MTA thinking of listening in? Never mind
Update: Maryland Transportation Administration Acting Secretary Beverly Swaim-Staley said Monday evening that she has withdrawn the following request to the attorney general for a legal opinion, saying the matter should have been reviewed at the department level before the MTA sought legal advice.
Swaim-Staley took the action after the following was reported here early Monday.
The MTA is considering installing audio surveillance equipment on its buses and trains to record conversations of passengers and employees, according to a letter sent by the MTA's top official to the state Attorney General's Office.
The letter, reported by the Maryland Politics Watch blog, seeks legal guidance on whether installing such equipment would violate Maryland's anti-wiretapping law. In his letter, MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld notes that the MTA already uses video cameras for security aboard its vehicles.
"As part of MTA's ongoing efforts to deter criminal activity and mitigate other dangerous situations on board its vehicles, Agency management has considered adding audio recording equipment to the video recording technology now in use throughout its fleet," Wiedefeld wrote.
According to the administrator, the MTA staff decided the idea raised legal issues and decided to send a letter seeking an opinion from the attorney general on whether such electronic eavesdropping would be legal and, if so, under which circumstances.
Whether legal or not, the notion didn't play well with Paul Gordon, who broke the story on the Montgomery County-based blog.
"Personally, I find the idea of the state recording people’s conversations on public transportation creepy, something I would expect from the old Soviet Union," Gordon wrote.
I was reminded this weekend during a trip to Artscape on light rail that one of the chief sources of amusement aboard public transit are the too-loud and uninhibited conversations of fellow passengers. It would be a shame if riders were cowed into silence by the fear that someone in authority was recording their descriptions of their wild weekends.
Comments
This is silly. Instead of working on recording conversations, they should work on getting a public address system working at the light rail stations so customers can be notified of delays and interruptions.
Posted by: Bill | July 20, 2009 1:48 PM
I'm floored that this has even been mentioned, let alone proposed. If such public surveillance of citizens isn't illegal, it needs to be.
Posted by: Spam | July 20, 2009 1:53 PM
I'm not automatically going to jump up and down for such a system...
But those uninhibited actions Paul Gordon loves so much resulted in me and my girlfriend getting smacked in the head more than once by a drunk lady who felt she was entitled to our seats. The train was so crowded it would have been nearly impossible to get off and report the situation to MTA police (and make our way through several individuals levying threats to 'pop you' for having the audacity to remain seated when they had requested we give up our seats).
Had it continued, I would have dialed 911 on my phone, but one rational individual with the group tried to talk this person down and luckily they got off the train before we did.
If only that had been recorded.
Posted by: Chris | July 20, 2009 3:55 PM
"I have long contended that the Maryland Transit Administration needs to be a better job of listening to its customers, but this isn't quite what I had in mind..."
You said it all. Working for the MTA customer comments division must be the easiest job in the world. Well, short of working in MTA customer service.
Posted by: Ryan | July 20, 2009 4:35 PM
Instead of installing listening devices in buses, perhaps citizens should insist that they install listening devices in all the board rooms of America...where the real crimes are committed.
Posted by: shannon | July 21, 2009 7:16 AM
One word: 1984
Posted by: Manja | July 22, 2009 3:16 AM