The issue was of interest to us because we see a lot of unrealized potential for Granville. It is one of our city’s most celebrated streets, and yet it seems – despite a costly make-over – in 2008-9 – to miss the mark. It’s definitely not a street that feels welcoming to all residents – or even functionally useful for them. One of the big issues, of course, is the concentration of night-time uses, and the often less-than-savory spill-over effect from the concentration of bars and clubs in the area.

But while the Council motion looked strong in a number of ways, it also contained a proposal to install surveillance cameras, as a way of monitoring public activity on the street. Having looked at CCTV in detail over the past few years, this caused us concern. Surveillance cameras, it is often suggested, are a way to reduce criminal activity and wrong-doing. The evidence tends to suggest that this isn’t actually the case. More often, they become a costly intrusion into public life, with little actual return on investment. Even worse, they put everyone in the public – including the vast-majority of law-abiding residents – under unnecessary scrutiny.

With that in mind, the VPSN wrote a letter to Council to note our concerns. Here’s an excerpt:

Like many people in Vancouver, the Vancouver Public Space Network is interested in potential improvements to public space and public life on Granville Street. We support the general spirit of the motion that is being discussed at Council today.

However, we are writing in particular, to note that we are strongly opposed to Part B of the aforementioned motion, wherein it is proposed:

THAT Vancouver City Council direct staff to work with the Vancouver Police Department, Bar Watch, and other relevant stakeholders to determine the viability, budget, and timeframe for reactivation of the Street Surveillance Camera Network.

As we have noted on a number of occasions with the City (dating back over a decade), the use of CCTV in the fashion suggested by this motion has proven to be costly and ineffectual in many other jurisdictions around the world.

On the contrary, evidence shows that in the majority of instances, surveillance cameras do not have a statistical impact on either the overall prevention of crime, or the ability of police to solve a greater number of crimes. Many of the assumed or anecdotal benefits simply do not bear out when subjected to closer study. Most recently, the Acting Privacy Commissioner of BC has also questioned the legality of similar proposals in other municipalities.

Alongside this, CCTV cameras do come with a more problematic cost when used in public spaces: they place all users of the street “under the gun” of closed circuit television. This notion of continuous surveillance is an unacceptable intrusion into the public life of the street.

If the City’s goal is to improve public life and safety on Granville Street, there are numerous proactive measures that can be taken. Introducing CCTV along the street is not one of them.

We encourage you to strike Part B of the motion, but encourage you to explore other ways to improve Granville Street.

Should the City wish to pursue enhancements to the street, we suggest a focus on matters related to street design, transit planning, licensing considerations and more. Indeed, many of these ideas are mentioned elsewhere in the motion.

(As an aside, we aren’t totally certain what the motion means by “reactivation” – as the only ongoing electronic surveillance consistently conducted on Granville took place during the Olympics).

On the positive side, we are pleased that Council did not pass the motion as it was written. Instead, the final recommendation called on City staff to consult with a number of organizations (including the VPSN) around the efficacy of CCTV, along with other safety measures that could improve the street. The full text of this motion is as follows:

THAT Vancouver City Council direct staff to work with the Vancouver Police Department, Bar Watch, BC Civil Liberties Association, Pivot Legal Society, Vancouver Public Spaces Network, Downtown Business Improvement Association, BC Law Society, and other relevant stakeholders, including the Granville Entertainment District Safety and Security Working Group (GED SSWG), the Provincial Government, and other B.C. municipalities exploring the use of CCTV, and ask the Provincial Privacy Commissioner to give us an assessment of the use of CCTV in the Granville Entertainment District and to review the efficacy of using Street Surveillance Camera Networks to support safety measures and to deter property damage, theft, violent behavior and consider other methods that could achieve these outcomes minimizing impacts on civil liberties, and report back to Council by June 2018, or sooner if practicable.

We look forward to this further discussion, along with other, less intrusive ways to enhance the safety of Granville Street. We’ll provides updates as these discussions take place.

Photo by Jason Thibault, Massive Kontent (Creative Commons)

We’re big fans of the work of Media Democracy Days, having participated in their panels and blogged about their events in the past. This November, they’re launching their first-ever three-day event, and we’ll definitely be checking it out. In the meantime, they are co-presenting a film screening and panel discussion on surveillance, a subject of special importance in this political and social moment in Vancouver.

Article 12: Waking Up in a Surveillance Society presents a sharp look at the current state of privacy and the debate around the rights and desires of individuals and governments with the increasing accessibility and use of surveillance. Using the twelfth article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to chart the current state of privacy around the world, the film argues that without the right to privacy no other human right can truly be exercised. The film features interviews with Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, and Vancouver favourite Brian Eno. The film and accompanying panel discussion – featuring Micheal Vonn of the BC Civil Liberties Association and Kate Milberry of Geeks and Global Justice, among others – takes place Thursday, September 15 at W2 Media Café.

With the recent publishing of the Vancouver riot review, concerns over the use of facial recognition software, and the potential for scaling up the use of public video surveillance in the future, now (right before the municipal election) is an apt time to be discussing the impacts and implications of surveillance in our city’s public spaces.

For more details on the film screening and panel discussion, visit the event’s Facebook page.

According to the Act, ICBC can disclose personal information (including your photograph) to “a public body or a law enforcement agency in Canada to assist in a specific investigation with a view to a law enforcement proceeding, or from which a law enforcement proceeding is likely to result.” This clause may well come into play for people present at Vancouver’s most recent riots. According to the Vancouver Observer, ICBC has offered access to both its image bank of driver’s license photographs and its facial recognition technology for the RCMP to use to identify people involved in the riots and looting that followed last month’s Stanley Cup riot.

BC’s Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham says ICBC must comply with the FIPPA when it uses the technology. She stated, “There is a fine balance to be struck in weighing a citizen’s privacy interests and the use of personal information for law enforcement… This balancing of interests must be undertaken within the confines of existing law.”

ICBC spokesman Adam Grossman says the RCMP has not yet taken up ICBC’s offer of technology and photographs, but if the exchange does come to pass, ICBC will comply with the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner.

Commissioner Denham points out the importance of this, stating, “This is a very, very tricky area of law, especially when government bodies have new technologies and new caches and extensive databases of personal information.”

When we talk about surveillance and privacy, we often end up also talking about ‘mission creep’, where a technology or practice is introduced in such a way and for such a purpose that seems reasonable, only for its mission to gradually extend its scope to include activities that we may not be comfortable with. While most of us think it’s pretty reasonable for ICBC to store our driver’s license photos, having those images used to document our movements in public space is an escalation that we don’t tend to consider when we’re grinning for the camera to receive our driver’s license.