The Philadelphia Inquirer recently investigated Philadelphia’s use of what it described as a “little-scrutinized, 7,000-camera system that is exposing residents across the city to heightened surveillance with few rules or safeguards against abuse.” The article detailed how Philadelphia narcotics cops not only allegedly failed to disclose their use of video surveillance in arrest reports or to prosecutors, but also that the video footage at times proved officers were lying when they testified.

The Conversation U.S. talked to Albert Fox Cahn, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and a practitioner-in-residence at NYU School of Law, about what these new video systems can do and the privacy and other issues they raise.

The closed-circuit television, or CCTV, cameras most Americans pass each day may look interchangeable, but a lot has changed behind the lens in recent years. As video surveillance cameras have become cheaper and more ubiquitous, they have also grown more powerful – featuring increasingly high-definition images and the ability to pan, tilt and zoom. But the most significant change to cameras like those used in Philadelphia is the networks that police departments set up to aggregate these countless images of city residents’ daily........

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