Committee Report CR-2

The Civic Unity Committee held a public hearing on January 22, 2009 beginning at five o'clock and five P.M. in the Sullivan Chamber.  The purpose of the hearing was to discuss the Homeland Security grant for installation of surveillance cameras and to provide an opportunity for a community discussion of this matter with city officials.

Present at the hearing were Councillor Marjorie Decker, Chair of the Committee, Councillor Craig Kelley, Councillor Sam Seidel, Councillor Henrietta Davis, Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves and City Clerk D. Margaret Drury.  Also present were Gerald Reardon, Cambridge Fire Chief, Robert Haas, Cambridge Police Commissioner and George Fosque, Director of Emergency Communications.

Councillor Decker convened the hearing and explained the purpose.  She invited the city administrative staff to make a presentation.

Chief Reardon began the presentation, which he accompanied with slides.  A hard copy of the slide presentation is attached.

The Homeland Security agency offered grants for a Critical Infrastructure Monitoring System (CIMS) to link all of the communities in the regions into which Homeland Security has divided the areas of the country.  Cambridge is part of the Metro Boston Region, which includes the communities of Cambridge, Boston, Somerville, Revere, Everett, Chelsea, Winthrop, and Quincy.  The grant application process was very open-ended; communities could decide how they wanted to use the system in their community.  Cambridge applied for a grant to use its system for evacuation monitoring.

The CMIS system has two components, a secure network including both fiber and microwave connections linking each of the Metro Boston communities and video cameras located in areas of critical infrastructure, such as major roadways, biological or chemical facilities or other sensitive areas identified by each community.  The secure network provides each community with an alternative route for data, radio and video traffic in the event that traditional communications links are down.  It ensures ability to communicate between communities in the event of a major incident or disaster.  While the grant application process was open-ended, communities were not allowed to choose installation of the secure network without also agreeing to installation of the video cameras.

In Cambridge, cameras have been installed in eight locations where traffic bottlenecks occur, 364 Rindge Avenue for the Route 2 and Route 16 rotary, Mount Auburn Hospital, Porter Square, Inman Square, Harvard Square, Memorial Drive at River Street, Kendall Square and Central Square.  Chief Reardon presented slides showing the home view and zoom views for each of these locations.  See Attachment A.  Chief Reardon then described the protocols for controlling use of the system.  Access to the system is permission based.  The system logs all activity by a user.  A draft policy covering acceptable use has been developed and will be implemented within each Cambridge agency accessing the system.  Access by other communities to Cambridge cameras will be via a memorandum of understanding and will only allow other communities to view the camera, not to control the camera.

Councillor Decker then invited a presentation organized by Nancy Murray, resident of Erie Street and Director of Education American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (CLUM).

Ms. Murray expressed the ACLU's concerns about the potential for use of these surveillance cameras for more than traffic evacuation and about whether the data from the cameras will be transmitted to the Commonwealth's very secretive Fusion Center, one of 66 Fusion Centers in the country which are emerging as hubs of a new domestic intelligence apparatus that collects information about crime, everyday activities, tips from the public about suspicious activities and uses data mining techniques to identify individuals for closer scrutiny.  There are very serious issues with respect to privacy and the surveillance of First Amendment Rights activities.  Ms. Murray reported on existing studies that demonstrate how easily surveillance cameras can and have been misused in ways that interfere with the right to privacy and First Amendment rights.  She noted that two of the sites where cameras will be placed are sites where demonstrations and vigils often take place, Holyoke Center in Harvard Square and Central Square.  Ms. Murray also expressed concern about a recent Cambridge Chronicle report that Cambridge police officers traveled to Israel to study Israel's counter-terrorism methods. She submitted a copy of her testimony for the record

Ms. Murray also submitted a report entitled "Under the Watchful Eye," by Mark Schlosberg and Nicole A. Ozer on behalf of The California ACLU Affiliates

Councillor Decker asked Commissioner Haas why he went to Israel.  Commissioner Haas said that the trip was sponsored by the American Defamation League.  It was interesting, but in the end, not particularly useful.  The Israel government does a number of things that he would never do in this country.

