The House Armed Services Committee held a hearing last week to consider whether there is a need to rewrite the original authorization of force, which doesn’t even mention the word detainee.  The hearing included testimony from legal experts who said there is a need to make detainee policies clear for the military because troops are normally is the first to come into contact with terror suspects.

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., a member of the committee, said it’s time to reaffirm Congress’s role in identifying the scope of the current conflict.  The complications surrounding a war against what Mukasey called “shadowy adversaries who do not follow the rule of law” have become more complex as the enemy has split and transformed.

Mukasey, a former federal judge, said U.S. troops need clear authority to capture and hold dangerous people in order to gain valuable intelligence, but that they often don’t know what to do.

“We are faced with the choice of killing them, holding them onboard ships for a limited time to obtain intelligence if possible, then either sending them to another country that will take them, bringing them to the U.S. for trial in a civilian court or freeing them,” Mukasey said.

But some Constitutional experts don’t think Congressional action is needed to deal with the issue of detainees.

Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, said this issue has already been addressed. 

“Detainees are generally considered to be dealt with in the Geneva conventions,” Davis said.  “The Army has a detailed field manual on dealing with this.”

Laura Pitter, counterterrorism advisor with Human Rights Watch, said Congress is interfering unnecessarily and irresponsibly in counterterrorism policy by considering new legislation to deal with detainees.

“The Obama administration has clear policies on detainees,” Pitter said.  “They [Congress] are attempting to strip the Justice Department of the role that they’ve been playing in counterterrorism and trying to force the use of Guantanamo Bay instead.”

Tom Parker, policy director of terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights with Amnesty International, said there’s already a good system in place – the criminal justice system.  The idea proposed by those in Congress to continue the use of Guantanamo Bay as it was used under the Bush administration is troubling, he said. 

“Civil courts have high conviction rates and have had no difficulties dealing with defense information,” he said.  “It’s a very, very good system.  There is also a very bad system, and that is Guantanamo Bay.” 

Guantanamo Bay does not produce many convictions for the amount of money spent there he said. 

“If you want a good place to start cutting debt, look there,” Parker said.  “We’ve spent a ton of money and have prosecuted few people.  It’s a cracked and failed system and it’s been a failure in bringing people to trial.  Hearing Congress talk about this is like hearing kindergarteners talk about it.”

Davis and Parker both cite the language of ‘unlawful combatant’ used by the Bush administration as a point that complicated dealing with terror detainees.

“The Bush administration created such a complicated situation that no one really understands,” Parker said.  “’Unlawful combatants’ didn’t exist before, so it’s very difficult to untangle all of this.”

Robert Chesney, Charles I. Francis professor in law at the University of Texas School of Law, testified during the hearing that civilian criminal prosecution is best for long-term.

“But that doesn’t mean that you treat a terror suspect like a civilian suspect,” Chesney said.  “You should get intelligence on the front-end, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t prosecute on the back end.”

A policy combining the military, intelligence community and the Justice Department would be most effective, he said.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., the ranking member of the committee, said at the hearing that keeping all options for detainment – including indefinite detention, military commissions and federal courts – will help the administration prosecute detainees.

Davis agrees.

“We’ve prosecuted six people in 10 years at Gitmo and 300 to 400 in civilian courts,” he said.  “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is still sitting in Gitmo, but his nephew, who we tried in a New York [federal district] court was sentenced to life in prison and is serving it in solitary confinement in Florence, Colo.”

The military doesn’t have a history of dealing with these types of issues, which may have posed some challenges for them, Pitter said, since interrogation and intelligence gathering is normally handled by the FBI, the intelligence community and by domestic law enforcement.

And the fact that this debate continues 10 years after 9/11 is a sad commentary on our political climate, Davis said. 

So it ends up as the Obama compromise, Parker said, of combining interrogation with civil courts.

