All over the city, surveillance cameras are being installed atop poles. The promise that has attended these installations by successive governments is that they will improve security, help with traffic management and even in areas like identifying garbage litterers. For a project with such great scope for the invasion of privacy and the misuse of imagery there is need for caution and accountability.
There are also other preliminary issues to address. Given the lack of integrated planning between governments there must be a huge cache of inoperable, obsolete and incompatible hardware and software considering that the first surveillance programmmes stretched as far back as 2012. Then, in a building behind Castellani House known as the Central Intelligence Unit, around 100 cameras were being monitored on a daily basis. There was never, as far as this newspaper can tell, any public accountability for what exactly these cameras were doing, who was monitoring the feed and exactly what had been done with it and with whose permission.
The next major development was under the APNU+AFC government. In July 2019, the government unveiled the Huawei-built Safe City Command Centre for the CCTV Surveillance system and it was noted that real time facial recognition and facial tracking were among features.
The system received feeds from 102 Intelligent Video Surveillance sites, each consisting of three to four cameras and facial recognition and tracking components were said to be key features.
At the launch, Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan described the initiative as one of the best developments for the country as it was expected to enhance the capabilities of law enforcement officials. “This is exactly what Guyana needs…this is just going to be one of the best developments for our country in relation to security and to see the capacities and the capabilities being built in to ensure that we can literally track vehicles, track suspects to the extent to knowing where they are and what time they would have been there through this technology, I am just so thrilled,” Mr Ramjattan said.
In June of 2020, Mr Ramjattan stated that “lots” of persons who were found in breach of the law had been arrested and charged with the aid of video recordings obtained from the cameras.
“Those who breach it and they are clear on the cameras, they are charged. Lots of traffic offenders have been charged as a result of the cameras and a lots of arrests have been made as a result of the cameras,” he said.
On the ascension of the PPP/C to office a large number of cameras was ordered and facial recognition technology is to be utilised. Speaking at a press conference on January 11 this year at PPP headquarters at Freedom House, party General Secre-tary, Bharrat Jagdeo made the most unequivocal statement thus far about the government’s intended use of facial recognition technology.
Clearly speaking in his capacity as Vice President, Mr Jagdeo said that the government is working on a biometric project that will allow the authorities to use facial recognition software to track people with criminal records and pinpoint their exact location at any given time.
As such, he said the new Brickdam Police Station which is being built will assist in bolstering the country’s security plan. Mr Jagdeo added that the government has a “master plan” to improve security in the country and to do that there must be better-trained police officers “which we are working on separately but we also need a whole range of facilities and technology and upgrade of the environment.”
He said that the Brickdam station will be the “nerve centre” for crime fighting across the country and added, “In a modern environment, we have to support, the technology will support it, it has to be bolstered by good quality forensic labs, we are already putting in security cameras with facial recognition software, we are working on a biometric project that would allow us to know everywhere, every person in Guyana, every criminal in Guyana who has a record we can pinpoint where they are at any moment in time, through facial recognition software we’d be able to track every person who comes into our country, who overstays their visa or anything else, all of that being worked in at different (points).”
Legislation will obviously have to be presented to Parliament to entrench safeguards.
Members of the public will not argue with cameras helping to crack down on crime or traffic offences but the wanton use and abuse of facial recognition technology will be a major concern.
What are the cameras at the moment – from three very different programmes – actually doing? Are they working together or are they functioning separately? Are they delivering the results we actually need to help fight crime? Somebody in government must be in a position to answer this question with precise details on the different systems in place and other questions such as how we are ensuring that these devices are not coming embedded with spying devices we are unaware of.
On September 27, Joshua David was kidnapped in one of the busiest parts of the city, Main Street. One would presume that cameras of the highest quality and resolution are positioned there. More than six weeks later there has been no sign of Mr David even though a number of persons have been charged. The police have searched several East Coast Demerara villages for him. If the surveillance cameras had been properly functioning and integrated then the law enforcement authorities should have been able to quickly detect the path that his kidnappers had taken on September 27. After all they would have had to have wound their way through key parts of the city before getting to the East Coast. Depending on how quickly the alarm was raised police stations could have been mobilized to intercept the kidnappers within minutes. Or alternatively, camera footage should have been able to pinpoint where exactly Mr David had been taken. None of this happened. The police evidently did not have confirming camera footage of where the escape vehicle took Mr David and therefore lost valuable time in tracking him down. It could be the difference between life and death. If we don’t yet have the ability to extract uninterrupted sequences from these cameras it means some are not working or are not properly positioned. The government needs to explain what is happening here.
Given the well-established concerns about the abuse of facial recognition technology, and in general, the imagery from the cameras, what accountability system is in place? It can’t be Freedom House and the Office of the President in charge of patrolling the feed from the cameras. Whichever government agency is ultimately in charge, whether the Office of the President or the Ministry of Home Affairs it has to be fully accountable to a security committee in Parliament that is representative of all the parties represented. With such an arrangement the likelihood of abuse will be diminished. No one in government however speaks about this. The PPP/C likes complete control which potentially enables it to pick and choose which crimes get solved and which don’t, who gets charged and who doesn’t. It won’t work that way.
Given his ultimate responsibility for security, we call on President Ali to address the question of the management of the surveillance cameras and accountability for the feed. Who is monitoring, who are they reporting to, how many charges have been brought using evidence from the feed and in which categories, are these systems properly backed up in the event of the loss of power? Are all of the feeds stored or subsequently discarded? Is there an appropriate data centre? What has been the total cost of the entire project? Who provides maintenance and what are the running costs?
Answers must be provided to these questions so that the public can begin to recognise that the government and its various agencies are accountable in relation to these cameras. Otherwise this system will remain vulnerable to abuse and can pose a threat to security.
