They keep an eye on us Cameras in cities - they see us everywhere

Divergences in the assessment of monitoring would not be so extreme if we had a law regulating its use. And this one, despite requests for it by subsequent ombudsmen and inspectors general for personal data protection, we are looking forward to.

Visual monitoring (closed circuit television - CCTV) appeared in Poland during the rule of Edward Gierek, when the Warsaw Central Station, opened in 1976, was equipped with the first cameras. Today, there are so many of them in Warsaw that almost every inhabitant, from the moment they leave home, falls into the field of vision of one of them. A camera installed by a nosy neighbor, a community of residents, the board of a housing cooperative or the manager of an apartment building can look at the door and balcony of his apartment, the household trash can and the parking lot. Major streets, squares and parks are monitored by 407 cameras operated 24 hours a day by 180 operators from the Monitoring System Service Department (ZOSM) reporting to the mayor of the city. In addition, 23 police cameras monitor traffic at major intersections. We also have cameras at gas stations, parking lots, underground passages, banks and ATMs, stations, supermarkets, airports, subways and city buses. We find them in exchange offices, and they are even packed with so-called. smart office buildings. Cameras hang in schools, kindergartens, prisons, churches, hospitals, sobering-up stations and social welfare homes. They're basically everywhere.

Thanks to the zoom of the digital camera, its operator will read the car registration number and obtain a clear image of a person's face (allowing identification) from a distance of several hundred meters. Most often we do not even know from what direction and from what distance its lens is staring at us. It can be a camera directed at one object (e.g. bank entrance), as well as a rotating camera monitoring the area in a programmed cycle or operated by an operator. And the latter, by enlarging and zooming in the image, can see someone on the street snatching a woman's handbag, parking a car in a place threatening the safety of passers-by, starting a fight, taking care of a physiological need or painting over election posters.

The operator can also look at the ladies' exposed cleavage, look at the packages we carry and put into the car (perhaps they are "goodies" from a burglary), pilot a group of young people in hoods through the monitored area (this is a high-risk group) and look at our hands when, sitting on a park bench, we give our neighbor candy (because maybe it's the dose of the drug). But the "bought" operator can also send a text message to the editorial office of the tabloid that a celebrity or politician just sat down with a lady in a cafe garden. At any time, the control of the camera and the image from it can be taken over by a police officer or other service, and the obtained recording can be used for broadly understood operational purposes.

There are so many cameras in Warsaw that operators from the monitored areas of the city can compile the entire route of the manifestation. They can observe the front of the procession, its center and stragglers. They can also track the car's passage through the entire city, e.g. from the entrance from Poznań to the exit towards Terespol. In the Wiecha Passage there are cameras with the so-called smart application. They compare the view of the wall of the building with the view saved a few minutes earlier in its memory, during the previous camera rollover. Such a camera allows you to unmask a graffiti artist who smears a wall or a person sticking advertising or election posters in an unauthorized place.

- In Warsaw we have one of the most modern monitoring systems in the world, and that is why camera manufacturers are willing to test technical innovations here - says Jacek Gniadek, director of the Monitoring System Service Department. Modern cameras can analyze the location of fixed and movable objects in the monitored area and alert the operator when an object appears on the stop bench or in the station hall that has not changed its position for several minutes. It can be a forgotten student backpack, but also a package with a bomb. There are already cameras that record movement that goes beyond the general norm, e.g. reacting to a suddenly passing person or waving arms.

The technical department of the Warsaw ZOSM is testing cameras that can identify people within their range. These may be persons reported as missing and wanted on warrants. The latest cameras allow you to mark the person seen on the monitor, after which the camera automatically tracks and records it. Camera operators are trained in from the language of the human body, which is to facilitate the correct and quick interpretation of the behavior of the observed people. Because in the end it is not so much what the operator sees as important as how he reacts.

Sound barrier

The authorities of Mława, out of concern for the safety of the residents, even decided to overcome the sound barrier. In July this year Rotary cameras recording images appeared in the city, additionally equipped with microphones recording sound on the monitored streets, and loudspeakers through which operators can also lecture residents. In statements for the media, Mayor Sławomir Kowalewski explained that microphones do not eavesdrop on conversations, but only pick up distinctive sounds: a cry for help, an alarm on, the sound of broken glass, etc.

He did not convince either the residents or the opposition councilors who demanded that the barely installed microphones be turned off. According to the website mojamlawa.pl, the mayor of the protests summed it up as follows: "Against these solutions, the loudest protests are made by the milieu that favors criminals." The Mława surveillance novelty was condemned by the Panoptykon Foundation and the Helsinki Foundation. Dr. Wojciech R. Wiewiórowski, the Inspector General for Personal Data Protection, sees no reason to introduce sound surveillance of residents. – Our voice, like our image, belongs to the personal data protected by law – he emphasizes.

Why have video surveillance systems become so popular in recent years? Some researchers of this phenomenon believe that it was influenced by the end of the Cold War, which forced defense companies to seek new orders on the civilian security market. The electronic media (television and the Internet) also contributed to the dissemination of monitoring, which began to receive recordings from municipal and police cameras: recordings of fights, attempts to steal cars, acts of vandalism, as well as human stupidity. For example, a video of a night march along a Warsaw street of four young men stripped down to the broth, followed by their friends carrying shoes and clothes, or a drastic recording showing how a drunk cyclist, who bypassed the lowered barriers, drives in front of the train.

