Surveillance Series #2

What’s So Bad About Video Surveillance?

The past several years have seen a dramatic increase in closed circuit television camera surveillance of public space. Video cameras peer at us from the sides of buildings, from ATM machines, from traffic lights, capturing our every move for observation by police officers and private security guards. The effectiveness of these devices in reducing crime is dubious at best, and cases of misuse by public and private authorities have raised serious concerns about video monitoring in public space. These are a few examples of people who might legitimately want to avoid having their picture taken by unseen observers:

Minorities

One of the big problems with video surveillance is the tendency of police officers and security guards to single out particular people for monitoring. It is hardly surprising that the mentality that produced racial profiling in traffic stops has found similar expression in police officers focusing their cameras on people of color. A study of video surveillance in the UK, the leading user of CCTV surveillance systems, revealed that “black people were between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half times more likely to be surveilled than one would expect from their presence in the population.” It is worth pointing out that, in this study, 40% of people that the police targeted were picked out “for no obvious reason,” other than their ethnicity or apparent membership in sub cultural groups. In other words, they were singled out not for what they were doing, but for the way they looked alone.

Women

Police monitors can’t seem to keep it in their pants when it comes to video surveillance. In a Hull University study, 1 out of 10 women were targeted for “voyeuristic” reasons by male camera operators, and a Brooklyn police sergeant blew the whistle on several of her colleagues in 1998 for “taking pictures of civilian women in the area… from breast shots to the backside.”

Youth

Young men, particularly young black men, are routinely singled out by police operators for increased scrutiny. This is particularly true if they appear to belong to subculture groups that authority figures find suspicious or threatening. Do you wear baggy pants or shave your head? Smile—you’re on candid camera!

Outsiders

The Hull University study also found a tendency of CCTV operators to focus on people whose appearance or activities marked them as being “out of place.” This includes people loitering outside of shops, or homeless people panhandling. Not surprisingly, this group includes individuals observed to be expressing their opposition to the CCTV cameras.

Activists

Experience has shown that CCTV systems may be used to spy on activist groups engaged in legal forms of dissent or discussion. For example, the City College of New York was embarrassed several years ago by student activists who found, much to their dismay, that the administration had installed surveillance cameras in their meeting areas. This trend shows no signs of abating: one of the more popular demonstrations of CCTV capabilities that law enforcement officials and manufacturers like to cite is the ability to read the text of fliers that activists post on public lampposts.

Everyone else

Let’s face it—we all do things that are perfectly legal, but that we still may not want to share with the rest of the world. Kissing your lover on the street, interviewing for a new job without your current employer’s knowledge, visiting a psychiatrist—these are everyday activities that constitute our personal, private lives. While there is nothing wrong with any of them, there are perfectly good reasons why we may choose to keep them secret from coworkers, neighbors, or anyone else.