CCTV – Page 8 – ubisurv

How Many CCTV Cameras are there in Britain? (Part 6)

BBC’s Newsnight current affairs programme has used the Freedom of Information Act to ask almost 100 Local Authorities in the UK how many video surveillance cameras they operate. There are some really nice graphics here, which demonstrate what a ridiculous number of cameras we have, and particularly the way in which CCTV is becoming seen as ‘normal’ in all areas, not just big cities.

This brings up the discussion we were having earlier in the year with David Aaronovitch of The Times and Paul Lewis of The Guardian (see here, here, here, here and here!), who claimed that members of Surveillance Studies Network had knowingly fabricated figures. In fact these were scenarios and broad guesstimates and never presented as anything more than that. Newsnight in common with most media doesn’t get this either and thinks that its survey means that “there are almost one million fewer CCTV cameras in the UK than previously thought.”

However there survey was only of Local Authorities. It did not cover private systems in public open space or quasi-public space like transport systems (railways, buses and the underground) and shopping malls, let along cameras in private space. The guesstimates made by Clive Norris and Mike McCahill way back in 2001 included all cameras in public space. Norris and Gary Armstrong’s little scenario of being spotted by up to 300 cameras a day most certainly included purely private ones too – as did a real life version of the same kind of scenario conducted by The Times earlier this year – in fact, private cameras covering public space were almost twice as numerous as state ones. So in fact there are probably many more CCTV cameras than “previously thought.” The important thing is that there is almost no control over their proliferation whether nominally ‘public’ or ‘private’ and, as I wrote the other day, almost nothing apart from conscience that seems to be stopping operators from using ‘augmented’ CCTV because extra functionality like audio comes as standard on camera units these days.

For me, of course, the really interesting figures are the international comparative ones: that there are more cameras operated by the average London borough than by the whole metropolis of Tokyo. Yet in other ways, the figures are probably closer – Tokyo is as comprehensively covered as London in terms of public transport. Nothing is quite as clear-cut as it seems if you restrict the research to one type of camera system. Still, thank-you very much to the Newsnight researchers for performing a useful public service!

Big Brother isn’t listening (at least in Maryland)…

Hot on the heals of my earlier post on the subject, I have just received the news that following the publication of the report in The Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Transit Authority have pulled the proposal to use audio surveillance on their buses.

However, an interesting thing to note in this supplementary report by transport correspondent, Michael Dresser, on the paper’s blog, is that the proposal apparently came about because CCTV cameras these days come with sound-recording built in, and that other transit authorities in Cleveland, Denver and Chicago use it. The MTA administrator responsible for seeking the legal opinion on audio surveillance is quoted as saying “It’s something that’s becoming the standard of the industry.”

So, if I am reading this right here, important policy decisions that have major implications for privacy are being treated simply as technical issues because the technologies that are being purchased have the capabilities. It’s only in this case because the MTA sought a legal opinion that we know at all, let alone that anyone objected. So how many other transit, police or urban authorities or commercial venues in how many places are now regularly using the audio capabilities of cameras without ever having considered that this might be a problem? And what other built-in technical capabilities will simply be used in future simply because they are available? What about the Terahertz Wave scanning that I covered earlier on?

‘X-ray vision’ may not be so far away…

Fascinating and disturbing news from the MIT Technology Review blog that a team of researchers appears to have cracked the problem of how to produce cheap, effective Terahertz Wave (TW) cameras and receivers. TW are found between infrared and microwave radiation, and produce what we called in A Report on the Surveillance Society, a ‘virtual strip search’, as they penetrate under layers of clothing but not much further, and can thus produce images of the body ‘stripped’ of clothing. Thus far, they’ve been used on an experimental basis in some airports and not really any further afield.

This is largely because of the way that TW waves have been detected up until now has basically been a bit of a kludge, a side-effect of another process. This has meant that TW equipment has been generally quite large and non-portable (amongst other things).

However one Michel Dyakonov of the University of Montpellier II in France has followed up theoretical work he did in the 1990s, with a new larger team, to show that tiny (nanoscale) ‘field effect transistors’ can – and they are still not quite sure how exactly – both produce and detect TW. The details are in Technology Review, but the crucial thing for those interested in surveillance is that:

the output is ‘good enough for video’; and
‘they can be built into arrays using standard silicon CMOS technology’ which means small, cheap (and highly portable) equipment. This could be an add-on to standard video cameras.

