video surveillance – Page 4

Surveillance cameras in the favelas (4): more from the other side

The mainstream Bazilian media outlet, O Globo, is reporting that Fabiano Atanázio da Silva (AKA ‘FB’ or ‘Urubu’), allegedly a leader of the Amigos dos Amigos (‘Friends of Friends’) on Morro de Macaros, who recently tried to take control of the neighbouring favela, Morro São João, resulting in many deaths and even bringing down a police helicopter, had also installed a video surveillance system in his favela, which monitored the entrances of the favela and watched the movements of police and residents. So, it seems that it is clearly the traficante gangs who were first to install CCTV in the favelas of Rio for the purposes of helping to maintain a violent authority over the local area. The form of surveillance is what Bruno Latour perceptively called ‘oligoptic’ – a spatially limited vision but one which is very powerful within its limits. And of course, given the massive extent of private security and both legal and illegal surveillance equipment available in Brazil, it’s hardly surprising that gangs with disposable cash would invest in security like this. However, what is particularly interesting is that by doing the same thing and installing a video surveillance system in Santa Marta against the wishes of the local community, the military police are seen as effectively operating like a gang. This isn’t such a startling statement and was one which was quite frequently put to us by community representatives who we interviewed in the favelas of Rio earlier this year.

(thanks, again, to the invaluable Paola Barreto Leblanc for the information).

Poll claims 96% of US citizens support video surveillance

A Harris online poll of 2416 adult US citizens, conducted between May 28th and June 1st, 2009, has found a 96% rate of support for federal government video surveillance in ‘specific public places’, according to Reuters.

Further statistics from the survey include an 80% rate of support for ‘any available measures’ to protect citizens in a terrorist attack, and 54% supporting the US of federal stimulus funding for video surveillance. As the press release notes, public support appears to be totally detached from the evidence we have about the limited effectiveness of video surveillance – something is (quite literally) being seen to be done, and this is what appears to matter. Video surveillance is culturally engrained, even expected, as a result of two decades of movies and TV shows which use surveillance as a theme (from programs like Cops to ‘realityTV’). So in many ways such a result is not altogether surprising.

The poll appears to have been commissioned as part of a PR campaign by an advanced ‘intelligent video surveillance’ company, which has a clearly stated commercial interest, which makes one wonder exactly how the questions were phrased, and how they were asked. The word ‘terrorism’ is mentioned a lot, and I expect there would be a great deal of difference in responses to a similar question that did not mention terrorism (or indeed did not mention the supposed purpose at all), and indeed a survey of people who had read a summary of available research on CCTV would probably once again, result in a different percentage (as economic experiments with ‘willingness to pay’ methods of valuing policy decisions have shown, informed participants make different judgements). I will try to get hold of the raw figures to take a deeper look…

Even video surveillance hit by global recession?

According to a new market-research report produced by Arizona firm, In-Stat, the market for video surveillance equipment has seen a slow-down in unit grow in 2009, and even a decline in overall revenue (and this may be the first time this has happened for many years). This is interesting as it is conventional wisdom that the security sector is generally unaffected or even benefits from recession (but see some previous posts here and here for other aspects of surveillance in a global recession). However the report also states that whereas sales of cameras are relatively flat, sales of data-recording equipment, especially hybrid recorders that can handle both analogue and digital images, are increasing and this is partly due to the US government’s stimulus package. This suggests that those operating exisiting video surveillance systems that may have older analogue cameras are chosing not to upgrade their cameras now but are making sure that they can retain the images more efficiently. The report predicts that, after the recovery, the overall market for video surveillance equipment in 2011 will be $19Bn US.

Mind you, I haven’t read the report in full, only this summary, because it retails at $3,495 US! Someone is clearly expecting to make plenty of money out of the recession…

Surveillance cameras in the favelas (3): the other side

As my collaborator in Rio de Janeiro, Paola Barreto Leblanc, points out to me, it isn’t just the police (see previous posts here and here) who have been installing surveillance cameras in the favelas. Accoring to UOL, in September 2008, the military police found a whole clandestine CCTV system of 12 cameras, and a control room hidden behind a false wall, in Parada de Lucas, a favela in the Zona Norte of the city. The cameras covered all the entrances to the favela. The system was allegedly operated by a drug-trafficking gang but since the room was, according to the reports, destroyed in the police attack, and no one was captured, it is hard to verify the story… however it is not surprising that a major illegal commercial operation would seek to have early warning of police (and other gang) raids in this way. Indeed, this system may well have been the reason why no traficantes were caught in the raid in question. From the interview we did earlier in the year, it seems clear that the favelas have intense human surveillance systems of mutual observation, whether they are gang-controlled, community-controlled or police-‘pacified’ morros. Very little goes on in the crowded informal settlements that almost everyone will not know about. Of course, the nature of the power-structure within the favela will determine to whose benefit such knowledge works. CCTV in a context like this can be seen as a sign of insecurity and weakness. Perhaps the Parada de Lucas gang felt that they were losing their grip, and the cameras in Santa Marta installed by the military police certainly seem to indicate a lack of trust in the community and the civil pacification measures – investment, infrastructure development, regular meetings and confidence-building – so far undertaken.

