Urban surveillance has been on the rise in the past 20 years, and the balance of privacy and security is quickly changing. Closed Circuit television (CCTV) has been used for highly industrialized nation since the late 1950s, in Sean P. Hier’s Risky spaces and Dangerous Face: Urban Surveillance, Social Disorder and CCTV emphasized on Jeremy Bentham’s panoptical supervisions and will be a reoccurring theme in this essay. Betham efforts in the dynamics of panoptic video surveillance systems are essential in find ways to create a controlled population with the idea of not being aware of when your are being watched. The expression of power is very important, to have discipline and self control on people that live in urbanized areas that have issues with obedience. The appeal for the expansion of public video surveillance with the integration of the panoptic principle is very strong, in order for expansion we need to look at four major components; the CCTV needs a more complete socialetal visualization of urban areas instead of having social exclusion, the acceptance of facial recognition systems to increase security and promote safer streets, the process of creating visually appealing space that directly impacts forms of crime and deviant acts which compliments the spatial production process, and ensuring space is being conceptualized from various viewpoints, looking at the way surveillance effects human emotions and power structures. These elements are what will be discussed in this essay and give an in-depth look at the changing nature of urban video surveillance. There are several ways to discuss CCTV systems, in terms of its use and effectiveness. Such a discussion requires a complex analysis of the types of surveillance as well ... ... middle of paper ... .... (2005). Surveillance in the city: Primary definition and urban spatial order. Crime, Media, Culture, 1(131), 131–148. Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://cmc.sagepub.com/content/1/2/131. Gray, M. (2003). Urban Surveillance and Panopticism: will we recognize the facial recognition society?. Surveillance & Society, 1(3), 314-330. Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://www.surveillance-and-society.org Hier, S. P. (2004). Risky Spaces and Dangerous Faces: Urban Surveillance, Social Disorder and CCTV. Social & Legal Studies, 13(4), 541-554. Retrieved March 1, 2014, from http://sls.sagepub.com/content/13/4/541.refs.html Koskela, H. (2000). 'The gaze without eyes': video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space. Progress in Human Geography, 24(243), 243–265. Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://phg.sagepub.com/content/24/2/243.
The citizens experience a deficiency of identity as a result of the way the government physically controls them. Big Brother monitors every move each individual makes; nothing goes unnoticed. Every face made, the way one’s body reacts to different situations, everything said and everything done, is overseen by the government. If the way one acts is abnormal, it is believed that citizen is rebelling: “The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself…” (Orwell 65). The Party keeps everyone under constant surveillance using telescreens. A telescreen is a device that is both a television and a security camera. Big Brother also exercises physical control by forcing all citizens to watch specific broadcasts, wear specific clothing and perform specific tasks. Citizens are forced to pa...
If misused, body-cameras can be a violation of privacy. In order to prevent this, proper legislation needs to be enacted in order to ensure privacy rights are protected. The only policy related document regarding police body cameras is the “Guidance for the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement authorities” which is issued by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. This document discusses that rules should not be enforced only by local police departments, but for Canada as a whole. As this is the only document related to police body cameras, it is undoubtable that there needs to be serious legislation created. As it is suggested that body cameras pose as a risk for privacy rights, it is evident in order to implement them effectively, there needs to be regulation constructed. Body cameras can be an effective and useful tool, but without legislation, they can cause problems. Bruce Chapman, president of the Police Association of Ontario expresses, “We want to do it right. We don’t want to do it fast” when asked about the implementation of body cameras. While body cameras, are important to have in today's society, it is also dire to have it done properly. By enforcing strict guidelines, and documents addressing body camera legislation, it will ensure the process is done correctly. In order to implement body cameras properly, privacy rights need to be assessed. This process takes time, and proves body cameras need to be implemented at a pace legislation can follow. Thomas K. Bud, discusses the worry that privacy will be violated with body cameras. Factors such as facial recognition, citizen consent of recording, and violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms all pose as risks. While legislation has not matched their guidelines with modern technology, it proves how important it is to create new documents, in order for changes to be made. Therefore body