I’m getting a genie-out-of-bottles feeling with this, but is it really as damaging to personal privacy as it feels? Does this really ‘reveal’ anything truly important? Or will it become something to which we rapidly become accustomed, and indeed with with which we quickly get bored? In some cultures, specially those that regard covering the body and modesty as being god-given, this is clearly going to present massive challenges to social and moral norms. It seems to me that there is also an immediate conflict with current constitutional and legal rights in several jurisdictions, not least the US Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected to warrantless searches and the European Convention Article Eight on the right to privacy.

But it seems that unless such a technology is banned, or at least particular commercial implementations, we’re about to cross another Rubicon almost before we’ve noticed it has happened. Ironically bans on technology can only really be effective in states where intensive surveillance and state control of behaviour is practiced. In other places, I am not sure banning can be effective even if it were desirable, as in reality, a ban simply means reserving the use of the technology to criminals, large corporations which can afford to flout laws, and the state.

Community Safety in Shinjuku

As well as trying to interview officials at national and city level here, I am also looking at a few different areas of the city, including Shinjuku, where I have done some work before. Shinjuku is a central ward of Tokyo that includes the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) buildings, part of a growing high-rise district, possibly the busiest railway station in the world, one of the most extensive entertainment districts in the city (not just Kabukicho, the conventional ‘red light’ district, but also a lot of gay clubs and bars), and substantial Korean and Chinese communities.

We had an interesting interview this week with the two officials seconded from the Metropolitan Police Department (keishicho), to run the efforts in Shinjuku (as usual there is a lot more than I can summarise here). We met in the Emergency Control Room, a cramped space full of monitors old and new, walkie-talkies and lots and lots of yellow telephones. We had a brief chat about emergency planning, but as we there to talk security and surveillance, we moved on.

Anzen anshin (or bohan) machizukuri (community safety (or security) development) in Tokyo derives from a TMG ordinance (jourei) of 2003 which encourages all ku (city wards) to implement it. The main reason was that recorded crimes had reached a record high in the city in 2002 (I’ll consider crime figures in Japan and their reliability in another post). There were a patchwork of existing community safety organisations but these appear to have been separate from the chounaikai (local community associations). What the 2003 ordinance did was to make community safety the responsibility of the chounaikai with co-ordination, information and encouragement from the ku administration.

The Shinjuku authorities are very keen on this, much more so than some others, for example, Arakawa-ku where we are living and which I am also examining, which tends to rely on much more conventional policing. This may be a matter of money (Arakawa is nowhere near as wealthy as Shinjuku), but it may also be down to the attitudes of the public and local state officials. This kind of community safety work is time-intensive, and requires a substantial commitment in order to carry out things like citizen patrols (which seem to be one of the core elements).

We also talked about CCTV, which Tokyo started to implement in 2003 as well for the same ostensible reasons. Of course Kabukicho is one of the city-centre pilot areas (along with Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Ropongi and the later addition of Ueno), with over 50 cameras operated by the city police. Given their position it is hardly surprising that they had little time for talk of a ‘surveillance society’ (or indeed even the idea of ‘surveillance’ – the word kanshi provokes quite a strong reaction here – no, no – they are definitely not doing surveillance). They also talked about the co-ordination of shoutenkai (shopkeepers’ association) CCTV systems. It seems that despite their large numbers, these systems are generally not monitored, i.e. there is not control room and no-one is watching. The officials were also certain that the shoutenkai operators themselves were not even allowed to view footage without permission from local police. This is something I will have to investigate more as I have read in the past of shoutenkai representatives claiming the opposite – that they had to give permission for the police to view footage. It seems that both shoutenkai and chounaikai are being encouraged to install CCTV systems, and there are grant systems in place – basically one third comes from the city, one third from the ku, and one third has to be found by the organisation itself from its members.

This means that coverage is very uneven and tends to be restricted to wealthy and / or particularly committed –kai. Shinjuku has many, many shoutenkai systems. Nippori, in Arakawa, in contrast has three cameras – not three systems, but three cameras…

(Thank-you very much to Mr Takahashi and Mr Yabe for their time and patience with my questions).

More on CCTV in Japan

The slightly left-leaning Asahi Shimbun newspaper had a pretty balanced if uninspiring editorial this week on the spread of CCTV cameras in Japan. The English translation is available here.

