We’re being watched: ACCPD surveillance hub opening soon

In Athens, Georgia, we're being watched.

The Real Time Crime Center, opening later this month, will provide police analysts access to over 1,000 camera feeds and other surveillance tools to help them fight crime. But some Athenians fear the center will erode civil liberties and put them at risk.

Read the article on AthensPoliticsNerd.com:

This video includes footage from ACCPD's podcast. You can listen to the entire podcast here:

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TRANSCRIPT

Police in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia are about to open a new facility called the Real Time Crime Center to more efficiently surveil the local population.

“We’re in the middle of building out what’s called the Real Time Crime Center here at the police department. It’s a state of the art room that is bringing all of our technology together into one place to assist our agency as a whole, but specifically patrol for real time investigations when they pop up on the street.”

“Now, when you say ‘real time’ technology, what are we looking at?”

“So, we’re looking at all sorts of different technology that ranges from camera feeds, license plate readers, intelligence databases. Pretty much every kind of technology that we would use historically in a reactive perspective, like in a criminal investigation, but applying that to the officers on the street as they’re dealing with a call in real time.”

Police will have access to the feeds of over 1,000 cameras in real time, mostly in the downtown area and on UGA campus, but also elsewhere in town, including at private businesses. Police also track traffic movements in Athens every day, all the time by using license plate readers like this one at the corner of Prince and Pulaski. While these tools can be very important for law enforcement, mass surveillance like this brings up all kinds of privacy concerns, especially in the age of Trump. There’s so much I want to say, and if you want to learn more about surveillance in Athens, there’s an article you can read on my website AthensPoliticsNerd.com.