May 01, 2008

Washington D.C. Creating Massive Surveillance Network

The D.C. government is launching a system today that would tie together thousands of city-owned video cameras, but authorities don't yet have the money to complete the high-tech network or privacy rules in place to guide it. The system will feature round-the-clock monitoring of the closed-circuit video systems run by nine city agencies. In the first phase, about 4,500 cameras trained on schools, public housing, traffic and government buildings will feed into a central office at the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Hundreds more will be added this year. Civil libertarians and D.C. Council members say the network is being rushed into place without sufficient safeguards to protect privacy.

D.C. Forging Surveillance Network, Washington Post, May 1, 2008.