Channels, Fall 2018

Channels • 2018 • Volume 3 • Number 1 Page 131 that society. That important point transitions to the next phase of the discussion in the literature, that being the question of the social and moral viability of CCTV surveillance. Constitutional and Legal Implications Emory Law Journal expert Levinson-Waldman (2017) writes that “Civilians and law enforcement alike benefit from the steady innovation of new technologies and new applications” (pg. 614), and yet “There is a growing judicial consensus that this state of affairs profoundly implicates the Fourth Amendment protections that are fundamental to Americans’ individual rights, including the right to some modicum of privacy and the right to associate, to speak, and to protest.” Especially in the USA, where the government has a history of much more significant levels of accountability to the public than in the PRC, there is a significant concern over whether or not public CCTV networks by nature violate the right to privacy, as Levinson-Waldman discusses in the analysis of the future implications for the Fourth Amendment. Surveillance policy researchers Sousa and Madensen (2016) conducted a related study for Criminal Justice Studies, researching the public sentiment in regard to the public CCTV network in Las Vegas, Nevada. They explain in their study that although “the perception of increased safety along Fremont Street (a studied area of Las Vegas where CCTV cameras were installed) has accompanied an overall revitalization of the downtown Las Vegas area since the initiative began in 2007” (pg. 51), there was still a portion of the population in that area that expressed continuing displeasure with the fact that public activity could be easily monitored by law enforcement officials at all hours of the day. Legal scholar Jeremy Brown’s (2008) study points to this problem in much greater detail, highlighting the “inadequacy of judicial regulation” (pg. 755) in that sphere, and describing how “Courts have recognized some limits on the use of video surveillance. But those limits—many of which are found in the dicta of cases addressing other forms of surveillance—are hazily defined and largely untested” (pg. 756). He continues on to offer suggestions as to how local and national governmental regulations could be implemented or better- adjusted to protect Constitutional rights, in regard to both current surveillance practices and whatever may come in the future as technology advances. Surveillance technology and policy scholars Introna and Wood’s (2004) work offer an example of what sort of problems advancing technology poses for privacy rights, focusing upon the implications of facial recognition systems (FRSs) employed by law enforcement as a software for analyzing data collected through CCTV cameras. They detail the dangers of discrimination involved in using such technology, in that “it emphasizes that surveillance at root is founded on sorting and categorization not on vision” (pg. 195). As the article explains, looking for certain types of facial structures or other aspects of personal appearance may quickly lead to profiling and targeting individuals for surveillance based on legally unjustifiable and legally indefensible criteria. This is also the focus of legal scholar Olivia Greer’s (2012) study, which involves conditions of profiling in relation to the New York City CCTV network. Greer finds that “oversight policies are vague and unenforceable” (pg. 626), and that discrimination and profiling remain as serious downsides of a system of surveillance that he deems to be founded on “legitimate security concerns-both local and national-that offer compelling reasons for the use of video surveillance programs.” This depth of this issue is made clear by human rights researcher Heather Cameron (2002), who in her writing on the possibilities of preventing discrimination, profiling, and morally unjustifiable surveillance concludes that “Choosing to address the problems of surveillance through technological fixes opens up some strategic options and shuts down others…Each approach focuses in on a few elements, distorts others and pushes still others into invisibility outside its frame” (pg. 143). In other words, there is no simple solution, no means of simply adjusting parameters to rule out improper surveillance practices. It becomes apparent, then, that the trade-off between individual rights and the protection of society must somehow be juxtaposed, an action performed in