Dr. Bruce Knobe, 73 Langdon Street, said that there are many technology systems that have started out like the one being discussed tonight and have then grown into very troubling and offensive systems.  He distributed a Google satellite picture of Cambridge City Hall (

as an illustration of the power of the type of cameras that exist, and invited the members of the committee to consider that this picture was taken from many miles above the subject and to imagine the degree of detail that such a camera could capture when the picture was taken a mere mile from its subject.  He said that for a tiny fraction of the cost of building the infrastructure, very powerful cameras could replace the existing cameras and provide a troubling level of surveillance.

Professor John Ellis van Courtland Moon, 11 Monmouth Court, Brookline, Professor of History Emeritus stated that he has studied and written on the history of weapons of mass destruction.  An attempt to carry out a mass evacuation in the event of a terrorist attack would create disruption, panic and confusion.  Victims could be far better treated if they were to remain in the Boston area with its excellent hospitals.  He submitted a copy of his testimony for the record

David Wolf, ACLU, Cambridge resident, discussed the lack of efficacy of video cameras for crime prevention.  Research shows that surveillance cambers have not been effective at reducing crime.  Improved lighting and more effective policing from well-trained police have been show to be more effective in reducing crime.  Many of the studies come out of Great Britain, which now spends 20% of its crime-fighting budget on video cameras and maintains over four million surveillance cameras.  A study from San Francisco produced the same results.  Increased lighting proved to be more effective.

Councillor Decker expressed her concern that she, as a city councillor, had to learn about this project from a constituent.  Chief Reardon said that the grant goes back a couple of years.

Councillor Decker requested that he send a copy of the grant application to the City Clerk so that it could become a part of this report

Councillor Decker requested that Chief Reardon provide an actual example of how these cameras would assist in an evacuation.  Chief Reardon said that the cameras would not have helped in the snowstorm a couple of years ago, when the Massachusetts Governor declared a state of emergency and the entire Greater Boston workforce was released at the same early afternoon time to get into their cars and create an enormous gridlock.  However, the system would assist in a small-scale evacuation or a large-scale fire.  The cameras are not a magic bullet.  They can show where the problem is, but they cannot solve the problem.

Councillor Decker said that she is also very concerned about access to information.  She asked what city officer would have the right to release stored information from the cameras if Department of Homeland Security officials were to decide they wanted the information.  She also asked whether the Fusion Center would get this information.

George Fosque, Director of Emergency Communications and Technology, said that they decided to put the cameras at high sites and focus on the traffic problem spots.  They wanted to be able to focus on getting people from Boston through Cambridge without gridlock.

Police Commissioner Robert Haas noted that this project has been under development since 2005.  For the police, the cameras would have utility in pre-arrival to tell police and fire personnel what they are going into.  He is keenly aware of the balance between public safety and civil and human rights.  They do not give out information easily.  The data is kept on the cameras for 30 days.  There is no storage of the data.  The biggest utility of the system is that it links the entire state.  He added that he is not a proponent of using cameras for stopping crime.  They do not work for this purpose and they do not make people feel safer.  In response to a question from Councillor Decker, Commissioner Haas said that these cameras are not critical to the police mission.

Councillor Davis asked whether they can adjust the time that the information is kept on the camera, for example, to 40 hours.  Commissioner Haas answered in the affirmative.

Councillor Decker asked about the planned timeline for starting to use the cameras.  Chief Reardon said that all the technical work is scheduled to be completed by the end of the month.  Then there will have to be setup and testing work, and the cameras are scheduled to be operational in about another month after the technical work is completed.

Councillor Decker said that deletion of the records in 30 hours does not address her concerns with regard to the erosion of privacy.  Her inclination, if her colleagues agree with her, would be to say "shut off the cameras."

