Posts Tagged CCTV

The Nonsense Game (not funny)

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in security policy on January 4, 2011

When I was little, there was a game we would play quite often, called The Nonsense Game. We would sit in a small circle and the person to my left would whisper a simple question to my ear, and I would reply. I would then ask something else to the person on my right, and put together the answer I got from my right and the question on my left, coming up with… well, nonsense. Hence the name. The result would be things like: On my left I was asked ‘What is your favorite color?’ And my right replied ‘Fly’, or ‘What do you dream of doing? Yellow’. Hope you get the idea.

Lately, an increasing amount of news on issues related to security bring that game to mind. Here’s a few examples:

1)      In the summer of 2009, a major Spanish newspaper published pictures of tourists and sex workers having sex in the area around a central market in Barcelona, La Boqueria. Just a few days ago, the Town Hall implemented its solution to that problem: putting up a fence around the area, so that only neighbors can access it during the night.

On my left I was asked ‘What to do with prostitution in public places?’, and my right replied ‘fence-in a whole area of the city’.

2)      In recent years, many cities have installed CCTV in streets and squares around commercial areas, as a way to deter petty crime and reduce anti-social behavior. The fact that we have no clear evidence to conclude that videosurveillance is useful to prevent incivility or reduce petty crime seems irrelevant.

On my left I was asked ‘How to improve community safety in city centres’, and my right replied ‘turning everyone into a suspect and the object of permanent remote surveillance’.

3)      Just a year ago, a guy who had been reported by his father due to his links with Al-Qaeda tried to explode a bomb inside a plane Amsterdam-Detroit –luckily, he only managed to set his underwear on fire. A few days later, the media reported what the solution to that problem was: full-body scanners. The fact that it was unclear whether such devices would have identified what the man was carrying seemed irrelevant.

On my left I was asked ‘How to make sure people who have been reported for links with terrorist organizations never board a plane’, and my right replied ‘By making everyone go through full-body scanners’.

The gap between security and safety problems and solutions is frightening. Faced with problems of public health and human trafficking, the break-up of social ties and inequality, of police inefficiency or lack of resources for intelligence operations, etc. the solutions we adopt invariably respond more to a generalized technophilia and the need to make it look like political representatives are ‘doing something’ than to anything having to do with real efficiency and problem-solving. And while the massive expenditure of public money on devices and ‘things’ that have yet to prove they actually address any of the real problems is worrying, what unsettles and upsets me is that, in each and every case, the solutions to security problems include measures and policies that affect everyone: public spaces are fenced-in for everyone of us, regardless of whether we have taken part in any exchange of sexual services. CCTV monitors and controls us all, irrespective of our criminal record or intention to commit an illegal or anti-social act. Full-body scanners invade the privacy of all of us, even if we would never dream of causing damage to innocent people.

In this drive to feel safe, we are not only sacrificing liberty, but also fundamental rights and values such as the right to privacy, the presumption of innocence (the idea that one is innocent until proven guilty) and legal certainty.

At this rate, by the time any of the ‘enemy civilizations that threaten our way of life’ invade us, there will be little left of the rights and values we pretend to defend and care so much about. All we’ll have left will be nonsense.

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So what’s that camera up there for again???

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in EU on May 12, 2010

… or CCTV? Think Twice (III)

Every once in a while, the press reports on a case of bystander passivity, of people being attacked, insulted, killed or abused in a public space or area while people around the scene just ignore it. The latest incident was picked up by media all over the world, and involved a man being stabbed to death after trying to help a woman, and several people walking past him without doing anything to save his life.

These incidents usually make it to the public sphere because there is footage from a CCTV camera, and are usually followed by a little bit of public debate, where we all express outrage at the behaviour of those who chose to mind their own business an not help a fellow human being. Our fears of an incresaingly individualistic and atomized society are confirmed, we swear to ourselves we’d act differently, and the press exorcizes our collective outrage by bullying the passers-by caught on tape.

But aren’t we forgetting something here? If the scene was caught by a CCTV camera, how come the “watcher” didn’t do anything? What’s the point of having a camera if, when things go wrong, all you get is a tape to send to the burial? Whatever happened to the promise of deterrence and a better police response?

In their quest to ensure security and control at all times, policy-makers fail to inform us that most cameras are not monitored. But deception is not the main problem here: the most worrying thing is that since people tend to assume that someone *is* watching, they feel less compelled to intervene -a more powerful ‘someone’ is watching, right?

Videosurveillance, thus, reinforces the indifferent, mind-my-own-business impulse in us. So the next time something like this happens, it might not be a bad idea to bully the policies that promote the delegation of social responsibility onto ‘someone else’, and not just the ghosts that incarnate our collective fears.

