They used the technology again during protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in 2000 and again during last year's presidential inauguration and became so keen on it that they incorporated it into a high-tech center. That center was ready for service on the kind of day it was conceived for: Sept. 11.

Now, with the war on terrorism shifting the frontiers of law enforcement, the D.C. police command and control facility is expanding into one of the country's most extensive computerized surveillance networks, linking hundreds of government video cameras that already monitor streets, subway stations, schools and federal facilities.

Police acknowledge that the system is in "an embryonic state" that will develop for months and years, depending on public debate over its proper limits. They have no plans to plug in private camera systems, for instance, except for that of a Georgetown business association that has asked to take part. But police are also reacting to the country's post-September mood, eager to protect Washington's unique environment using technology that has moved from a concept to a reality, nurtured by millions of dollars' worth of development by the federal government.

"The video technology is state-of-the-art, fully computerized switching equipment that is very similar to what you would find in a NASA or defense command center," said Stephen J. Gaffigan, a former Justice Department director of community policing and head of the D.C. police project.

"I don't think there's really a limit on the feeds it can take," Gaffigan said. "We're trying to build . . . the capability to tap into not only video but databases and systems across the region."

Police departments across the country have been using surveillance video for years to deter crime and guard property in specific districts. The D.C. police project, however, makes Washington the first U.S. city to be able to peer across wide stretches of the city and to create a digital record of images, according to security industry and police chiefs associations.

U.S. security experts are working with satellite-based optics that enable camera operators to see in the dark, zoom in to see the type on a printed page from hundreds of feet away and peer inside buildings.

The potential of such technology, pioneered for the military, presents a host of issues. Is the system designed to catch terrorists or street criminals? Should it be used all the time or only for defined incidents? Once in place, will authorities expand it by building a repository of images or directing it to controversial uses such as computer facial-recognition software? And who controls the cameras, the recordings and the decision-making?

As Norm Siegel, former head of the New York Civil Liberties Union, once put it, "Who's watching, why are they watching, and, perhaps most importantly, what are they doing with the videotape?"

The D.C. Council and the House Government Reform subcommittee on the District plan to hold hearings, and police and watchdog groups say they welcome a public debate to set the rules.

"The technology [used by the District] can be a very powerful tool," said Richard Chace, spokesman for the Security Industry Association, a trade group of equipment manufacturers that advises governments to have policy drive their use of technology, not vice versa. "But it has to be controlled. You have to be careful who's in charge of it and have proper procedures and protocols."

The security industry and the 15,000-member International Association of Chiefs of Police plan to hold a conference to discuss intelligence sharing, following a statement the association released on self-regulation of video monitoring in March.

Sheldon Krantz, chairman of an American Bar Association task force on technology and law enforcement, said the bar in 1999 released its first guidelines for police surveillance in two decades to fill a void in constitutional and legislative regulation of the fast-changing field and to call for public input.

"When George Orwell wrote '1984,' probably even he just did not anticipate what kind of eavesdropping and electronic technology we now have," said Krantz, a white-collar defense lawyer and former Boston University Law School research director, who added that there are very good reasons for public surveillance. Still, he said, "technology has evolved to a point where it can literally take away virtually all notions of privacy."

The rapid expansion of video surveillance -- and occasional abuses -- is neither hypothetical nor new. The Supreme Court has defined Americans' right to privacy based partly on the distinction between public and personal spheres, but camera proliferation can blur that distinction.

Cameras at automated teller machines capture 250,000 customer transactions daily for Citibank, for instance, and the security industry estimates that more than 2 million surveillance cameras are in use across the country. In Manhattan in 1998, volunteers counted 2,400 electronic eyes in public places used to catch everything from red-light runners at traffic intersections, shoplifters outside grocery and department stores, and drug sellers loitering near lampposts. Former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) credited surveillance with slashing crime in public housing by 20 to 40 percent, and cameras have been added to Washington Square and Times Square in the city.

A 2001 survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police concluded that 80 percent of 19,000 U.S. police departments have deployed closed-circuit television in their jurisdictions, and 10 percent more plan to do so soon. Police in Tacoma, Wash., cut service calls in half with seven cameras in a neighborhood plagued by drugs and gangs.

