It can be done!
Cambridge, Massachusetts has become the first city in the state -- and maybe the United States? -- to stop Department of Homeland Security video surveillance cameras. Homeland Security provided a $4.6 million grant to form a camera network linking Cambridge and eight other Greater Boston communities.
As the Cambridge Chronicle and the Boston Globe report, yesterday the Cambridge City Council voted unanimously (9-0) to ensure that the cameras are not installed.
The ACLU of Massachusetts has been working on this issue since last summer when the Cambridge Chronicle broke the story on August 13, 2008, about a plan to install the camera network in Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline and other Greater Boston communities. But assurances that the cameras would only ever be used for traffic control during emergencies seemed to raise more questions than they answered.
Cambridge City Councilor Marjorie Decker approached the ACLU of Massachusetts with her concerns about the DHS grant. The ACLU created materials and organized a public meeting in Cambridge on November 20, 2008, to inform residents about the technological capacity and potential use and abuse of the web of surveillance cameras and fusion centers that has been set up across the country in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Council voted against the cameras after two sessions during which Councilors tried to learn more about a secretive grant process that was four to six years in the making. They also heard testimony from dozens of Cambridge residents who feared the cameras could violate their First Amendment and privacy rights.
Nancy Murray, the Director of Education at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts -- and a Cambridge resident -- said of the vote, “The Councilors were rightly concerned that they had been kept in the dark about the cameras for four years or more. And even after a briefing from the Police Commissioner and Fire Chief on January 22, they did not get answers to basic questions. What agencies would have access to the camera’s digital images? Where would they be stored and for how long? Would they be transmitted to the Commonwealth Fusion Center? What guarantees would residents have that they would not used for purposes other than the stated one of traffic control?” Murray provided testimony against the cameras on January 22, 2009.
If anyone knows of other municipalities that have done this, we'd like to know.