- "Only someone completely distrustful of all government would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras."
NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999
The fight over surveillance cameras in public spaces has come to Central Pennsylvania. The campus chapter of the ACLU is planning its protest yet most people are either unaware of the controversy or they just don't care.
Beaver Avenue is lined with student apartment buildings that feature balconies and is the site of past "riots" by drunk undergrads. After a big win (or loss) some people feel the need to take to the streets and break things.
There are already numerous cameras around town on private property at banks and department stores. Also several webcams are set up around campus. Now, as part of a plan to deter future disturbaces State College and the University agreed that "security cameras may be installed to monitor public spaces in the area. Private security cameras will be installed to monitor balconies." The cameras along Beaver Avenue will serve both a deterent to future rampages and as tool for police to identify participants in such distubances.
The ACLU folks plan a conventional protest with a march, petition and letter-writing campaign. But, there is a group that has been at this for several years called the Surveillance Camera Players (SCP). Their form of protest is a little more creative. They give Big Brother something to look at by performing plays for the cameras. In November 1999 they performed The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich for cameras in a New York subway station.
Even though the right to privacy is protected by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution it takes groups like SCP to focus attention on violations and erosions of our fundamental rights.
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