“He gets to have his cake and eat it too,” Parker said.  “A little roughing up, some intimidation techniques – then the old-fashioned policing.  The right gets to see someone flex his muscles and the left gets to see someone in a police uniform.”

But you can’t be a little bit of a human rights abuser – you either abuse them or you don’t, he said.

Some city leaders fear having to cut certain programs they have developed to improve their emergency management, but others say there are more effective tools than money in dealing with emergency planning.

The dependency on federal funding for emergency management is controversial, and Dennis Mileti, retired professor of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Natural Hazards Center, said it’s not Washington’s job.

“To shuck that responsibility and think that the Department of Homeland Security or FEMA will take care of your city is absurd and not at all how America is structured,” Mileti said.  “When local government resources are exceeded, they should go to state resources and then finally to federal.”

Mark Tompkins, associate professor of public administration at the University of South Carolina, said the federal government could provide services other than grants that could be more beneficial.

A state, regional or federal program that could provide smaller cities with simulation training exercises could be more beneficial than expensive equipment because local government employees would know their role or where to look for help in time of an emergency, Tompkins said.

“What I’m impressed by are periodic exercises,” he said.  “You get everyone in one place and walk through an emergency and get to know who to talk to and what to do.”

The emergency preparedness and readiness levels of cities depend on the type of threat and the size of the city, Mileti said.  But those cities that have received the most federal funding have some advantages.

There’s no metric for making the judgment for what cities are best or worst prepared to deal with a terrorist attack or emergency situation, said Monica Schoch-Spana, senior associate with the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC based in Baltimore, Md.  But some cities fare better than others due to funding providing the means for professional emergency management staff, special training and tools to communicate with other agencies.

“Certainly the high terrorism risk cities have received significant resources,” Schoch-Spana said.  “New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago have had more investments than other cities.”

Gene Shepherd, emergency management leader for Kansas City, Mo. said that city will lose $7.4 million annually due to the cuts.  The city will have to fill the gap, he said.

“A lot of it went toward equipment,” Shepherd said.  “It’ll continue to be there, but how can we maintain it?  The city will need to stand up and provide or we’ll lose capabilities.”

And while Mileti doesn’t think cities should look to federal government first for funding, he sees constraints in dedicating large portions of city budgets to deal with emergency management.

“They face having to spend money on something that might never happen, and taking away money from things that are happening now like schools, teachers’ salaries, new textbooks and potholes,” he said.

Mileti agrees that a strong plan is what makes cities successful in emergency management situations.  And it needs to clearly lay out the responsibilities of all departments, not just the first responders.

“The department of public works needs to know what they have to do to remove rubble,” Mileti said.  “The department of health needs to know how to deal with bio threats that might arise.”

Schoch-Spana and Tompkins emphasize that successful plans need to include those outside the government as well.

Cities that have developed strong networks with businesses, non-profit groups and community organizations are those that will be best-equipped to deal with an attack or emergency, Schoch-Spana said.

“You saw this working in the Katrina situation,” Tompkins said.  “Wal-Mart brought their distribution center in and they had resources and networks ready to go.  Plans should look at these issues.  If we need to get bottled water or shelter a lot of people, where would we go?  Going through the practice gives you the opportunity to learn.”

Some of the means by which the public and private sectors obtain information today are things we would’ve only expected in James Bond movies a few years ago.  Accessing surveillance cameras via your iPhone, cameras so clear they can read the print from the book on the subway platform, and GPS darts that police can shoot onto moving cars are all things of today.  So where does it go from here?

Orin S. Kerr, professor of law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., wrote Use Restrictions and the Future of Surveillance Law for The Brookings Institution.  In his piece, Kerr writes about an al Qaeda spin-off group targeting nation’s major subway systems in the year 2030.

In Kerr’s piece, the fictional government from 2030 responds to the terror threat by creating a system called MONITOR, or “Minding Our National-Interest Transit or Rail.”