City cameras are on us - they see us everywhere

Darkest Under the Lantern

The career of such recordings reinforces the belief that the camera can see everything, and its presence also has a preventive effect. But the case of the cyclist shows that the camera at the railway crossing will not prevent the accident. It is estimated - the Ministry of the Interior and Administration does not have such data - that video monitoring (from several to several hundred cameras) has approx. 80 percent. Polish cities. However, in a small town, where the only patrol car on duty has a fuel consumption limit, the use of monitoring may be small if there is no possibility of immediate reaction to the event noticed by the operator. It may be cheaper and more useful for the safety of residents to turn on all city lights at night.

Placing signs on the city's outskirts with the inscription "Monitored City" is a fraud against its inhabitants, if the monitoring system includes only a few cameras placed at the main intersection and in front of the town hall. This will not deter an experienced criminal, and it will give the residents a false sense of security. Only the authorities will be satisfied, which at the end of their term of office will boast that they funded not only the aquapark, but also monitoring. And it's getting easier to install. There are already companies that offer free installation. The City of Bytom took advantage of such an offer and pays only for the lease of the system.

The dissemination of video surveillance also raises protests. Last year's International Day Against Surveillance, celebrated on September 11, the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the US, was devoted to monitoring the behavior of citizens on the streets in Poland. From the published materials developed by the activists of the Panoptykon Foundation, one can learn that the Polish society knows little about monitoring and therefore, not noticing the threats to privacy that it poses, agrees to its widespread use.

Proponents of monitoring claim, among other things, that it reduces crime. Spokesman of the Warsaw Police Headquarters, subinsp. Marcin Szyndler claims that in some places, after installing the cameras, the level of committed crimes and misdemeanors decreased by up to 60 percent. However, he cannot answer the question whether the monitoring of more important streets and squares did not "push" the criminals out of them to the streets without monitoring. Such a phenomenon was noticed in Great Britain, the country considered to be the most closely monitored. It was the British data and experience that Gen. Adam Rapacki, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration, reached for in 2010, answering the question of the General Inspector for Personal Data Protection about the scope, usefulness and legal basis for monitoring in Poland. Rapacki wrote: “According to the statistics published in 2007 in the UK's national CCTV strategy, a thousand cameras detect one crime a year, and 90 percent of them detect a crime. images are not qualified as evidence in court.

The eighth place of the camera

In Poland, research in 2008 was conducted by Dr. Paweł Waszkiewicz from the University of Warsaw, author of the book "Big Brother Year 2010" and a doctoral dissertation on forensic, criminological and legal aspects of video monitoring. They were to show whether the installation of video surveillance reduces the level of crime in the monitored area and increases the sense of security of people living there. It turned out that the installation of cameras (in four places in Warsaw's Wola district) had neither a significant impact on the decrease in the number of crimes and misdemeanors, nor on the sense of security of the inhabitants. Among the factors with the greatest impact on security, cameras were only in eighth place, losing to, among others, with police patrols, street lighting and vigilant neighbors.

The results of these studies, however, should not lead to the conclusion that the cameras should be scrapped. They are often useful and even necessary, for example in places of mass sports and cultural events, in cells for dangerous criminals and in other facilities where citizens have limited freedom and may be exposed to harassment by staff.

Thanks to the analysis of monitoring recordings, many such events were revealed by the employees of the civil rights ombudsman. From the use of force against a ward of the correctional home in Głogów, to the forced undressing of a patient in the sobering-up center in the city of T. by the men working there and their presence in the admission room during her examination by a doctor. In another room, the patient was thrown on the floor, undressed and dragged into the room without clothes. In the Szczecin chamber, the controllers, after watching the recordings, recommended "replacing the installation of the cameras in the toilets for women and men in such a way that the private parts of people taking care of their physiological needs are not visible in the image transmitted by the cameras". The monitoring also confirmed that the residents of the Social Welfare Home in Gołuszyce were used to clean the rooms, although this was the responsibility of the paid staff of the Nursing Home.

Monitoring should be used in really necessary situations and, according to prof. Irena Lipowicz, Ombudsman, and Dr. Wojciech R. Wiewiórowski, there is an urgent need to adopt the Act on Monitoring. Today, the provisions concerning it are dispersed in the acts on the police, municipal guards, municipal government, property protection, as well as in acts of a lower order, although they affect the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.

Looking at hands

During monitoring, our personal data is processed and privacy is infringed. Dr. Wiewiórowski believes that monitoring devices can only be used as auxiliary means, if there is a purpose that actually justifies their use and when other means that do not require obtaining images from cameras prove to be insufficient or impossible to use.

In Poland, there is no obligation to inform that a given object or area of ​​the city is monitored, nor to inform (as in some countries) who is the administrator of the camera and recordings. In Spain, any recorded person has the right to see the recordings and request their removal. We do not regulate the maximum storage time for monitoring recordings, e.g. in Italy they may be kept for a maximum of 7 days. Those from Warsaw streets and squares are stored for 30 days, and from railway stations in Poland it is not known how long, because according to the PKP spokeswoman, it is a secret.

The act will also have to include a seemingly obvious thing that it is unacceptable to install cameras in changing rooms, fitting rooms, toilets and hotel rooms. The storage and use of monitoring recordings by the police and secret services is an unregulated matter. Self-government cameras, as is the case in Warsaw for example, make recordings, the sole disposal of which immediately becomes the police. It can make use of them in a process, operationally (that is, even keep them for another occasion), pass them on to another service or to the media. We have not received an answer to the question of who and what guides them when making such decisions.

There are many doubts and matters to be settled. That is why it is worth looking at the hands of the authorities so that they do not look at us unnecessarily and too much.