Superbowl Panopticon

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Sat Feb 3 16:59:45 PST 2001


I scanned this amusing tale from the N.Y. Daily News of 2/2/2001.

SNOOPER BOWL

By BOB KAPPSTATTER

(from the N.Y. Daily News, 2/2/2001)

Cops turned last Sunday's big football matchup in

Tampa into the Snooper Bowl.

Using a high-tech surveillance tool, they optically

scanned each face in the crowd of 100,000 Giants and

Ravens fans to look for wanted criminals, known pick-

pockets and possible terrorists seeking to target a

particularly symbolic -- and crowded -- American event.

The Big Brother "computerized police lineup" has

some civil-rights activists outraged, and a furor was

growing today over the tactic. Police responded by

saying the goal was to stop trouble before it started,

not to invade privacy.

The computerized system was capable of matching

images to a database of known crooks within seconds,

allowing cops to identify suspicious characters and

watch them with video cameras until officers could

respond and intercept them, police said.

No arrests using the system were made.

The American Civil Liberties Union demanded that

Tampa city officials hold public hearings to answer

questions about the operation at Raymond James

Stadium, which authorities called a test for future uses.

The surveillance raised serious questions about

possible violations of fans' constitutional right to

freedom from "unreasonable searches and seizures,"

the ACLU said in a letter to Tampa Mayor Dick

Greco yesterday.

"This was essentially a computerized police lineup,"

said Florida ACLU director Howard Simon.

"I don't think the issue of privacy is in question,"

Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin said. "Clearly

the courts have ruled that there is no expectation of

privacy in a public setting like this."

The video system, designed by Pennsylvania-based

Graphco Technologies Inc., uses biometric technology

to compare facial features -- such as the size of a nose,

the set of a brow or the cut of a jaw -- with images in

a database.

The Super Bowl test project compared images from

the video cameras to a relatively small database of

about 1,700 faces assembled from FBI and police files.

The database included criminals ranging from pick-

pockets to domestic terrorists.

Signs outside the stadium warned fans that they

were under video surveillance, police said.



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