveillance by private individuals (Switzerland) -
http://www.edsb.ch/e/themen/video/index.htm

Anyone who'd like to see similar guidelines enacted in Nova Scotia
might want to consider contacting the NS Freedom of Information and
Protection of Privacy Review Office and letting them know this is
important to you.

Contact info:

NS Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Review Office
Box 181
Halifax, N.S.
B3J 2M4

Phone: 902-424-4684

Web: http://www.foipop.ns.ca/
Email: dfardy@gov.ns.ca

Greta.

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