Surveillance Policing, Video and Audio Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Audio and video surveillance technology has been around since the dawn of electronic audio and visual technology. From the invention of the telegraph in the 1800s to the development of the smartphone in the 2000s, it has been possible to eavesdrop on private conversations, and over the years law enforcement agencies have availed themselves of such technologies for investigative purposes. While video surveillance has not been as widely used for investigative purposes as audio surveillance, advances in video recording technology in the mid-to-late 1900s made video surveillance (specifically, closed-circuit television) a common public security measure in major metropolitan areas throughout the world. The use of such technologies by law enforcement has generated numerous questions about individual privacy and the right of the government to monitor activity among the citizenry, but there is no dispute that audio and video surveillance have become permanent tactical fixtures in the law enforcement arena.

The term surveillance is ambiguous in that it can be applied to a number of methods of observation, but in common usage surveillance typically implies the observation of a person, a group of people, or an area as in the case of detectives following a suspected criminal or loss prevention professionals conducting surveillance of a department store. In addition to clandestinely following a suspect (i.e., a “stakeout” or “tail”), there are a variety of audio and video surveillance technologies available to law enforcement. Audio surveillance technology, the older of the two forms of technology, was invented almost simultaneously alongside electronic communication technology.

Although communication technology of the late 1800s and early 1900s was in its infancy, it was possible to tap into telegraph and telephonic communication. Doing so required some technical skill and, owing to the limitations of audio recording technology with early telegraphones and Dictaphones being crude machines, tapping into phone lines required that someone (ideally, a stenographer) monitor the tap to listen to the communications. Despite such intensive manpower requirements the tapping of electronic communication was common. For instance, during the mid-to-late 1800s and early 1900s private detectives used wiretaps to gather information, and businesses used wiretaps to spy on their competition. The practice was so common and so problematic that in 1862, the California legislature legally banned telegraph interception, and in 1905, extended the prohibition to telephones as well. During this time, however, the use of wiretaps by law enforcement officials was uncommon.

It was not until the era of prohibition (1919-33), when there was a sizeable increase in the U.S. federal law enforcement apparatus, that wiretapping by law enforcement officials became a significant practice. There is some question about how commonly law enforcement officials tapped phones, but in one important case during the 1920s a bootlegger in Washington named Roy Olmstead was convicted of violating the National Prohibition Act, with key evidence against him and his coconspirators having been obtained by wiretaps.

In an appeal heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, Olmstead argued the use of wiretaps was a violation of his Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure and his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. In the case of Olmstead v. United States (1928), the high court rejected the argument and upheld Olmstead’s conviction, the rationale being that because the government agents had tapped Olmstead’s phone from the street and had not trespassed on Olmstead’s property, the government had not conducted a search that violated his right to privacy. A few years after the high court’s Olmstead ruling, Congress addressed the practice via the Communications Act of 1934. The primary purpose of the 1934 act was the establishment of the Federal Communications Commission, but the legislation also included a section that laid the legal groundwork for wiretapping. Private citizens were prohibited from surreptitious eavesdropping on or interception of radio or wire communications, but provisions were included in the legislation that allowed for wiretaps under court orders or the demands of “lawful authority.”

During the next several decades there were no significant challenges to the legality of audio surveillance by law enforcement, but the situation changed in the 1960s. In a case in New York the police obtained a warrant and placed an electronic eavesdropping device in the office of attorney Ralph Berger and, based on information gathered via the bug, Berger was convicted of conspiracy to bribe a public official. Although the police had a warrant to plant the bug in Berger’s office, Berger appealed the conviction, and in the case of Berger v. New York (1967) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Berger. The high court ruled that the eavesdropping search warrant law in New York was unconstitutionally vague because it did not require the police to specify the crimes being investigated or the reasons a person was suspected of the crimes, nor did the law require adequate judicial oversight of the police use of the electronic eavesdropping device. In a more significant case decided that same year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had (without obtaining a warrant from the courts) placed an electronic eavesdropping device on the exterior of a public pay phone used by persons in an illegal gambling enterprise. As a result, a bookie named Charles Katz was arrested, tried, and convicted on federal interstate gambling charges. Katz appealed the conviction, arguing the evidence against him had been obtained illegally, and in the case of Katz v. United States (1967) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Katz and reversed the Olmstead ruling.

The Katz decision was especially significant because the high court ruled that the Fourth Amendment not only protects persons’ physical property from unreasonable search and seizure but their conversations as well. The Katz ruling established the precedent that a physical trespass was not a necessary component of a governmental search and that the citizenry’s right to privacy extended to conversations. The landmark Katz ruling laid the legal foundation for all law enforcement audio surveillance activities, requiring that law enforcement officials obtain a search warrant prior to employing a wiretap or other electronic eavesdropping device. The following year Congress passed the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which, in accordance with the Berger and Katz rulings, included provisions that permitted court-ordered wiretaps provided such court orders complied with the spirit of the Supreme Court decisions.

