Cities Gone Wireless: Safety or Surveillance?

Most cities have abandoned the idea of providing wireless Internet access for all, but have instead used those wireless networks to help link video surveillance cameras installed across the city. Does that mean our cities are safer – or are we just being spied on now?

In a new article for National Public Radio (NPR), Joshua Brockman examines the issue of using wireless networks for public safety and surveillance. He looks at several cities that have implemented municipal or city-wide networks, and discusses how those cities are using the systems.

“Today, public safety is the ‘largest and most successful sector’ in the municipal wireless market, according to MuniWireless.com, a Web site devoted to tracking wireless broadband projects and technologies,” Brockman says. “Its 2007 state of the market report found that 75 percent of cities and towns with active or planned wireless networks were using them for public safety purposes. That represents a 10 percent increase from 2006. “

Among the cities he examines in the article are Oklahoma City, with a 555-square mile municipal Wi-Fi network that links more than 300 surveillance cameras, and Chicago, which already has several hundred cameras installed in its central business district.

But do these systems make the public safer? Brockman says the issue has “raised questions about those systems’ effectiveness in fighting crime, as well as privacy concerns.”

Only preliminary studies have been conducted in the United States, he adds. “An analysis of those studies by the ACLU concludes that ‘video surveillance systems in the U.S. show little to no positive impact on crime.’ The ACLU examined independent studies conducted in the U.S. and abroad from 2000 to ‘08,” Brockman says.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92613801