Surveillance cameras becoming part of everyday life

Gazette Extra | June 4 2006

7:45 a.m. You're late for work, but you stop at the corner convenience store for an essential cup of coffee. As you rub your eyes, you miss that the cup is overflowing. The spill isn't missed, however, by several security cameras, which silently record images of you shaking the scalding liquid from your fingers.

You curse, pay and step outside, where more cameras capture your license plate number as you drive away.

Smile, big brother is watching.

Security cameras are everywhere, recording your steps throughout the day.

Business owners say the cameras are an economical way to improve their security, but the constant recording raises concerns among privacy experts.

From bars and restaurants to gas stations and child-care centers, an increasing number of private businesses are monitoring consumer's actions, said Brad Smith, owner of 1st Choice Lock & Security, which serves Rock County.

He compares the latest digital security cameras to the trend of alarm systems 10 to 15 years ago.

"For small to large companies, surveillance cameras are an inexpensive way to secure a facility because there's no monitoring charges, where an alarm system has a monitoring charge month-to-month," he said.

Electronic security is a $30 billion-a-year industry, according to the Security Industry Association. One security camera runs anywhere from $85 to $1,500, depending on the quality and features, Smith said.

Closed circuit television, also known as CCTV, is a private video system used to visually monitor a location. Rapidly improving technology has tossed out stacks of VCR tapes for digital images downloaded to a server.

Digital images from surveillance cameras are helping to solve crimes, such as the recent robbery of AnchorBank in Janesville, said Janesville Police detective Craig Fritz, who helps patrol officers convert tapes to photos to help identify people.

"Probably a day doesn't go by that I don't look at at least one video," he said.

The trend raises privacy issues, however, which boils down to the reason for recording, said Robert Dreschel, a UW-Madison journalism professor specializing in media law.

"Do people know they're being watched? Obviously we all have implicitly less of a right to privacy when we are in public-the more public the place the less privacy we should assume," he said. "That's not to say anything and everything goes in terms of surveillance."

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8 a.m. You arrive at the hotel where you work, and images of your car appear on a camera watching the parking lot. Throughout the day, your actions and interactions with guests are recorded by cameras reviewing the front desk and lobby.

Baymont Inn & Suites in Janesville just upgraded to a new digital system, which produces great clarity, manager Larry Entress said.

"It's just a good security feature for our guests to make them feel safe," he said.

All cameras are in plain view so guests know they are being recorded, he said. Cameras watch over lobbies, the pool area and doors.

"We know people see them because we see people wave at them," he said.

What worries Dreschel is not surveillance that people are aware of, but secret surveillance.

"If you walk into a store, quite frankly you're a fool if you don't assume you're being watched," he said.

A person walking into a building with video surveillance has no right to demand to see the recording, Janesville lawyer Michael Fitzpatrick said.

If parents wanted to know where their child was during a day, for example, they would have no legal mechanism to request recordings from a business, he said. The business could willingly comply, but a court subpoena would be required to force a business to turn over recordings, he said.

As public surveillance increases, the biggest concern is what will be done with the recordings, Dreschel said.

"I think the key isn't going to be to say, 'Surveillance-yes or no?' But basically for what reason and why?" Dreschel said.

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Noon At the mall, you grab lunch in the food court before running errands. Images of you browsing and paying are captured on several cameras throughout the retail stores.

A "fair amount" of stores in the Janesville Mall use security cameras, general manager Jodi Coyer said.

"It's definitely a trend in retail stores in general," she said. "I don't know it actually stops shoplifting, but it helps those retailers prosecute thefts when it happens."

Fritz, the police detective, said businesses tend to rely too much on video cameras and surveillance equipment.

"We get a lot of images of people that we can't identify," he said. "Oftentimes merchants pass on the video and the fraudulent transaction and expect us to make a quick match."

Aside from obvious places like banks, Fritz said more 24-hour businesses such as Laundromats are using cameras.

Cameras are used most often to prevent or solve crimes such as credit card fraud, thefts, bad checks and counterfeit transactions, he said.

