Gov’t must conduct privacy impact assessment of surveillance cameras project

Dear Editor,

No doubt, the use of technology can radically improve public security. The launch last week by the government of the Smart City surveillance cameras system in Georgetown is, therefore, a progressive step. The system can indeed help with crime fighting by recognizing and tracing criminal suspects and vehicles and by deterring unlawful behaviour.

Government surveillance of citizens, however, even if well-intentioned, raises serious privacy concerns. These concerns take on added significance where the surveillance is continuous, ubiquitous and backed up by technology to cross-reference and store data. Indeed, we are told that the project in Georgetown (even as a pilot) involves 104 mounted poles with four cameras each, that the system includes face-recognition technology, and that the project will be unveiled countrywide.

Potentially, therefore, the surveillance system over time can, through the storage, cross-referencing, and aggregation of data, create a detailed record of a person’s life. Modern surveillance technology can, to borrow the words of a 2012 US Supreme Court case (in relation to GPS tracking of vehicles by police), reveal not only one’s particular movements, but also one’s “familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations.”

From a legal standpoint, when

persons venture out in the open (say, in going to work) and are therefore viewable by other citizens, they can claim no legitimate expectation of privacy. Such persons cannot successfully make the legal case that others have invaded their privacy by watching or staring at them (or at their bags, necklaces, cellphones, or body shapes). This low expectation of privacy in our physical locations and movements makes police surveillance of us generally defensible. We accept it.

Modern technology has, however, overturned this established agreement. For it has transformed and boosted the capacity of the government to potentially erode our privacy and other rights. For one, technology can make surveillance far more sweeping (that is, continuous and ubiquitous). So, while we may not mind if random persons could observe us intermittently when in public, we become uneasy or fearful should a particular person gaze at us all the time and everywhere we go.

Second, the capability of the technology to cross-reference data on any individual (across cameras across the country) introduces another means to erode privacy, that of aggregation of that data. To explain: less is known of us if our numerous traffic tickets over the years are scattered and unconnected in logbooks in police stations across the country. We are far more exposed, however, if that traffic data could be readily aggregated in one computer printout. Likewise, a high-tech public surveillance system, such as that envisaged under the Smart City programme, is capable of stitching together pieces of our life from when we were in Linden, NA, and GT, or in banks, bars, and brothels. Data aggregation makes us more vulnerable.

I did not see these and other issues raised by the speakers at the launch. They were all correct, however, in touting the necessity and potential effectiveness of the system.

How then should government surveillance of the public strike a balance between respecting the privacy of lawabiding citizens and fighting crime? The government must first conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) of the project. Key questions to answer in a PIA are: (1) What are the implicated laws and human rights principles? (2) If the system is meant to track criminal suspects, who is a criminal suspect in Guyana? Too much potential for police abuse exists here. (4) Apart from fighting serious crimes, what are the other clear purposes of data collection? Do these extend to detecting traffic violations and misdemeanors, such as littering? (5) Who should have access to the data? (6) What are the security controls throughout the system? (7) What is the after-use data disposal schedule? (8) How would independent oversight be exercised?

In closing, I would also recommend Privacy Impact Assessments for several of the country’s new legislation where personal information is collected, processed, and disseminated, such as our laws on anti-money laundering, tax evasion, and credit history.

Yours faithfully,

Sherwood Lowe