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Back… and still obsessing about surveillance!

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in EU on February 22, 2010

Apologies for the long break… but the announcement last week that Barcelona had just received the go ahead for the installation of 7 more cameras along the Ramblas has prompted me to finally get my act together and update this blog.

The announcement coincided with a visit to Barcelona of some students from the University of Liverpool to compare the situation of CCTV in both cities. Understandably, what surprised them was the lack of surveillance -which is not surprising for anyone coming form the world’s most surveilled country.

In Barcelona, the public cameras that are actually up and running can still be counted on two hands, and the Surveillance Commission of the Catalan Supreme Court has not only rejected some petitions (like that of installing a system on Plaça Reial), but also limited others by establishing, for instance, the obligation to turn off the camera pointing at one of the city’s main streets, Via Laietana, whenever there is a demonstration in order to protect people’s political rights.

What is worrying, however, is that even though the Socialist mayor has said explicitly that his cabinet “rejects” the generalization of CCTV, surveillance continues to grow. While nobody has ever bothered to commission a study of its impact. Without a public debate over its implications. Without any of us knowing who’s looking at us and how much it’s costing us.

And so when the students from Liverpool asked me whether we had had any kind of democratic or participatory process to decide if we wanted CCTV, I didn’t know whether to admire their naivety or run away…

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CCTV? Think Twice (II)

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in EU on December 18, 2009

A few weeks ago I started a (wannabe) series on CCTV, and ended the post by stating how urgent it is to assess what the impact of security policies really is, as many countries are now considering the possibility of expanding their CCTV networks.

Well… it just happened. Sigh.

The Socialist Party in power in Paris (France) has just approved the installation of 1,302 CCTV cameras in the streets of la Ville-Lumière, where so far only 293 cameras have been installed in open public areas (up to 10,000 do monitor the public transport system, though).

This cost of this over the next two years? 300 million euros.

The decision is not only surprising because the PS has criticized the national government’s plan to triple the amount of cameras in the streets of the country, but also because, as it has been reported elsewhere, the report that was mentioned to defend the effectiveness of CCTV… well, just doesn’t.

So: at a time of crisis, Paris’ municipalité decides to increase the budget for CCTV, even though the efficacy of the already-existing cameras has not been properly evaluated.

If we look at the British example (the only one that has provided us with real data, as I mentioned in the earlier post), the Met Police acknowledges that only one in 1000 cameras is useful in terms of contributing to solve a crime. This means that the price tag for the CCTV contribution to the solving of each incident would be around 20,000 pounds, in the case of the UK. It is hard to calculate this in the French example as the sources disagree over the cost of the scheme (from 5 to 300 million euros).

At a time of corruption scandals, ponzi schemes and mismanagement of public money, it might seem that demanding that public policy justifies their cost is just splitting hairs. Maybe it is.

More on this series: the sociological effects of CCTV, CCTV as deterrent, the legal use of CCTV footage and the long-term sustainability of CCTV as public policy.

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CCTV? Think Twice (1)

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in EU on November 9, 2009

A few weeks ago, I found myself speaking to a Superintendent from Scotland Yard about CCTV. To my surprise, he had never heard any arguments against surveillance, and so asked me to summarize what the critical literature says. I will cover the main points I find relevant in a series of posts, starting with what I find is a crucial problem when we discuss the need for cameras in public space: the usefulness of CCTV when it comes to stopping crime from happening.

The deterrent effect of CCTV is mentioned over and over again, and so funding for such schemes always comes from the crime prevention budget (eating up to 80% of it in the case of the UK). However, even the Metropolitan Police has reported that, at its best, CCTV is mainly useful in terms of identifying the perpetrators after the fact, and even in this case, only one in 1,000 cameras managed to capture criminal activity in the last year.

Do CCTV systems help build safer cities, then? Not according to the data available, especially if we also take into account the displacement effect CCTV can have on criminal activity, and the fact that the kind of crime CCTV addresses is property-crime, and not personal crime. Maybe that’s why studies have only been able to establish a very short-term effect on citizens’ perceptions of risk.

The debate over CCTV might be lost in the UK, where cameras have monitored behavior for over 25 years, but other countries are now considering the possibility of extending such systems. It is thus high time community safety policies are approached from the point of view of their real impact on people’s lives, local budgets and criminal activity.

More on this series: the sociological effects of CCTV, the cost-effectiveness of CCTV, the legal use of CCTV footage and the long-term sustainability of CCTV as public policy.

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Barcelona: de la prostitución a la videovigilancia

Posted by Gemma Galdon Clavell in EU on November 3, 2009

Las imágenes publicadas por El País la semana pasada, denunciando la prostitución callejera en los alrededores de la Boquería han recrudecido el debate sobre le efectividad de la ordenanza cívica de Barcelona y la persistencia de las actitudes incívicas cinco años después de su aprobación.