In the roughly half century which has elapsed since the Supreme Court ruling in the Katz case, audio surveillance technology has increased considerably. In contrast to the days when phones were connected via wires and switches and a wiretap required a physical connection to a phone line and conversations had to be recorded using tape, technological advances have revolutionized audio surveillance. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires all telecommunications companies to cooperate with law enforcement officials. With the cooperation of phone companies and by means of using digital recording technology, law enforcement officials have the ability to monitor wireless communication and can even use the global positioning system (GPS) technology in modern smartphones to pinpoint (i.e., “ping”) the location of a phone. Although the term wiretap may still be in common usage, such surveillance techniques do not require physically tapping into a phone wire. Phone taps (inclusive of taps of broadband voice over Internet protocol phones) can now be electronically ordered and digitally recorded, requiring no physical intrusion into phone lines.

As for video surveillance, the technological capacity to produce visual recordings of activity (i.e., a motion picture) has been in existence for well over a century—with silent movies having debuted in the late 1800s—but the process was initially too complicated and costly for routine applications. Visual recording and monitoring technology improved considerably in the early-tomid-1900s, with closed-circuit television (CCTV) being developed in the late 1940s and becoming commonly used in private businesses (e.g., banks, convenience stores) in the 1960s and 1970s. But it was not until the latter decades of the 20th century that video surveillance became a viable option for routine law enforcement purposes.

Early CCTV allowed for security personnel to visually monitor multiple areas from a single location, but the picture quality was poor and video recording technology was limited. The development of the camcorder and inexpensive video cassettes in the 1980s and advances in digital technology in the 1990s and early 2000s made discrete, portable, and reliable video surveillance possible. Digital and wireless communication technology have advanced to the point that many law enforcement agencies not only equip patrol vehicles with cameras but also utilize small, versatile cameras known as “tactical cameras” for specific documentation purposes and surveillance operations. To provide a couple of examples, tactical cameras are small enough and sturdy enough to be mounted on a tactical officer’s helmet during a dynamic entry of a building or to be temporarily mounted on a utility police vehicle for surveillance purposes.

With regard to the value of video surveillance for law enforcement, there have been high-profile cases in which video surveillance proved valuable— for instance, there was the video surveillance of the notorious organized crime boss John Gotti (also known as the Teflon Don) in the United States, the video footage of Sicilian Mafia don Nicolo Rizzuto in Canada receiving stacks of cash from a construction boss, and the video surveillance of convicted murderers Gary Dobson and David Norris using racial epithets and acting out how to stab someone in the United Kingdom. However, such cases are few and far between. Far more common is the use of CCTV by private security and public safety officials. For example, in the United States and the United Kingdom, most major metropolitan areas (e.g., Chicago, London, New York) have installed CCTV surveillance systems in city centers and on public transportation, and numerous smaller cities in these countries have installed CCTV systems in public areas as well. Additionally, a number of other nations such as Australia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden utilize CCTV for surveillance of public areas. Exactly how much has been spent on the installation and operation of such systems is unknown, but there is little doubt that (worldwide) the figure is in the billions of dollars. To date, however, there is little research to indicate that CCTV is of much use in detecting, investigating, and preventing crimes. While there are cases in which video surveillance has provided valuable information to investigators, the bulk of the empirical research on routine video surveillance indicates that CCTV can significantly reduce crimes in parking areas, but that CCTV has little or no impact on public nuisance or violent crimes in public areas or on public transportation.

A much less common but nonetheless important form of video surveillance technology available to law enforcement is aerial surveillance. Owing to the costs and complexities of aviation units (airplane and/or helicopter), relatively few police or sheriff departments maintain such units. However, the majority of law enforcement agencies that maintain aviation units utilize the units for surveillance operations, as well as the more traditional duties associated with aerial patrol such as aiding officers on the ground in active pursuits and conducting search and rescue operations. Aviation units can provide valuable aerial surveillance of suspected ongoing criminal activity and surveillance of critical public facilities (e.g., ports, bridges, and public utilities) for enhanced homeland security.

To date, the costs associated with aviation units have deterred most agencies from developing such units, but technological developments—specifically, the vast advances in unmanned aerial vehicles better known as drones—are making aerial surveillance an increasingly affordable option. U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have used unmanned aircraft for surveillance purposes along the United States-Mexico border since 2005 and the U.S. government has begun offering grant money to encourage local law enforcement agencies to use drones in their operations. As drone technology has only recently started being integrated into domestic law enforcement operations, the full range of applications and the legal, political, and social ramifications of aerial surveillance have only begun to be explored.

Bibliography:

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