February 11, 2008
Morning Roundup: Earth, Wind and Fire Edition
Good morning, Washington. We hope you had a relaxing weekend, although Saturday's weather surely provided for a better chance of fun. Yesterday's cold and windy conditions didn't stop the annual Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown, however, as you can see by the variety of colorful shots uploaded to our Flickr Group. We also noticed that canvassers for both Senators Obama and Clinton (including former president Bill Clinton, it seems) appeared undaunted along U Street and 16th Street yesterday, despite the difficulty of holding flimsy cardboard signs in 30 mph winds. It's really cold out there again today, although significantly less windy. The Capital Weather Gang says it should warm up slightly tomorrow, but rain is also expected, which should be a welcome relief to the Virginia National Guard -- they're still out fighting dozens of wildfires that broke out over night, causing serious damage and knocking out power to 24,000 customers in the Northern Virginia area. A state of emergency has since been declared by Va. Gov. Tim Kaine.
Big Brother is Officially Watching You: The Post has an A1 story this morning detailing the capabilities the MPD has as of today to watch live footage 24 hours a day on the department's crime cameras. Up until now, police were only in the habit of checking a camera's recordings after crimes were committed, but now, they'll be monitoring live footage as part of a new initiative put forth by Chief Cathy Lanier. "I'd love to have the whole city wired like London," Lanier told the Post. London has one of the world's most extensive crime camera networks, numbering at 10,000 cameras, but evidence also suggest they don't actually help to solve crime there.
Tax Office Server Dump was Benign: In an update to Friday's unbelievable story about the discovery of two computer servers belonging to the embattled D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue behind the Ruby Tuesday in Columbia Heights, it turns out they were nothing sinister: the two 10-year-old servers are listed as being sold as in an online auction of excess D.C. government equipment last month. An unidentified woman reportedly dumped the servers after deciding it would cost too much to ship them out of state to the only potential buyer. The servers would have been wiped of any data before they were sold at auction. It's not clear whether the FBI will now discontinue its review of the servers.
Briefly Noted: Banita Jacks to appear in court today ... Plans to redevelop former GW Hospital now formalized ... Southeast man gets 35 years in jacket dispute murder ... Stolen tankers found, minus their fuel ... Nearly 2,500 people apply for jobs at the new Nationals stadium.
Photo by SpecialEd98
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Given DC Government employees' penchant for looking at porn on the job, I figure it won't be long before one of these camera operators gets busted for zooming in on residents' boudoirs in the PM.
I mean, that's what I'd be doing, anyway.
Wait, 21% of crime solved via CCTVis a GOOD rate?? That's even better than being a weatherman!
And yes, totally boudoirs.
Speaking of cops behaving badly with techno-gizzmos, whatever happened to the cops that were sending one another instant messages from their squad cars that were racist and homophobic? All I remember from that debacle was the police union guy saying this was all because MPD didn't properly train its officers and MPD is to blame. Apparently MPD needs to train its officers to not reveal their inner bigotry via instant messages that are recorded.
And here's my deep thoughts of the morning:
Why is it that the people most likely to oppose the use of these cameras are upper class white folks who don't likely live in the areas where all the crime and shootings are taking place? You have a woman from Ward 8 saying she wants the cameras because she's tired of all the crime. Yet you have the ACLU-types concerned about a citizen's right to privacy and the potential for abuse.
The potential for abuse is simple to mitigate: proper training by MPD and severe punishments for intentional violations ("You see Sarge, I was zooming in on her cleavage to see if she was hiding some contraband in there").
And what right to privacy does someone have when they are on a public street or sidewalk? Even if you're in a car parked on a public street, you have no expectation of privacy. If you're selling drugs on a dark alleyway, you also have no expectation of privacy. And if I can see you lighting up a crackpipe in your apartment because you forgot to close the blinds, then you have no expectation of privacy.
Now, I have no doubt that crime could simply move around the corner or down the street from where the cameras are located, and that can be dealt with police presence and tougher enforcement. But to argue that the program shouldn't be done - and to get rid of the potential to deter crime and potentially save lives - based on some illogical right to privacy on public thoroughfares is ridiculous. That sort of academic logic may make sense in the halls of academia that are patrolled by security guards and are access-controlled, but they're not very relevant in the neighborhoods where the crime is occurring.
Is there some legal reason why crime cameras must be monitored by sworn MPD officers who could be patrolling our streets? Why not use civilian MPD employees to monitor the crime cameras? Training should take about an hour or two.
I asked this of an Assistant DA and an MPD official at a recent ANC public safety meeting and got shrugs.
I love that someone dumped the servers rather than ship them to the person who paid for them. She couldn't have at least recycled them?!
Mike: Seems like just as you don't need an MPD officer to be monitoring 911 calls (as opposed to a civilian employee), you wouldn't need an officer watching the live feeds.
Mike Licht has it right on the nose.
OldPosterKnownAsCranky, the ACLU-types are right to be concerned about privacy—there's a reason Orwell wrote his damn book, and it wasn't so high schoolers would have something to discuss in English class—but the woman from ward 8 is right to be concerned about safety, too. The answer is not for police to be hiding inside, spying on everyone. The answer is to put some damn police on the streets in ward 8.
Lanier wants a fast response? What's faster than having the cops on the streets from the onset? What's more of a deterrent to crime than having police walking the streets?
So aside from the obvious benefits of a visible police presence, what is the difference between having officers on the street and having live cameras from a privacy perspective? Cops on the street can gawk at the same people as cameras (even moreso because of mobility). I would think a physical presence would be even more onerous than a camera. And you guys do understand that they don't store video feeds forever. Usually it's a very short time period (24-28 hours) because of limited storage space, then they're overwritten unless it's going to be used as evidence or further fact-finding.
"Is there some legal reason why crime cameras must be monitored by sworn MPD officers who could be patrolling our streets?"
There may be.. if something viewed on a camera is used as 'reasonable suspicion' for a search, I think a sworn officer would be required to make that determination. But I don't see any reason why you couldn't have one officer overseeing a small group of non-officers.
The Chinatown parade was great -- on the sunny east-west parts (less wind)! More than one dragon/lion dance going on at any given time. Ballou Marching Band was on fire. Tons of Obama marchers, 3 Clinton hecklers, the Washington Yu Ying school, and Falun Gong (their hypnotic jingle is catchy). Pretty good crowd turnout. A great time.