Surveillance image of the week 3: remembering One and Other

One and Other, Anthony Gormley’s remarkable populist and popular participatory artwork, which enabled 2400 ordinary people to spend an hour each on the vacant fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square, ended recently. Not surprisingly, given London’s reputation as a the surveillance capital of the world, there were some pointed reminders. This ‘plinther’ spent her hour dressed as a CCTV camera looking at the watchers and the watched…

(thanks to Eric Stoddart for this)

Surveillance cameras in the favelas (2)

A couple of weeks ago, I found out that the military police had installed surveillance cameras in the favela of Santa Marta, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which I visited back in April. This is the first time such police cameras have been put into such informal settlements in Rio. My friend and colleague, Paola Barreto Leblanc, sent me this link to these youtube broadcasts from a local favela TV company, in which residents discuss their (largely negative) views of the cameras.

There is also a poster that has been put up around the area produced by the Community Association and other local activist and civil society groups – see here – which reads as follows in English:

SANTA MARTA , THE MOST WATCHED PLACE IN RIO

At the end of August, the inhabitants of Santa Marta were surprised to learn from newspapers and TV that nine surveillance cameras would be installed in different areas of the favela. A fear of being misinterpreted paralysed the community.

Many of the people of the city, and some in the Moro itself support this initiative. However, we are a pacified favela, so why do they keep treating us as dangerous?

Walls, three kinds of police, 120 soldiers, cameras – this is no exaggeration. When will we be treated as ordinary citizens instead of being seen as suspects?

Wall: 2 million Reais, Cameras, half a million Reais. How many houses could this amount of money build? How many repairs to the water and sewage system?

The last apartments built in Santa Marta are 32 square metres. The Popular Movement for Housing [an NGO] says that the minimum size should be 42 square metres. Other initiatives have gone with 37 square metres. So why don’t we stand up and demand this minimum standard? This should be our priority!

When will the voice of the inhabitants of this community be heard?

We need collective discussion and debate.

Fear is paralysing this community and preventing criticism. But the exercise of our rights is the only guarantee of freedom.

“Peace without a voice is fear”

We want to discuss our priorities. We want to know about and be involved in the urban development project in Santa Marta.

We will only be heard and respected if we unite.

Think, talk, reflect, debate, get involved…

Surveillance image of the week 2: camera catches man stealing camera

Just how postmodern can contemporary surveillance get?

Well, after the irony of numerous recent CCTV thefts in the USA – after all, if you’re going to put lots of shiny new cameras up in public places they are bound to be a target themselves – now another layer has been added in Bakersfield, California, with a video surveillance camera thief caught on the camera system he was stealing. Of course, some thieves don’t seem to realise that the camera isn’t the place the data is stored… either that or they just aren’t put off by CCTV at all. Say it ain’t so…

A clear demonstration of the deterrent effect of video surveillance in action... not.

Automation and Imagination

Peter Tu writes over on Collective Imagination, that greater automation might prevent racism and provide for greater privacy in visual surveillance, providing what he calls ‘race-blind glasses’. The argument is not a new one at all, indeed the argument about racism is almost the same proposition advanced by Professor Gary Marx in the mid-90s about the prospects for face-recognition. Unfortunately, Dr Tu does several of the usual things: he argues that ‘the genie is out of the bottle’ on visual surveillance, as if technological development of any kind is an unstoppable linear force that cannot be controlled by human politics; and secondly, seemingly thinking that technologies are somehow separate from the social context in which they are created and used – when of course technologies are profoundly social. Although he is more cautious than some, this still leads to the rather over optimistic conclusion, the same one that has been advanced for over a century now, that technology will solve – or at least make up for – social problems. I’d like to think so. Unfortunately, empirical evidence suggests that the reality will not be so simple. The example Dr Tu gives on the site is one of a simple binary system – a monitor shows humans as white pixels on a black background. There is a line representing the edge of a station platform. It doesn’t matter who the people are or their race or intent – if they transgress the line, the alarm sounds, the situation can be dealt with. This is what Michalis Lianos refers to as an Automated Socio-Technical Environment (ASTE). Of course these simple systems are profoundly stupid in a way that the term ‘artificial intelligence’ disguises and the binary can hinder as much as it can help in many situations. More complex recognition systems are needed if one wants to tell one person from another or identify ‘intent’, and it is here that all those human social problems return with a vengeance. Research on face-recognition systems, for example, has shown that prejudices can get embedded within programs as much as priorities, in other words the politics of identification and recognition (and all the messiness that this entails) shifts into the code, where it is almost impossible for non-programmers (and often even programmers themselves) to see. And what better justification for the expression of racism can there be that a suspect has been unarguably ‘recognised’ by a machine? ‘Nothing to do with me, son, the computer says you’re guilty…’ And the idea that ‘intent’ can be in any way determined by superficial visualisation is supported by very little evidence which is far from convincing, and yet techno-optimist (and apparently socio-pessimist) researchers push ahead with the promotion of the idea that computer-aided analysis of ‘microexpressions’ will help tell a terrorist from a tourist. And don’t get me started on MRI…

I hope our genuine human ‘collective imagination’ can do rather better than this.

