Cameras monitor every move in parts of Hampton Roads - dailypress.com
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Home > News > Traffic
Cameras monitor every move in parts of Hampton
Roads
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Experts say expectation of privacy is changing
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Stuck on HRBT
Traffic stopped on HRBT westbound.
Bike rider has time to clean …
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May-18 1:06 PM
by: ac1979
Beginner
Control room operators Curtis Jordan, left foreground, and Ron Tatum, right foreground, monitor highway video
cameras at the Virginia Department of Transportation's command center in Virginia Beach on March 13. (Sangjib Min,
Daily Press / March 13, 2012)
By Mike Holtzclaw, [email protected] | (757) 928-6479
May 20, 2012
Related
The room is large and well lit, and it buzzes with activity even though
its occupants remain seated.
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The video screen at the front of the room is as wide as an IMAX,
though not quite as tall. It consists of 64 smaller screens – 16
columns of four apiece – that monitor every inch of interstate
between Great Wolf Lodge and the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
There is an emphasis on tunnels and bridges, and one corner
screen is tuned in to a 24-hour weather report.
If you are driving on an highway in Hampton Roads, VDOT is
watching you.
"This is about safety," says Neil Reed, maintenance manager for the
Virginia Department of Transportation's regional transportation
operations center in Virginia Beach. "If you're out on the road and
you need assistance, you should feel very good about it."
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It is a fact of modern life that many Americans either do not realize
or do not mind: We live an increasingly large percentage of our lives
on camera.
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Page 1 of 5
Cameras monitor every move in parts of Hampton Roads - dailypress.com
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At any given moment between the time you leave your home in the
morning and the time you get back in the evening, there is a good
chance that you are being watched and/or recorded. Video cameras
on the highways and on busy streets, with a focus on intersections
and red lights. Security cameras at the store, at the bank, at the gas
station where you fill your tank and the restaurant where you fill your
belly. Dozens of cameras monitoring the lots where you park your
car. Even in some workplaces.
A half-hour from the VDOT control center, in a much smaller office in
Hampton, a security guard at Peninsula Town Center keeps an eye
on more than 1 million square feet via three small, black-and-white
TV screens. Those screens provide images from an undisclosed
number of 360-degree cameras that cover the parking lots and
common areas of the shopping center and apartment complex.
If you are strolling the grounds at Peninsula Town Center, you are
on camera.
"If something is out of place, we can always spot it," says Raymond
Tripp, general manager of Peninsula Town Center. "If there's a car
parked in the middle of the street, or a guest who looks lost or in
distress … if there's a child by himself or a suspicious package … if
there's wetness where it should not be wet, we can find it."
5/21/12 10:54 AM
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Tripp begins every business day by scanning through the digital
recordings provided by the security cameras, looking for anything
that may have been amiss overnight. By contrast, VDOT's 276
highway cameras do not record, but simply provide a live view of the
interstates.
280
"It's very, very rare that you actually see something happen on
camera," Reed says. "You'd have to be looking at the right spot at
just the right time, and even then you might miss it. But you can see the effect it is having on traffic, and you can
get help on the way immediately."
But VDOT's cameras are streamed live online so that citizens can check out what is happening on the interstates.
One more way that you are being watched. And never forget that almost everyone you encounter is holding a cell
phone that contains a camera that records both stil images and video.
"It used to be that people had an expectation not to be watched in public, but I don't know if they have that
anymore," says David Murakami Wood, an associate professor of sociology at Queens University in Ontario who
writes and speaks extensively about the pervasiveness of cameras in modern society. "Our ideas about privacy
are changing. For a lot of people, the idea of being watched by a disembodied camera is disturbing – but for
younger generations, it's not.
"For people who have grown up with Facebook and with cameras on their mobile phones, that particular aspect
doesn't factor into what an invasion of privacy is. They have a more sophisticated idea of privacy."
