Privacy issues
In Canada, video surveillance of public places by municipalities is becoming more prevalent. Even smaller municipalities such as St. Catharines and Brockton are introducing it, says Michelle Chibba, policy manager at the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC) of Ontario. “We don’t have a good handle on the majority views of the public,” she says, noting there’s a split between those in favour and against it, and that the IPC’s guidelines try to balance privacy concerns against the public safety benefits.

As the introduction of these systems is fairly recent, public misconceptions about the rules governing video surveillance is a major issue, says Gregory Dack, corporate security analyst at the City of Ottawa. “There’s paranoia about Big Brother watching, but also shows like CSI lead people to believe it’s a miraculous cure for social ills,” he says, adding that a significant chunk of his time is spent on public education.

Dack illustrates these conflicting attitudes with some examples. Surveillance of private property by municipal cameras is prohibited, so cameras in public areas are specifically set up to avoid recording nearby homes. But citizens are often upset when they’re informed no video evidence was captured if a break-in or other crime occurs on their property. Conversely, placing cameras in recreational areas such as swimming pools also worries citizens. “People ask why they’re being watched, and we must tell them the cameras are only turned on after hours when there’s no staff to secure the swimming pool,” says Dack.

While the IPC’s privacy guidelines are fairly clear, there are some ambiguous areas, says a security manager at a major Ontario municipality who agreed to share his experiences anonymously. The guidelines restrict the placement of cameras in public places unless there’s a history of incidents or other justification. But the degree of privacy to be accorded in areas such as parkland is a gray zone. “The guidelines are vague about definitions of public property. Is the city required to protect a pathway versus physical property? But there’s also some expectation of privacy when someone walks through a park.”

There’s controversy around this point, says Elliott Goldstein, a Toronto-based lawyer and video evidence consultant. “Case law thus far has ruled a person doesn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy when they’re in plain view of the public,” he says ”“ but he notes the federal privacy commissioner’s office has a different opinion. “I think that’s dead wrong,” he says, adding it’s important not to confuse anonymity with privacy. Individuals are entitled to go about their normal business anonymously in a public places without being identified on surveillance video, he explains. But their actions in public can be legally captured.

Lack of consensus on this issue can stymie a city’s plans. In the recent Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) debacle, the London, U.K.-based watchdog group Privacy International lodged a complaint with the IPC about the city’s plans for an extensive video surveillance network throughout Toronto’s public transit system.

Chibba said she could not comment about the case nor explain why the IPC is reacting to a complaint by a non-Canadian organization beyond stating all complaints are investigated. In these controversial cases, it’s important to ask some fundamental questions, says Goldstein. “On whose behalf does Privacy International advocate? What are they trying to protect, and why?”

The benefits of public surveillance in deterring crime have to be weighed against the potential for infringement of privacy rights, he says. For example, “a young couple kissing on the subway may say surveillance is an invasion of privacy ”“ but anyone else on the car can see them.” If an identifiable image is captured on video, this raises a different set of issues. “If you have recorded evidence, then the issue becomes its use and disclosure,” he says. “If images are used to hurt or humiliate people, that could be grounds for public mischief charges or lawsuits. But the issue isn’t that you took a picture, it’s what you did with it. If you have strict controls over surveillance systems so there isn’t unauthorized access and use, then the issues aren’t around privacy rights.”

Designing principles
Privacy guidelines allow for the placement of new surveillance cameras in public areas if there’s a history of crime. But this can be a tricky area to handle, says Dack. “Security managers have to consider how they want their surveillance systems to grow instead of reacting to pressure groups,” he says. Proactive planning and a big picture view is needed to create a system that delivers maximum security value. “What ends up happening in many places is that a bad incident occurs, and a cam is put in place in response. But maybe if it had been planned out more thoroughly, it would have made more sense to place it 500 meters away.”

He cites a recent example. In response to some incidents, a camera was placed near a specific entry point at an outdoor swimming pool to protect the perimeter after hours. But at the end of the summer, security staff discovered kids were using another entrance at the opposite side of the building to get in. “If we’d take more time to plan it, we would’ve put the camera at a mid-point,” he says. “It wasn’t a big modification to move the camera in that instance, but we could have done it right the first time. However, in other environments like airports, cameras are massive and unwieldy, and it would have been harder to correct.”

The ultimate purpose of the surveillance is also a key consideration in system design, he says. In the City of Ottawa, municipal cameras aren’t generally set up to collect forensic evidence.

“We stay away from that,” Dack says. “We want cameras we can monitor on alarms in real-time so we can use the information to respond.” Even with high-definition cameras, he says setting up a surveillance system to collect video evidence that gets clear shots of people’s faces is very difficult ”“ and identification can be easily obscured with hoods. Instead, a system that issues alarms when there’s an incident and helps track people’s movements so they can be apprehended delivers the best value for the investment, he says.

“Video surveillance is more effective for immediate incident response than court evidence later. The best use of resources is to assess the situation and to protect first responders,” he says.

Audits of municipal video surveillance systems to ensure privacy rights are a requirement in the IPC’s guidelines, says Chibba. “They must do regular reviews of the system, be it as an internal audit function or a third party ”“ we don’t require one or the other.”  A key issue in audits is transparency, she adds. “People need to know the cameras are there, and if they’re just monitoring or recording them.” Surveillance has no deterrent value if people aren’t informed.

At present, the audit requirement is not a formal institution, and is typically a self-audit exercise, says the Ontario security manager. “It’s up to the video system’s administrators to ensure the system is installed properly, that security guards are monitoring appropriately, and that it’s all documented,” he says. “But I can see these audit requirements getting tightened up over the next few years with genuine third party reviews.”

Dealing with emerging technology is a constant challenge, says Chibba. The IPC reaffirmed the need for regular audits in a recent case where images of a woman providing a urine sample at a Sudbury methadone clinic captured by a wireless camera were intercepted by a hacker. In its investigation, the IPC concluded the clinic had not exercised proper due diligence in ensuring the camera’s wireless security features were working properly. The Sudbury incident also caused the IPC to re-evaluate what constitutes a record and related storage issues. “Although the actual images weren’t stored, we concluded digital replication of a live image is a record,” says Chibba.

But the Ontario manager points out that the WEP protocol used to secure wireless devices is considered weak by industry experts. “The original intent of those devices was to allow open broadcast signals, like in an Internet cafe,” he says. “Higher levels of encryption should maybe be identified by an authority like the IPC when it comes to securing wireless cameras in a closed-loop system. People shouldn’t be relying on security features that come out of the box for these things.”

Emerging technologies such as high-definition mega-pixel cameras may also pose some privacy challenges in the future, depending on how they’re deployed, he says. Cameras used for access control typically don’t capture people’s identities. “With people-counting, you don’t get good face shots ”“ it’s just movement on the screen,” he says. “But if a high-definition camera can identify people, that can raise privacy issues.”


Rosie Lombardi is a Toronto-based freelance writer.