On a brisk November evening in New Haven, the bus was on time. On a CT Transit bus, a young man clad in a fast food uniform was asleep. A middle-aged mother gripped tightly onto a stroller where her daughter fussed inside. Two teenage girls gossiped. An elderly man rode home from the doctor’s office; a couple held their week’s groceries in brown bags. As the bus lights flickered, passengers watched New Haven blink by.
None of them were aware of the small black half-spheres that were monitoring their every move. Without notice, a silent, uninvited audience tapped their conversations. On the bus, four cameras watched, listened, and stored the intimate details of their day to day lives.
Since August 1st, all New Haven city buses have had audio surveillance systems installed to capture both visual and voice recordings of patrons. Tucked away in a hidden corner of the bus was a tiny, unassuming sign in standard Calibri font: “This vehicle is equipped with audio and visual surveillance.” With the passengers all facing forward, they missed the memo.
Thomas Stringer is the General Manager of CT Transit, an organization owned and operated by the Connecticut Department of Transportation. As general manager, Stringer oversaw the surveillance policy implementation this past summer.
Alluding to the recent surveillance implementation, Stringer told The Politic “this was a missing piece in the safety program.Being new management and new leadership, we’re identifying and addressing issues that should have been addressed many, many years ago, and bringing the agency up to the current standards of systems around the country.”
Before joining CT Transit, Stringer worked in a number of other public transit agencies, including Cincinnati Metro, Jacksonville Transportation Authority, the Charlotte Area Transit System, and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. He said the previous transit systems he’s worked in have deployed audio surveillance systems on their buses.
“Every place I’ve been, we’ve had audio on the buses. So [its absence] was unusual, and an anomaly here,” Stringer said.
Surveillance systems in public transportation primarily emerged as a post 9/11 artifice.
“After 9/11 there was a very significant swing towards the idea that more surveillance and undermining privacy would provide greater security,” said Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Training’s Security and Surveillance Project.
“The PATRIOT Act is a major example, especially section 215,” according to Laperruque. Since its passage, section 215 the Patriot Act has made it substantially easier for the government to seize a large volume of records. Laperruque also pointed to a number of federal measures designed to procure personal data from civilians, including the “Terrorist Surveillance Program that President Bush unilaterally enacted, the augmented use of National Security Letters, and Section 702 of FISA.”
With the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by President George W. Bush, all transportation systems in the United States were consolidated under a federal agency to execute improvements in security measures. Federal grants and funding from the Department of Homeland Security has allowed major metropolitan transit authorities across the country to increase their surveillance capacities.
“Over time, and especially because of the Snowden revelations and debate stemming from them, the attitude that there was always a tradeoff between privacy and security changed,” Laperruque said.
With the expiration of the Bush-era surveillance laws, the USA Freedom Act was enacted in 2015 to limit bulk collection of telecommunication metadata on US citizens by federal agencies, including the National Security Agency.
Laperruque explained that the act was a major turning point for protecting privacy rights: “Congress voted by a large margin to outlaw bulk collection, and made a variety of other surveillance reforms, most notably requiring public disclosure of important FISA Court decisions, so new surveillance systems couldn’t exist in secret.”
The majority of cities that have deployed transit surveillance systems do not conduct them in secret, although passengers are not made explicitly aware of how the data is stored or utilized.
Major metropolitan transit systems did not deploy video or audio surveillance systems until the early 2010s. When San Francisco MTC rolled out the installations in 2012, there was pushback on the surveillance system with critics calling it “Big Brother-esque.” The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) began capturing both audio and video recordings in 2013. In an interview with Government Technology in March 2016, MTA Police Force Captain Chistropher Holland defended the system, stating, “it’s a public setting on a public conveyance. On that same bus, anybody could be pulling out a cell phone and recording what you’re doing.”
Cities across the country have continued to quietly implement auditory surveillance systems alongside visual recordings, but the Connecticut Department of Transportation did not take such measures until this year.
When the announcement was first sent out to CT Transit employees, the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 281, which represents New Haven City bus drivers, immediately expressed concerns about their members’ privacy rights. Though the policy was initially slated to take effect on July 1, 2023, CT Transit did not begin utilizing audio capacity on transit until August 1, 2023 due to union backlash, according to Stringer.
