By: F. Behr
Picture this. You’re walking along the pavement when an excited, somewhat perverted, whistle scatters your thoughts. It’s a Ring Camera announcing that it is recording you because you happen to be passing. It is a necessary but particularly obnoxious reminder that we live in a surveillance society, one facilitated both by public measures and individual private interests.
The city of Philadelphia has historically invested in surveillance technologies. In 2007, the City Council passed a bill that allowed for the transfer of $5,000,000 from employee benefits to the Department of Public Property for the purchase, installation, and maintenance of surveillance cameras.
Since then, the spread of cameras in Philadelphia has increased. An investigation The Inquirer conducted last year found that the video surveillance system in Philadelphia includes 7,000 cameras that can be controlled via an app. The city has not publicly disclosed the use of the app, and it considers the location of pole cameras to be non-public information. Police officers were also not documenting their use of these cameras, and in some cases, the recorded evidence proved officers were lying when they gave their testimony.
This public surveillance is only going to expand. This year, the Council passed a bill that introduced a section for automated vehicle noise enforcement to the traffic code. The amendment allows the PPA to use automated vehicle noise enforcement systems, which would use cameras and decibel meters to help issue fines for drifting and nuisance vehicles. The latter is defined as:
- A vehicle operating a device that amplifies sounds within the vehicle to the point it can be heard 100 feet away.
- A vehicle engaged in drifting.
- A vehicle blocking access points with the purpose of enabling drifting.
However, as of writing, Mayor Parker has not taken action.
This bill is part of a greater push to use surveillance tech to regulate automobiles and the space they take. In 2020, four cities decided to pilot a ‘smart zone’ program with Coord, a curb management company. Drivers could book popular loading zones with an app to reduce double parking, lane blocking, and congestion. Anyone who has tried moving in Philadelphia can appreciate the benefits of this.
In the city, SEPTA conducted a 70-day pilot program with Hayden AI in which it equipped buses on Routes 21 and 42 with cameras to record cars parked illegally in bus stops and bus lanes. Such acts both disrupt the flow of transport and pose problems to riders who have to walk into the street and wheelchairs users who cannot access the ramp. During this, SEPTA noted over 36,000 violations. That pilot transformed into a policy this May when the PPA, SEPTA, and the Office of Transportation, Infrastructure and Systems spread the camera use to more buses and trolleys.
So, surveillance-style technology can clearly help with some real infrastructural problems. However, who has access to the tech and what logic it uses remain concrete issues that need to be addressed. In the case of the app-controlled cameras, the use of surveillance was purposefully kept secret. In the case of the automated vehicle noise enforcement systems, these tools displace the responsibility of determining what counts as an overly loud vehicle. The outcomes of this decision are severe. Even before the systems were considered, violations come with a penalty of $2,000 and a seizure of the vehicle. Moreover, any police officer who discovers a nuisance vehicle may seize it.
The desire for ever-greater surveillance does not end at the pavement, however. In 2024, the City Council adopted a resolution calling for the city to explore a pilot program for free doorbell cameras to improve public safety. The council drew inspiration from similar programs conducted in Freeport, Illinois, and Akron, Ohio. In these programs, the city bought some doorbell cameras which they then distributed to their citizens on a first-come-first-serve basis. (An odd quirk in the City Council’s resolution is that it begins with a call for generic doorbell cameras but specifies Ring Cameras by the end.)
These initiatives have not proven themselves, though. In Freeport, the government collaborated with ShotSpotter, which sells a gunfire locator service. CNN learned, however, that these services are lacking. In Chicago, only 9 percent of alerts were due to gun-related crimes; in Houston, it was 5 percent. Akron’s initiative used Ring Cameras to tackle shootings.Undark reports, though, that recordings from before and four months after the Ring program did not lead to arrests. In fact, very little data shows the effectiveness of these cameras in deterring crime.
Putting aside the question of efficacy, this program is not handing people free cameras that they might buy anyway. Instead, its focus is on control. Aspects the resolution highlights as worthy of emulation include:
- Barring the sale and transfer of the cameras.
- Permitting law enforcement access.
- Prohibiting obstruction or objections to the use of footage by law enforcement.
- Notifying the City in advance of any changes in ownership of property.
- Holding the City harmless of any damage, loss, injury, or death resulting from or related to the program.
So, instead of empowering citizens with technology, this resolution is a push to expand the surveillance net even further by claiming your doorbell. It also opens the door to abuse even further. We have internalized that our digital journeys are watched from their beginning to their end. With enough cameras, the state can create a near perfect trace of a person’s physical path. It is done in the name of security and enforcing democratically-created regulations, but without democratic accountability, that security and enforcement is a cage that is slowly constricting us.
The Philadelphia Partisan 