Secret Cameras Scanned Crowd at Super Bowl for Criminals
Surveillance: Faces were cross-checked by new technology in bid to catch
terrorists, other suspects. Privacy concerns are raised.
By LOUIS SAHAGUN, JOSH MEYER, Times Staff Writers
�����Unknown to the 100,000 people who passed through the turnstiles at
Sunday's Super Bowl, hidden cameras scanned each of their faces and compared
the portraits with photos of terrorists and known criminals of every stripe.
�����In a command post at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., the digitized
images of fans and workers were cross-checked against files of local police,
the FBI and state agencies at the rate of a million images a minute.
�����The cameras identified 19 people with criminal histories, none of them
of a "significant" nature, Tampa authorities said. But the undisclosed first
test of the technology at a major U.S. sporting event raised arguments about
privacy versus security and questions about the future of such spying and its
uses.
�����"Oh my God, it's yet another nail in the coffin of personal liberty,"
said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of Counterpane
Internet Security Inc., a security monitoring company.
�����"It's another manifestation of a surveillance society, which says we're
going to watch you all the time just in case you might do something wrong,"
said Schneier, whose book "Secrets & Lies: Digital Security in a Networked
World" warned of the increasing encroachment on civil liberties in high-tech
society.
�����But USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a nationally recognized
authority on constitutional law, said the right to privacy doesn't extend to
places quite so public.
�����"I'm troubled by the extensive use of cameras to monitor us when we're
in public places, but that doesn't mean it's illegal or unconstitutional,"
Chemerinsky said. "People have no reasonable expectation that when out in
public, they cannot be photographed."
�����Tampa police spokesman Joe Durkin said the department jumped at the
chance to borrow the technology after Graphco Technologies Inc. approached it
and allowed it a tryout for free.
�����"It's just another high-tech tool that is available," Durkin said. "We
used it for a week to test it, evaluate it and see if we liked it. And yes,
we did like it. Very much so."
�����Durkin said the department wanted to screen for pickpockets and other
potential scam artists drawn to the huge event and for potential terrorists
who wanted to use its worldwide TV and radio audience to make a political
statement.
�����"Clearly, the vast majority of citizens would applaud our efforts to
make Super Bowl XXXV as safe as we did," he said. "And I'll tell you, had
this system identified some known terrorist because of the size of the event
and the eyes of the world on Tampa, and the police stopped the terrorist act,
the system would have proved priceless."
�����No arrests were made that day. But, Durkin said, "it alerted us that
they were there. It confirmed our suspicions that a crowd of this magnitude
would attract people trying to take advantage of the situation."
�����Oakland Raiders Senior Assistant Bruce Allen agreed with the need.
�����"Whatever they want to do to protect this country, I'm for. . . . So
anything we can do to help, I can't imagine anyone disagreeing with that."
�����Critics warn, however, of the potential for error.
�����"What if I have the same shaped nose as John Dillinger? Am I going to
get frisked?" asked Clifford Stoll, author of books questioning the
applications of technology and their benefits to society.
�����Although advocates insist such technologies are reliable, he added,
"that's what J. Edgar Hoover said when he measured the head shape of
criminals to determine the standard appearance of a criminal."
�����Other applications are expected to include ATM machines and public
events such as the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
�����The popularity of facial-recognition technology is also spreading in Las
Vegas, where a growing number of casinos employ it to identify criminal
suspects or unwanted gamblers--including card counters and those listed in
the "Black Book" of banned casino guests.
�����But not everyone who enters a casino, where "eye-in-the-sky"
surveillance cameras are a long-accepted feature, is automatically
photographed, according to the corporate spokesman for three of Las Vegas'
largest casinos using the technology. Rather, a person is photographed, and
his facial features scanned, only if he is suspected of being a criminal or
otherwise unwanted at the casino, said Alan Feldman, vice president of MGM
Mirage.
�����What happened at Sunday's Super Bowl, however, signals a revolution in
spying technology with possibly grave implications, Schneier said.
* * *
�����Times staff writers Tom Gorman, Charles Piller, Sam Farmer and
researcher Michael Faneuff contributed to this story.
