Informant38

hidden in small plywood closets
The cameras can see a long way, Chambers acknowledged, but they are "looking at bridges and those types of things," and there is a "very strict policy in place with checks and balances. Operators know that this isn't a toy, and the only time the operator can zoom is when he or she has an articulable suspicion that the person is committing a criminal act."

If the operators see people passing a suspicious object that could be a weapon, she said, officers would be alerted. Same with "suspicious persons attempting to get into cars."

The only places where they look, she said, are those "where people do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy."
�Al Kamen/Washington Post 11.07.03
link from Sam Smith's Progressive

Ω{I don't keep notes or a scrapbook, but it's a subject I'm keenly interested in, this idea of 'operators'. Not cops, but on-the-case, a subculture of what someone suggested be called 'auditors'.
This is the first public mention I've seen of the presence of actual humans behind the lens. That 'gypsy' in the parking lot thing where the woman kicked off a nation-wide gasp of outrage by smacking her kid in front of a camera, it was talked about as though the event brought itself before the news director for his consideration, not as though there was some social invalid going over the tapes, or even more likely at this point a droid prosthetically hooked up to the camera in real-time. We seem to be entering territory the Light Brigade would find familiar, all ethical considerations get ignored by the higher-priority tactical and strategic. Who cares about civil rights, don't you know there's a war on? Like that.
But I will insist as long as I'm still around, putting inferior people in omniscient positions has polluted the soul commons.
Any telepath will back me on that.}

Ω{Quasi-update: In the end it's a feeble attempt. And the mistake is right at the entrance, there's no qualifying, they run the camera feed because they can't do anything else, because there's something wrong with them. The common denominator of their effect on things doesn't rise, it sinks. You need saints there, you have only demons. Your demons, loyal and true, but demons nonetheless.}