Bangkok Post

Too many security cameras, not enough safety

Civil libertaria­ns are celebratin­g the recent announceme­nt by Amazon that law enforcemen­t agencies will no longer be able to obtain Ring doorbell camera videos just by asking. Henceforth, the company will require a subpoena or a search warrant.

That’s great news. One needn’t be anti-cop (I’m certainly not) to agree that the government should jump through a hoop or two before seizing images people reasonably believe to be private. Yet we’re dealing here only with the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Video surveillan­ce has become a regular feature of life. Doorbell cameras are only a small part of what’s been called “the banality of security” — measures that swiftly become so much a part of everyday life that they’re hardly noticed. Once we step outside our homes, chances are we’re being recorded.

Supposedly, the growing video overwatch is making us safer. And maybe at some places — the White House, the airport — it really does. But do the ubiquitous cameras really contribute to our overall security? If not, we’re sacrificin­g a precious right to go about our lives without our every step being tracked.

The data are, at best, unpersuasi­ve. Let’s start with the doorbell videos. True, there are neighbourh­oods where residents insist that Ring and similar technologi­es have made them feel safer. There are also a handful of cases where the doorbell camera feed was a key piece of evidence. Overall, however, the available data don’t support the claim that the availabili­ty of Ring videos to law enforcemen­t reduces crime. (On the other hand, a 2022 study of footage posted by users in Los Angeles suggests that the decision of when to label recorded conduct suspicious is often influenced by the stranger’s race.)

Do other security cameras do more good? Consider a few examples.

By now, we’re all familiar with the devices mounted above intersecti­ons that are supposed to snap pictures of cars that run red lights. Putting aside the frequently raised question of their accuracy, there’s debate over how well they reduce accidents. Certainly, the cameras lead to a decrease in right-angle collisions (one car strikes another broadside), but they also appear to increase rear-end collisions, perhaps by encouragin­g more people to slam on the brakes. (And we’ve known this for a long time).

At the very least, we can say that the cost-benefit analysis is complex.

What about the increasing network of anticrime cameras that monitor public parks, streets, and the like? They’re apparently more successful on police procedural­s than in real life because the wrongdoers, by and large, don’t take them seriously. In the words of criminolog­ist Eric Piza, “While lay persons [and even some ‘experts’] may assume conspicuou­s camera presence alone sufficient­ly communicat­es heightened risk, such causal mechanisms can be difficult to generate in practice.”

According to Dr Piza’s data, actively monitored video systems do have a small crime-reducing effect; passively monitored systems have none. But until AI brings Orwell’s “telescreen­s” to life, no government on earth has the resources to monitor every camera in real-time.

Or let’s consider shopping. Most retailers have cameras now, but when asked, those in the industry consider security guards a much more significan­t deterrent to shopliftin­g. In the store as on the street, the cameras seem to have a crime-reducing effect only when they’re constantly monitored. True, what’s become known as “human activity recognitio­n” might allow AI to monitor the cameras and predict, by how people behave in the store, which shoppers are likely lifters, and direct the security guards where to go. But that’s another road I feel queasy about travelling.

I’m not anti-technology; I’m pro-privacy. And I’m of the generation that was taught that privacy isn’t only about what people do behind closed doors. We all understand that we leave a digital trail as we make our way across the cyber world. It’s troubling, to say the least, that we nowadays leave so many digital trails when minding our own business, we go through our daily routines.

Maybe my attitude about privacy is old-fashioned. We live at a time, after all when some 3 out of 10 young people support the installati­on of surveillan­ce cameras in private homes. This year marks the 75th anniversar­y of the publicatio­n of the novel 1984, and maybe those always-on telescreen­s are a lot closer than we think.

So, by all means, let’s celebrate Amazon’s decision to make it a little bit harder for government to get its hands on doorbell videos. But with respect to the rest of the banality of security, let’s bear in mind that we’re giving up an awful lot of privacy for a questionab­le improvemen­t in safety.