1

Public Privacy under the Camera: Pure Viewing or Video Sync, or neither?

Ting Ruan

Currently, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) or camera surveillance is commonly used
for multiple purposes, such as protection of property, controlling access, and crime
prevention. The primary goal of camera surveillance by the government is insuring public
safety. In general, this goal is achieved by monitoring and supervision of the general public,
which usually result in crime deterrence. This paper will primarily focus on the
governments use of surveillance camera in public areas and the privacy issues associated
with these uses. This paper is comprised of five parts. Part One discusses the use of
surveillance cameras in various countries. Part Two outlines the benefits of video
surveillance systems. The concept of information privacy and how cameras in public spaces
affect this concept is analyzed in Part Three. Part Four discusses the types of video
surveillance system. Part Five provides some suggested best practices for mitigating
privacy concerns and Part Six sets forth my conclusion.
I. The Use of Surveillance Cameras by Government has Expanded in Many
Nations
Britain was the worlds first to use imaging technology on a wide-scale basis to monitor
the surrounding environment in the country. As early as 1970, the British began the
installation of CCTV in public places [1]. By the early 1990s, with the general support of
the public, nearly half of the metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas were installed with
video monitors by the government. The Bishopsgate bombing in 1993 was a turning point
for London. This devastating bombing occurred in the heart of the City of London, killing
2

one person and injuring 44 [3]. The bombing scene was captured by surveillance cameras.
Using the recorded footage, it only took the police three days to release a blurred image of the
suspects [10]. The government implemented what is called a ring of steel around the city
directly after the explosion. Later, in 1999, The Home Office Police Research Group
announced the execution of The Crime Reduction Program, which cost two hundred and fifty
million pounds to install monitors in the country, and was expected to reach the goal of
reducing crime by 30% by the year of 2004. Nevertheless, this goal was not accomplished.
According to a 2009 meta-analysis by researchers from Northeastern University and the
University of Cambridge, camera systems in public settings cut crime by about seven percent
[4]. Although the effectiveness of camera systems was not as satisfying as expected, CCTV
cameras spread dramatically in the following decades. The British Security Industry
Authority (BSIA) reported that there are now up to 5.9 million CCTV cameras in the country,
which is approximately one camera for every 11 people in the nation [5].
Several cities in the United States adopted the British practice of widespread use of
surveillance cameras. Even though many New York City residents and tourists complain
about the installation of surveillance cameras, thousands of monitoring cameras have been
installed in urban parks, public streets, schools, and other public places. In Baltimore, more
than six hundred surveillance cameras have been installed to cover most intersections, streets,
and ports in urban areas [6]. In Washington DC, police have been using surveillance
cameras to monitor and patrol streets, parks and suburbs since 2006, and plan to expand the
monitoring system to other public places in the near future [7]. The city of Chicago has also
joined the list of cities that installed monitoring cameras in public places, and other cities in
3

the United States are gradually doing the same.
In Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency asked the Urban Crime Prevention
Research Center to perform research on the efficiency of private residential security camera
systems, and provide a technical and legal report on how to develop a surveillance camera
system in public areas in Tokyo. Based on the report, Tokyo installed a surveillance camera
system on public streets which the goal of preventing crime. The monitoring system has
now been expanded to other regions with higher criminal rates. According to a recent report,
Japan has incorporated facial recognition technology in their surveillance systems, which can
scan and index around 36 million faces in just around one second [8].
In China, the use of video surveillance systems in public areas is very recent. However,
due to the rapid development of security industry and the societys growing demand for
security, CCTV has been widely used in public areas. By 2013, there were more than
800,000 cameras installed in Beijing [9]. For example, there are about ten surveillance
cameras monitoring a person walking through a fifty meter long subway tunnel and one
camera on the roadside for every ten meters.
Due to the convenient and comprehensive advantages, camera surveillance has been
expanded from the public domain to certain previously private areas. This has sparked
privacy concerns by the public. For example, students complain about the installation of
cameras in school dormitories, patients complain about surveillance cameras installed in
hospitals, and criticisms against video surveillance cameras in bathroom, and many more.

