Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:59:44 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Unlikely allies fight new surveillance tool
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

http://www.capitolalert.com/news/capalert02_20010909.html

Unlikely allies fight new surveillance tool
By Muriel Dobbin
The Sacramento Bee Washington Bureau
(Published Sept. 9, 2001)

TAMPA, Fla. -- Stroll down the streets of Ybor City, a national 
historic landmark district where wrought-iron balconies curve around 
old brick buildings, and you may not notice the little cream-colored 
cameras suspended on poles above your head.

Or even the street-corner signs that announce, "This area under video 
monitoring."

But you are in the midst of the nation's first public experiment with 
facial-surveillance cameras, which search the crowds for suspected 
criminals.

Use of the new technology has aroused indignation among civil 
libertarians and conservatives who see it as constitutionally 
questionable as well as a police invasion of privacy. Concern about 
the possibility of lawsuits has been voiced by at least one city 
leader.

The 8-week-old Florida pilot project, with its 36 tiny cameras 
suspended above the streets of Tampa's high-crime entertainment 
enclave, has allied ideological opposites such as Dick Armey, the 
conservative Republican majority leader of the House of 
Representatives, and the liberal American Civil Liberties Union.

Armey charged that such cameras risk putting the innocent beside the 
guilty in what he considers a police lineup, thus "eroding privacy 
and freedom."

"The trend of government using technology to track citizens is 
disturbing," he warned.

[...]



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