More and more Americans, he says, are willing to accept surveillance in their public lives, particularly in the
decade following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They still have an expectation of privacy, but they are more openminded in establishing the line of what is and isn't acceptable. (An example of unacceptable: Two years ago, a
high school in Pennsylvania got caught spying on students in their homes via tiny webcams attached to schoolissued laptops.)
Just as VDOT's cameras monitor the interstate, most cities in Hampton Roads employ cameras at major
intersections. The cameras, which stream live on the internet for anyone to watch, observe but do not record and
are of little or no value for security. They are primarily used for traffic and road conditions.
Submit Your Traffic Video
Submit your videos of traffic conditions/incidents from around
Hampton Roads.
Hampton started with a half-dozen cameras in 2002; the city now has 30 cameras and plans to add 10 more.
"Being able to check real-time traffic is the main reason for the cameras," city spokeswoman Robin McCormick
said. "We also use them to look for flooding or for snow or other weather conditions on the road. Primarily, they are
there for citizens' convenience."
McCormick said the cameras received 60,000 page views last year, spiking during Hurricane Irene. Not
surprisingly, the busiest streets draw the most page views.
"If you want to be on camera," McCormick says. "the most likely places to be seen are on Mercury Boulevard, Fox
Hill Road and on Settlers Landing Road near I-64."
Virginia Beach in 2003 installed cameras equipped with facial recognition software in the bustling Oceanfront
resort area. The idea was to scan the faces of people on the street and digitally cross-reference their features with
those of police mug shots of fugitives and suspects.The program was dropped within a few years after producing
no arrests.
In the city of Franklin, police officers now wear tiny video cameras on their shoulders. The cameras are activated
during any arrests or confrotations so that the behavior of both the officer and the citizens will be recorded. This
technology could become mainstream in the foreseeable future, Murakami Wood predicts, with people recording
snippets of their lives with cameras attached to their hats or clothing.
"This saturation of images, the expectation of being on camera, is not decreasing," he said. "Our idea of privacy is
changing. Pretty soon it will not be a fundamental right, as we see it now, but something that exists in particular,
agreed-upon circumstances. If both parties are wearing head cameras, they will be able to say, 'I'd rather we both
turn these off now.'
"Just like now there are certain location now where people say 'We'd rather you didn't carry a gun,' there will be
locations where they will say, 'We'd rather you turn your head camera off.' That's the kind of society we're going for
http://www.dailypress.com/news/traffic/exclusive/dp-nws-public-camera-surveillance-20120520,0,6358117.story
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Cameras monitor every move in parts of Hampton Roads - dailypress.com
5/21/12 10:54 AM
in 20 or 30 years, and kids who are growing up now will consider it to be completely normal."
He stresses that this is not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing.
It is simply an observation of the direction in which our culture is headed.
Americans today use phones as cameras and upload the footage to the rest of the world. We post details of our
lives on Facebook and click "share." We webcast and podcast and stream and Skype. And when we do this on
our own, Murakami Wood says, we are less offended or worried when we know that cameras are observing us on
the street and in places of business.
"People have actually become very conscious of sophisticated ways to control privacy," he says. "They share a lot,
but they're careful who they share things with – the period when people didn't realize was Facebook was is over.
At first they didn't understand what Facebook was. Now they do.
"People are very good at catching up, and right now people are learning to live in this world. People learn to live in
whatever social situation they are living in. They adapt and change. That's what is happening right now."
Copyright © 2012, Newport News, Va., Daily Press
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US-13 - SB
From Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel To I64 Hampton Roads Beltway
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RT-13 Northampton Blvd To Atlantic
Av/Fort Story
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Comments (3)
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BigMikeMIT at 1:52 AM May 20, 2012
Good, keep those cameras on the Africans ... then maybe some whites can even walk the streets again
in peace.
NOTE: Comments area is for meaningful discussion. Readers are reminded to post comments that are
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I-64 Hampton Roads Beltway To
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