New Surveillance Might Mean New Abuses Here

via Wikimedia

PushBlack
June 24, 2019

Imagine 4,000 new eyes in the sky watching your every move. How’s that sound? Cameras see crime, but they also see whatever else you’re doing, and that raises questions for some in the Bronx, where they’re installing a massive new system. 

A security-camera sharing program known as Bronx Community Assisted Mapping System was implemented in late 2018. It’s open to those who register their cameras at home, their business or elsewhere. And a massive intranet system of them all is managed by authorities!  

The City reported that Michael Sisitsky at the New York Civil Liberties Union warned against the system: “It’s essentially a way around external oversight if they’re relying on all of these private feeds to generate data for them.”

So what’s wrong with surveillance? The Black community knows all too well that cameras can work both for and against us. As a community that’s always been spied on, we have to be careful what rights we hand over in the name of security. 

After all, will we feel any safer trusting the police with cameras than we do trusting them without? What’s happening in the Bronx may answer these questions and more. 

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