Revision History

Revision	Date	Revised By	Notes
Draft v 0.0001	October 24, 2006	Paul Flint	Initial Draft Document Deliverable

BACKGROUND

This document is the result of a request from Mayor Tom Lauzon based upon a discussion that took place at the Hedding United Methodist Church. The Pastor, Ralph W. Howe invited the community to discuss the implications and possible mitigations of illicit behavior and alleged criminal activity concentrated in specific areas of the City of Barre. At this venue and under the sponsorship of the Pastor, Tom Lauzon revealed that the City was in the process of planning installation of surveillance cameras at specific locations within the City as mitigation. At this time Paul Flint suggested to the Mayor that a policy outlining the deployment, and distribution of this system should take place, considering the civil liberty implications of a government public video surveillance installation.

This document is an initial and draft attempt to develop a policy that protects the rights of the citizens of Barre as well as demonstrating that the local government authorities are cognizant of the need to develop this system within the constraints of existing law, social norms and civil rights.

1OVERVIEW

Several days later, the City of Barre Vermont office of the Mayor asked Paul Flint of Flint Information Technology Services (FITS) to draft a policy guidance document regarding Public Areas Video Surveillance (PAVS) in support of the need in the City of Barre to monitor specific areas within the city via the World Wide Web (WWW). This document outlines the following:

Policy Objectives
Policy Statement
Objectives of this Guidance
Policy Constraints And Precedents

Future versions of this document should very likely include the following section:

A Suggested Policy Implementation

Note that this document refers to other documents and other resources, all of which have proven useful and should be considered in the design of this PAVS implementation. A nominal list of reference documents suggested to consider as part of the requirements definition of the PAVS system is detailed in Section 2 below.

1.1Policy Objectives

This document details the policy of the City of Barre on the use of video surveillance as a method of improving security to city properties. The basic principals of this policy are

Allow and encourage public viewing of all cameras installed for public space surveillance. This multiplies the deterrent capability of these video systems.

These public area surveillance cameras should also be considered as a feature of Barre City. For instance:
- Should you want to know the weather or the traffic situation in Barry City you should be able to go to the city web site and view the camera output.
- A child can call a parent and demonstrate where they are by waving into the camera, and the parent is assured of the location of the child.
- Pictures on the Barre City web site (http://www.ci.barre.vt.us/) would be enhanced with live shots from downtown.

This use of video allows us to portray downtown Barre to the world, by doing this we expose our public civic areas to public scrutiny. This act will indirectly compel Barre to improve the areas we survey.

1.2Policy Statement

City of Barre Office of the Mayor and the City Council will consider installing video cameras at Barre City properties as part of a risk management approach to deter vandalism, theft, and to create a safer environment for Barre citizens. The cameras may cover public areas, including the interior of buildings and external areas such as streets and parking lots.

As part of this effort a PAVS council shall be established to oversee this effort. The members of this council shall be appointed by the mayor and approved by the council, which shall oversee implementation and operation of this activity.

The PAVS Council shall arrange to advise the community through signage where surveillance is carried out, because this helps to deter illegal activity.
PAVS Council will in normal circumstances grant logged access to the video data obtained by video surveillance. This data will in normal circumstances be available on the web.
In the event that a crime investigation or other public surveillance matter requires controlled access, this limiting access control shall be delegated by the PAVS Council in advance to specific City Employees under specific publicly available Terms Of Reference (TOR) and this action will only delay the viewing of this public data where required as part of a criminal matter or other investigation.
The Council will establish requirement and procedures to manage the surveillance to deliver this data to public scrutiny as the objective so that risk to privacy and improper use are minimized.

1.3Public Areas Video Surveillance Advisory Council

The following Table Details the notional stakeholders that need input to this council. When modified in a new version this shall also constitute the initial Public Areas Video Surveillance Advisory Council (PAVSAC).

Name	Description
Paul Flint	FITS Principal researcher for this project
	Barre office of the Mayor Representative
	Barre Webmaster Representative
	Barre Chief of Police Representative
	Citizen Representative
	Barre Office of Training and Documentation

Table 1 PAVSAC Notional Membership

2POLICY CONSTRAINTS AND PRECEDENTS

Prior to the installation of the PAVS there needs to be consideration of several areas of precedence and existing regulation at the International, Federal, State and Local Level. These areas are detailed below based upon initial research into this topic. It is likely that there exist many other resources that should be reviewed and added to these citations.

2.1International Citations

In research of this guidance the authors discovered international guidance and precedence. This guidance has been considered, and included into this draft. Cited sources include practical guidance originating from:

The Lake Macquarie City Council

126-138 Main Road Speers Point,

New South Wales, Australia

Community Facilities Video Surveillance Policy version 01 12 December 2005
Workplace Surveillance Act 2005, New South Wales
Policy Statement and Guidelines for the Establishment and Implementation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in Public Places

An additional international citation is a common high school textbook. This should be required reading for anyone considering Public Video Surveillance.

‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ or ‘1984’ (1949) “George Orwell”

(pen-name for Eric Arthur Blair - 1903-1950 ISBN 0-452-28423-6).

2.2Governing Regulations

Since the PAVS system shall be a Web based Automated Information System (AIS), this document has been drafted in accordance with Information Assurance Policy based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), and NIST Special Publications (800’s series). This useful codified Federal Guidance includes:

FIPS Publication 73, Guidelines for Security of Computer Applications, 30 June 1980
FIPS 102, Guideline for Computer Security Certification and Accreditation, 27 September 1983
FIPS 87, Guidelines for Contingency Planning, 27 March 1981
FIPS 112, Password Usage, 30 May 1985
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-474)

In addition to this NIST framework and the guidance that it represents, there are Federal policies and statutes that should continue to be considered in the formulation of this policy. These include:

Privacy Act of 1974
Computer Security Act of 1987 (P.L. 100-235)
Freedom of Information Act
Information Technology Management Reform Act and The Federal Acquisition Reform Act (Clinger-Cohen)

Note that while the authors of this document are not at this time, officers of the court of the State of Vermont, there appear to be overriding regulations and guidance from the State of Vermont that may currently apply to PAVS. These statutes may include:

Vermont Statute § 316. Access to public records and documents
Vermont Statute § 317. Definitions; public agency; public records and documents

Finally, the local policies of the City of Barre apply directly to this matter. These include:

?? Please insert local policy requirements here ??

2.3Documentation Availability

This document is not a work for hire and is Copyright © by Paul Flint and is hereby licensed under the GNU General Public License (the text available on the following web site is hereby included by reference http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). This document and any antecedent versions or derivatives is provisionally assigned to Barre City, Vermont in perpetuity, provided that a web readable version of this document shall remain on the Public Areas Video Surveillance web site and remain available as part of the overall public disclosure.