This method of surveillance effectively curtails negative social behaviour by keeping the population under constant fear of being watched. The objective of this intense surveillance is to create a modern Panopticon, a prison designed by British architect Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s. This prison featured a centralized guard tower surrounded by brightly lit cells. Due to the difference in the quality of light, the prisoners were not able to see the guard tower so, “not knowing if they are being watched, but having to assume that they are, the prisoners [adjusted] their behavior” (Jan Kietzmann 135). This method was adapted by many societies including soviet Russia where the people were so afraid of being spied upon that they would only meet their friends in public to avoid being suspected of private conspiracy (Enteen 209). As in communist Russia, the governing body’s manipulation of surveillance is in an effort to ensure that no citizens are doing, or thinking of doing anything contrary to the goals of the party. This omnipresent surveillance has been shown to cut down on crime, however this comes at the cost of the citizens’ freedom and spontaneity, turning vibrant humans into fearful
The government is always watching to ensure safety of their country, including everything and everyone in it. Camera surveillance has become an accepted and almost expected addition to modern safety and crime prevention (“Where” para 1). Many people willingly give authorization to companies like Google and Facebook to make billions selling their personal preferences, interests, and data. Canada participates with the United States and other countries in monitoring national and even global communications (“Where” para 2). Many question the usefulness of this kind of surveillance (Hier, Let, and Walby 1).However, surveillance, used non-discriminatorily, is, arguably, the key technology to preventing terrorist plots (Eijkman 1). Government surveillance is a rising global controversy; and, although minimal coverage could possibly result in safer communities, too much surveillance will result in the violation of citizen’s privacy.
Current advancements in technology has given the government more tools for surveillance and thus leads to growing concerns for privacy. The two main categories of surveillance technologies are the ones that allow the government to gather information where previously unavailable or harder to obtain, and the ones that allow the government to process public information more quickly and efficiently (Simmons, 2007). The first category includes technologies like eavesdropping devices and hidden cameras. These are clear offenders of privacy because they are capable of gathering information while being largely unnoticed. The second category would include technologies that are used in a public space, like cameras in a public park. While these devices
Surveillance cameras have helped hundreds of law enforcement agencies solve thousands of crimes throughout the nation. They have become so helpful that most law enforcement agencies are planning on setting them up on street corners, buildings, publication parks, and on their own officers. There are many cities across the nation that have began to use surveillance cameras. Setting up cameras is a pivotal technique to solving and preventing crimes. Although, it is often argued that having law enforcement surveillance cameras set up throughout the nations communities is an invasion of privacy, citizens should sacrifice a little bit of privacy in return for their safety and protection of civil rights against criminals and police officers.
The past decade has seen a proliferation of law enforcement security cameras in public areas, with central London having more cameras than any other city. In cities like New York, Los Angeles, and central London, cameras can be found at almost every intersection. Terrorist attacks have been a major basis for this significant increase in law enforcement security cameras; however, privacy advocates, along with many of the public, feel that it’s an invasion of privacy. People are concerned that all this video surveillance, which is continuously expanding, has created a “Big Brother” society, where people are constantly watched. This creates paranoia and unease for people that just want to go about living there private lives, without feeling that their every move is being watched. The increased presence of surveillance cameras is almost compared to George Orwell’s novel from 1984, where he imagined a future in which people would be monitored and controlled by the government. One question that needs to be asked is: does the benefits of law enforcement security cameras outweigh the negative sides to it? Although the invasion of privacy is a serious argument against law enforcement cameras; nevertheless, it should be seen as a valuable tool to help fight crime. As long as surveillance cameras are in public places and not in people's homes, privacy advocates should not be concerned.
In Michael Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, the late eighteen century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's model of Panopticon was illustrated as a metaphor for the contemporary technologies of mass surveillance.