The most important thing in the editorial is the recommendation of national laws for CCTV. This would be better than in the UK for example, where there still isn’t any national regulation of CCTV except for the Data Protection Act. The paper’s suggestions are:

transparent operational procedures with ‘rigorous conditions’ for the sharing of images
third party oversight for police cameras and a ‘help desk where people can complain about being caught on tape’

This is a start, but only a start, and the second one would probably prove completely unworkable especially if cameras become more widespread. It would be rather better for some kind of permission system to operate, where cameras were seen as an exceptional response to a proven need. The paper is already accepting the normality of CCTV cameras in public spaces regardless of the evidence of their effectiveness- which it acknowledges is equivocal (in fact it’s generally much worse than that in the UK) or indeed the wider social impacts.

Japan to introduce resident-monitored CCTV

One of the most interesting developments in recent years has been the way in which the state has attempted to adapt Japan’s traditional culture of responsibilized local community organisations (chounaikai) for the new surveillance society (kanshi shakai, in Japanese). Cynics may well argue that what is called here bohan machizukuri (or community safety development – or sometimes the similar anzen anshin machizukuri) is simply a way in which the government can attempt to save money whilst pretending to be tough on what is always claimed to be a worsening crime rate. It is also true to say that this is also a further perversion of the machizukuri (bottom-up community development) idea that came out of local environmental movements of the 1960s.

Nevertheless, the Japan Times reported that the Keisatsuchou (National Police Agency or NPA) appears to be pushing forward with plans to extend its rather small number of CCTV cameras* into 15 residential areas starting January 2010 (two of which, Higashiyamato and Musashimurayama, are suburbs of Tokyo, and I’ll be visiting these whilst I am here) at the cost of 597 Million Yen (around £3.85 Million or $6.3 Million US). There’s always an underlying fear that is played on when such systems are installed, and in this case it is a classic: the threat to children. The small camera systems(around 25 cameras in size) will be installed on streets that are commonly used by kids going to and from school.

The fact that the schemes are focused on child safety would certainly be one of the reasons why the use of local volunteer committees to watch the cameras and manage the data from local civic facilities like community centres, has been put forward. It could also be in response to opposition from some local residents to what they see as the imposition of unwanted state invasion of their privacy, although according to the Japan Times, the police say it “will help residents to secure safety by themselves.” Their big problem is that there do not appear to be many volunteers yet!

There are many questions here. One mystery is that in Japan most school runs already have several, often elderly, volunteers who look out for children in person,in a more genuinely machizukuri form of bohan machizukuri so why the more expensive cameras? Another massive question is the one around privacy and data protection. How will volunteers be expected to act as official data controllers, especially in such a sensitive area as surveillance of children in public space? Finally, what will the effect be on trust and community relations to have one set of people in the community monitoring others? How will they be held accountable?

These, and many other questions will be just some of the things occupying my time here for the next two months…

*There are just 363 NPA cameras in Japan, however there are more owned by local municipal authorities, particularly in Tokyo, and thousands more operated by private companies and shoutenkai (shopkeepers’ associations).

CCTV: expensive and limited says Home Office study

Back in 2002, David Farrington and Brandon Welsh published a study for the UK Home Office which showed that CCTV had only small effects on crime, except in car parks. Now they are back with a study that confirms all that, plus which shows that despite the evidence, more money is spent on CCTV in Britain than on any other single form of crime prevention. So much we knew, but what is a slightly unexpected finding is that CCTV apparently works better in Britain than in other countries. This is not a plus for the UK, rather it shows that in other nations it is even worse value-for-money – and it is clearly not an efficient use of public funds here as currently used. Instead the authors recommend that CCTV should be more narrowly focussed – in other words, we don’t need mass surveillance, we need targeted surveillance At the same time however, more and more money is going into CCTV in the USA in particular, where all the same ‘silver bullet’ arguments are being made as were made in the UK in the 1990s, and have now been shown to be largely unwarranted. The government has now fallen back on populism to justify the continued expansion of CCTV: ‘people want it.’ Well, on that basis, they would bring back public flogging and hanging… it would make rather more sense if they listened to the evidence from the reports they themselves are commissioning.

The full report is available from The Campbell Collaboration library, but there’s a summary in The Guardian today.

UK Ministry of Justice sounding old, tired and defeated

I was at a meeting organised by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) today (Wednesday) in London where both Jack Straw and Michael Wills from the Ministry of Justice spoke. In the wake of the expenses revelations it was not surprising that both sounded somewhat conciliatory, but the degree of both overt and tacit admission of mistakes and changes needed was quite surprising. I had a bit of a set-to with Michael Wills on the apparent lack of knowledge amongst government ministers of the results of their own research on the (in)effectiveness of CCTV, to which he responded with the Melanie Phillips defence – i.e.: come and talk to ordinary people and they will tell you they want CCTV. This is a diversion for many reasons, not least of which is that unlike both the Daily Mail’s moral minority and the minister, I actually live in places where they only visit on official business and I also understand that what people mean when they demand CCTV is not the technology itself but a solution to the real and perceived problems of crime and anti-social behaviour that they face. They only demand CCTV because they see the programs on TV and are convinced that CCTV ‘works’ – however if you talk to senior police officers or anyone who has done research on this, they will tell you, yes, targeted mobile CCTV surveillance to deal with specific problems can be very effective (in terms of both cost and results) but mass camera surveillance is not the same thing. It is rather disappointing that a Justice Minister did not appear to understand the difference.