II. The Benefits of Video Surveillance Systems
4

After the success achieved by monitoring cameras at road junctions, video surveillance
technology has been rapidly deployed in other city public spaces, such as roadsides, public
facilities, subway and bus stations, consumer sites, residential communities and so on. As
described previously, this phenomenon exists in many advanced countries. Why are video
surveillance systems so pervasive? One answer that explains this rapid expansion of
government use of surveillance cameras is that the systems are highly effective.
A video cameras electronic eye strengthens surveillance in areas of insufficient
visibility by police. The monitors can achieve the goal of crime deterrence, making the
allocation of limited police resources sufficient to meet the demand in a certain area.
Moreover, as a crime is taking place, the monitoring camera can perform an electronic patrol
function to find hazards in a timely manner, and then inform the police so the hazard may be
removed. This function can not only initiate effective rescue of a victim, but also improves
the chance to arrest the criminal on the spot. After a crime has occurred, the monitoring
camera can be considered as an objective and reliable witness. Due to the complete
synchronized and continuous record function, the data recorded may provide sufficient
evidence to determine the identity of the criminal. The data recorded by the surveillance
camera often has strong credibility, which can reduce subjective eye-witness views and
provide an objective evidence for the process of prosecution.
According to a review published in August 2009, one crime per year is solved in London
for every 1,000 cameras. While surveillance cameras help law enforcement with
investigations, it also helps deter crimes [10]. Video surveillance has played a huge role in
crime deterrence. However, as noted by some officials, blanketing a city in surveillance
5

cameras can create as many problems as it solves [11]. The primary concern is whether a
London type ring of steel violates the privacy of citizens.

III. The Right to Privacy in Public Spaces
A. A Brief Development of The Right to Privacy
The right to privacy is a legal concept recognized under both the law of torts and U.S.
constitutional law. As early as 1890, Samuel D. Warren, a Boston attorney, and Louis D.
Brandeis, who went on to become Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, first
advocated the concept of privacy. Two of them wrote an article entitled The Right to
Privacy, which was published in the Harvard Law Review issued in December 1890 [12].
The article first proposed the protection of personal privacy, and their views of personal
privacy inviolability. Many arguments had significant impact on the privacy invasion case
studies later in time.
In The Right to Privacy, Warren and Brandeis characterized privacy as the right to life
and the right to be left alone. The concept of the right to be left alone was derived from
Thomas Cooley, who was a Justice and a Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court
between 1864 and 1885 [13]. Warren and Brandeis claimed the general object is to protect
the privacy of private life, and to whatever degree and in whatever connection a mans life
has ceased to be private, before the publication under consideration has been made, to that
extent the protection is to be withdrawn [12]. They believed that privacy is essentially the
right to control the disclosure of personal information. This right initially protects
information such as personal identifiable information, personal writings, and all other
6

personal productions to prevent misuse of personal information by others [12].
As technology advanced, digital information became a major part of the personal
information defined earlier, and information privacy is attracting more and more attention.
From the courts and the public, information privacy includes the following concepts: An
individual should have autonomous control of their personal information as to when it may be
disclosed; to whom and to what extent it may be disclosed; and in what manner. Therefore,
widespread surveillance cameras in public places threaten citizens information privacy.

B. Reasonable Expectation of Privacy in Public Areas and Characteristics of Public
Spaces
In 1967, the United States Supreme Court, in Katz vs. United States, formulated the now
well-known reasonable expectation of privacy test. There are two circumstances that must
exist to satisfy the Katz test. First, an individual must exhibit a subjective expectation of
privacy, and second, this privacy expectation must be deemed reasonable by society [13].
One common argument that supports the use of surveillance cameras is that when people
voluntarily enter a public place they give up their privacy rights that they originally had when
they were in a private place. Since you voluntarily stepped into the publics attention your
choice has given others the right to collect your personal information. Consequently, you
should bear the privacy risks associated with this collection of information. This view
suggests that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Therefore,
installation of the surveillance cameras will not violate peoples privacy, because a camera
installed in a particular place is equivalent to a passerby on the street; nothing more than an
7

