This is a local story for me. In the hot spot Ybor City, they have had surveillance camers installed for quite sometime now. The new twist is that the cameras are now being used to capture a persons face and then try to match it to images found in the police dbase of wanted felons, known sexual predators, mising children, etc. Thoughts?
<edit> BTW, I think it's a good idea.
</edit>
Florida City Stirs Controversy with Crowd Watching
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - The city of Tampa, criticized by civil libertarians for its scanning of fans at this year's Super Bowl, has again stirred controversy by launching a police surveillance system using street cameras and computer software to look for wanted criminals.
The face recognition technology was put into action by Tampa police last Friday, linking software to 36 video cameras that were already in use in the city's bustling entertainment district of Ybor City to watch for people who might be on a police database.
The "smart" cameras swiftly aroused attention for what critics see as an invasion of privacy, or the arrival of "Big Brother" to watch over people enjoying a night out on the town: in this case a district that can attract as many as 150,000 people on busy weekend evenings.
But Tampa Police Detective Bill Todd, in charge of putting the system in place, said on Tuesday it was no more invasive, but more efficient, than having an officer standing on a street corner and watching out for possible wanted criminals passing by.
"If the system doesn't find a match, it discards the image," Todd told Reuters, stressing that unlike the surveillance systems found in places like convenience stores, the system makes no record of images unless it matches a person the police might want to approach.
The software, linked to street cameras that have been in place in Ybor City since 1997, scans a person's face and breaks it down to compare it with images held in a police database of wanted felons, known sexual predators and runaway children, Todd said.
If it finds a match, the system alerts officers monitoring the camera, who in turn can message an officer on the street for a possible approach. Todd said that if there were no match, the images were discarded in less than a minute.
Tampa police installed the system, initially for a year's contract, after using a similar technology to scan images of thousands of fans as they went through turnstiles into Raymond James Stadium to watch the National Football League's biggest annual event, the Super Bowl, in January.
The system was attacked at the time by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is again worried about the use of the technology by the city of about 300,000 people.
"We're very concerned that this system is in violation of the Fourth Amendment ... the right of the public to be free of unreasonable search and seizure," said Jack Walters of the ACLU's Tampa chapter.
"If you ask most people if they would want a police officer to ask for their ID when they were doing nothing wrong, they would say no. This system checks your identity without your permission," he said.
"The history of criminal law in the United States is that people can be pursued by the police only if there is reasonable suspicion ... historically we have not scanned the general public looking for criminals in the crowd," Walters said.
He added that far from being like a police officer on a street corner, the system would be more analogous to 100 officers carrying hundreds of mugshots each.
Todd, responding to suggestions of invasiveness, said the city had been very open in launching the system, and added that signs alerting citizens to street cameras had been updated to note the new "smart" cameras.
'BIG BROTHER TRACKING OUR EVERY MOVE?'
The system being used by Tampa police is made by New Jersey company Visionics Corp., a leading maker of identification technologies.
The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a Washington D.C.-based group, called on Tuesday for the immediate withdrawal of the computer-enhanced cameras from Tampa streets.
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey added his criticism. "This is a full-scale surveillance system," the Texas Republican said in a statement on Monday. "Do we really want a society where one cannot walk down the street without Big Brother tracking our every move?"
But the Tampa Tribune said fears of privacy invasion could be misplaced, given people are "on camera" anyway in many places, such as tollbooths, automatic teller machines and convenience stores.
"It is all done for the purpose of crime prevention, crime solving and law enforcement -- not to create a Stalinist police state," the newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday.
<edit> BTW, I think it's a good idea.
</edit>Florida City Stirs Controversy with Crowd Watching
TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - The city of Tampa, criticized by civil libertarians for its scanning of fans at this year's Super Bowl, has again stirred controversy by launching a police surveillance system using street cameras and computer software to look for wanted criminals.
The face recognition technology was put into action by Tampa police last Friday, linking software to 36 video cameras that were already in use in the city's bustling entertainment district of Ybor City to watch for people who might be on a police database.
The "smart" cameras swiftly aroused attention for what critics see as an invasion of privacy, or the arrival of "Big Brother" to watch over people enjoying a night out on the town: in this case a district that can attract as many as 150,000 people on busy weekend evenings.
But Tampa Police Detective Bill Todd, in charge of putting the system in place, said on Tuesday it was no more invasive, but more efficient, than having an officer standing on a street corner and watching out for possible wanted criminals passing by.
"If the system doesn't find a match, it discards the image," Todd told Reuters, stressing that unlike the surveillance systems found in places like convenience stores, the system makes no record of images unless it matches a person the police might want to approach.
The software, linked to street cameras that have been in place in Ybor City since 1997, scans a person's face and breaks it down to compare it with images held in a police database of wanted felons, known sexual predators and runaway children, Todd said.
If it finds a match, the system alerts officers monitoring the camera, who in turn can message an officer on the street for a possible approach. Todd said that if there were no match, the images were discarded in less than a minute.
Tampa police installed the system, initially for a year's contract, after using a similar technology to scan images of thousands of fans as they went through turnstiles into Raymond James Stadium to watch the National Football League's biggest annual event, the Super Bowl, in January.
The system was attacked at the time by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is again worried about the use of the technology by the city of about 300,000 people.
"We're very concerned that this system is in violation of the Fourth Amendment ... the right of the public to be free of unreasonable search and seizure," said Jack Walters of the ACLU's Tampa chapter.
"If you ask most people if they would want a police officer to ask for their ID when they were doing nothing wrong, they would say no. This system checks your identity without your permission," he said.
"The history of criminal law in the United States is that people can be pursued by the police only if there is reasonable suspicion ... historically we have not scanned the general public looking for criminals in the crowd," Walters said.
He added that far from being like a police officer on a street corner, the system would be more analogous to 100 officers carrying hundreds of mugshots each.
Todd, responding to suggestions of invasiveness, said the city had been very open in launching the system, and added that signs alerting citizens to street cameras had been updated to note the new "smart" cameras.
'BIG BROTHER TRACKING OUR EVERY MOVE?'
The system being used by Tampa police is made by New Jersey company Visionics Corp., a leading maker of identification technologies.
The Law Enforcement Alliance of America, a Washington D.C.-based group, called on Tuesday for the immediate withdrawal of the computer-enhanced cameras from Tampa streets.
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey added his criticism. "This is a full-scale surveillance system," the Texas Republican said in a statement on Monday. "Do we really want a society where one cannot walk down the street without Big Brother tracking our every move?"
But the Tampa Tribune said fears of privacy invasion could be misplaced, given people are "on camera" anyway in many places, such as tollbooths, automatic teller machines and convenience stores.
"It is all done for the purpose of crime prevention, crime solving and law enforcement -- not to create a Stalinist police state," the newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday.
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