Video being used to ID women getting abortions is called just one vulnerability of police cameras

Fears that surveillance camera footage would be used by governments for purposes other than catching criminals had civil liberties experts opposed Monday to their installation and at least one Cambridge city councillor hesitating.

As a result, no decision was made at the summer’s sole council meeting about a test of the cameras, and the matter will be taken up again in September.

Cambridge has a strict surveillance policy passed in 2018 with help from the American Civil Liberties Union, but a few violent crimes since its passage have inspired louder calls for cameras to be installed – which has increasingly been done on private property. A shooting May 23 at Donnelly Field in the Wellington-Harrington neighborhood renewed the calls for cameras and revealed that there were already some live “attached to the school” and helping in the investigation, police said at the time.

In a plan presented in an impact report required by the city’s surveillance law, police and the city manager said they wanted to post “overt cameras” running 24 hours a day to deter crime and gather evidence if it took place “initially in Central Square and phased in throughout the city in the major squares” including Harvard, Porter and Inman.

“We wanted to see what the results of this pilot were going to yield before we expanded,” police commissioner Christine Elow said.

The cameras are cheap – $15,000 – and would be paid for by Department of Homeland Security grants through a program called the Urban Area Security Initiative.

Video plays a key role in investigating cases and prosecuting criminals, police spokesperson Robert Goulston said ahead of the Monday meeting, noting that the initiative was a response from pressure from the public and city leaders. Police now often seek private video from stores, cars or smart-home doorbells after a crime.

“The CPD recognizes the critical need for careful and sensitive balance between an individual’s privacy and public safety in general,” Goulston said, and noted that the cameras would not be monitored 24 hours per day, seven days per week; not record sound; not have a search function such as facial recognition; and not capture and search license plate information.

The images captured by the cameras would be stored for 60 days by police and not shared automatically with the public, though members of the public could file records requests to see files for specific purposes.

Use by government

Government could also ask to see the files, which is what several Cantabrigians and experts found chilling.

“Attorney generals of states that ban abortions will request the video of Cambridge police to track down women visiting the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center in Central Square,” said James O’Keefe, chair of the Massachusetts Pirate Party, during a public comment period. “Do you want persecution of women for activities that are legal in the commonwealth on your conscience? The only way to protect people from misuse of surveillance data is not to gather it at all.”

The same concern was raised by Julie Bernstein of Digital Fourth, a volunteer group that opposes mass government surveillance. Students from states where abortion is illegal could be filmed “and that data could be subpoenaed by an out-of-state law enforcement agency,” she said.

“The problem with camera deployment is that it never remains limited in scope, because it is obtained for free” from Homeland Security, Bernstein said. “CCTVs are increasingly used retrospectively and have led to the wrongful arrests of seven individuals – most of whom were black. Although Cambridge police do not use facial recognition technology, [other agencies] all do, and CCTV recordings are shared with them. We are concerned at the potential to start cataloging where people go.”

The ACLU of Massachusetts also recommended that the cameras not be installed without further work to sharpen vague policies, said Emiliano Falcon-Morano, policy counsel for its Technology for Liberty Program.

Crime is already falling

Another concern raised during public comment came from resident Dan Totten, a former council aide, who believed cameras would be “used to criminalize homelessness in Central and Harvard squares,” but several speakers argued that the cameras were unnecessary even for their intended purpose of crime-fighting.

Bernstein compared her time in Central Square in the 1980s as an MIT student with now – and said she felt “much safer in Central Square today.”

“Crime in Cambridge has been on a steady decline for over 50 years, according to the Cambridge Police Department. Surveillance cameras were not needed to cause this decline, so why should they be needed now?” asked Lily Gardam, a Dorchester resident who said she visits Cambridge’s squares often.

Only one resident spoke in favor of the cameras to the council: lawyer and developer Patrick Barrett, who believed Central Square especially needed cameras because of crimes there such as a murder in November and sexual assault in June. Police officers do work in Central Square “99.9 percent of which is admirable, and I would call god’s work,” he said.

Hope for lack of abuse

In the brief conversation among elected officials before the issue was set aside for September, councillor Patty Nolan looked forward to seeing cameras expand to parks from squares, because some recent gunfire incidents have taken place in or around parks. She expressed hope that the video data gathered by Cambridge wouldn’t be abused.

“Many people in the community want us to be able to, under very protected ways, use a camera from the city to help city staff do their job,” Nolan said. “This is something that hopefully will not be used in any other way other than helping the community.”

Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler was less willing to immediately put his hopes in video not being abused. He used his “charter right” to pause the conversation for a month so he could look more deeply at the policy concerns of the civil liberties groups.

Those concerns included “how footage could get shared to other entities, including the federal government,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said, “especially on the chance the administration changes in a different direction next year.”

Traffic and body-worn too

Other kinds of cameras were also discussed briefly Monday: those for traffic enforcement, which can’t be implemented under state law; and the body-worn kind that will go on police officers if negotiations are successful with the force’s two police unions. Councillors accepted a report that $243,689 was being used to buy equipment needed for when that happens.

The president of the Cambridge Patrol Officers Association, Chris Sullivan, said July 29 that police “are supportive of the deployment of body-worn cameras” – despite the fact that the patrol officers and superior officers unions sought privately to force the city to negotiate with the unions on whether to adopt them. The unions’ complaint to the state Department of Labor Relations was dismissed July 10, but the two sides continue to talk about impacts of body cameras on police work.

“Our union negotiations are moving forward,” Elow told the council Monday. “We are doing everything possible to put all the pieces in place so when these negotiations are finalized, we’re ready to go.”

John Hawkinson and Sue Reinert contributed to this report.

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