additional pair of eyes. In other words, citizens do not have standing to complain against
monitoring and collection of personal data, because all data collection was done in a public
area.
I disagree with the argument described above. As early as 1900s, Thomas Cooley
claimed the concept of privacy is the the right to be left alone [14]. As surveillance
technologies advances, I believe this concept of the right to be left alone should also be
applied to public places. While individuals are in public spaces, they may not have as full a
privacy expectation as they would in a private space, such as a home. However, people can
still have a certain level of reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. Public places
provide a basis for informal social, civic, and public lives [15]. People are able to see and
hear non-specific people in a public space at any time. It is true that an individual needs to
bear the possibility of being seen and heard by others when he decided to enter public places.
Though, it is not true that this action of voluntarily entering public places means he agrees to
expose himself completely in full view at all times.
First, not all acts in public places are completely visible by others. Some behaviors
occur in enclosed or semi-enclosed spaces. The structural characteristics of public spaces
such as walls, curtains, buildings, and distance factors establish physical barriers which allow
individuals to enjoy the opportunity to be free from public eyes or being recorded by others.
As a result, people can still be comfortable in social life in public places, and they can move
around without having to expose themselves completely and be tracked by a digital record.
These features help to develop a free and democratic society, which allow individuals to
seclude from external factors.
8

In addition to the physical barriers exist in public places; there are also non-physical
barriers which can moderately define boundaries between individuals in public area. For
example, one would expect a larger safe zone while interacting with a stranger than with a
friend or family. These rules affect the way we interact with others under different
situations.
Due to both the physical and non-physical barriers, individuals can develop enough
confidence to retain interests such as remaining unnoticed, undisturbed, and not recorded
even while present in a public space. These interests allow citizens to behave freely and
enjoy public life. Individuals should be able to maintain anonymity in the crowd if desired,
and they should have the right not to be noticed by the government at all times; unless the
individual themselves do or say something that invites the governments attention such as
committing a crime or becoming a public figure.
Given the characteristics of openness in public places, an actor should foresee the risk of
been seeing and heard by others. However, if a persons behavior clearly exhibits the desire
to protect his privacy, then his privacy rights should be protected even where the behavior
occurs in public places. For example, private conversations in public spaces are very
common, and one would have reasonable expectation of privacy. Imagine two people
sitting on a bench in a public park, whispering to each other and there is no other person near.
They would have reasonable expectation of privacy in the content of their conversation
because their actions have clearly expressed that they intentionally want to protect this
private conversation. Currently, surveillance cameras only record video; thus recording only
the images of this conversation may not be invasive to ones privacy. However, surveillance
9

cameras in public spaces can be incorporated with facial recognition and voice recording
technologies, which mean everything we say and do in public spaces could be documented.
In this case, surveillance cameras will be much more invasive to citizens privacy rights.

C. Surveillance Cameras in Public Places Implicates Citizens Information Privacy
Surveillance cameras are much more than an additional eye in a public area. Video
cameras create a potentially permanent record, whereas the passerbys observations are
fleeting. Also, surveillance cameras can transmit videos, images, records of external
representations and personal features of pedestrians, creating a record that can be easily
accessed, stored, and copied. For high-resolution screen monitors, the cameras can collect
detailed information such as skin pores and even fingerprints using the telescopic lens zoom
function. This information certainly falls into the scope of personally identifiable
information. According to the information privacy right, an individual owns this
information and should have the right to control the disclosure and use of this kind of
personal information.
Police using monitoring cameras may also disturb other citizen interests in public spaces,
such as the interest to be anonymous and the interest to be unnoticed or secluded.
Furthermore, there are concerns that surveillance cameras installed in public places may
greatly affect the way people behave in public areas, because it may indeed change the
characteristics of the original public spaces. To reduce these concerns, some proponents of
video surveillance suggest that police only use the pure viewing form of monitoring instead
of what is referred to as video sync monitoring.
10


