Video Cameras Capture Images, Crooks in O.C. : Surveillance: Criminals are being identified, but so too are the law-abiding. That worries civil libertarians.

It follows you step by step to the bank window. It scans your face at the automated teller machine, recording every detail, from the mole on your chin to the style of your favorite shirt.

Soon, it will track your whereabouts at 35 different locations on Orange County freeways, at a cost of more than $10 million. It has the power to record your facial tics and skin color and file them along with your license plate number.

It is the video surveillance camera, and if you own a business or work in law enforcement, chances are you’re singing its praises. If you’re a First Amendment lawyer or a civil libertarian, however, you may see it as one more weapon in the hands of big government.

Its impact was demonstrated dramatically here recently in helping to solve two major crimes in a matter of weeks.

Police said that such a camera positioned across the street from a nightclub where a beating death occurred last week offered a perfect view of the crime--and led to the arrest Monday of a suspect in Northern California.

Parolee Edward Patrick Morgan Jr., 28, of Orange was apprehended in connection with the May 20 murder of Leanora Annette Wong, 23, of Huntington Beach, whom police said Morgan met at the Australian Beach Restaurant & Nightclub.

Across the street from the Orange club is a high-tech pharmaceutical company, which has on its roof a sophisticated surveillance camera. That camera, said Orange Police Lt. Timm Browne, “was placed right over the crime scene.”

Browne declined to elaborate on the details of the tape of the crime. But he said private surveillance cameras also played a key role in the investigation of another homicide in the same shopping center in Orange. In that slaying, a security guard inside a movie theater was fatally wounded by a bullet fired through a plate-glass window, and three Santa Ana men were arrested a few weeks later in connection with the shooting.

The City Shopping Center, where both the nightclub and the movie theater are located, is “packed” with surveillance cameras, said Sgt. Barry Weinstein.

The gunman ran away, Browne said, but the camera captured his likeness.

Whether it’s found at the local video store, the corner 7-Eleven, the bank, the freeway or the local synagogue, the video surveillance camera is playing an ever-increasing role in American life. And the technology promises to become cheaper and far more effective in the future.

Many say that not only does it help stop crime from happening, but it plays an almost omniscient role in prosecuting suspects when crimes do occur. It is precisely the fear of crime and the perception that lawlessness is so widespread that sociologists say account for the growing use of such surveillance in the first place.

But First Amendment attorneys and civil libertarians say that even a real fear of crime is not enough to offset the potential invasion of privacy that such devices represent. Critics warn that the increasing use of video surveillance offers yet another window into private lives to individuals and institutions who have the potential to abuse it--and who often do.

“The problem with the increased and clandestine use of such technology is the fact that it’s utterly indiscriminate,” said Century City attorney Stephen F. Rohde, who specializes in First Amendment law. “Essentially, we’re snooping on everyone for the sake of capturing a random criminal. We’re doing this not only in an ephemeral way, but also for the sake of recording, preserving, cataloguing and maintaining information in these vast and scary inventories usually controlled by government.

“We’re rapidly becoming a Peeping Tom society. And we keep accepting--incrementally--a level of surveillance, intrusion and inspection that is chipping away at our zone of simple human privacy, which, in case we’ve forgotten, is a basic American right.”

Nevertheless, everyone from merchants to police detectives to rabbis says that surveillance cameras provide a bold deterrent to crime while increasing the comfort level of those who have them.

Jeff George, an executive with the Silent Watchman Division of National Guardian Security Services Corp. in Columbus, Ohio, which sells surveillance systems to corporations across the country, said the technology is exploding while the price is plummeting.

George said the Florida Legislature recently mandated the use of video surveillance cameras in every convenience store in the state. National Guardian also sells systems to school districts for use in classrooms and hallways--even on buses.

“They record students riding on the buses,” George said. “They capture violence on the buses. They can spot unruly children and, in that sense, are useful for disciplinary purposes.”

Margaret Chabris, a spokeswoman for the Southland Corp., which operates and franchises 7-Eleven convenience stores throughout the country, said the chain has seen a sharp reduction in crime since surveillance cameras were first used in 1988. The 7-Eleven chain bought its systems from National Guardian.

