N.Y. bombing trial reflects ubiquity of security cameras
NEW YORK — There’s one video of a man walking to and from the scene of a bombing in a Manhattan’s bustling Chelsea neighborhood. Another shows him minutes later planting another homemade explosive a few blocks away. A third has him in a backyard in New Jersey, apparently testing an incendiary device.
Prosecutors say the person captured on those videos and several others is Ahmad Khan Rahimi. The trove of digital evidence in Rahimi’s federal trial is meant to provide proof he was behind a 2016 attack that injured 30 people, but it also demonstrates the growing omnipresence of security cameras.
The Rahimi case relies “on video from security cameras in storefronts and businesses all over New Jersey and New York,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Shawn Crowley said in opening statements.
Inspired by the “ring of steel” surveillance measures in London, the New York Police Department has led the security-video push in the last decade by blanketing the city with 13,000 cameras.
In the past, civil liberties groups have complained that the cameras are an invasion of privacy. But over time, their proliferation has changed expectations about being watched.
“What we know is that there is no longer, or never was legally, any expectation of privacy on a public thoroughfare,” said John Decarlo, founder of The Center for Advanced Policing at the University of New Haven.
Challenges for the police include sifting through tens of thousands of images quickly enough to find suspects before they attack again. Another possible pitfall is the often poor quality of many of the videos.
“Someone could be falsely identified because the quality wasn’t good, or someone who may have done the crime but, say, lost 40 pounds and shaved before trial may not appear to be like the suspect on camera,” said Dennis Jay Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “If they aren’t sharp, it can be a problem.”