BRITISH ‘BIG BROTHER’ SYSTEM OF CCTV SURVEILLANCE IMPRESSES NEIGHBORS IN EUROPE AND IN U.S.
JOHN LEICESTER, AP Worldstream
Published: Jul 10, 2007
After last month’s failed terror attacks in London and Glasgow, the
7/7 London suicide bombings and another botched plot on the British
capital’s trains and buses in 2005, authorities zeroed in on suspected
terror rings with lightning speed.
The nation’s vast web of surveillance cameras is credited with playing
a crucial role. Now, to the alarm of some privacy advocates, Europe
and the United States are starting to follow Britain’s lead.
Dutch cities and towns are increasingly monitored. French President
Nicolas Sarkozy says he is contemplating a "vast plan" to install more
cameras on public transport. In New York, officials have announced
plans to outfit hundreds of Manhattan buses with cameras and to add
1,000 others and 3,000 motion sensors to subways and commuter rail
facilities.
"I am very impressed by the efficiency of the British police thanks
to this network of cameras," Sarkozy said in an interview published
this weekend in the wake of Britain’s car bomb plots.
"In my mind, there is no contradiction between respecting individual
freedoms and the installation of cameras to protect everyone’s
security," the tough-on-crime French leader told the weekly Le Journal
du Dimanche.
Sarkozy vastly exaggerated the number of cameras used in Britain,
saying: "There are 25 million cameras in the United Kingdom, 1 million
in France."
In fact, Britain has about 4 million closed-circuit security
cameras. Police say the average Briton is on as many as 300 cameras
every day.
Video was crucial in catching and prosecuting the four would-be suicide
bombers who were convicted Monday for their plot to detonate backpacks
laden with explosive charges and shrapnel on public transport on July
21, 2005.
Chilling footage showed one bomber attempting to detonate his charge
facing a mother and young child in a subway. The cameras also captured
moments of heroism, including an off-duty firefighter remonstrating
with the bomber.
In all, police had 18,000 hours of footage available, which was edited
down to seven hours used in the trial. One of the bombers fled London
disguised in a head-to-toe black veil worn by some devout Muslim
women _ a bizarre getaway also captured on camera.
The trend toward greater use of CCTV and other monitoring technologies
worries some in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
The French state-funded authority that monitors the protection
of privacy and personal data warned this week of a "society of
surveillance."
"Technological innovation brings both progress and dangers,"
Senator Alex Turk, the authority’s president, wrote in its annual
report. "People are tempted by the comfort that it offers, but are
barely aware of the risks."
In Sweden, a court last month rejected the southern city of Malmo’s
plan to place 58 surveillance cameras in the downtown area, saying
it was too intrusive.
In Madrid, CCTV cameras vividly recorded train bombings in 2004 that
killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800. But the Spanish capital
is being required to seek court approval for its project to install
31 new CCTV cameras to counter prostitution.
The wave of terror plots in Britain in recent years also indicates that
while surveillance cameras may be an excellent tool for investigators,
they do not deter bombers determined to take their lives and others’.
The technology is constantly being honed. Cameras in London photograph
the license plates of cars so drivers can be charged for bringing
them into the town center. But the day when cameras can monitor crowds
for specific people may still be far away.
"It’s difficult for a camera to recognize any face in a crowd of
people, let alone a specific one," said David Wood, an expert in
video surveillance at the University of Newcastle in northern England.
Britain was first to pioneer widespread use of closed-circuit
cameras in the 1980s to monitor the movements of Irish Republican
Army bombers. Footage proved instrumental in identifying the paths
of massive truck bombs constructed by the IRA’s bomb-making unit
in the Republic of Ireland and detonated in the 1990s in London’s
financial district.
Investigators were able to piece together the attacks from batteries of
cameras that picked up the progress of each truck bomb as it made its
way on roads in Northern Ireland, on to vehicle ferries to Scotland,
and down motorways in Britain to their targets. But the CCTV trail
went cold south of the Irish border. The Republic of Ireland has
invested virtually no money in electronic surveillance.
In Turkey, opposition to security cameras appears to have waned
since they were instrumental in the January murder of ethnic Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink.
Cameras have been installed in Istanbul and a few other cities, and
authorities have announced plans to expand them to other locations
and to vacation resorts to increase tourists security.
German officials agreed last year to expand the use of video
surveillance at train stations, airports and harbors, after footage
helped police identify two Lebanese men believed to have placed
makeshift bombs aboard trains last summer. The bombs failed to
detonate. Police in Hamburg, Germany, have installed cameras in
crime hotspots. A court ordered that one camera be modified because
it pointed into somebody’s flat.
Some 5,000 cameras film the Metro and suburban train network in Paris,
with plans to increase that number to 6,540 by the end of this year.
In the Netherlands, one in five towns now use CCTV cameras, rising to
four in five of towns of more than 100,000 inhabitants, the Interior
Ministry said. "Fewer and fewer people see cameras as an invasion of
privacy," it said in a statement on the issue last August.