“MONITOR worked by requiring all subway passengers to use a MONITOR card when they entered subway systems.  Each card was activated by its owner’s fingerprints.   The fingerprints identified the user and kept records of where the user had entered and where the user exited the system.”

Kerr writes that each person’s card scan would result in a green, yellow or red light.  Green-lighted passengers would be free to ride the trains.  Yellow-lighted passengers might be people-of-interest who law enforcement agencies might want to follow.  Red-lighted passengers would be denied access to the trains.

These ways the government responds to protect its people might have seemed futuristic and far-off a decade or two ago.  But now in today’s world of surveillance, it’s not too different than some of the things we are able to do now.  So do our laws keep up with our technology?

Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York said that as technology changes, laws should be better defined.  But Mark Rumold, an open-government legal fellow with Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that could be tricky.

“Technology changes rapidly and what we’ve found is that even well-intentioned privacy laws can become old and out of date really quickly,” Rumold said.  “Any type of privacy policies would have to be very carefully considered.”

Kerr’s piece also brings up concern for human error – something that will still be a source of unease in the future.  He writes:

“…an employee of Homeland Security lost a laptop computer that included a MONITOR database containing millions of datasets of fingerprints.  The computer was never recovered.  No one knows if it was destroyed, or if the information eventually made it into the hands of criminals or even foreign governments.”

So while technology changes, things like human factors don’t.

The privacy concerns that arise in Kerr’s piece are still the same issues that conflict with surveillance as a means of protection today.  So can there ever be balance between security and liberties?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, based in San Francisco, teamed with the Samuelson Law, Technology and the Public Policy Clinic at the University of California Berkeley School of Law in December 2009 to see what was going on between law enforcement agencies and social networking sites.

“To my knowledge, Twitter is the only social networking site that posts its law enforcement guides on their site,” Mark Rumold, the Foundation’s Open Government Legal Fellow, said.

Users can now find the law enforcement guides for major social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace on the Foundation’s website.

Rumold said federal agencies can access any information on a social networking site that is public or searchable by Google.  But anything private like a message sent between two users or something hidden to the public by higher privacy settings would require a warrant or subpoena to access.  The law enforcement guides on their site show users the policy of the social networking sites to turn information over when they receive those warrants or subpoenas.

The expectation of privacy one can expect after information is posted online is something that people should be aware of, Rumold said.

“I think it’s most important to know that when you put something online, it ceases to be private – even if you have high privacy settings,” he said.  “Just the fact that you put it on the social networking site, it can come back to haunt you.”

Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York , said email is another example of one not having full expectation of privacy.

“What people choose to share between one another electronically can be very private,” she said.  “But the government says email does not warrant the same privacy [as postal mail.]  Email doesn’t have the same expectation of privacy because you hand it over to a third party.”

Crump said electronic messaging like email is the modern equivalent of postal mail, so it should have that same level of protection to privacy.

The work the Foundation has been conducting allows people some access into what agencies are looking at and what these sites turn over, Rumold said.

“Social networking sites have information,” he said.  “So if the FBI is doing an investigation, they’ll look for information there.”

The Freedom of Information Act has exceptions for law enforcement methods and techniques, Rumold said.  But you can see that these agencies are looking at these sites to gather information in an investigation.

Rumold also said social networking users should be aware of their digital footprint.

“A lot of people don’t recognize the scope of info when you put something online,” he said.  “Say you put a photo on Facebook – along with uploading that photo, you’re giving away the metadata in the photo that could tell what camera you used, where you took the photo, what time you uploaded the photo.  There’s a huge digital footprint anytime you do anything online, and I don’t think that people recognize the scope.”

President Obama was quoted as saying, “It’s an important tool for us to continue dealing with an ongoing terrorist threat,” of the PATRIOT Act.  Does this surprise you?