For the first time in Milwaukee, privately funded video security cameras will attempt to reduce crime on city streets. Last week, Milwaukee Police Chief Nannette Hegerty announced the system will be installed along 11 blocks of a major southside street.

Like anything else, though, there will be abuses to public surveillance systems as they increase, Dreschel said. It's one thing if the government is focused exclusively and carefully on crime prevention, but it's a problem if the use of that information wanders in other areas, he said.

"If another agency wants to know who that was participating in that demonstration … well that's a whole other matter," he said.

Fritz doesn't see anything like Milwaukee's new system happening in Janesville.

"Maybe if we had a problem area, but public surveillance is not a future issue at this point," he said. "It's never been discussed."

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3:30 p.m. You wheel into the circle drive to pick up your daughter from school. Cameras capture your daughter leaving the building and you waiting in your car.

At Parker High School, cameras watch over the student parking lot and front circle drive to solve disputes over who threw garbage or who dented whose car, assistant principal Dan Keyser said.

The digital recording is routed to a police liaison officer, and an image can only be recalled for a certain period because recordings are recycled every "so many days," he said.

Because student parking permits cost $50, some sort of security is the right thing to do, Keyser said.

The only complaints Keyser has received are requests for more cameras in the lot, he said. Other cameras also monitor hallways that include bathrooms, the commons area and entrances to monitor who goes where, he said.

A similar system is used at Craig High School.

The increase is a reaction to the "liability climate" and the need to have concrete proof if there is a problem, said David Mumma, director of the Janesville Transit System.

Soon 17 of the city's fleet of 20 buses will be camera equipped, he said. Cameras also watch over the system's transfer center.

Videos are only watched when a complaint arises and periodically to ensure the system is working, he said.

A majority of transit systems in Wisconsin have some form of surveillance, he said.

School district transportation manager Steve Eichman recently said he plans to look into the possibility this summer of adding cameras to school buses, but he hasn't decided if he'll make that request.

A 2005 survey by the state Department of Public Instruction found 57 percent of school districts have video cameras on their buses. The survey was limited because only about half of the state's 426 districts responded. Most of those who did respond use private companies to bus their students, as does Janesville.

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3:45 p.m. You and your daughter stop at the bank before heading home. Driving up to the bank, cameras record your vehicle while another peers at you while you complete your ATM transaction.

When a woman stole more than $2,000 robbing AnchorBank, 100 W. Racine St., last month, clear, color images of her face released to the media helped identify her, bank officials and police say.

Since the incident, other financial institutions have contacted police about how to get a similar camera system because it worked so well, Fritz said.

Video surveillance plays a vital role in apprehending criminals because it's immediately accessible, said Dave Oldenburg, security coordinator at AnchorBank.

When the robbery occurred, Oldenburg could look back at the images on his computer screen from his Madison office and pull up still images of the robber. Within minutes, he was able to attach the picture in an e-mail to police, he said.

In the past, the bank used tapes that were recorded over 10 times, leaving poor imagery, Oldenburg said. Like most businesses, images are saved to a hard drive or CD and saved for a limited period of time.

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6:30 p.m. You and your family spend the rainy evening at a family fitness center. While your spouse and son run off to the basketball courts and you and your daughter venture to an aerobics class, cameras throughout the building capture who accesses each room.

The YMCA in Janesville uses 16 security cameras to monitor who is where and to record incidents, such as fights on a basketball court, said Tom DenBoer, chief executive officer of YMCA of Northern Rock County.

There are no hidden cameras and none in locker rooms, he said.

"(We're) here to provide, to the best of our ability, a safe, quality, friendly atmosphere," he said. "As a membership-based organization, we do our best to keep members in and those who are non-members out-that's really the intent."

Smith said a trend that will likely increase is video verification for alarms. When an alarm goes off in a big city such as Chicago or Milwaukee, police don't respond unless an owner manually goes to the business and verifies it is not false, he said.

With video verification, a monitoring company would have a link to a business' video surveillance and could verify a break-in immediately, he said.

The security camera business is exploding to the point where it will be common to find them everywhere, he said.

"Wherever you're going to have masses of people, it's inevitable," Smith said. "Cameras are here to stay."

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