Transit, lies and videotape: Who's behind the cameras?

author : Drew Hendricks topic : Intercity Transit

by Drew Hendricks

On June 6, Intercity Transit's board (known as the IT Authority) took the decision to spend $667,500 to buy closed circuit television cameras to monitor their buses. The system will be purchased from a company called Verint Systems Inc, which is a US intelligence industry contractor.

The video system will include between four and six cameras on each bus, covering both the inside and outside of the vehicle. A microphone will pick up conversations at the fare box as well. All of the video and audio will be stored on hard drives installed on the buses, until it is downloaded back at the bus maintenance yard. A wireless capability is built into the system to facilitate downloading video from the buses remotely.

Policies and procedures adopted at the meeting seem to imply that the video system will only be used for "tagged events" such as incidents the operator (bus drivers are called operators) noticed during the day. The policy states that these video frames will be downloaded manually and burned onto dvd discs for storage, at which point they become public documents subject to disclosure. But because the video system can also be downloaded wirelessly, it opens up thepotential for the system as a whole to be used for cataloging the face and clothes of every Evergreen student who uses the bus.

Of course, with recent Green Scare convictions of people who lived in Olympia, no one could ever foresee the US Intelligence community's interest in such a system for political surveillance. Intercity Transit claims that the video system is designed to reduce false claims made by passengers against IT operators and equipment for personal injury. A figure of about $14,000-16,000 per year was cited as the cost saved by installing the video system. But the system will cost $667,500 just to acquire and install, never mind maintenance. That's at least 41 years until the system pays for itself under this set of assumptions, the key fault of which is the notion that the video systems will never prove the claims to be correct! So the question has to be asked: who is spurring IT to install this expensive digital video system, and for what real purpose?

Another key claim is that the system will "improve safety for our operators." But since the system's video feed is not monitored live, it cannot help improve safety with anything but a diminishing deterrent effect. Long experience with pervasive surveillance has shown that people actually do stupid, dangerous things on camera despite knowing about the surveillance. Numerous videos of the world's 'most stupid criminals' can prove this to anyone, if the TV show "The Real World" did not.

Verint Systems Inc was founded in 1994, and does not manufacture any of the cameras or network components itself. It holds the copyright on a software package for managing video intelligence taken from the system, but partners with manufacturers to actually produce the cameras, interconnections, storage systems, and power supplies for their systems.

Verint describes itself as a US Government contractor in intelligence: "Verint leads the industry in Networked Video Solutions for detecting potential threats, improving emergency event management, reducing liability and loss, and increasing operational efficiency. Verint Communications Interception & Analytics Solutions help government and law enforcement agencies neutralize threats from criminals and terrorists and help communications service providers comply with government mandates on electronic surveillance."

Several members of Verint's board of directors should give us an insight into why this company really exists: Lt. Gen. (Retired) Kenneth A Minihan served as the 14th Director of the National Security Agency / Central Security Services and was the senior uniformed intelligence officer in the Department of Defense. Lt. Gen. (Retired) Minihan also served as the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is the President of the Security Affairs Support Association and he consults for national security and intelligence committees.

Mr. Victor A De Marines recently served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of mitre Corporation (where he remains a Director), which provides security solutions for the computer systems of the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and several organizations in the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. De Marines recently served as an advisor to the Department of Defense on matters concerning the transformation of the military. Mr. Howard Safir served as the 39th Police Commissioner of the City of New York. He also served as Associate Director for Operations, U.S. Marshals Service, as Assistant Director of the Drug Enforcement Administration and as Chief of the Witness Security Division, U.S. Marshals Service. Mr. Safir is currently the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of SafirRosetti, a division of OmnicomGroup, Inc.

In February 2002, the company changed its name from Comverse Infosys to Verint Systems and shortly afterward in May, added these three directors to their board. With friends like these it should be quite easy to see how the video capabilities of our local bus system could come to the attention of the US intelligence industry.

Our question as riders of this system should be: what are we going to do about it, now that IT has already decided to spend our money buying this system? Will we quit using the public system, and make a cooperative transportation system of our own? Or will we be willing to wear our hoodies and otherwise disguise ourselves just to ride the bus? Perhaps the application of stickers at key points will notify passengers that they are no longer on view of certain cameras, due to the opacity of the sticker! The possibilities are endless, but I'm ruling out complacency in my own response.

Drew Hendricks is a member of Olympia Copwatch, Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, and Olmpia Port Militarization Resistance.