It doesn’t surprise me only because I’ve unfortunately grown to expect this from President Obama.  Change we can believe in hasn’t come to pass.  President Obama has expanded executive power, and the PATRIOT Act is a cornerstone of that foundation.  In the national security arena – what little we do know because so much is secret – abuses constitutional rights.

Do you think President Obama’s stance on these types of policies has changed over the years?

Without a doubt.  Until about a week ago, we had a YouTube clip of the president speaking about the Bush administration and the PATRIOT Act in 2008.  The clip is diametrically opposed to what he’s doing now.  He spoke of restoring liberty and security, and this idea that we didn’t have to trade liberties for security.

His statement now about how it’s an important tool in dealing with ongoing terrorism threats suggests that we must give things up to ensure security.  Even if it were true, it would still be an indefensible statement to make.

What concerns you the most about this extension?

There’s never been a debate about this law.  No one has ever really read it and no one has ever debated it.  It was passed the first time in a rush, so no one had time to read the act as it’s thousands of pages long.

But since then, it’s been reauthorized numerous times, and there’s a very tepid – not at all exploratory – process around it.  The kind of stuff that Congress is supposed to do is never done when it comes to the PATRIOT Act.

What do you think has created that type of climate?

Congress – just party dynamic, the speed of media cycle – few people will still be talking about this in a week.  Americans don’t always have historic memories.  The fears put forth by the Bush and Obama administrations that it keeps us safe.

I think the name of the PATRIOT Act itself plays a role, like you’re unpatriotic if you don’t support it.  And Obama said as much when he was running, which is why it’s so mystifying.

There are political factors – he doesn’t want to be the president to let 9/11 happen again.  It does reflect a failure of the president to implement the mandate he spoke of and promised.

Do you think any of the wiretapping and search capabilities allowed by the PATRIOT Act have kept the U.S. safe since 9/11?

No.  It’s actually counterproductive.  Information overload is a problem.  In particular, the idea is that there are legit tips that get lost in the haystack.

The underwear-bomber was flagged by his own dad, but somehow that slipped through the cracks.  And in the first of Mumbai attacks, he was flagged by his wife to American authorities.  But he still shows up and hundreds of people die.

If the intelligence community wasn’t inundated by all of this information, tips like that would’ve been able to make it through.

Do you think Osama bin Laden’s death made it easier to pass an extension of the PATRIOT Act?

I fear that it would’ve happened anyways.  Why did we adopt it in the first place?  It was this figure of bin Laden being out there and we had to find him.  But since then, the network has been shattered.  So can we have our Fourth Amendment back please?  Apparently not.  And bin Laden had not yet been found in February when this passed through Congress, so I fear it would’ve happened if he was found or not.

Photo: The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel / AP Students have their lunch photographed in Texas elementary schools for research on childhood obesity.

Moms aren’t the only ones wondering what their kids are eating at school, and cameras in some elementary schools are tracking their choices.

The Social and Health Resource Center, based in San Antonio, Texas, received a $2 million dollar grant from the Department of Agriculture to see what’s going on in Texas elementary school cafeterias.  With first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign pushing schools to think about ways to deliver healthy meals to students, the Department of Agriculture wants to see how schools are faring.

The goal is to gather data that can be helpful in researching childhood obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Dr. Roger Echon with the Center said the cameras will be aimed at lunch trays and will work as an objective nutrition analysis tool, since gathering data on what kids 8-years-old and younger eat can be tricky.

“To date, the nutritional assessment is based on 182 food-related questions asked by a nutritionist about what they ate yesterday and all the way back to last week,” Echon said.  This was something difficult to do with children who don’t have that kind of attention span, he said.

The research will capture bar codes on lunch trays and before-and-after images of students’ lunches to see what they eat.  Only those students whose parents gave permission for them to be in the study will have pictures of their lunches taken.  And the cameras are angled to get photos of just the lunch trays, and not the students, Echon said.

Although not for research sake, but more to keep mom and dad posted, some schools are providing parents with data on what their child chooses to eat for lunch when they’re not around.

