Surveillance Society: Operaton Snapshot: August 26, 2004

Today I submitted my first-ever Metafilter front-page post (FPP for short), about the Winnipeg Police Service's Operation Snapshot. I also included a link to Rev. Lehotsky's webpage which lists the licence plates of suspectedjohns.

(I just realized the Window title of my Metafiler FPP is spelled wrong: Operation Smapshot... Argh! Oh well.)

Note: both newspapers now require compulsory website registration—in the case of the Winnipeg Free Press, you also have to have a paid subscription—so in order to give people an opportunity to read both newspaper articles, I have simply quoted excerpts from the newspaper text here. You can always useBugMeNot to gain access to both websites if you want to read the complete articles on their websites without having to go through the hassle of registration or (in the case of the Winnipeg Free Press) without having to pay for a full subscription just to be able to read a single article.

City police have unveiled yet another crime-fighting camera -- this one to battle prostitution in two residential neighbourhoods.

But critics say the so-called "john-cam" and the posting of video on the Internet may violate the privacy of law-abiding citizens and will likely have little impact on the street sex trade.

The new measure, called Operation Snapshot, involves officers digitally taping people they believe to be involved in prostitution and posting those images on the Winnipeg Police Service's website. Faces and vehicle licence plate numbers have been blurred out and a disclaimer on the site states that not everyone who appears is a sex-trade worker or a customer.

Patrol Sgt. Kelly Dennison, head of the force's morals unit, said the intent is not to publicly identify males -- so-called "johns"-- buying sex, but to discourage them from being there in the first place.

Dennison also said the project is the first of its kind in Canada.

"We're not on a hunt to identify 'johns,' " he said, adding, "If you drive a red Taurus, and your wife knows you drive a red Taurus, well... "
Police have posted four clips recorded over the past three weeks on the website. Two were shot at King Street and Flora Avenue in the North End and two at Sargent Avenue and Home Street in the West End.

Police were taping yesterday at the corner of Selkirk Avenue and Parr Street.

Dennison said officers wear police windbreakers with the word "Police" on the back when out with the camera and taping from a public sidewalk.

"It's not something we're hiding," he said. "We're not mounting a camera on top of a building."

He said the police service got a legal opinion before launching the program and do not believe they are interfering with the privacy rights of people not involved in the sex trade.

He also said police make a concentrated effort to make sure that those taped are indeed prostitutes and the men who frequent them.
But local privacy experts say that's not enough, as it's conceivable anyone, or their vehicle, could be recorded by police and then posted on the Internet.

"It may be legal, but it doesn't change the way it operates and whether it protects innocent people," said Manitoba's Ombudsman Barry Tuckett. "Cameras are indiscriminate. They just don't pick out the criminal."

Tuckett also said he has the authority to investigate whether Operation Snapshot is an invasion of privacy. Police only started posting images yesterday and no one has complained.

"It's the threat of identification," he said. "It could identify innocent people. You do have the right to be left alone. It's not OK to put a camera up to monitor activities."

Lawyer Brian Bowman, an expert in Canada's new privacy laws, said police have to make a better case than saying the camera is an effective way to deal with the street sex trade. "You just move the problem and then keep moving the camera," he said. "Why not arrest these people?"

The single digital camera police now have is on loan from the West End Biz.

Executive director Trudy Turner said police approached the West End Biz several weeks ago with the idea and asked for help to buy the camera.

Turner said the Biz agreed in the hope that Operation Snapshot, and corresponding publicity, would drive away prostitutes and their customers. Many prostitutes are crack cocaine addicts, so the drug trade also flourishes in areas of high prostitution.

"To me, the only people freaked out by this are the people who shouldn't be doing what they're doing," she said... (Source of quote: Bruce Owen. 'Police 'john-cam' riles critics: Force posting videos of prostitutes, clients on website', Winnipeg Free Press, Thursday August 26th, 2004, front page)

The grainy footage lasts only 13 seconds: A young woman wearing open-toe sandals climbs into a minivan, flips her hair, and the vehicle drives away.

It doesn't reveal much, but Winnipeg police are hoping this kind of video, posted on a new website launched yesterday, will scare away the men who pick up prostitutes on residential streets.

The tactic is similar to the efforts of community groups in several cities where licence plate numbers and photographs of prostitutes and their suspected customers are regularly posted on the Internet, but Winnipeg officers say they're the first in Canada to distribute police surveillance film of red-light "strolls."

"Our goal is to discourage the customers," said Winnipeg police Constable Shelly Glover. "We're trying to indicate, 'Listen, we're out there videotaping.' "...

...Police acknowledge that not everyone depicted in the clips is a sex-trade worker or a customer, and the videos have been altered to conceal faces and licence plates.

But Trudy Turner, executive director of community group West End Biz, Inc., said her group purchased a digital video camera and lent it to the police morals unit, hoping that the images, and the publicity they generate, will frighten men seeking sex.

"I don't think these grainy, unprofessional videos are going to do much by themselves," Ms. Turner said. "But it's going to tell the johns they're being watched. And they'll know that somewhere out there, there's a high-quality copy without their licence plate blurred out."

Wives might also notice familiar vehicles on the website, Ms. Turner added: "If some businessman gets a call from his wife, saying, 'Hey honey, that's our car,' you know he won't be cruising our streets any more."

Rev. Harry Lehotsky, an urban activist, has been running a similar site for several years, recording licence plates and details about prostitution in downtown Winnipeg...He said some of the site's 12,000 visitors have been wives who wrote to express their gratitude to him for exposing their husbands' philandering. Other thanks came from residents who were tired of aggressive, unpleasant behaviour in their neighbourhood, he said.

Rev. Lehotsky, of the New Life Ministries, said some people complain he is violating their privacy, but he doesn't have much sympathy. "People have privacy concerns," he said. "But I say, if you're pulling your weenie out in a laneway, you've forfeited your right to privacy." (Source of quote: Graeme Smith. 'Winnipeg police post Web video of johns: New site aimed at scaring men who pick up prostitutes on streets', The Globe and Mail, Thursday, August 26th, 2004 - Page A10)