Surveillance is the monitoring of behaviour. In addition, surveillance system is the process of monitoring the behaviour of people, objects or processes within systems for conformity to expected or desired norms in trusted systems for security control (Cohen and Medioni, 1999). Video surveillance systems have existed 25 years ago whereby it started with 100% analogue system and gradually becoming digital system. The closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera is the most popular video surveillance because of its reliability and low price. The camera does not broadcast images but it records them, so that user can always check to see what occurred while they were away. It is widely used at public spaces and residences for security purposes.
Foucault once stated, “Our society is one not of spectacle, but of surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests” (301). By this, he means that our society is full of constant supervision that is not easily seen nor displayed. In his essay, Panopticism, Foucault goes into detail about the different disciplinary societies and how surveillance has become a big part of our lives today. He explains how the disciplinary mechanisms have dramatically changed in comparison to the middle ages. Foucault analyzes in particular the Panopticon, which was a blueprint of a disciplinary institution. The idea of this institution was for inmates to be seen but not to see. As Foucault put it, “he is the object of information, never a subject in communication”(287). The Panopticon became an evolutionary method for enforcing discipline. Today there are different ways of watching people with constant surveillance and complete control without anyone knowing similar to the idea of the Panopticon.
Kammerer, Dietmar. Surveillance in Literature, film and television. Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies, pages 99-106. 2012. Seen in: MDIA322: Media, Technologies & Surveillance. Kathleen Kuehn. Wellington: Victoria University, 2014. 82-89. Print.
...f surveillance might serve to have real impact on people’s life chances owing to such institutionalized prejudice. For example, a recent study found that CCTV operators were disproportionately monitoring the young, the male and ethnic minorities “for no obvious reason” (Norris & Armstrong 1999). That is, in the absence of suspicious behavior they were choosing to focus their attention on these categories of people. The result is that anyone falling into these categories is more likely to be caught if doing something wrong than someone else, thus perpetuating the stereotype. Furthermore, as these groups were being watched more frequently than others, they were more likely to be seen as doing something suspicious. This in turn could lead to disproportionate response rates by security forces on the ground, contributing to a sense of alienation and rejection by society.
The concept of surveillance is a phenomena addressed by a wide range of disciplines- including sociology, psychology, law, criminology and politics (Crampton and Elden, 2007), and has been defined as the systematic investigation or monitoring of the actions or communications of one or more persons (Clarke, 2000). Its purposes vary according to the subject in question, although most ordinary language users argue that its primary purpose is to gather data and information about individual’s actions and daily activities in society (Rose, 1999). While others have argued that there is a second intention which is to deter a whole population from undertaking illegal actions (Clarke, 2000). The process of monitoring includes observations from a distance via technological devices such as CCTV, or interception of electronically transmitted information (reference). On average it is suggested that there are approximately 5.9 million CCTV cameras operating in Britain (Barrett, 2013), which work out at one for every 11 people in the UK. There has been a wide range of debates and publications on Surveillance & Society, the most important of which are the work of Michel Foucault (1977), Jeremy Bentham, Giddens (1985), followed by the work of Gary Marx (1998), and of course more recent work afforded by Deleze, (1990) Lyon (2001, 2007) and many more. For the purpose of this essay, the work of Foucault (1977) is discussed at length in order to examine whether his work is applicable to contemporary society. Therefore, this essay will begin by drawing on Foucault’s work on Discipline and Punish (1977), and outlines the concept of panopticon which he elaborate...
Video cameras are being deployed around the nation to help with crime solving, but some people are concerned about their privacy. Having cameras to monitor public areas have shown to be useful in situations such as identifying the bombers of the Boston marathon in early 2013. There have also been issues with these cameras however, as people are concerned they are too invasive of their privacy and have been misused by police officers in the past. Some people want to find a balance in using cameras in public so that they can continue to help with crime solving while making sure they are not too invasive and are properly used.
Since surveillance cameras have been invented for security reasons at shopping malls and stores they have also been place in public areas such as stoplights, parking lots, hallways, bus stops, and more.