Advances in facial-recognition software present new opportunities and new concerns. The technology, controversial when first attempted on a wide scale at last year's Super Bowl in Tampa, has been tested since Sept. 11 by a handful of airports in cities including Boston; Oakland, Calif; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Dallas, and it has been studied by airports and law enforcement agencies in many other jurisdictions, including Virginia Beach.

Abroad, England has experienced the greatest benefits and costs of what sociologists dub a "culture of surveillance." More than three-fourths of British localities patrol public spaces with the help of video. The London Underground has 14,000 cameras, and the central government installed 1,300 cameras as part of its anti-terrorism "Ring of Steel" defenses around its financial district. Street crime dropped 19 percent from 1993 to 1996 there.

On the other hand, the country reeled in 1996 when more than 80,000 copies of a $15 video, "Caught in the Act," were sold. The 45-minute voyeur video depicted couples engaged in sex in office closets, violent break-ins, women in their bedrooms and even a shot up the skirt of Princess Diana.

Groups such as the ACLU support cameras to catch red-light runners and to patrol parking garages, but the pace of public surveillance technology is overrunning traditional legal notions of average citizens' rights to anonymity and free association, said ACLU Associate Director Barry Steinhardt.

Libertarians invoke Orwell's haunting line from "1984": "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."

D.C. police officials, acknowledging the sensitive nature of the debate, say they intend to move carefully. Their project has won support from several established law enforcement and technology figures. In addition to the Secret Service and FBI, the U.S. Capitol Police and U.S. Park Police are expected to reach agreement soon to permit links from their video assets to the D.C. center when events warrant, Gaffigan said.

As described by police officials, the District links computer video servers to 13 digital police cameras programmed to automatically scan such public places as the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, Union Station and major bridges. D.C. public schools, Metro and the D.C. Department of Transportation have agreed to link 500 cameras overlooking train stations, roads and school hallways in an emergency. As a crime is reported, the cooperating agency can feed views of the scene, surrounding alleys or streets to police commanders and to computer screens installed in nearly 1,000 squad cars.

"In the event a biochemical or any other event happens in a subway," Gaffigan said, "a central command officer can actually look in and see what's going on." Police could also see inside a school in case of a shooting or hostage incident, manage an evacuation, track a getaway car -- or perhaps stop a saboteur before one struck.

Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer said police will not tolerate misuse by camera operators and say that although daily operations will increasingly be run from the command center, its video displays will be activated only during incidents or special alerts, such as that issued by the Justice Department last week.

Police are drafting policies on recording and storage of images, among other issues.

"There are lines that will be drawn which no one should cross," Gainer said. "When we are in a public space, what we do and how we behave is visible to anybody, including the police. But now with technology and the way you can get a picture from a satellite or a remote camera, people probably just need to be aware of that more."

The power of surveillance images was clear after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when agents combed through neighboring buildings' videotapes in an effort to identify their "John Doe" suspects.

More sophisticated technology is on the way. The General Services Administration has dedicated $1 billion since 1995 to building security, screening and surveillance devices and personnel and is proposing spending $75 million this year on projects such as X-ray machines, reinforced glass and facial-recognition software. Engineers are hard at work to create software to join such databases as surveillance image libraries with lists of suspected individuals.

D.C. police say that facial-recognition technology is unreliable for now and that they have no intention of including video from private sources -- other than a pilot test requested by the Georgetown business district.

But industry leaders say technology is continuing to expand.

"The digital video collection, as it becomes cheaper and more accessible technology, will become the method of video surveillance," said Chace, spokesman for the Security Industry Association. "It's just a no-brainer."

The trick, said John R. Firman, director of research for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, is to do it right.

"We have to maximize our ability to blend, share and combine information," he said. "The real bottom line is there should never even be a Big Brother issue. There should be consensus among law enforcement, justice community and citizens to say, how do we keep ourselves and our country safe?"

Note: Police System of Hundreds of Video Links Raises Issues of Rights, Privacy.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, February 17, 2002; Page C01
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com

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