Brookline's Fabulous Compromise

In the spring of 2010, the camera committee for Brookline finalized its report on the outlines and uses of the Brookline police cameras and their levels of effectiveness over the course of the little more than a year that they had been active. This report, measuring 59 pages in length, outlines not only the uses of the cameras, but also their post-compromise situation. This situation is defined as one where the cameras are to be active only between 10 PM every night and 6 AM each morning. While this is a serious limit on the former 24/7 policy the police had been employing, it does seem to still allow the cameras to be effective. However, the full purpose of this report was not to analyze the cameras, but more to outline their purposes and the guidelines for their use in Brookline. As noted in the report, the cameras are stationary Bosch Autodome 300 cameras. The use of sound is disabled for the cameras, however they can rotate around 360 degrees and have a 28x zoom capacity. In addition, the committee defines that the cameras are not usually actively monitored, but rather that the footage is stored at 30 minute segments for 14 days, unless the footage is required in an ongoing investigation. To actively monitor the cameras, one must obtain written permission of the chief of police, who has executive control over them. A final technical aspect to the cameras is that they boast no face-recognition software, and there are no plans to install any in the future.
One troubling thing about the cameras that was listed however concerned the sharing of the footage. As it is reported, nine other suburbs of Boston have constant access to the footage displayed by the cameras, as does the city of Boston on certain occasions. In fact, the footage is widely shared on a microwave network between the other communities, making the footage quite public in its own right. In addition, the police chief himself has commented saying that viewing of the footage by police departments other than Brookline's is "common." This presents quite a concern for those who advocate privacy as assured by the first amendment, though the report also covers that maintaining that (as of spring 2010) the cameras had not been officially reported to have infringed on first amendment rights. Finally, it should be noted that as of the time of this report, 99 requests to view the footage had been reported, and 79 of the requests had proved useful in assisting with policing. However, two things worthy of noting are that the requests are not all individual incidents, and that the cameras themselves are stated to have the primary purpose of simply assisting in the solving of crime, and do not boast attempting to prevent it. With this, one has to wonder whether or not the camera's are really living up to their potential, but the statistics given seem to indicate that they do.