Focus is on safety vs. privacy

A surveillance camera on the Somerville Community Access Television building. (Richard Thompson for the Boston Globe)

Brookline may soon have a new secret weapon for tackling emergency situations.

Town officials are working to install a dozen surveillance cameras in areas that have been identified as possible evacuation routes.

Brookline is among nine communities in the Boston area receiving the cameras as part of a $4.6 million federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security, according to Jennifer Mehigan, a spokeswoman for Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, whose Office of Emergency Preparedness is coordinating the effort.

Similar grants have doled out tens of millions of dollars over the last five years for placing surveillance cameras across the country, from Pittsburgh to St. Paul, investing in a controversial practice that some privacy rights advocates say transforms public streets into places under constant scrutiny.

As the technology becomes less expensive and easier to network with other devices and nearby communities, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union contend the cameras have hastened a "surveillance society," where every aspect of private life is monitored and recorded.

"I think the chief concern is the tradeoff between lost privacy and what you gain in terms of public safety," said Martin Rosenthal, co-chairman of Brookline PAX, an activist group supportive of civil rights, social justice, and organized labor. "This is just one more drop in the bucket in some ways, but it's also a drop that we have some local control over."

Eight cameras are bound for Cambridge, while seven will be installed in Somerville and 30 are being placed in Boston, which has already installed 44 of the devices through this program since 2004.

Since the cameras are being installed along major evacuation routes, as Somerville officials realized earlier this month, the devices may be easy to spot for residents.

"The public misconception is that they're out there for us to keep tabs on the residents, and that's not the case," Somerville city spokeswoman Jaclyn Rossetti said last week.

Brookline officials are holding off installation until a policy outlining general procedures can be presented to the Board of Selectmen, according to Brookline Police Chief Daniel O'Leary, who said that the guidelines will describe how the cameras will be used and what the department will do with recorded footage.

That meeting could come as soon as next month, O'Leary said.

"In reality, if they're up there and they're operational 24 hours a day," he said, "we'll reap some of the other benefits from them as well."

Brookline police gained some perspective on those benefits over the past year. As part of a separate initiative, the department tested a pair of stationary surveillance cameras that, according to published reports, gave officers a lead on a sexual assault case and helped them collar an alleged drunk driver who was involved in an accident.

The devices provided real-time images to police over the network, and O'Leary said he plans to purchase a couple of cameras for the department in coming months. "You don't have to let crime occur, and when you find out a crime has occurred, later go back and research the tapes," he said. "That's really the benefit, because it's taken our ability to view things to another level."

Nancy Daly, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen, said last week that she "would expect a pretty comprehensive policy" in conjunction with the new cameras.

"We try to be very sensitive to people's rights," Daly said in an interview. "This technology can be good, but we also don't want to be too intrusive, so you've got to try and find a good balance."

These days, with cameras lodged anywhere from ATMs to cellphones, most Americans are "being watched every minute of the day," according to Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University. "Whenever something unusual happens, whether it's good or bad, positive or negative, you can rest assured that someone will be photographing it."

Research has shown that the presence of surveillance cameras can perform some of the same functions as a large police presence, Levin said. "They can be used to identify not only terrorists," he said, "but would-be rioters or would-be criminals, and you can place them in crime hot spots to reduce the likelihood of drug transactions."

O'Leary, who believes the devices could be beneficial for the town, plans to keep the exact locations of the cameras under wraps for security reasons, he said.

Adopting the policy will be a different story.

"We're not doing this without going in front of the selectmen at a public meeting," he said.

Globe correspondent Danielle Dreilinger contributed to this report.