NH to monitor highways with cameras

New Hampshire Union Leader
Sep. 04, 2005

The state plans to use surveillance cameras to keep watch over New Hampshire's busiest roadways.

The idea is to start with the interstates, then add cameras to other commuter routes. The images will be monitored by state transportation and law enforcement officials, and available on-line — most of the time — to the rest of us.

State officials say the camera surveillance will make New Hampshire roads safer, by helping them manage traffic during emergencies and high-traffic events. But some say highway cameras represent yet another threat to personal privacy in our increasingly wired world.

The high-tech monitoring equipment is part of the new Emergency Operations Center now under construction off Route 106.

Modeled after traffic management centers in other states, the state Department of Transportation's section of the multi-agency facility will include a wall of screens that display real-time images of New Hampshire's high-volume roadways, according to department officials.

State officials say the cameras are not designed for law enforcement but for traffic management during high-volume events, or emergencies such as crashes or evacuations. They say the new facility and its accompanying technology will allow them to re-route traffic more efficiently, warn drivers of upcoming hazards, and get emergency responders more quickly to incidents.

Increasing congestion
DOT Commissioner Carol Murray told the Sunday News the new traffic management center is needed so authorities can better respond to New Hampshire's increasing traffic congestion problems.

"It's not unusual to have an event on Interstate-93 between Salem and Manchester and have that thing shut down," she said. "Right now it's 'OK, people, go find your way' if 93's not available."

And during high-traffic events like Loudon race weekends, she said, authorities currently have to rely on radio relays to keep track of traffic patterns and problems. "To have a traffic management center where everybody could be seated in the same room and see what's going on it would make so much more sense," Murray said.

She also said the tragedy unfolding on the nation's Gulf Coast is a terrible reminder of the importance of evacuation planning, and said the traffic management center would be a critical asset during such an emergency.

Big brother concern
But the plan to install highway cameras — beginning in early 2007 with Interstates 93 and 95 — has some legislators concerned.

"This smacks of big brother," said Rep. Neal Kurk, R-Weare, when he learned of the plan from the Sunday News. He believes the Legislature would have to approve such a project.

"In order for this state to expend money, including federal money, it has to be approved by the Legislature," he said. "If we're going to accept a grant to buy these cameras, I assume there would be legislative involvement in that. I don't know what the Legislature will do, but I certainly think the privacy issue will be a major component of that."

Murray said the state Legislature does not need to approve the new system since it's not for enforcement. "What we're talking about doing, managing traffic and selecting routes, much like we have to do in the event of a detour, for example, we can do that. That's allowed by law."

However, she said, "Certainly, as we get closer toward deployment, I feel a real responsibility, not just to the Governor and Council but to the Legislature as well, to talk about what we're doing and how we're doing it."

New building
The Executive Council last month approved an $11 million construction contract for the new center. But that covers only "bricks and mortar," according to Murray. "Everything else is going to be a separate contract."

By the time the center is fully operational in the spring of 2007, that cost is expected to double, due in large part to the high-tech equipment it will house, including an extensive traffic monitoring system. An estimated 75 to 80 percent of the cost will come from federal funds, including grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. DOT, state officials said.

The new emergency operations center will also house operations for the New Hampshire State Police and the Division of Emergency Management, including the E-911 call center.

"This will bring them all under one roof, which by its very nature will be more efficient, and provide a more unified approach," explained Bill Boynton, DOT spokesman. "It's all about putting data and images into the one centrally controlled facility, in which we would be able to respond more quickly to incidents and potentially even affect traffic flow."

Police will watch
A glass wall will separate the state police section from the DOT's traffic management center, allowing everyone to view the camera images.

Bill Lambert, state traffic engineer for the DOT, said while the details are still being worked out, "What we envision is our DOT operators who are looking at traffic congestion and incident management from an incident perspective will be the ones with the 'joysticks' that can pan, tilt and zoom the cameras."

"If there's an incident that the state police has a concern about, they will be able to stand over our shoulders and say, 'Can you zoom in here?'

Wouldn't police have to react if they saw someone driving extremely recklessly?

"If the cameras are up on the screen and state police are behind us and they see somebody cutting in and out of traffic and doing 100, and they can pick them up from camera to camera, I don't disagree they're going to dispatch to the nearest camera," Lambert said. "But the primary function of those things is just to view the highways and show what the conditions are."

Reading plates?
Earl Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the Department of Safety, said motorists need not fear that the cameras will be used to track individual vehicles.

"The cameras that will be in the emergency center will be maintained by DOT to survey bridges and interstates, to look for traffic jams and backups, so they can quickly dispatch police and fire trucks and ambulances, and DOT detours, and prevent the chain reaction collisions that so often happen when the interstate gets tied up," he explained.

"That's what they're going to be looking for and they're going to be scanning from such a distance I doubt they would even be able to read a license plate unless they enlarged it tremendously. Because really what they're looking for is to monitor the flow of traffic."

On the Web
Lambert said the plan is not to store any of the captured images, although if an incident does occur, operators will be able to push a button to start recording.

And while the concept is to put camera images on the Internet so members of the public can see traffic for themselves, as other states have done, Lambert said, "There are issues with privacy and things like that that we've got to get past."

"What we don't want is to be looking at a bloody scene and putting that on the Internet or anyplace else," he said. "And anything we would be looking at for security reasons would likely be turned off as far as the public access."

Slippery slope
Kurk said state officials need to look closely at what kind of cameras they allow.

"If their stated purpose is safety and traffic control, then presumably the cameras that they have will be the kinds of cameras that take the big picture and not the little picture. For example, they wouldn't be able to identify a license plate, the kind of vehicle, or they wouldn't be able to take pictures of the passengers, but in effect it just monitors literally the vehicles."

"Then of course, there's always the slippery slope argument," he said. "Long-vision lenses today, close-up lenses tomorrow."

Kurk noted a measure to allow communities to use red-light cameras was rejected soundly by the House in the last session. And he believes the same debate would ensue if state officials wanted to use highway cameras for any kind of enforcement activity.

"I'm not willing to give up my personal privacy, and I don't think most people in the state are willing to give up their personal privacy, to the peeping Toms at the state emergency management organization in exchange for the possibility, however remote, of catching a few speeders," said Kurk.

Commissioner Murray said she "absolutely" understands concerns about privacy. "Certainly a state that has 'live free or die' on its license plate, we do have to be aware of that."

And she expects ongoing discussions once the technology is on-line. "I suspect there will be opportunities where the Department of Safety is going to say with this capability we could do enforcement in some area, whether it's speed or whatever the area might be, and that would take specific legislation."

Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, who previously co-chaired a legislative task force on privacy issues with Kurk, shares his concerns.

She said she has no problem with the cameras if they only show road conditions, not individual drivers and vehicles. However, "If they are using it for any sort of identification, whether or not it goes as far as being able to determine who is breaking traffic laws, then I do have a problem."

"I would hope that in New Hampshire, where we have basically believed in having government do what is essential for the common good and leave individual private situations alone, that we continue to do that."

But she went on, "Do I have a high level of confidence? No. Do I think that we're seduced by the federal money that comes in to do all these things? Yes, I do think we're seduced by that."

DOT engineer Lambert feels otherwise. "I know what we're using the cameras for and I'm confident, between the state police behind us and our own integrity, that we're going to be using the cameras the way they're intended," he said.