Big Blue Meets Big Brother

council approves installation of cameras on buses

Hannah Heineman
Mirror staff writer
  
   Santa Monica’s City Council decided by a vote of 5 to 2 on July 13 to allow surveillance cameras to be placed on the City’s Big Blue Buses.
   The cameras will be installed in 125 buses as part of Big Blue’s $4,695,526 fleet reconditioning plan that also includes the refurbishment of wheelchair ramps and seat insert installation.
   The cost of installing the video systems is $1,286,271.56. Signs will be posted to notify passengers they are being photographed. According to the City staff report, “the installation of the cameras will help reduce vandalism and graffiti, improve security, provide information on passenger and driver disputes, and lower fraudulent claims.”
   Prior to the vote, Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown began the discussion by saying, “As a City Council who a year and a half ago voted unanimously to oppose the Patriot Act, it would be inappropriate for us to approve this without a public hearing on this policy question of camera surveillance on public transit.”
   The item appeared on the Council’s consent calendar that generally includes items that it approves without public discussion.
   Council member Michael Feinstein echoed McKeown’s concerns by pointing out, “this is the second time in a row we’ve had a significant civil liberties issue buried deep in a staff report on a consent item. Issues about civil liberties are real ones that have to be properly debated.” He added that the placement of surveillance cameras on buses would not strike the “right balance between safety and people’s freedom in the public sphere.”
   On the other side of the issue was Council member Pam O’Connor, a member of the Metropolitan Authority Transit (MTA) Board, agreed with the majority of the Council that “it’s more about public safety than it is about surveillance or spying on people. One of the key things [ at the MTA] is that people who ride public transit are concerned about security.” MTA buses are all equipped with cameras.
   Council member Ken Genser told his colleagues, “I don’t see this as a civil liberties issue because it enhances passengers’ safety. The interior of a bus is not public space where you could speak out, street perform or eat. There are all kinds of restrictions. You are not free to do whatever you want.”
   After voting against the installation of the cameras, both McKeown and Feinstein reiterated their charges that the cameras will compromise passengers’ civil liberties, and Feinstein added that the Council had “willfully taken away bus passengers’ civil liberties” without allowing the public to comment.
   In an interview with the Mirror, Big Blue’s Marketing and Public Information Coordinator Dan Dawson pointed out the cameras’ “pictures will not be reviewed” on a routine basis. Instead they will be placed in a storage vault and “looked at only in cases of an accident or vandalism.”
   Saying the cameras are “like a black box on an airplane,” he went on to say that “in an emergency, a bus driver has the option to turn the camera on [via a panic button] to give live transmission” that also includes audio.
   According to Dawson, cameras will not be placed on the entire Big Blue fleet because some buses will soon be “retired, and, at the end of this year, 53 Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) buses, all of which will be equipped with cameras, will be added to the fleet.
   Dawson also said that information on Big Blue’s Little Big Card which contains a magnetic strip is kept “for issuing credits but is not given out for marketing purposes” and no information is “kept on the card or card holder.” It is not used to track passenger trips on the system.