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Title: You Are Under Surveillance Author: CrimethInc. Date: March 4, 2004 Language: en Topics: surveillance Source: Retrieved on 7th November 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2004/03/04/you-are-under-surveillance Notes: Texts adapted by CrimethInc. Anonymists Autonomous. Some source material originally made public by the Institute for Applied Autonomy.
Public space is increasingly policed by hidden surveillance systems. The
private life of the individual is secretly captured, mapped, collected,
and owned in effigy by a cabal of private business operations—the
security industry.
Ironically, as communities disintegrate and more and more of us find
ourselves lost in a faceless mass of consumers, the only ones we can
count on to interest themselves in our lives are the enforcers of the
laws that govern spaces designated for consumption. Reclaiming space
from surveillance would reinforce our freedom to act privately, for
ourselves and each other rather than the cameras, and thus enable us to
come together out of our anonymity. We’ve had our fifteen minutes of
fame—now point that thing somewhere else!
Such oppressive security measures are only necessary when wealth and
power are distributed so unfairly that human beings cannot coexist in
peace. The ones who oversee these security systems are mistaken when
they claim that order must be established to clear the way for liberty
and equality. The opposite is true: order is only possible as a
consequence of people living together with freedom, equality, and
justice for all. Anything else is simply repression. If cameras are
necessary on every corner, then something is fundamentally wrong in our
society, and getting rid of the cameras is as good a starting place as
any.
As a culture, we are preoccupied with observation, images,
spectatorship. Now internet advertisements offer consumers spy cameras
and hidden microphones of our own, completing the three steps to
panopticon: we watch monitors, we are monitored, we become our own
monitors. But when the distinction between observer and observed is
dissolved, we do not regain wholeness—on the contrary, we find we have
been trapped outside ourselves, alienated in the most fundamental sense.
Here’s a quixotic project—get together with your friends and disable all
the security cameras in your city, declaring it a free action zone. You
know what they say about dancing like nobody’s watching.
In full view of the enemy
–Sean Penn for the CrimethInc. ex-Movie Stars’ Collective
---
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:
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 subcultural groups. In other words, they were singled out
not for what they were doing, but for the way they looked alone.
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.”
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 subcultural groups that authority figures find
suspicious or threatening. Do you wear baggy pants or shave your head?
Smile—you’re on candid camera!
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.
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.
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.
Clearly, video surveillance of public space represents an invasion of
personal privacy. But so what? Having one’s picture taken from time to
time seems a small price to pay for the security benefits such
surveillance offers. It’s not like anyone ever sees the tapes, and let’s
be honest—being singled out for scrutiny by remote operators without
your even knowing about it is not at all the same as being pulled over,
intimidated and harassed by a live cop.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The fact is, there is very little
oversight of video surveillance systems, and the question of who owns
the tapes—and who has the right to see them—is still largely undecided.
Many of the cameras monitoring public space are privately owned. Banks,
office buildings, and department stores all routinely engage in
continuous video monitoring of their facilities and of any adjacent
public space. The recordings they make are privately owned, and may be
stored, broadcast, or sold to other companies without permission,
disclosure, or payment to the people involved.
Similarly, video footage that is captured by public police departments
may be considered part of the “public record,” and as such are available
for the asking to individuals, companies, and government agencies. At
present, there is precious little to prevent television programs like
“Cops” and “America’s Funniest Home Movies” from broadcasting
surveillance video without ever securing permission from their subjects.
Sound far-fetched? Already in the UK—the country that so far has made
the most extensive use of CCTV systems (although Canada and the US are
catching up)—there have been such cases. In the 1990’s, Barrie Goulding
released “Caught in the Act,” a video compilation of “juicy bits” from
street video surveillance systems. Featuring intimate contacts—including
one scene of a couple having sex in an elevator—this video
sensationalized footage of ordinary people engaged in (mostly) legal but
nonetheless private acts.
Similarly, there has been a proliferation of “spy cam” websites
featuring clandestine footage of women in toilets, dressing rooms, and a
variety of other locations. A lack of legislative oversight allows these
sites to operate legally, but even if new laws are passed, the nature of
the internet makes prosecutions highly unlikely.
