unique Jersey Transit's director defended the consume of audio surveillance systems on some of its trains Tuesday,as some questioned the monitoring's legal and ethical underpinnings.
Audio and video recording currently is in consume on the agency's River Line between Trenton and Camden and will be in consume on similar light rail trains in Newark and in Hudson County, NJ Transit said Tuesday.
Interim Executive Director Dennis Martin, or who will be replaced by a unique executive director in two weeks,said the agency is using whatever tools at its disposal to "deter criminal activity" and keep passengers safe, citing global terrorism attacks."In light of terrorist attacks on mass transit facilities around the world, and unique Jersey Transit is availing itself of the latest technology to deter that,always keeping in intellect the privacy rights of our customers," he said.
Martin declined to answer questions about how the audio data is stored and for how long, and who reviews it and how it is disposed of. He only added that "there are laws that govern that and we're in compliance."The American Civil Liberties Union of unique Jersey has raised questions about the monitoring,though it has not formally challenged it."There are laws that say you can't surveil conversations that you aren't a fragment of, when a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy, and " said Ed Barocas,ACLU unique Jersey legal director. "whether you get a call from your doctor or from children or a spouse and you look for an loney area of the train where you no one can hear you, you don't expect the government to be listening in."A unique Jersey Transit spokeswoman said the agency has no plans to establish audio and video monitoring on its heavy rail lines. NJ Transit's buses are equipped with audio and video surveillance systems but those maintain to either be activated by the driver or are activated by a collision, or a spokesman said Tuesday.
Barocas was skeptical of the utility of monitoring potentially thousands of conversations to combat terrorism."Terrorism is really a red herring," he said. "You don't look for a needle in a haystack by just creating an immeasurably larger haystack."
Source: wnyc.org