We’re Watching You

 

There are so many surveillance cameras in private and public spaces watching private citizens that it seems the only way to redress the imbalance is for private citizens to start recording corporate and government officials with surveillance cameras of their own. Recording business representatives on their property without their permission would be legally permissible only on publicly accessible portions. Recording public officials, however, such as police employees, would be much easier since much of their business is conducted in public and because they are, well, employees of the public.

 

The police employees themselves will often dispute the right of citizens to film them as they go about their business, and intimidate filmmakers into shutting off their cameras and even turning them over to the police. Those tactics are illegal, and cops who use them are doing so either out of ignorance of the law or, more likely, in anticipation of ignorance of the law on the part of the filmmaker. It’s interesting that the increasing surveillance in public of private citizens by corporate and government entities is justified by asserting “If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about”, but the same entities do not feel their dubious logic applies to them when the public films them going about their activities.

Inauguration U.S. Park Police Surveillance
A U.S. Park Police (USPP) employee takes video of spectators observing an incident in which the USPP had kettled a group of people at 12th and L N.W. in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017. The USPP officer has his back to the kettled group. Photo by Mobilus in Mobili.

Dashboard cameras, many of them with audio recording capabilities, are increasing in popularity mainly for insurance purposes in the recording of accidents. Some auto manufacturers have started including them as standard equipment or options, and therefore they are not entirely after market purchases by car owners anymore. What some car owners tend to overlook is the usefulness of dashboard cameras in recording interactions with police employees. Police have themselves had dashboard cameras for about 20 years, and body cameras are becoming more prevalent every year. The question is how much a citizen can rely on evidence provided by police dashboard cameras and body cameras in any interaction with police employees.

 

The police have cameras, which they can and do turn off, or the footage of which they can and do selectively edit. It’s well past time for the general public to have cameras in the same abundance. In their cars, for instance, they should have not only a dashboard camera pointed forward, but a rear dashboard camera pointed backward, because that is where a roadside stop by a police employee will end up if it goes outside, with the cop and the driver between the back of the driver’s car and the front of the squad car. All cameras should have the ability to swivel on their mounts, which in the case of the front pointing dashboard camera would allow it to capture the interaction with the police employee at the driver’s side window. All cameras should also have audio capability, though it is important to remember to advise passengers in the vehicle if this feature is on. Police employees do not have to be informed, because they are engaged in public business.

Bodycam-north-charleston-police
Police employee with bodycam in North Charleston, South Carolina, in March 2016. Photo by Ryan Johnson.

So many people have smartphones now that it may seem unnecessary to buy and install more than one dashboard camera in a vehicle. If the need arises, people think, they can always take out their smartphone and film the interaction with the police employee. There are a few things wrong with that idea. The first is that for most people, who interact with police rarely, getting stopped by a police employee can be intimidating and make them nervous, which in turn may make it difficult or impossible for them to get out their smartphone and point it directly at the police employee, making it obvious they are filming them. Secondly, for some aggressive police employees who don’t know or don’t care about the constitutional rights of the citizens who employ them, pointing a smartphone camera at them is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. It’s much easier and less conspicuous to reach up quickly and turn the dashboard camera toward the driver’s window, making sure to enable audio.

The Conversation, a 1974 film by Francis Ford Coppola, is about an audio surveillance expert, though in general the topic becomes the loss of privacy in the electronic age.