IV. The Different Types of Video Surveillance
The Pure Viewing Monitoring System
The pure viewing operation mode means that surveillance cameras monitor without
data collection. Since the video is not saved or analyzed, then much of the controversy over
privacy violations can be resolved, because what the monitoring camera sees is the same as
what others in the same public space can see. Nevertheless, I believe that the pure viewing
form of monitoring still maybe invasive of ones privacy for two principal reasons.
First, the barriers in public spaces allow individuals to express different self-images, as
well as to share different quality and quantity of information in order to establish social
networks. With the electronic eyes everywhere in public spaces, people cannot avoid
been watched, or know whose eyes are watching them and how many eyes are there behind
the cameras. This fact certainly deprives citizens the right to control the disclosure of
information about themselves.
Second, although the monitoring video is not recorded and information is not collected,
this government monitoring still constitute an infringement of fundamental rights. The
reason is that comprehensive monitoring can certainly impose a strong psychological stress
on citizens which produces the threat effect. When individuals know they are being
constantly watched, they will instinctively imitate the watchers point of view, and then
incorporate it into their behavior. For example, if drug abusers are aware of the monitoring,
they will purposely hide the characteristics of drug usage in public areas. This effect on
behaviors freedom will severely affect premises such as assembly, procession, religion,
11

migration, and performance in public spaces. In the long term, this constant stress may
affect a citizens internal and external behavioral freedom, and be detrimental to informal
civic life.
Surveillance cameras make social contexts ambiguous by blurring the spatial and
temporal bounds of these contexts. This transformation of public places may individualize
people, causing them to protect their privacy in ways that undermine the potential for social
interaction and thereby the value of these places [15]. Therefore, even if police only use the
monitoring cameras to simply watch and deter crime, it will also generate a psychological
constraint in law-abiding citizens, forcing them to only behave in ways the watchers believe
is legitimate, reasonable, and sensible. This in fact, will seriously reduce the meaning of
freedom.

The Video Sync Monitoring System
Another monitoring mode is video sync monitoring, where the surveillance system
synchronizes and records what the camera sees. Compared to the pure viewing mode,
video sync monitoring creates a record of personal information that can be stored and used
for future purposes. The data recorded can help to trace the crime and provide significant
help for crime investigation and prosecution. However, this monitoring mode also
potentially violates citizens fundamental rights to a further extent than the pure viewing
mode of monitoring.
As mentioned in previous sections, personal observations degrade over time, because
information stored in ones memory becomes increasingly blurred and less accurate over time.
12

Compared to personal observations, mechanically recording information via video cameras
provides a real-time, complete, continuous, and permanent record. Therefore, surveillance
cameras turn an original short-term memory into a permanent record. If the police monitor
and record ones behavior, they can establish a personal profile for every citizen, and can
extract this data anytime in the future. For instance, an individual goes to the drug rehab
center to treat his drug additions during his college years. The surveillance cameras on
public streets capture his visits to the drug rehab center, and this record is permanently stored.
This permanent record may come back to haunt him years later. In this case, the CCTV
system may deter individuals from seeking certain treatments. Also, individuals would have
to be even more careful about what they say and what they do in all public areas, because one
careless action may become a permanent psychological shadow within the next few seconds.
Therefore, both the pure viewing and video sync monitoring directly constitutes
infringement of citizens fundamental rights. Even more, it also in-directly violates the
information privacy act and behavioral freedom. Regardless of the monitoring mode used,
to minimize the privacy issues, several best practices need to be built into the surveillance
system.