Jack Staw gave a weird speech. It was both full of matey bonhomie and characterised by stuttering hesitancy and vagueness. He made a number of historical errors, for example in claiming that the culture of secrecy was a product of the Cold War, when the first Official Secrets Act was a product of WW1. He also claimed that CCTV was all about ‘low-level disorder’ and ‘reassurance’, which will be news to all those (like his ministerial colleague) who still think it prevents crime. But he did rightly take some credit for Freedom of Information, including allowing parliamentary expenses to be included, even as it turned out, to his latter-day embarrassment.

Where it got very interesting was in his comments on the government’s consultation on the future of the DNA database following the damning verdict of the European Court. Contrary to Jacqui Smith, Straw indicated that he would be quite happy with the proposed 12 year retention period being reduced to 9 or even 6 years. He also claimed that there was a behind-the-scenes review of The Terrorism Act and other post-9/11 measures going on, which I don’t think many people in the room even appreciated. He admitted that the Labour government got many things wrong after 9/11 and that the environment had now also changed.

It was all very interesting, but you really got the feeling that this was a government on the way out anyway. The Tories will no doubt scrap the ID cards and register, but listening to the Shadow Justice Minister, Dominic Grieve, I got the impression that they don’t have much to offer apart from caution. That might be welcome for a while, but as a speaker from Google remarked, the debate is so far behind the reality of technological change that none of this will really matter very much unless there is a real culture shift. The ICO under the massively influential Richard Thomas, for whom this was very much a valedictory event before he steps down, has made great strides in this direction, but the government and opposition parties are still a long way away from understanding the need to establish a new basis for informational relationships between people, state and private companies that we desperately need.

Behind the cameras

While the vast majority of those monitoring CCTV screens are probably decent people who stick within the legal and ethical guidelines (such as they are), it is worth remembering that pervasive surveillance offers unprecedented opportunities to perverts, stalkers and sex offenders. This is not just secret cameras set up by weirdo voyeurs, it is the people who work with CCTV. This was noted by Clive Norris and collaborators back in the 1990s in Britain in their work on control rooms when they reported on operators making private tapes of women they saw in the street. Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph reported on a case in the US, where two FBI agents spied on girls changing for a charity fashion show for the underprivileged. They have been charged with criminal violation of privacy, which I am glad to see is a crime in the US. But, don’t forget that behind the cameras, if there is anyone these days, is a human being and that human being has as many flaws and secret desires as anyone else.

In the recession, are humans too expensive?

One of the things that I have been following over the past few months has been the effect of the recession on security and surveillance. One of the observations I have made is that those investing in security at this time are turning more and more to surveillance in preference to expensive human guards.

The Journal, the regional newspaper of the north-east of England (and my local paper), has a report today which seems to add more weight to this hypothesis, arguing that “the economic downturn, which has had a devastating effect on the construction industry, has led to a growing trend of companies cutting costs by replacing building site security guards with hi-tech CCTV systems”.

However, like the last time I reported on a similar story from Boston in the USA, there is perhaps less to it than meets the eye. The piece is another business section puff-piece for a local company, this time Newcastle-based UK Biometrics, largely a fingerprint ID outfit, on the basis that it is claiming “a 10-fold increase in enquiries for its sideline technology, CCTV cameras which can be accessed via remote devices”. It turns out that the suggested reason for this also comes from the company. This doesn’t make them incorrect, however I tend to treat all local business news stories with a certain degree of scepticism.

There is also a fundamental problem with the reasoning for such decisions, if they are indeed being made, which is one of the big issues with CCTV more generally, which is that cameras, even if they ‘work’ (and what that means is controversial enough), do not provide an equivalent service to a human guard. It is not necessarily a question of better or worse, it is just not the same. CCTV is also nothing if there is no response to the images that are seen. Without operators, analysts and people on the ground to act on the images, there is little point in even thinking that CCTV systems will ‘replace’ what a guard does. If only the machines are watching, there is only the illusion of security; an empty show.