Just this month, 934 7-Eleven stores nationwide adopted new and far more rigorous surveillance systems that Chabris says will eventually be installed in all 5,300 stores managed by the chain at a cost of “millions” of dollars. She declined to be more precise.

George said the most basic system--a black-and-white wall-mounted camera, a black-and-white monitor and a 24-hour recorder--costs about $2,000. The camera sells for $450, the monitor for $250 and the recorder for $1,300, he said.

In an upgraded system, George said, a color camera sells for $950 and a color monitor for $430. Some companies, he said, spend more than $1 million, depending on the number of cameras and monitors employed.

Chabris said that 16 of the most high-tech units were recently installed in 7-Eleven stores in undisclosed locations throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties.

The system features a large color monitor hanging over the cash register and in full view of customers as they enter the store. It features audio as well as video capabilities and has the ability to alert law enforcement agencies should problems arise. Chabris declined to elaborate on the methods employed to alert police.

“The entire system is designed to catch bad guys,” she said.

Like most surveillance units, it contains 24 hours of tape. Once the cycle is complete, the unit begins taping over previously stored information. Color offers greater clarity, Chabris said, and audio often records important elements of a conversation that may later prove vital in a courtroom.

She said 7-Eleven even hopes to use the devices in settling claims against the chain by, for example, customers who fall and hurt themselves and sue the store for damages. A surveillance camera will help determine the veracity of such complaints, she said.

Chabris said a surveillance unit recently played a role in the investigation of a crime in Dallas, where the Southland Corp. is headquartered.

An armed intruder who robbed a Blockbuster Video store on Dallas’ east side--and who shot and killed two people working behind the counter--remains at large. But Dallas police say the video has provided an image of the suspect that no composite drawing or eyewitness description could hope to match.

Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the Orange County Anti-Defamation League, said surveillance cameras are increasingly employed at synagogues, as a deterrent to anti-Semitic spray-painting and other hate crimes.

Most offices of the ADL employ surveillance cameras at the entrance, Bernstein said, since ADL chapters routinely incur threats.

But he and many others worry that such devices, if placed in the wrong hands, could be used as tools of persecution, as Big Brother’s all-seeing eye so eerily demonstrated in the George Orwell novel “1984.”

The technology is so new that the American Civil Liberties Union and the activist group People for the American Way have yet to formulate a position on surveillance cameras, although, as an ACLU spokeswoman said, “we’re getting tons of calls about them.”

Many worry that such technology can be misused not just by government but also by videotaping thrill seekers. Television shows such as “Eyewitness Video” have never been more popular, and in pop culture, movies such as “Sliver” show the ability of one neighbor to spy on another--or many others--just by using a camera.

Others worry about the range of interpretation that video analysis often breeds, citing the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police and Abraham Zapruder’s 8-millimeter home movie of the Kennedy assassination as examples. With so many eyes seeing so many different things, these skeptics wonder, how can videos be infallible in court?

But the most concern centers on government use of cameras, potentially for spying.

For instance, anyone entering the United States--even the Orange County tourist returning from Tijuana--is videotaped at the border by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. And within months, the California Department of Transportation plans to add 33 video surveillance units to the two already installed on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Each unit costs $50,000, according to Rose Orem, a Caltrans spokeswoman. The agency has state funding of $1.65 million already allocated for the remaining 33, scheduled to be installed on freeways throughout the county.

Orem said the agency has petitioned the Legislature for 64 more units in Orange County at a cost of $3.2 million and eventually hopes to have 210 units countywide, with the ultimate price tag being $10.5 million.

Ostensibly, the units will be used to maintain traffic flow, but Orem said they can be used by any law enforcement agency that wishes to view their footage or record their data.

Attorneys such as Rohde worry that government’s ability to videotape motorists at random and keep extensive files on every driver in California only enhances the potential of a Big Brother to use such technology against its people.

“People are being inflamed by politicians over their fear of crime, which is rampant and completely genuine,” Rohde said. “And polls show that a growing segment of the population would give up its civil liberties--surveillance cameras being just one of the ways--in favor of greater law enforcement.

“But it’s an elusive and dangerous bargain. I don’t think we’re going to be any safer than we were in the past, and the cost will be enormous--not so much the monetary cost but rather what we’ll all pay in how our freedoms are compromised.”