Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations, according to documents obtained by a news outlet...Do we really want or need to live in this type of surveillance society? Do our friends on the left remember when they used to believe in civil liberties, and when they believed in individual privacy rights?
The use of the equipment raises serious questions about eavesdropping without a warrant, particularly since recordings of passengers could be obtained and used by law enforcement agencies...
Cities that have installed the systems or have taken steps to procure them include San Francisco, California; Eugene, Oregon; Traverse City, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Baltimore Maryland; Hartford, Connecticut; and Athens, Georgia.
San Francisco transit authorities recently approved a $5.9 million contract to install an audio surveillance system on 357 buses and vintage trolley cars, paid for in full with a grant from DHS (Department of Homeland Security). The contract includes the option to expand the equipment to an additional 600 vehicles.
Concord, New Hampshire also used part of a $1.2 million economic stimulus grant to install its new video/audio surveillance system on buses, according to the Daily.
Transit officials say the systems will help improve the safety of passengers and drivers and resolve complaints from riders. But privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.
In Eugene, Oregon, the Daily found, transit officials requested microphones that would be capable of “distilling clear conversations from the background noise of other voices, wind, traffic, windshields wipers and engines” and also wanted at least five audio channels spread across each bus that would be “paired with one or more camera images and recorded synchronously with the video for simultaneous playback.”
Homeland Security gave these grants. Are these cities, and/or their bus systems, serious terrorist targets?
Update: Do you feel safer after watching TSA-holes detain a 12-yr-old wheelchair-bound girl because she had "bomb residue" on her hands?
Well, Eugene, Oregon is the location of the ultra-liberal University of Oregon, and it is a town full of counter-culturalists (old and new). It is clear that these folks don't really mean what they've been saying for all these decades about freedom and the right to live as one would live.
ReplyDeleteAs other writers state, it's about power, not safety.