Towards Open-Circuit Television

The era of Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance may be coming to an end. Surprised? Unfortunately, this does not mean that we are likely to see less surveillance, and cameras being torn down any time soon – quite the contrary. Instead a number of developments are pointing the way to the emergence of more Open-Circuit Television (OCTV) surveillance. These developments include technological ones, like wireless networking, the move to store data via ‘cloud’ computing, participatory locative computing technologies like CityWare, and the increasing affordability and availability of personal surveillance devices (for example, these plug and play mini-cameras unveiled at DemoFall 09). However they also include changes in the way that video surveillance is monitored and by whom.

Back in 2007, a pilot scheme in Shoreditch in London, which enabled residents to watch CCTV cameras on a special TV channel, was canned. However the project had proved to be incredibly popular amongst residents. Now The Daily Telegraph reports that an entrepreneur in Devon, Tony Morgan has set up a company, Internet Eyes, which is marketing what is calls an ‘event notification system’. They plan to broadcast surveillance footage from paying customers on the Internet, with the idea that the public will work as monitors. They won’t just be doing this for nothing however: the whole thing is set up like a game, where ‘players’ gain points for spotting suspected crimes (three if it is an actual crime) and lost points for false alarms. To back this up, there are monthly prizes (paid for out of the subscriptions of the organisations whose cameras are being monitored) of up to 1000 GBP (about $1600 US). Their website claims that a provisional launch is scheduled for November.

Mark Andrejevic has been arguing, most recently in iSpy, that those who watch Reality TV are engaging in a form of labour, now we see the idea transferred directly to video surveillance in ‘real reality’ (a phrase which will make Bill Bogard laugh, at least – he’s been arguing that simulation and surveillance are increasingly interconnected, for years). This idea might seem absurd, indeed ‘unreal’ but it is an unsurprising outcome of the culture of voyeurism that has been engendered by that combination of ever-present CCTV on the streets and Reality TV shows that came together so neatly in Britain from the early 1990s. It certainly raises a shudder too, at the thought of idiots and racists with time on their hands using this kind of things to reinforce prejudices and create trouble.

But is it really so bad? At the moment, UK residents are asked to trust in the ‘professionalism’ of an almost entirely self-regulating private security industry or the police. Neither have a particularly good record on race-relations for a start. Why is it intrinsically worse, if there are to be cameras at all (which I am certainly not arguing that there should be) to have cameras that are entirely open to public scrutiny? Is this any different from watching public webcams? Wouldn’t it actually be an improvement if this went further? If say, the CCTV cameras in police stations were open to public view? Would it make others, including the powerful, more accountable like a kind of institutionalised sousveillance?

In Ken Macleod‘s recent novel, The Execution Channel, the title refers to an anonymous but pervasive broadcast that shows the insides of torture chambers and prison cells, which functions as a device of moral conscience (at least for literary purposes) but also a Ballardian commentary on the pervasive blandness of what used to be the most outrageous atrocity. Accountability is in the end as far from this project as it is from Internet Eyes. Set up like a game, it will be treated like a game. It strips out any consequence or content from reality and leaves just the surfaces. What is ‘seen’ is simply the most superficial – and seen by the most suspicious. Participatory internet surveillance is Unreality TV. In any case, I don’t think it will either be successful in terms of crime-control (other such participatory surveillance schemes, like that on the Texas-Mexico border, have so-far proved to be failures) or useful in social terms, and may also be illegal without significant safeguards and controls anyway.

And there is nothing to stop multiple people signing up with multiple aliases and just messing the system up… not that I’d suggest anything like that, of course.

(Thank-you to Aaron Martin for badgering me with multiple posts pointing in this direction! Sometimes it just takes a little time to think about what is going on here…)

New York City expanding surveillance infrastructure

The New York Times reports that $24M US has been assigned from the Department of Homeland Security to expand the city’s CCTV camera system from downtown to midtown Manhattan (the area between 30th and 60th Streets). This of course is justified by Mayor Bloomberg on the grounds of security, with a large number of iconic buildings in the midtown area. However, it bears repeating that firstly, the 9/11 attacks did not come from the streets, and secondly, London already had a comprehensive CCTV system at the time of the 7/7 attacks and whilst they provided lots of pictures for the news media afterwards, they did not in any way prevent the attacks, and it is difficult to see how such a system could prevent any determined attacker. It may make people feel safer, at least temporarily, however even at that symbolic level, there’s likely to be as many people who feel uneasy about the idea of constant monitoring or the loss of privacy (although from my experience of the UK, the actual monitoring is far from constant or comprehensive, and most people also get used to that too). But, whatever the people of New York do feel – and there will many different reactions – they shouldn’t get the impression that they are getting actual ‘security’ (whatever that is) here. This isn’t a message many people like to hear, it seems, least of all those in government…