“I told them, I’ll give you an additional 30 days to work that feeling out and work it out. And we did. But I told them on August 1, we would be activating the onboard recording audio as well as the video and it hasn’t been, there’s been no issue related to it,” Stringer recounted.
Ralph Buccitti is the chairman of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 281 chapter. He told The Politic that the increased surveillance measure “ was a unilateral decision by management to implement the policy, and [they] never discussed with the union or negotiated to put it into the labor agreement.”
Buccitti said that the other two ATU union groups, ATU Local 443, representing Stamford, and ATU Local 425, representing Hartford, are also fighting against CT Transit’s audio surveillance system. The joint bargaining council has since filed a grievance procedure against CT Transit, arguing that the transit authority violated initial labor contract agreements between itself and the three ATU unions.
“We have now invoked arbitration to bring it to a third party in order to listen to both sides and make a decision on whether or not what stays or goes,” Buccitti said.
Buccitti contends that the legal justification for the surveillance rollout is hard to navigate. “I’m not a lawyer. I mean, this is stuff we’ve looked up on the internet,” he said. “But I can’t get anybody to explain to me how it doesn’t violate eavesdropping laws. You’re listening to a conversation without consent, and I don’t wish to be a party to it.”
The union groups have also raised questions surrounding the efficacy of the audio surveillance system. “We haven’t had anything, to my knowledge, outstanding that the audio would prove or disprove,” said Buccitti.
Buccitti also raises concerns about labor violations. Under Connecticut labor laws, employees who work seven and a half or more consecutive hours must be given a break of at least 30 consecutive minutes for a meal. Buccitti explains that “for bus operators, when they’re out on their route, they may have a few minutes of break time. They’re entitled to their own personal space, but they can’t even have a conversation without being constantly recorded.”
Employers are allowed to deploy surveillance systems in their workplaces, but must inform employees if surveillance is used and what its purpose is. Additionally, surveillance should be used in public areas where employees do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
“When you are in a break area for a break time, like a lunch room in a work setting, you are not allowed to have audio or video recording,” Buccitti said. “But the bus drivers are now being recorded in their own personal space during this short time window for their breaks.”
Since the bus drivers’ workplace is the bus itself, drivers only get breaks when all patrons are off of the bus. Without the ability to leave the bus during their shift, drivers are confined to being recorded 24/7.
“People have brought up in the beginning the union’s privacy concerns, but I tell them, there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces,” Stringer said. “We are being recorded just going about our day throughout the city on the streets.” He dismisses the idea that the CT Transit audio surveillance system could be used to parse out individual information about a particular bus driver, saying that nobody has time to process the video and audio taken on the buses.
Stringer also argues that the net positive of the audio recording outweighs any individual privacy concern, helping to control rowdy bus riders. He said the presence of the surveillance devices pushes riders to “conform to reasonable expectations” of etiquette.
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Last year, Governor Ned Lamont signed the Connecticut Data and Privacy Act into law. The Act grants Connecticut residents rights over their personal data by establishing privacy protection standards for data controllers. Stringer maintains that the new policy does not violate CDPA.
“The Act doesn’t apply to this because it’s a public space,” Stringer said. “Recognizing that all the buses have the notification saying that riding on this vehicle is subject to audio and visual recording, so there is no violation. Again, the reasonable expectation, you’re in a public space, so therefore, you can’t expect privacy.”
Could these recordings be used against bus drivers for disciplinary measures? Could the accrued data be used to potentially spy or “mission creep” — government use of surveillance data in ways other than disclosed—on unsuspecting passengers?
“Generally there aren’t limits on the government’s ability to put cameras and surveillance systems up on government and public property, be it a government building, a bus, or a street corner. That’s increasingly creating serious problems of pervasive surveillance in cities that are now densely populated with government cameras,” Laperruque said.
Given technological limitations, authorities have historically relied on the argument that the recordings do not violate wiretapping laws, since the devices do not have facial recognition or biometric collection capacity.
When asked his opinion on the future of mass transit surveillance systems, Stringer explained that if new systems were installed, the data from bus rides could be stored, overwritten, and distributed. While he concedes that the collected data could potentially be abused in the future, Stringer maintains that CT Transit is nowhere near that capability.
“With the amount of volume of recording that goes on a daily basis, nobody’s listening to them. It’s only pulled if there’s an incident, and it rewrites every 30 days. So if something happened in September, it’s not even there anymore,” he said.
