A video camera follows a young man leaving his apartment. Undercover police officers snap photos of him from an unmarked car.
He boards public transit and security operators use an infra-red scanner to scour his body for suspicious packages. At work, his employer uses spyware to record what websites he visits and for how long.
He buys a book from his favorite online store and is surprised by how accurate its “personal recommendations” are.
According to Ben Goold, a new UBC professor who studies surveillance technology, civil liberties and law, these scenarios raise a number of concerns.
“The question is how we balance society’s legitimate interest in security with a commitment to individual privacy rights,” says Goold, who left Oxford University to join UBC’s Faculty of Law in January.
The 40-year-old has been on the front lines of this controversial debate for more than 15 years, having lived in the UK at the inception of closed-circuit television (CCTV) and New York for 9/11, and the subsequent crackdown on travel and civil liberties.
“Other countries need not follow the example of Britain’s CCTV and America’s Patriot Act,” says Goold, who has helped numerous government agencies in Europe think through public safety and privacy issues, including Britain’s House of Lords inquiry into surveillance and data collection, the UK Identity and Passport Service, and the European Forum for Urban Safety. “The benefit of hindsight allows us to make more informed decisions.”
Before considering surveillance technologies, Goold says there must be a clear understanding of their costs and benefits. And according to Goold, who teaches courses on privacy, security and law, one important cost that is often over looked is the damage to public trust.
“Surveillance technologies have the potential to seriously undermine the relationships between individuals and the state,” says Goold. “In the UK we have seen CCTV cameras transform busy and vibrant city streets into heavily monitored spaces in which young people and visible minorities are likely to be the main focus of attention. You need to ask, would adding police officers be more effective from a cost and community safety perspective, given the actual risk?”
Understanding surveillance technologies and their limitations is also key, says Goold, whose books include CCTV and Policing and Security and Human Rights. “Reducing violent crime is often used to justify CCTV, but cameras are not always particularly effective at that,” he says. “CCTV can help deter crimes committed by people in rational states, like shoplifting and car theft, but not spur of the moment violent crimes or other offences committed due to the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
Since arriving at UBC, Goold has heard many debates that previously raged in the UK and the US heating up in Canada. Online, social networking websites like Facebook have been pilloried for not adequately protecting personal information, and according to civil liberties groups like the Public Space Network, proposed changes to the B.C. School Act may be opening the doors to CCTV-style cameras in B.C. high schools.
There is also still fallout from Canada’s largest-ever domestic security operation, the 2010 Olympics and Paralympics Winter Games. While most of the 1,000 CCTV cameras that were installed for the operation have since been decommissioned, questions remain on how the City of Vancouver will use the remaining 14 cameras.
Goold says institutions need to determine exactly how surveillance technologies will be used before they are employed, not after. “If you don’t take the time to get things right from the beginning, that’s when problems occur, such as overzealous policing, violations of individual privacy, and the loss of sensitive personal data.”
For more information on Goold and UBC’s Faculty of Law, visit law.ubc.ca.