Councillor Seidel expressed his skepticism, which he related to two recent experiences. He said that when he was in Washington, D.C. for the Presidential Inauguration, the situation was chaos -it was controlled chaos but it was chaos, even though they had months to plan for it.  He does not see that cameras would have improved the gridlock. If there is catastrophic event, there will need to be officers in control, not cameras. Then, when he returned to Cambridge, he saw on late night TV that the National Security Council is doing 24-7 surveillance of a whole lot of people.  He does not want to take steps that would make it easier for security agencies to engage in inappropriate surveillance.

Councillor Kelley said that if he had to say cameras yes or no, he would say no cameras.  However, the City Council does owe the speakers an apology.  We have known of these plans for many months.  He submitted a copy of Order No.2 of April 7, 2008

Councillor Decker observed that the order submitted by Councillor Kelley concerned MBTA surveillance cameras at Russell Field and requested the City Manager to confer with the MBTA.  There was nothing in that order about the Homeland Security grant cameras being installed in various locations around the city. The infrastructure work for this project began a long time ago, and the City Council was not notified at the appropriate time.

Gail Epstein, 43 Linnaean Street, said there often is a large gap between the intention and the reality.  Let us stop the process before it gets to a point where we lose local control.  There are very clear risks that down the road, with other people in control, these cameras could lead to a big erosion of our freedom.

State Representative Alice Wolf, Huron Avenue, said that she is here because this is a really important issue.  Our public safety officials do a wonderful job.  Her preference would be not to have the cameras turned on because of the potential over time for erosion of privacy and rights. There are many unknowns, for example, how long the information is kept, who could get the information, etc.  This is very different from You Tube.  Some of the fiercest assaults on civil liberties begins when our governments obtain information about their citizens.

John Roberts, 321 Huron Avenue, former president of the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts, discussed his own experience with government collection and use of surveillance information and, thereafter, inappropriate government use of that information.  He also expressed concern about Cambridge police going to Israel on a trip sponsored by the ADL, with its long record of surveillance abuse.

Marley Lovell stated support for using lighting and community policing to reduce crime, not surveillance cameras.  He has lived and  worked in Cambridge for twenty-five years with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).  He is very concerned about the cameras and the potential for abuse.  He would like to know how the community can get involved in preventing them.

Keith Harvey, 2161 Massachusetts Avenue, Regional Director of AFSC, described what it is like to be under intense scrutiny because of work for justice.  He hopes for Cambridge to continue to be a model community where we do not need these cameras.

Ted Peck, 3 Traymore Street, urged the City Council to keep Cambridge from going down this route.  It is more effective to do things in a public way.

Nancy Ryan, 4 Ashburton Place, stated her respect for and confidence in our public safety officials, but she noted that we will not have them forever - we cannot hand government the authority to watch us 24-7.  There are cameras with automatic classification systems that classify behavior and can automatically focus on images of people displaying these behaviors.  She urged the City Council to prevent the turn on of the cameras.

Jay Shetterly, Magazine Street, said that almost everything that he would like to say has been said.  This does not come from Cambridge officials; it comes from Homeland Security.  He urged the City Council to vote to prevent the cameras.

Hatch Sterrit, 12 Boardman Street #202, said that he would like us to open up to the emerging sense of the obvious, in terms of the direction in which security is moving-techno- totalitarianism.  There is always a security excuse, and that is historically why we have constitutions.  The second issue has to do with labeling individuals.  The next is the disproportionate expenditure on security and crime.

James Williamson, 1006 Jackson Place, noted there are cameras in the Sullivan Chamber that no one is concerned about.  We know who controls them, when they are on, and when off.  However we do not have that information about the cameras in question.  He urged the City Council to pursue a very thorough investigation and asked that results be made available online.

Councillor Decker thanked all those who attended the hearing.  She stated that she still is not convinced that the cameras are necessary.  She believes that they contribute to the erosion of privacy and liberty.  The meeting was adjourned at seven o'clock and fifty minutes p.m.