From: Michael M. Butler (butler@comp-lib.org)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2001 - 10:01:25 MDT
Forwarded from a friend.
Mike
List relevance: ubiquitous surveillance, governance.
THEY 'MADE ME FEEL LIKE A CRIMINAL'
He was just having lunch in Ybor City when
a surveillance camera captured his image.
Weeks later, the police show up.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/080801/TampaBay/_They_made_me_feel_li.shtml
TAMPA -- Rob Milliron has never married. He has never had kids, never
been to Oklahoma.
Yet three Tampa police officers went to Milliron's construction job
site Monday and asked him whether he was wanted in Oklahoma for child
neglect.
It seems that his face wound up on a surveillance camera in Ybor
City. News cameras captured that image. A woman in Tulsa saw his
picture in U.S. News and World Report and called Tampa police.
She said the man in the photo was her ex-husband and was wanted on
felony child neglect charges.
Turns out they had the wrong man. But the experience has turned
Milliron into a vocal critic of the controversial surveillance system.
"From that picture, I was identified as a wanted person," said
Milliron, 32, whose only previous brush with the law involved a
marijuana possession charge when he was 19.
The surveillance system uses software called Face-It and is linked to
36 cameras throughout the Centro Ybor entertainment complex and along
E Seventh Avenue. Images taken from the cameras are compared with a
data base that includes wanted felons and sexual offenders.
If the image is a match, officers are dispatched to question the
person. But in this case it wasn't the system that flagged Milliron,
but simply a woman who saw his picture with a news story.
The plainclothes detective, accompanied by two uniformed officers,
had a copy of the magazine, folded open to the page with Milliron's
photo.
After producing identification, answering the detective's questions
and enduring curious stares and inquiries from his construction
co-workers, a mortified Milliron went home.
"He was absolutely horrified," said Cheryl Toole, 32, Milliron's
girlfriend of nine years.
"He said, "I was surrounded by the police today,' " Toole recalled.
"We were worried they'd come to our home in the middle of the night."
Equally upsetting, Milliron said, was the fact that beneath his photo
in the magazine, a headline read, "You Can't Hide Those Lying Eyes in
Tampa."
"It made me out to be a criminal," he said.
Tampa police Detective Bill Todd, who took the call from the Tulsa
woman and interviewed Milliron, said Milliron did not seem upset.
"He was laughing about it," said Todd, who spearheaded the software
project that captured Milliron's image.
Milliron's photograph was captured in June while he was on a lunch
break in Ybor City.
He didn't know it at the time, but the Police Department used his
photo to demonstrate the system to local news media.
The software costs $30,000, but is on loan for a year by its owner,
Visionics Corp. of New Jersey, while the department decides whether
to purchase it.
Milliron's photo ran in the St. Petersburg Times June 30. A caption
under the photo read, "The man in this image was not identified as
wanted."
The Times later sold the photo to U.S. News and World Report.
The software system has sparked controversy nationwide. Protesters
say the "spy cameras" intrude on citizens' privacy. Mayor Dick Greco,
however, has said the system is no more intrusive than the cameras
found in banks and shopping malls.
Milliron, who says he plans to retain an attorney, hopes the software
system will be removed.
"I don't think it's right," he said. "They made me feel like a criminal."
________________________________________
DANIEL J LYNCH
Partner, Creative Director
Sp3d, Inc.
Media Design & Production
http://www.sp3d.com
dan@sp3d.com
(415) 864-3302 - VOX
(415) 864-3402 - FAX
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