Casualmente, este debate coincide con el encargo por parte del Home Office británico a un grupo de académicos de la Universidad de Glasgow de un estudio sobre el fracaso de las medidas de control del comportamiento en el espacio público. En el Reino Unido, dónde el Estado ha financiado la instalación de más de cuatro millones de cámaras de videovigilancia y las ordenanzas de comportamientos anti-sociales, como allí las llaman, hacen que cualquier ordenanza cívica de nuestro entorno parezca un juego de niños (limitan la libre asociación de más de dos mayores de seis años en la calle, por ejemplo, que deben dispersarse si así les es requerido), los gestores públicos confiesan su incredulidad y desorientación: tras años de seguir a rajatabla las doctrinas de ventanas rotas (Broken Windows) y de monitorizar y reglamentar los comportamientos en el espacio público, tanto el incivismo como la sensación de inseguridad no han ni siquiera disminuido.

No estaría de más que desde aquí también empezáramos a plantearnos estas mismas preguntas: tras cinco años de ordenanza en Barcelona, la mayor parte de las sanciones no llegan a cobrarse y los comportamientos que se pretenden censurar persisten (o empeoran, según algunas voces). Desde el punto de vista de la eficiencia y eficacia de las políticas públicas, es evidente que algo está fallando.

Sin embargo, a día de hoy la única propuesta en firme que ha salido del consistorio de la ciudad condal es la petición de instalar más cámaras de videovigilancia en el barrio del Raval, con el fin de atajar la “inseguridad, la prostitución y los comportamientos incívicos”. En 1984 la localidad de Bournemouth tuvo el honor de acoger la primera cámara instalada en Inglaterra; desde entonces, éstas se han generalizado hasta tal punto que se dice que las más de cuatro millones de cámaras del país filman a cada ciudadano una media de 300 veces al día (una cifra difícil de demostrar, pero quizás plausible teniendo en cuenta que la relación es de una cámara por cada 14 personas). Inglaterra, con el 1% de la población mundial, concentra el 20% de las cámaras de todo el mundo. No obstante, en Inglaterra, como aquí, los comportamientos que se pretendía atajar persisten.

Pero concentrémonos por unos segundos en las cámaras: en todas y cada una de las noticias que han aparecido en las últimas semanas sobre el tema de la videovigilancia en el Raval, las cámaras se proponen como elemento disuasorio de la actividad incívica/criminal, cuando en realidad la utilización de las imágenes se produce siempre a posteriori (y aún así, sólo son útiles en la resolución de 1 de cada 1000 delitos, según reconoció la Metropolitan Police londinense hace sólo unos días). Este efecto disuasorio es a veces atribuido a la creencia de que el incívico/delincuente dejará de actuar ante la presencia de cámaras, o a que los vecinos tendrán una mejor percepción (subjetiva) del nivel de inseguridad en la calle. La realidad, sin embargo, es que no disponemos de ningún dato que refuerce estas opiniones: los delitos y actos incívicos se cometen igual (en la calle de al lado o delante de la cámara con casco o capucha), en los casos en que las cámaras tienen algún impacto éste tiende a ser sobre los delitos contra la propiedad (robo de coches principalmente) y no contra las personas,  y la percepción de seguridad sólo mejora en casos aislados y a corto plazo. A medio y largo plazo, pues, seguimos igual de asustados, los delitos se cometen igualmente y las arcas públicas se vacían (el sistema público de videovigilancia de Londres ha costado 200 millones de libras: es decir, cada caso resuelto gracias a las cámaras le cuesta al erario público 20,000 libras).

La creciente demanda de seguridad, sobre todo en el espacio público, por parte de la ciudadanía se ha convertido en uno de los ejes de las políticas públicas municipales de los últimos años. No puede negarse que disponer de espacios públicos abiertos y seguros es una de las condiciones que debería cumplir cualquier sociedad democrática –sobre todo porque los espacios públicos inseguros expulsan siempre a los más débiles. Pero esa demanda no puede convertirse en excusa para llevar adelante políticas que no resuelven problemas, que no tienen en cuenta la relación coste-beneficio y que no son evaluadas de forma regular para que la ciudadanía pueda determinar si mantenerlas tiene sentido. El debate actual puede ser un buen momento para poner todo esto sobre la mesa y explorar estrategias de verdadera recuperación del espacio público urbano, evitando la extensión por repetición en todo el país de unas ordenanzas que todos los actores implicados coinciden en que no funcionan, y que en otros países se está ya camino de replantear.

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