January 22, 2006 – Information Technology’s Two-Edge Sword

January 22, 2006 – Information Technology’s Two-Edge Sword

On many intersections in San Francisco, you will find video cameras monitoring vehicle and pedestrian traffic. They have become ubiquitous. I first noticed intersection cameras while attending the Electronica Trade Faire twelve years ago. My German editor AV and his wife GV were driving me through the streets of Munich on Sunday November 5th, 1994 en route to a hiking excursion. AV kept pulling up at orange lights and I finally joked that in the U.S. an orange light was still considered green. AV explained that in Germany running an orange light would trigger cameras at the intersection and automatically result in a traffic ticket being sent to your address. The high resolution cameras would record the driver, the car, and its license plate and use the vehicle registration to issue a ticket.

I had encountered an early version of this technology in 1974 while employed at M-Systems, a government contractor based in Garland, Texas now owned by the Raytheon Company. There was a dangerous stretch of road in Arlington, Texas—where exactly it was I can’t remember any longer. Speeders along the section of highway caused an abnormally high number of accidents and the city wanted to end the carnage. My employer had successfully won the city’s contract for a system to detect a vehicle’s speed and to photography any that was speeding. The system comprised a camera standing alongside the highway and two sensor strips across the road ahead of the camera. The sensors fed data to the system’s on-board computer and the computer calculated the car’s speed. The camera took a high-resolution picture of any vehicle exceeding the limit.

The city of Arlington, publicized that cameras were installed along the road and that each citizen caught speeding would be issued one warning. Thereafter, violators would be ticketed. The pictures I saw from early tests of the system showed drivers surprised by the sudden flash of light with their license plates clearly readable. One devious trio of teenagers reportedly covered their car’s license plate, tripped the camera, and the resulting photograph showed all three with fierce faces displaying an obscene gesture. One of the three was recognized by someone in the police department and justice was meted out.

Today’s technology far exceeds the crude contrivances of 1974 and 1994: digital video replacing still images, software that not only reads the license plate and identifies the owner, but also recognizes the person’s face and matches it against a “be-on-the-lookout” list of individuals. Furthermore, the technology, matches data bases of vehicle registrations to driver’s license numbers, past traffic infractions, parole violations, outstanding warrants… In addition, these data bases can be linked to others the city, county, state, and federal governments continue to amass; not to mention the data bases of credit rating system, telephone call records, automated toll collections, credit and debit card purchases, ATM withdrawals… In effect, computers and their associated data mining software can perform extensive cross references among all these information repositories to determine a great deal about someone running a red light. The analysis would not occur for the average Joe, but for someone on a watch list for good reason or clerical error, the whole evaluation process gets set in motion—the unsuspecting violator caught in a Kafkaesque world.

In San Francisco, there have been 18 homicides and countless other incidents of violent crime in the high crime areas of Bayview-Hunters Point and several others. In October last year, Gavin Newsome, mayor of the bluest city in the blue state of California, proposed installing cameras at each of these areas to help reduce crime. This led to an outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union that the invasion of privacy was not warranted by the likely reduction in crime. The ACLU cited a British study of street cameras used since the mid-'90s showing they do little to curb crime. Casino owners in Vegas, looking over gamblers’ shoulders since television technology was available to do so, might dispute the claim. Law abiding citizens of the crime ridden areas are so fed up that they are willing to accept this intrusion into personal privacy even if the cameras provide nothing but the illusion of enhanced security. “Somebody is watching me; therefore if I’m victimized they will see who the perpetrator was.”

For most of my adult life, I’ve been an unabashed proponent of information technology. In reality, the computer has enabled handling the incredible numbers of people who must be accommodated 24/7. Imagine shopping in a grocery store without bar code scanners; with human checkers keying every item. This same gridlocked vision would apply to airline ticketing, entertainment venues, every transaction in which hundreds or thousands of people must be accommodated quickly. Without information technology, it just wouldn’t be possible. This is technology’s great virtue: performing repetitive mundane transactions at incredible speed.

As with all tools humans have invented, the weakness lies not in the instrument but with the individual wielding it. That especially holds true for information technology. In the hands of a totalitarian state, it could be used to exert enormous control over the citizenry. However, even in an enlightened democracy as ours, the power can be applied at the discretion of the sitting government as the debate over the Patriot Act attests. Ultimately in a free society, the citizenry determines how this vast power will be used. Democracy is a fragile state of being continually attacked by well meaning men.

In 1928, the Supreme Court ruled for the government in the landmark case Olmstead v. United States. Olmstead among other petitioners argued that the government violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in obtaining evidence that led to the conviction of Olmstead et al. The government victory set a precedent that would take nearly 40 years to rectify with Katz v. United States in 1967. In summary Olmstead and others were bootleggers who paid off Seattle’s police to maintain their lucrative $2 million-a-year business during the time of prohibition. The government tapped phone lines going into the defendants’ places of business and recorded their conversations. There was no dispute that Olmstead and his associates flaunted the law. The only question was did the government violate the Fourth Amendment in obtaining evidence to convict them?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote the five-to-four majority opinion, stating that the Fourth Amendment had not been violated because the defendants’ premises had not been illegally entered, nor had their mail been read. Only conversations over phone lines—not specifically cited in the original language of the amendment—going into the defendants’ private property had been recorded.

Louis D. Brandeis—Supreme Court Associate Justice 1916 to 1939—and three other associate justices—including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—dissented stating that though the government had not violated the letter of the law, it had violated the spirit of the fourth amendment. Brandeis wrote, “experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Words written at the dawn of the 20th Century remain true at the beginning of the 21st.