KDIS Home 10 Reasons why public CCTV schemes are bad.

Simon Davies, Privacy International (28/4/97)

[CCTV]

1. CAMERAS DON'T REDUCE CRIME.

A recent study by the Scottish Centre for Criminology shows that virtually all claims of crime prevention are false. Crimes of passion, crimes involving drugs and alcohol, and actions by professional criminals are not prevented by the cameras. One study by Brighton University's Health and Social Policy Research Centre flatly concluded that there is no evidence they are having any deterrent effect on criminals. In fact, the report says the incidence of violence and disorder in the areas covered by the cameras is on the increase. In many instances the cameras have made the streets a more dangerous place. Cameras might make some people feel safe but the vast majority of crimes committed within the range of cameras are not detected. The cameras are often looking in a different direction, are not functioning, or are unable to recognise a crime being commissioned. Criminals have eyes too, and they know which direction a camera is facing. To give people a false sense of security is negligent and irresponsible.

2. THE CAMERAS ARE BEING USED AS A REPLACEMENT FOR FRONT LINE POLICING.

Across Britain, CCTV is being used to engineer a fundamental change to policing practice. Instead of police being there, on the street, to prevent crime, they are reacting to acts that appear on a screen. While the occasional well publicised interception may occur, most criminals have escaped long before the police arrive. Many small towns have installed CCTV only to find their police numbers are immediately reduced. Hardware is being used to replace community spirit and traditional community policing. And while the police retreat further and further from the people they are supposed to protect, we become more vulnerable to crime.

3. THE TECHNOLOGY IS MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU REALISE

The camera systems being established across Britain use sophisticated military technology. They often have infra red night vision, automatic tracking, remote control, audio channels, and a zoom so powerful that it can scrutinise your facial blemishes in full colour at two hundred yards. Central control rooms are being equipped with sophisticated computer and telecommunication technology which link directly to police computer systems. And the technology being planned is even more frightening. In the near future, many camera systems will incorporate parabolic microphones to detect conversations on the street, in parks, in shops and in restaurants. And sophisticated software already on the market will allow the cameras to analyse the movement and activities of individuals or groups in public places.

4. CCTV IS A TOOL TO ENFORCE MORALITY AND PUBLIC ORDER

Originally installed to deter burglary, assault and car theft, in practice most camera systems have been used to combat ''anti-social behaviour,'' including littering, urinating in parks, underage smoking, traffic violations, graffiti, fighting, obstruction, drunkenness, indecency, and evading meters in town parking lots. The majority of so called "detections" by cameras are of this nature. CCTV is also used by authorities to track the movement of individuals "of interest", and to monitor public meetings, marches and demonstrations.

5. CCTV IS A HONEY POT FOR PERVERTS

There is a rapidly growing body of evidence that CCTV is being abused. The recent commercial distribution of the "Caught in The Act" video involving people in a variety of intimate situations created widespread anxiety. In 1996 a Brentwood man complained that images of his attempted suicide had been broadcast on national television. Meanwhile, a growing stream of letters appears in local papers complaining that the cameras are intruding into people's homes. One camera operator in Mid Glamorgan has been convicted on more than 200 counts of using cameras to spy on women, and then making obscene phone calls to them from the control room. The prestigious magazine New Scientist reports that one leisure centre has placed cameras in a women's changing room. The images are monitored by men.

6. CCTV IS A TOOL FOR PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

In many instances, CCTV system operators routinely exercise their prejudices to discriminate against race, age, class or sexual preference. They openly proclaim that this is a necessary part of their duties. One camera operator in Burnley told a Granada documentary "people mainly with shirts and ties are OK. Most people you can tell just by looking at them". Another said "I tell by the hair". A recent report by Hull University highlighted endemic discrimination against blacks, gays, minorities and young people.

7. CCTV DOES NOT GIVE VALUE FOR MONEY

Almost every alternative crime prevention strategy has been shown to be cheaper and more effective. For example, while policemen on the beat become more effective in helping to reduce crime, cameras become less effective over time. A system of twenty city centre cameras is equivalent to the cost of thirty full time police. Crime prevention budgets are now being expended exclusively on CCTV, while tried and tested community based strategies find their funding has been eliminated.

8. PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR CCTV HAS PLUMMETED

A Brighton University study has shown that less than fifty per cent of young people are in favour of cameras, while Scottish studies indicate that the overall support figure has dropped since 1995 to between fifty and sixty percent. This has been supported by surveys in London, Bradford and Manchester. If these trends continue, the cameras will have minority support by 1998.

9. THERE ARE NO LAWS TO PROTECT US FROM THE CAMERAS.

Anyone can set up a CCTV system. There is no licensing system. There is no government agency to provide oversight. The technology falls outside the protection of law, and the government has even made it exempt from planning requirements, so you can't use your democratic rights to lobby your Council. Indeed, British people have absolutely no legal right of privacy. The Home Office has issued a Code of Conduct, and some local authorities have their own codes, but these documents are weak and unenforceable, and offer the public no rights or protection.

10. THE CAMERAS WILL CREATE A BIG BROTHER SOCIETY

A growing number of experts - including the police - are alarmed by the power and spread of the technology. They fear it will create a pall of surveillance across the country. Speaking at IBMs Citizen and the State seminar in London in 1995, the former Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir John Smith, warned that Britain was becoming an Orwellian society in which people were constantly under surveillance. Sir John argued that the growth of surveillance would inevitably provoke distrust of those who had allowed it to happen, and would distance the citizen from the state. And in 1997, an editorial in New Scientist magazine warned "Now is the time to act In the not-so-distant future - say three or four years from now - the intelligence of video analysis software will have increased many times. The rights and privacy of individuals need to be guaranteed before all power passes to those who own the tools of surveillance"

Simon Davies
Visiting Fellow
Computer Security Research Centre
The London School of Economics
Telephone (+44) (0) 958 466 552. e-mail: davies@privint.demon.co.uk


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