As video surveillance systems evolve and become more sophisticated, the
opportunities for abuse are compounded. Sophisticated video systems can
identify the faces of individuals (matching video images to databases of
known faces—for example, the repository of driver’s license photos
maintained by the Department of Motor Vehicles), the objects they carry
(including, for example, reading the text on personal documents), and
their activities. These systems enable the creation of databases that
detail who you are, where you’ve been, when you were there, and what you
were doing… databases that are conceivably available to a host of people
with whom you’d rather not share such information, including employers,
ex-lovers, and television producers.
Beyond these concerns, there is the question of the societal impact of
our increasing reliance on surveillance, and our growing willingness to
put ourselves under the microscope of law enforcement and commercial
interests. Once a cold-war caricature of Soviet-style communist regimes,
the notion of the “surveillance society” is now employed unironically to
describe modern urban life in such supposed bastions of personal liberty
and freedom as the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada.
While the nature of such a society has long been theorized by
philosophers, critics, and sociologists (Jeremy Bentham, anyone?), the
psychological and social effects of living under constant surveillance
are not yet well understood. However, the impact of CCTV systems on
crime is beginning to become clear.
Touted as a high-tech solution to social problems of crime and disorder
by manufacturers selling expensive video surveillance systems to local
governments and police departments, CCTV has gained much popularity in
recent years. These manufactures claim that CCTV—which often costs
upwards of $400,000 to install in a limited area—will dramatically
decrease criminal activity, and provide a measure of security heretofore
unknown to the general public. Yet these CCTV systems are often
purchased at the expense of other, less oppressive, less expensive,
already proven law-enforcement methods such as community policing, and
the statistics do not bear out their claims.
CCTV is often promoted with thinly veiled references to the threat of
terrorism: hence their widespread use in the UK, which has long lived
with bomb threats and other violent actions. Following the September 11
attacks, video surveillance manufacturers have increased their efforts
to court the American public—with some success, as evidenced by recent
gains in these companies’ share prices.
Attempting to capitalize on an international tragedy to sell products in
this manner is tastelessly opportunistic at best—but given the track
record of CCTV systems to date, it’s downright cynical. According to
studies of the effectiveness of video surveillance in use throughout the
UK, there is no conclusive evidence that the presence of CCTV has any
impact whatsoever on local crime rates. While there have been examples
of reduced criminality in areas where CCTV has been installed, these
reductions can just as easily be explained by other factors, including
general decreases in crime throughout the UK. Indeed, in several areas
where CCTV was installed, crime rates actually increased.
Given the widespread use of these systems, it is surprising how
infrequently they lead to arrests. According to one report, a 22-month
long surveillance of New York’s Times Square led to only 10 arrests, and
the cameras involved have since been removed. Furthermore, the types of
crime against which CCTV is most effective are small fry compared to the
terrorism and kidnappings its advocates’ claim it stops. A study of CCTV
use in the UK found that the majority of arrests in which video
surveillance played a significant role were made to stop fistfights. Not
only that, but these were relatively infrequent already; and this hardly
seems to justify the exorbitant costs and loss of privacy associated
with these systems.
Even more disturbing, if not at all surprising, was the study’s finding
that incidents of police brutality and harassment captured by CCTV
surveillance were routinely ignored. The tapes of these events also had
a tendency to be “lost” by operators.
The effect of video surveillance on criminal psychology is not well
understood. One Los Angeles study found that cameras in a retail store
were perceived by criminals as a challenge, and thus encouraged
additional shoplifting.
At best, CCTV seems not to reduce crime, but merely to divert it to
other areas. According to one Boston police official, “criminals get
used to the cameras and tend to move out of sight.”
Given heightened awareness of public safety and increased demand for
greater security in the face of growing threats of terrorist violence,
projects that undermine systems for social control may seem to some to
be in poor taste. But it is our position that such times call all the
more strongly for precisely these kinds of projects. There is a vital
need for independent voices that cry out against the cynical
exploitation of legitimate human fear and suffering for political power
and monetary gain.