V. Suggested Best Practices for Mitigating Privacy Concerns
A. Big Brother Monitoring Should be Avoided
Surveillance cameras are often referred to as electronic police. Police uses these
electronic eyes in order to improve the effectiveness of public administration without
requiring a large police force. With terrorist activities becoming more rampant, arranging
13

an appropriate police force and a reasonable amount of electronic police is necessary to
ensure public safety and citizens are the primary beneficiaries. However, mass surveillance
of the general public should be avoided. In addition, the surveillance cameras equipped in
public places should only be used to monitor the space, rather than a specific person. When
an individual enters the monitoring space, the video surveillance cameras need to be used to
generate an objective record of the space, not the individual. To reduce the risk of invasion
of personal privacy, regulations need to be established to prevent targeting an individual with
one or more surveillance cameras.
Also, guidelines are needed to regulate the type of the surveillance cameras used. I
believe the video sync monitoring system should only be used in areas with high criminal
rates or high crowd flow. In such areas, video footage recorded by the cameras can be a
valuable resource for criminal investigation or population control. In areas with low
criminal rates or low crowd flow, the pure viewing monitoring method should be
implemented.
Regulations are also needed to limit the incorporation of other technologies in
surveillance cameras. For instance, audio recording technology should be prohibited in all
surveillance cameras. Citizens need some privacy when they are having a private
conversation in public spaces. Incorporating cameras with audio recording technologies
may be a severe detriment to a citizens free civic life. On the other hand, the implementation
of facial recognition technologies in a CCTV system should be allowed because it
significantly increases the efficiency of data analysis, especially under emergency
circumstances. Facial recognition technologies can automatically mine surveillance footage
14

for information, such as a specific persons face, and create a giant searchable database,
making security-camera images more valuable to law enforcement [12].
B. The Collection, Use, and Storage of the Recorded Data Should be Regulated
The monitoring cameras cannot distinguish between offenders and non-offenders;
therefore, the majority of people who are the target of data collection and long-term
surveillance are innocent citizens. In addition to the violation of their information privacy,
citizens behavioral freedom is also affected. While storing the collected data, there is
always a risk of data breaching or unauthorized access, which can lead to harmful
consequences, such as breach of personal information, reputation harm, financial lose, and
sometimes mental harm. Therefore, regulations need to be established to prevent misuse of
or unauthorized access to the collected data. The collection of the data should be only done
by the police, and the use of the data recorded by the surveillance cameras should be only
accessible by the law enforcement for legitimate reasons. The recorded data should not be
accessible by third parties such as insurance companies, financial firms, or any other private
parties. The recorded data should be deleted after a certain period of time from the date of
collection (i.e. 2 years). This will reduce the risk of data breach, because the data is only
stored for a limited period of time. While storing the records, the data needs to be encrypted
to prevent unauthorized use and data breach.
C. Citizens Should be Informed about the Monitoring Facilities in Public Places
The resources of police are limited; thus, to maximize the efficiency of surveillance
cameras, trust and support from the general public is essential. It is important for people to
understand that the purpose of using surveillance cameras by police is to deter crime, ensure
15

public safety, and help provide more effective services not track their movements or
otherwise spy on them. Furthermore, there should be signs to inform people that a facility
or space is equipped with monitoring cameras. This will express governments respect for
citizens privacy rights.
D. Surveillance Cameras Should be Prohibited in Certain Private Places in Common
Areas
Although law enforcement are allowed to install monitoring cameras in certain public
places, a citizens privacy in public settings should not be completely deprived. In order to
protect peoples legitimate privacy in public places, the installation of surveillance cameras
must be prohibited in places such as public dressing rooms, shower rooms, nursing rooms,
toilets, doctors examination rooms, and other public places that are designated for intimate
behaviors. To protect the will of people and to ensure fair competition, surveillance cameras
should also be prohibited in certain areas that engage political, cultural, and sports activities.
Such places may include voting areas, cultural performance makeup areas, rest areas for
sporting athletes and staffs, etc.
Also, since the use of surveillance cameras is to ensure the safety of the public, cameras
should be prohibited if they create new security threats. For example, the primary goal of
installing surveillance cameras near a bank ATM machine is to protect both the customers and
the ATM machines. However, the monitoring cameras must not be able to view the
password pad. Thus, in order to ensure the safety of customers financial passwords,
cameras with rotating lens on ATM machines must be banned.
E. Annual Reports on Usage Should be Required
16