Shelley Townsend, 27, of Brownsburg, Ind. said she can track what her son eats at school.

“My 7-year-old is able to choose what he wants to eat every day, and he did choose pizza for the first few months until we told him he was not allowed to eat that anymore,” Townsend said.  “Given the choice of unhealthy items, kids will always pick the worst choices.”

John Jay Myers is the membership director of the Libertarian Party of Texas.  He said dealing with childhood obesity is not the role of the government, especially the federal government.

“It’s hard to imagine this group getting a government grant for $2 million to study only five schools,” Myers said.  “I can tell them why kids gain weight free of charge.  They eat the wrong kind of food, or too much of any food, and they don’t exercise enough.  Have the Department of Agriculture make the check out to John Jay Myers.”

But Townsend said she sees the unhealthy options schools offer, and would be open to having her son’s lunch photographed if it helped lead to kids getting healthier options.

“I think childhood obesity is a real problem,” she said.  “I would wonder if they are also photographing packed lunches, which can often be very unhealthy too.”

Libertarians worry that manipulating factors, such as the use of cameras, can result in creating more problems than are solved, Myers said.  It changes the natural environment and could create results you would not have otherwise seen, he said.

But Echon said the hope is to develop technology that is sensitive enough to measure with accuracy and confidence what a child of this age group eats.

License Plate Recognition was first used by the U.S. Customs Service beginning in 1998 at border crossings.  It is now a tool being used by law enforcement agencies across the country to aid in finding stolen vehicles, assist in Amber Alerts, locate terror suspects and assist in drug and human trafficking cases.

Nathan Maloney is Vice President of Marketing and Communications at ELSAG North America Law Enforcement Systems.  The agency is based in Brewster, NY and provides Automatic License Plate Recognition technology to North American law enforcement agencies.

The way the technology works, Maloney said, is that cameras read license plates and can determine the numbers and letters on the plates.  They can then be compared to a database of license plate numbers for which law enforcement agencies might be looking.  If a match is made, the officer operating the camera will receive an alert.

There is currently no national database that agencies can use, but Mahoney said the Department of Homeland Security is working on one.

“There are databases that exist, so what we do is we massage this data to make it work for us,” Mahoney said.  “The trend is to go towards the national database, but it doesn’t currently exist.”

States currently provide information through their Department of Motor Vehicles offices or they receive information provided by the FBI alerting them to terror suspects, stolen vehicles or wanted criminals, Mahoney said.

“We monitor license plates, not people,” Mahoney said.  “We’re never looking at people.  We’re just looking at vehicles associated with them.”

But John Verdi, senior council with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said it’s still collecting data about individuals.

“It’s easy to tie a person to a vehicle,” Verdi said.  “And once you automate it either through a patrol car or fixed points is that you being to get a database of individual movements.”

There are three areas to worry about regarding these types of databases, Verdi said.  Use and misuse, disclosure and transmittal to third parties, and sloppiness with which data is secured are issues with which privacy experts are concerned.

Currently, the databases are being provided strictly to law enforcement agencies, Maloney said.

“We would use data that our clients provide us, he said.  “We don’t house the data, we don’t store the data and we don’t share the data.”

Sloppiness with which data is secured is an issue, Verdi said.

“Agencies unintentionally post this stuff to the Internet,” Verdi said.  “You see this a lot with court records – they think they’re posting to an intranet instead of the Internet, and it could be done.  Wrongful actors can get a hold of this information due to government entities being sloppy.”

Former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, said Chicago has one of the most integrated networks of government security cameras, according to the ACLU of Illinois.

Chicago officials have not confirmed the number of cameras that can be found around the city, but no one has disputed the claims that 10,000 exist according to a recent report released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

The closed circuit television network is a combination of public and private agencies.  Some are clearly noticeable like the blue light police cameras found around the city.  But others are unmarked, or even hidden.

