“I think the mayor, as the principal author of the ordinance, feels very strongly in favor of privacy,” city chief of staff Kevin Acklin said Friday. “To the extent we’re legally able, the city is committed to enforcement of this ordinance.”
The big caveat: The U.S. Coast Guard has warned the city not to reveal camera locations, effectively barring civilian involvement in surveillance decisions.
“In terms of the cameras that are funded by the federal government, we are restricted from notifying people of their locations,” Acklin said. “Given the federal restrictions, which are in direct conflict with what our local ordinance is, we need to have a conversation with council” about whether to fund future camera purchases with money from Washington, D.C., and sideline the privacy protections, or use local dollars and implement the rules.
It’s unclear, though, whether the restrictions placed on the city really come from Washington, or rather from a local interpretation of a federal directive. Privacy advocates, meanwhile, argue that excluding civilians from surveillance decisions makes it impossible to ensure that civil liberties are respected.
“Anytime you’re implementing video surveillance of the public, the public needs to be involved in that process,” said Jeramie D. Scott, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), based in Washington, D.C.
In 2008, the city prepared to buy a multimillion-dollar surveillance network, landing federal Department of Homeland Security funds because one of the system’s aims was to guard port facilities. Bill Peduto, then a city councilman, pushed through a Privacy Policy for Public Security Camera Systems. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl signed it.
Among other things, the ordinance called for creation of a Camera Review Committee to decide where to use surveillance, provide training for police and neighborhood groups to keep them from profiling and invading privacy, and give public notification of the placement of cameras.
The $5.7 million surveillance network has since swelled to some 100 installations.
Peduto became mayor last year. Three months ago, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that key provisions of the ordinance had not been implemented.
The city has since located an eight-page 2012 Pittsburgh Bureau of Police policy. It bars the use of cameras to peer into private places. Police can’t monitor people based on their demographics or their exercise of free expression, or electronically follow people unless they appear to be breaking the law, the policy says.
Until recently, police were getting little or no training in the policy, according to Acklin. The bureau has now started training officers in the policy, he said. He did not know when the training started, who had received it or when it would be finished.
The city’s budget office has started rounding up records of all of the cameras purchased by neighborhood groups with public funds. Then the city will reach out to those groups to make sure they’re following the rules, which require that camera operators be specifically designated and trained, acknowledge the privacy ordinance and keep logs showing when they access footage.
The Camera Review Committee was supposed to help decide where to put surveillance tools. It was to consist of representatives of the mayor, the public safety director, the council president and one other council member, plus three members of the public appointed by the mayor and approved by city council.
“Due to the federal regulations, we are prohibited from impaneling the committee,” Acklin said.
The same goes for an ordinance plank that requires the city to post notification signs near its cameras.
Acklin said that early in the Peduto administration, and then again after the Post-Gazette’s April article, the city asked federal officials whether it could fully implement the ordinance.
The city got a response on April 15 from U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Lindsay N. Weaver, enclosing a three-page Department of Homeland Security bulletin describing 16 categories of “sensitive security information” that should not be publicly disclosed. The categories included “systems security information” and “critical aviation and maritime infrastructure asset information,” which, the city was told, included cameras.
Weaver recently retired. Her interpretation of the bulletin is valid, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Burkett.
Camera location “is sensitive security information,” he said. Posting cameras is like deploying “people in plainclothes uniforms. … I don’t think you’d want to say who these people are.”
In response to questions, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman wrote that the agency does not bar public disclosure of camera placements but leaves such decisions to local officials.
Scott, of EPIC, said that a secret camera won’t prevent crime.
“Considering that most of the time when you’re implementing surveillance cameras the idea is to deter crime, the public needs to know where the cameras are in order to be deterred by them,” he said.
Burkett disagreed.
“It’s probably more valuable that people know that there are cameras out there, but they don’t know where they are,” he said, “so anything you do and anywhere you may be, [you believe] there are probably cameras watching you.”
©2015 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.