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Chandu Gogineni commutes to his college using New Haven city buses. When asked if he felt safer on the bus with the surveillance system, Gogineni said he didn’t feel so.
But Gogineni still believes that the addition of the audio surveillance system is a net positive. “I don’t mind anything about this,” he said. “Since I work in the field of artificial intelligence, data is required. Facial recognition, geospatial mapping—we require data to work on these projects. This would be useful for that.”
Laperruque pushed back on this. “I think facial recognition and remote biometric identifiers present the biggest threats. With automated identification tools like facial recognition, the government might soon be able to effortlessly track movements and activities.”
Another bus driver, who requested to only be identified by his bus route, 6130, became a driver at CT Transit two months ago. He was born and raised in New Haven, and has been riding the bus since childhood.
“In my training, we were warned that there are audio and visual recordings, but I don’t know about all the laws. I just know there are certain things I don’t do on the bus, or say on the bus,” the 6130 driver told The Politic.
The 6130 bus driver also did not believe that the audio recording system worked as a public safety measure, as Stringer claimed it set out to do. “It doesn’t really prevent anyone from being belligerent.” But the 6130 bus driver believed that the audio recordings could be used by law enforcement to resolve passenger or bus driver conflicts that may arise on board. “When it comes down to the law and they can come back and get the tape, it comes in handy,” he said.
Another bus passenger, Marquis Faison Jr., feels ambivalent about the situation. Faison commutes on the bus daily to get to his workplace, Frank Pepe’s.
“I think it’s good for public safety. But I still think it’s a little bit of an invasion of privacy,” Faison mused. “What I talk about isn’t everybody’s business. But when you talk in public you kind of make it everybody’s business. It doesn’t mean that it needs to be recorded, though.”
When asked if he had noticed a difference in passenger behavior, Faison said he didn’t believe so.
“This is New Haven, Connecticut. There’s no controlling the rowdiness on the bus. It’s just not gonna happen. Are you going to have a bus monitor for adults?”
Buccitti worries about the bus drivers’ ability to openly speak out against the monitoring system. “When it comes time for the fight, most of the time, people don’t want it. They’re worried about being retaliated against, or being blacklisted.”
One driver, who spoke to The Politic on the condition of anonymity, feels similarly to Buccitti. When asked his opinion on the new surveillance system, the driver said, “It’s a complete invasion of our privacy.”
“If you’re the kind of cop that bends the rules here and there, the cameras are gonna kill you. Same thing goes for the drivers–if you’re a good bus driver, then that technology isn’t gonna hurt you. But if you’re the kind of guy with a little too much coming out of your mouth, then you’re done for.”
The driver said that the audio tapes have already been used as testimony against other bus drivers as a disciplinary measure.
“We had a guy whose bus number was 429. He had an altercation with a passenger, and they pulled the tapes and used it on him to determine that based on what he was saying on tape, he initiated the altercation.”
The accused driver was let go of by Connecticut Transit after decades of service.
“My bus number is 622, so I’ve been here for 20 years, and he’s been here 200 drivers longer than I have,” said the driver who spoke to The Politic.
But the veteran bus driver believes that the new auditory surveillance system is effective.
“With the cameras, I’ll tell you, it’s saving Connecticut Transit a lot of money.” The driver attests that prior to deploying the audio surveillance systems, passengers who filed lawsuits against CT Transit had much greater success rates of winning their case in court.
“They would try to sue and make a case out of nothing, and that really hurt the company and the drivers.”
But for this driver, the new policy implementation is a part of a larger phenomenon of curtailing transit workers’ labor rights. When asked his thoughts on potential labor violations, the driver chuckled and said, “Oh, there’s no such thing as breaks for us.”
CT Transit bus drivers are not allowed to have possession of their cell phones during their work hours, and must place them in a secured overhead compartment for the entire duration of their shift.
“Try driving a car for eight hours without any music, and you can get an idea of how difficult this is.”
With new union leadership being concurrent with a new CT Transit administration, the driver worries that bus drivers will continue to have their grievances overlooked.
“We aren’t robots,” the driver pleaded. But Buccitti remains optimistic on the unions’ joint grievance to repeal the new surveillance measure. “We supposedly live in a democracy, but things are just the way that they are and people shrug their shoulders and accept that. Well, as a union leader, I don’t believe in shrugging my shoulders. I believe in standing up and fighting.”