Chicago’s former chief emergency officer, Cortez Trotter, told CBS News in 2006 that the city’s CCTV included access to camera footage from more than 100 private companies including the Willis Tower, Boeing and the John Hancock Building.

“What we’re doing is taking their cameras and feeding them right into our system here,” Trotter told CBS of linking private and public surveillance.

This network is called Operation Virtual Shield and is run by the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Mike Haldas is the co-founder and managing partner of CCTV Camera Pros, a video surveillance equipment supplier located in Boynton Beach, Fla.  They supply surveillance equipment to domestic and international customers in both the private and public sectors.

Haldas said he has seen some increase in giving third parties access to surveillance footage.  Some are doing so Chicago by access to government agencies, but it still isn’t the norm, he said.  And overall, sales are going up.

“We’ve been growing even through the recession,” Haldas said.  “So the trend that we see is more demand.  And that’s from both the public sector and the private sector.  We sell to all states and are getting into international sales as well.”

So what is making these cameras so popular?

The cameras have become less expensive but have more capabilities, Haldas said.

“We really specialize in being able to access and view the systems remotely,” he said.  “It’s common for us to have people who want to view their surveillance from their iPhone or smartphones.  It’s very popular, and that’s a service we provide.”

Jeffrey Shaman, a professor at DePaul University’s College of Law and former president of the ACLU of Illinois, said these advancements and ability to link cameras to third-party viewers are worrisome.

“The fact that cameras are becoming so prevalent and used by both private and government entities just exacerbates the problem on grand scale and gives the feeling that someone’s always watching you,” Shaman said.

These cameras can serve very important functions, Shaman said.  But they should be used carefully.

“They should not be used for fishing expeditions,” Shaman said.  “When cameras are put into place, police and other government officials should not be going through these recordings to see if someone has done something wrong unless a crime has been committed or there is probable cause that someone has committed a crime.”

Third-party access does cause some concern regarding privacy issues, Haldas said.

“Customers are always asking if anyone can log in,” Haldas said.  “Even if you open up the system outside of your local area network, there are user- network and password protections.”

But linking these cameras without public knowledge is a concern, Shaman said.

“I think the public should know that the cameras exist and that they are being used,” Shaman said.  “We have to know about all these things and government has to make some decisions about whether it’s permissible to have all these link-ups.”

It’s important to have government watch-dog groups and the press to alert the public so they are aware that these things are being done, Shaman said.  He added that the government should continue holding hearings on this issue and that people not get complacent.

“We’ve really got to study these problems and see if they’re being used appropriately,” he said.

Antoine Jones of Maryland was convicted to life in prison in a drug case after police tracked his movements via a GPS device attached to his car.  Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down his conviction based on the GPS device being installed without a warrant.

But the Department of Justice is claiming that suspects can’t expect privacy on public streets.

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided U.S. v. Knotts, which approved law enforcement use of electronic monitoring of vehicles on a public roadway.  This set legal precedence for individuals having “no reasonable expectation of privacy,” a point that the Justice Department is citing today.

Matthew Lippman, criminology, law and justice professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, said the claim is accurate.  He added that the government is not prohibited from enhancing its visualization through artificial means, like by cameras or tracking devices.

“In other words there would seem to be no Fourth Amendment violation,” Lippman said.

Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, said no one expects to be followed for 24 hours per day.

“Prolonged 24-hour surveillance can reveal highly intimate facts about people,” Crump said.  “If you think about every place that you go, who your friends are, meetings you choose to attend, your house of worship, where you go to the therapist, it reveals too much information about a suspect.”

The ability to have a neutral party is the key role of having a judge issue a warrant for surveillance devices, Crump said.

“The purpose here is that the warrant requirement is that someone stands between the government and a surveillance target,” she said.  An objective person should decide whether the government has the right to use these devices, she added.

Lippman said the courts seemed to have drawn the line of privacy to the home.