It’s a shame it has come to this, where the public feels they have to protect themselves against the very people who have sworn to serve and protect them, people who use public funds to trick out publicly funded squad cars in thousands of dollars worth of the latest technology, and themselves in quasi military gear and vehicles for the purpose of intimidating and beating down the citizens who pay their way. For the time being, it may appear out of control police employees are hurting only minorities and the poor, but that will change as they see they can get away with it, as they have. Any day now, the mistreatment will become indiscriminate, because that is the way of things like this. Psychotic bullies will beat up on almost anyone, middle class white people included, if they step out of lines that are ever more narrowly defined. They will beat up on almost anyone, that is, except the rich who are their real masters. Protect yourself with as many cameras as they have, if you can, because you can’t afford as many lawyers.
— Techly

 

Let the Recipient Beware

 

Online shopping increases as a percentage of overall retail buying year after year, with the current rate a little under ten percent. When people buy items online, they typically have them delivered to their home, and since regular hours for package delivery usually coincide with the hours most people are away at work, that opens an opportunity for package thieves, or “porch pirates”. As could be expected, boom times for online shopping and home delivery of packages has created an accompanying boom in porch piracy, which has victimized as many as 23 million people in the United States.

 

There are technological solutions available to combat the problem, though none are foolproof. One item employs a siren when a package is somehow removed from it, but on further reflection that may not be the best solution since there are a number of ways a package might get knocked off the item without the assistance of a thief, such as an inspection visit by a neighborhood pet. Having a siren going off unnecessarily like that is likely to make a homeowner unpopular in the neighborhood, and similarly to a car owner with an overly sensitive car alarm, that person’s property could be in for an egging.

Milkman 3b04462r
A Milkman makes his rounds in 1925. Did thieves pilfer milk from porches in the old days?

Cameras are a front porch security option, and to be effective the homeowner really does need more than one. Simply having a view of the thief is often not enough information for an eventual arrest; it is more helpful to have a view of the street as well in order to capture an image of the thief’s vehicle make and model, or even the license plate. In any event, it’s always a good idea to make thieves aware that they are under video surveillance, unfortunate as it may seem that innocent visitors are also being watched, in a kinder, gentler version of Big Brother. Little Brother?

 

Third party drop sites are becoming more prevalent in cities. For people in outlying suburbs or the countryside, those sites are generally not an option now because of the poor economics. As online shopping continues to grow, however, that may change to the point where it will not be unusual for people to pick up their packages at some secure location not far from their home, even in lightly populated areas. In a way, such a system would be a return to the days of picking up a package at the local general store. To be a viable option, the pickup location would have to offer more flexibility in services and hours than the local post office.

Parcel Post Truck and Carrier (3113303884)
A United States Postal Service Parcel Post carrier delivering packages in the snow around Christmas, 1950. Photo from the Smithsonian Institution.

Apartment dwellers have few options for secure delivery of packages to their door because of limited space, but since almost all apartments are in town, they have better access to third party pickup sites, or even the building of the package delivery service. A delivery option that has been in the news lately involves giving the delivery service access to the recipient’s house or apartment. That appears to open a can of worms, and it would be surprising if the nightmare of liability pitfalls were ever worked out to everyone’s satisfaction.

 

A better idea that goes halfway is for the package recipient to install a lock box outside the home, sharing the pass code with the delivery service. For apartment dwellers, a lock box would probably have to be no bigger than breadbox. Homeowners could have a box as large as practicable for them, or could even use a shed, though again for liability reasons it would be a good idea not to store anything else in the shed.

Milk home delivery truck
A milk delivery truck in Auburn, Washington in 2017. More uncommon these days than 60 or 70 years ago, home delivery of milk is nevertheless increasing, gaining in popularity along with other home deliveries. Photo by Ron Clausen.

Ultimately in order to put the skids on the current halcyon days for porch pirates, the onus for package security once delivered is going to fall to the recipient. Online shopping is only going to continue growing, and the consequent increase in home delivery will continue to present growing opportunities for thieves. Up until now, online stores and package delivery services have been accommodating toward customers who have reported stolen packages, offering replacements or refunds. That is likely to change if the trend in porch piracy continues upward unchecked, increasingly eating into firms’ bottom lines. The firms involved in online selling and the delivery of those goods have a vested interest in developing better safeguards than what is currently the widespread practice of relying on watchful neighbors. That was the old days, if it ever really was. More likely the problem now is nobody’s around during the day but the thieves, who are tempted by more and more easy pickings showing up on porches.
― Techly