Opinion

Privacy stopped at traffic lights

About this time last year, the Madison Police Department introduced a proposal to install mobile cameras to nab dangerous criminals on the city streets. That proposal passed without real objection — spare this columnist — because lawmakers assured everyone their use would be limited accordingly.

But it seems in the year that has passed, cameras have grown in favor so much so that Madison specifically, and Wisconsin generally, have decided they’re going to find new ways to intrude upon your personal life even more.

Just months after MPD received funding for their mobile cameras, Madison’s city buses decided to install even more cameras to battle the apparent epidemic of crime on Madison Metro.

And as if that wasn’t enough, state lawmakers are now considering allowing local municipalities to install cameras at intersections to combat red light runners. The cameras will take pictures of these lead-footed violators and send the picture to the car’s owner along with a pricey ticket.

Now I’m sure some will read this and think that my privacy objection to this program is just pure alarmism. Therein lies the problem for civil libertarians. Programs like this one get to a fundamental interest: Who doesn’t want safer streets, busses and intersections?

The truth is we all do. The question we should be asking instead is — do these programs actually do what they intend to, and are they worth it in light of the freedom lost?

In a political dialogue, safety really has to have a two-part definition: the obvious, protecting us from physical harm, and the not-so-obvious, protecting us from ourselves. In this framework, using cameras as liberally as we aspire to fails both of these requirements of safety.

These programs are hailed as crime prevention, but if anything, they just serve prosecutors looking for plea bargains and criminals who want to avoid being caught.

In order to prevent crime, criminals have to know there is a camera on a bus or intersection to deter any sort of behavior. In the event they don’t know and still commit the crime, the only thing that is going to be safer is the district attorney’s political career as he boosts his already high conviction rate.

For red light runners, this foreknowledge poses a legitimate issue as to the effectiveness of cameras as prevention: not all who venture forward illegally into stoplight-controlled intersections possess the intent to do so.

In the event that a criminal actually knows there is a camera on the bus, but still wants to commit a crime, he or she is not without option; all that person has to do is avoid the videotaped area. If the insides of busses are being caught on camera, all a criminal has to do is wait until the person gets off the bus to take care of their business.

These are hardly the kind of reassurances sought. However, despite the fact that cameras fail to actually make us physically safer, they still do not protect us from ourselves.

Equally important to our personal safety is our political safety and freedom. Privacy may be a touchy subject in constitutional dialogues, but the basic principle of being left alone remains a strong one in American culture, even if it isn’t directly explicated in the Constitution.

The notion of police and cameras on every corner watching every step you take is one that does not run well with democracies as we know them. While it is certainly legal, it doesn’t make sense to have a state that honors and values privacy but would police itself so heavily.

But that’s precisely what these programs aim to do. For those who claim that installing a camera at an intersection to stop red light runners is just that and nothing more, one need look no further than their explosive growth as a crime-fighting tool and surveillance mechanism.

Although we live in an age when you can Google anyone’s personal history, GPS track your friends on your cell phone and even install speedometer monitors in your child’s car, the case for privacy is not yet a lost cause.

American culture and law still holds privacy in high regard and for those who would hold a fire sale of that liberty for an unattainable and unsustainable definition of safety, there is still opposition. But with every step they take to erode our definitions of privacy and safety, the more that becomes a part of our culture.

Which is precisely why it is so important to start making a big deal out of little things like cameras now, until it becomes too late.

Robert Phansalkar (rphanslkar@badgerherald.com) is a first-year law student.

1 Comment | Leave a comment

Anonymous | January 23, 2008 3:37 PM | Reply

Good article
Pretty soon every child born will have a chip that makes them identifiable anywhere they are... is disgusting.
Technology is amazing at the same time being a privacy nightmare

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