“This is why commentators question whether the Fourth Amendment right to privacy exists outside the home,” he said.

But Crump said that while the Department of Justice sees privacy that way, it is not what the Fourth Amendment means.  With limitless abilities to use tracking devices, it makes not just suspects vulnerable, but everyone, she said.

“I think the point we like to drive home [at the ACLU] is that as technology advances, civil liberties should not be left behind,” Crump said.  “The Fourth Amendment needs to be updated as technology continues to advance.”

Use of GPS tracking by law enforcement agencies is on the rise, according to a recent piece by David Kravets for Wired.  Kravets wrote:

The government told the justices that GPS devices have become a common tool in crime fighting. An officer shooting a dart can affix them to moving vehicles, and recently, a student in California found a tracking device attached to the underside of his car, which the FBI later demanded back.

Three other circuit courts of appeal have already said the authorities do not need a warrant for GPS vehicle tracking.

The Supreme Court has not yet announced whether it will respond to the Department of Justice’s 121-page petition to hear the case.

Cameras added to Chicago Transit Authority stops were funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security, but some fear they'll invade privacy more than they'll increase security.

New cameras on the Chicago Transit Authority are so powerful that they can tell what you’re reading while standing on the platform.  The new biometrics surveillance the FBI contracted out might be able to recognize faces, scars, tattoos or perform iris scans.  Pattern recognition on surveillance cameras may soon recognize if a fight is occurring or a suspicious suitcase is left at an intersection without the need of human operators reviewing the feed.

So do these methods keep us safe?  Or invade our privacy?

From 2006 through 2010, the CTA received grants from the Department of Homeland Security totaling $22.6 million to install cameras at rail stations and rail yards.  Lockheed Martin, a global security company, won a $1 billion contract to create biometrics surveillance and databases.

As we approach the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, are we safer because of these advancements?  Or do we more readily give up some civil liberties in the process?  Have we kept our balance between the two?

Ed Yohnka, director of communication and public policy at ACLU Illinois said he’s still waiting for the balance.

“I have been hearing for almost 10 years now that we needed to balance liberty and security,” Yohnka said.  “But I have to say, I’m still waiting for the balance.  Every single thing – warrantless wiretapping, facial recognition, the plethora of security cameras and Big Brother – would not have been accepted before.”

The debate between surveillance and crime prevention has existed for decades.

Steve Chapman’s recent column about this issue in the Chicago Tribune questioned the effectiveness of cameras.  Chapman wrote:

Nancy La Vigne, director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, has directed a study of the impact of cameras in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.  Her preliminary findings, due to be finalized and published this year, are that they can indeed curb crime — and at a bargain price.

But with funding from the Department of Homeland Security for such projects, Yohnka said more research needs to be done on the effectiveness of public surveillance.

“The Department of Homeland Security has kind of been the Daddy Warbucks of these types of surveillance projects throughout the last few years,” Yohnka said.

And while there might be some benefits, he said the public should be aware at how invasive the new technology is.

“I think the most important thing to know is just how invasive and intrusive they are,” Yohnka said of new high-powered cameras.  “They are more powerful than any other surveillance system we have seen in other places.  The ability to magnify many times over what the human eye can see is a very powerful tool.”

Brad Hunter, 30, of Northbrook, takes the El a couple times a month into the city from the suburbs.

“I feel these cameras are beneficial because they create a better sense of safety and security,” Hunter said.  “But while higher resolution cameras aid in detective work, I am not sure I would want the FBI investigating me based on what I was reading on the train either.”

The number of cameras might also allow for the government to locate people as they travel to places they might like to keep private, Yohnka said.  This could include political rallies, psychiatrist appointments or a business deal, he said.

Yohnka also worries that Americans are becoming more accepting of surveillance in a post-9/11 world.

“Technology makes it easier to keep these huge databases.  As more and more information is gathered, Americans become desensitized to these types of measures.”