During the 1990s, London constructed a security system known as the Ring of Steel as a response to bombings carried out by the Irish Republican Army. This security system consisted of concrete barriers, checkpoints, and a large number of video cameras placed around the City of London. The primary purpose of this system was to closely monitor the movements of individuals entering and exiting the Square Mile area, leading to the term “fortress urbanism” being used by The New York Times to describe this extensive surveillance measure.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, urban planners in New York sought inspiration from London’s approach of fortifying cities to protect against terrorism. Fusion centers, which are platforms where various US law enforcement agencies collaborate and share intelligence at a national level to gain a comprehensive understanding of criminal activity, had already been in existence for a couple of years. However, officials started considering the possibility of establishing localized fusion centers. They wondered if local law enforcement agencies could analyze and gather significant amounts of intelligence within a single city.
In 2005, a new concept called the “real-time crime center” (RTCC) was introduced. It involved a large network of CCTV cameras and automatic license plate readers (ALPR) that were connected to a central hub in the headquarters of the New York Police Department. This initiative cost $11 million. Over the years, RTCCs have been adopted in various cities across the United States, from Miami to Seattle. According to the Atlas of Surveillance project by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization that focuses on digital rights, there are currently 123 RTCCs in the country, and this number continues to increase.
Each Real-Time Crime Center (RTCC) may have slight variations, but their main purpose remains the same: to collect surveillance data from various sources across a city and use it to create a real-time overview of criminal activities. Police departments have a range of technologies at their disposal, including CCTV cameras, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring tools, drones, and body cameras. In Ogden, Utah, authorities even considered using a 30-foot “crime blimp” for this purpose. Facial recognition technology is often employed to analyze the images captured by these systems, and the data obtained is frequently used for predictive policing. For instance, in Pasco County, Florida, where an RTCC is in operation, the sheriff’s office’s predictive policing system encouraged officers to constantly monitor and target residents for minor code violations like missing mailbox numbers or overgrown grass.
According to Erik Lavigne, who works as a detective at the Fort Worth Police Department and also serves as the communications director at the National RTCC Association, there has been a significant increase in the number of Real-Time Crime Centers (RTCCs) in the past year. This is because police officers believe that these centers help them carry out more precise policing. In the past, the approach to policing was scattered, similar to throwing out a fishnet and hoping to catch something. Lavigne explains that this approach used to work, given the circumstances at the time. However, it had the unintended consequence of alienating the community, as innocent people were often stopped and questioned along with the actual wrongdoers. Lavigne compares a real-time crime center to a scalpel, implying that it allows for more targeted and accurate identification and apprehension of criminals, reducing the likelihood of mistakenly apprehending innocent individuals.
According to Lavigne, RTCCs offer a cost-effective solution compared to hiring additional personnel, as each camera acts as a virtual officer monitoring a specific area. Lavigne claims that this approach has been highly successful, with RTCC analysts recording more crimes than they can handle, and the Fort Worth RTCC playing a significant role in reducing vehicle thefts.
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The effectiveness of Real Time Crime Centers (RTCCs) is mostly supported by anecdotal evidence, and there are not many studies available to determine their true effectiveness. A study conducted by the National Institute of Justice in Detroit found that Project Green Light, which is a part of the Detroit Police Department’s RTCC and installed cameras in over 550 locations, had a positive impact on reducing property violence in certain areas, but it did not have any effect in preventing violent crimes and other offenses. However, police departments maintain that RTCCs are effective.
Only a small number of individuals are aware of the existence of RTCCs and the level of surveillance they involve. As a result, these centers receive minimal public attention and are often able to operate with limited supervision. The potential impact of surveillance technologies on the First and Fourth Amendment rights in the United States has been a subject of concern for a while. However, Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher at the EFF, argues that RTCCs intensify these concerns by consolidating all the collected data in a single location.
“It is continuously contributing to the gathering of individuals’ personal data from numerous video streams,” states Lipton. “They are significantly reducing the standards for how law enforcement can obtain this information… When there are extensive databases like these without appropriate checks and balances, both law enforcement officials and individuals can exploit them for their own agendas, which can be extremely alarming.”
The regulations regarding the storage and usage of this data are inconsistent and unreliable. For instance, data collected by RTCC can be shared across different areas because third-party contractors who handle the hardware or software also collect and share the data. Lipton explains that although some of these companies claim to delete the data as per retention schedules, there have been instances where they have failed to do so. This has resulted in the sharing of information from databases such as license plate reader databases without the knowledge of police departments and in violation of jurisdictional rules.
Although companies may claim that their data is securely stored, there is no absolute assurance of this. In the year 2020, hackers managed to breach the security of web development firm Netsential, which was responsible for storing data for fusion centers across the United States. As a result, they were able to steal internal memos, financial records, and other sensitive information from over 200 local, state, and federal agencies. This incident, which led to the exposure of a significant amount of leaked data, became widely known as
According to Lipton, there are genuine worries about the storage of such a large volume of information. Lipton does not see any evidence to suggest that these systems are more secure than other systems in different scenarios. It is a well-known fact that breaches occur frequently in various law enforcement agencies in this country.
Lipton is concerned that the capability to track individuals from a distance and share this information across different states could be misused to target individuals participating in protests and political organizing, as it has already occurred, or those seeking reproductive health services. The alarming aspect is that this tracking can occur in real time, meaning that if you step out of your house, there is a high possibility that law enforcement could access a live feed that is solely focused on monitoring your movements.