Law enforcement that uses this technology should be required to make annual reports on
usage. Since citizens are willing to make a concession on their privacy in public spaces, the
government should be responsible to inform the public whether surveillance cameras are
really worth the sacrifice of citizens privacy. To do this, the government can create a
transparent system by releasing annual reports on how the surveillance cameras were used in
the past year, and how effective they were in crime prevention and prosecution. The report
should include contents such as criminal rate analysis, how many persons arrested because of
video surveillance, the cost, and the new implementations to current surveillance cameras.
The report also needs to address publics primary concerns such as do cameras in public
spaces deter crime? If yes, how many persons are arrested because of video surveillance?
The law enforcement also needs to report to the public about any new implementations to the
surveillance cameras, such as the facial recognition technology or the voice recording
technology.
VI. Conclusion
Overall, the use of video surveillance in public areas has a double-sided nature. Intense
surveillance of citizens in public spaces violates the right to privacy described in the Fourth
Amendment, but video surveillance also has some important positive effects that should not
be fully excluded. Before further implementation of a complex CCTV surveillance network
in the U.S., legislation should be enacted to regulate video surveillance in a way to minimize
the violation of citizens privacy rights. Any legislation should incorporate the privacy best
practices regarding the use of surveillance cameras in public spaces.

17

Reference:

[1] P. Cartmell, The history of the surveillance camera, eHow, [Online]. Available:
http://www.ehow.co.uk/about_7522627_history-surveillance-camera.html

[2] A history of video surveillance in England, [Online]. Available:
http://www.notbored.org/england-history.html

[3] 1993: IRA bomb devastates City of London, BBC, [Online]. Available:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/24/newsid_2523000/2523345.stm

[4] D. Lepeska, Are crime cameras really worth the money? 2011. [Online]. Available:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2011/12/crime-cameras-worth-the-money/693/

[5] D. Barrett, One surveillance camera for every 11 people in Britain, says CCTV survey,
The Telegraph, July 2013, [Online]. Available:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-peo
ple-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html

[6] Baltimore City Police Department, Locations of Baltmore Police Surveillance
Cameras/CCTV cameras, Jan. 2013, [Online]. Available:
http://chamspage.blogspot.com/2012/04/locations-of-baltimore-police.html

[7] A. Klein, Police go live monitoring D.C. crime cameras, Washington Post, Feb. 2008,
[Online]. Available:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/10/AR2008021002726.html

[8] E. Limer, Japanese surveillance system can scan 36 million faces in just a second,
[Online]. Available: http://www.geekosystem.com/system-scans-36-mil-faces/

[9] M. Riggs, Intense smog is making Beijings massive surveillance network practically
useless, Nov. 2013, [Online]. Available:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2013/11/intense-smog-making-beijings-massive-
surveillance-network-practically-useless/7481/

[10] K.M. Heussner, Big Brother: Are Surveillance Cameras Worth it? ABC News, May
2010, [Online]. Available:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/big-brother-surveillance-cameras-worth/story?id=105731
10

[11] H. Kelly, After Boston: The pros and cons of surveillance cameras, April, 2013,
[Online]. Available:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/tech/innovation/security-cameras-boston-bombings/

18

[12] Warren, and Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, December 1890, Harvard Law Review,
Vol. IV.

[13] R. Dryer, Information Privacy Law 2-Reasonable expectation of privacy test, [Online].
Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cCbywZcE6k&index=4&list=PLpbtRdN7xWUewU654
n2GIaO0PHtXkOjlc

[14]Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society, Thomas Cooley, [Online.] Available:
http://www.micourthistory.org/justices/thomas-cooley/

[15] J.W. Patton, Protection privacy in public? Surveillance technologies and the value of
public places, Ethics and Information Technology, 2: 181-187, 2000.