Right: London, often cited as the CCTV capital of the world, recently woke up to see a new offering by "outlaw" graffitist-cartoonist Banksy, who placed it on a wall under, of all things, a surveillance camera.
 Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Arguments against Australia installing more closed circuit TV cameras
1. CCTV cameras have no significant deterrent effect
It has been claimed that CCTV cameras have little, if any deterrent effect.
Dr James Martin, a criminologist at the school of political and social inquiry at Monash University, has stated, 'I recently spent 300 hours in CCTV control rooms around Australia and my observations suggest the technology has limitations in preventing the crimes that disturb us most, random assaults and murders, even premeditated murders.'
One of the limitations of public security cameras is that their locations are advertised. Rather than prevent crime, it is claimed that premeditated criminals merely take measures to avoid being detected by these cameras.
Dr Martin has argued, 'A well-lit car park or a store-front equipped with CCTV make relatively unattractive targets. Far better to select property that is less well protected or, in the case of more serious interpersonal crimes, simply wait until the potential victim moves out of the vision of cameras.'
It has further been argued that where a crime is not premeditated, CCTV cameras have no deterrent effect at all. Dr Martin has claimed, 'When a fight breaks out between people affected by alcohol or aggressive machismo, they are unlikely to be calculating the likelihood of being recorded by a distant camera. When offenders are uncaring of the consequences, CCTV has no deterrent value.'
In an opinion piece published on September 28, 2012, James Campbell, a Herald Sun opinion editor, noted, 'The marginal effectiveness of CCTV in preventing crime has been well known for at least a decade. In 2002 a British Home Office review of studies into the effectiveness of CCTV in preventing crime found the overall reduction in crime in areas with CCTV was only 4 per cent. Half the studies examined showed CCTV had no effect on crime at all, and all showed it had no effect on violent crime.'
The effectiveness of CCTV cameras in solving crimes has also been disputed.
A study has revealed that in London, just one crime was solved for every 1,000 cameras in 2008.
David Vaile, the vice-chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, has stated, 'You can still be murdered, raped, bashed, robbed or harassed...and...walking in front of the CCTV camera doesn't necessarily protect you from that.'
2. CCTV cameras are costly to install and maintain
Critics have noted that the cost of installing and maintaining CCTV cameras is high and is not justified by the results they achieve.
Between 1994 and 1997, the British Home Office made available œ38 million to fund 585 CCTV schemes. Between 1999 and 2003, they made available a further œ170 million for CCTV schemes. However, recent report from the London Metropolitan Police said that only one crime a year was solved for every thousand cameras in operation. Authorities are said to be questioning whether the œ500 million of public money spent on installing their extensive CCTV system has provided value in the fight against crime.
Over the period 1996 to 1998 CCTV accounted for more than three-quarters of total spending on crime prevention by the British Home Office. Each pound of Home Office funding is matched by local authorities.
The cost of CCTV as a crime prevention measure includes not only the initial investment but also the ongoing maintenance and running costs. For this reason, any cost effectiveness analysis must account for these factors, in particular the staff time required to monitor the cameras. Westminster City Council has estimated the costs of their CCTV system as follows: the capital cost for each camera is about œ20,000; the annual revenue costs are around œ12,000 per camera.
Australian research conducted in 2002 refers to the following examples of annual operational cost for local government CCTV systems - Sydney $900,000, Melbourne $400,000, Adelaide $310,000, Ipswich $444,000, Fairfield $340,000, and Toowoomba $85,000.
The City of Sydney had the highest estimated ongoing costs at $900,000 per annum. The City of Sydney CCTV system is monitored 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Other locations adopt a more modest monitoring regime, with designated staff only deployed for 'hot' times like Friday and Saturday nights and for special events. This reduction of monitoring brings down costs, but also has consequences for the effectiveness of the CCTV system to enable immediate intervention (and ideally apprehension) when a crime is occurring.
As of 2012, Melbourne City Council has installed 53 CCTV cameras in the CBD that cost the council roughly $500,000 a year to run.
While these costs highlight major expenditure, they tend not to reveal the costs over the life of a CCTV system. Those systems that were installed in the mid-1990s will have invariably undergone major upgrades. Cameras will have been replaced, new control rooms may have been built, data storage systems overhauled and damaged signage advertising the existence of the cameras replaced. CCTV systems, once installed, are rarely disassembled. Consequently, budgets should be based on costs over decades rather than shorter periods.
3. Improved lighting is more effective as a crime prevention measure
There has been research to suggest that improving lighting may be a more effective and less expensive means of achieving crime reduction than installing CCTV cameras.
In 1992 street lighting was significantly improved in the English towns of Dudley and Stoke-on-Trent to observe if it resulted in a reduction in crime relative to the control areas were lighting was not improved.
In Dudley, the upgrade of existing lighting resulted in a 23 per cent reduction in the prevalence of all crime, and a 41 per cent reduction in the incidence of all crime. In the control areas, the prevalence and incidence of all crimes showed insignificant decreases of 3 per cent and 15 per cent respectively. Changes in the experimental area were found to be significantly different to changes in the control area. Personal crime, burglary and outside theft/vandalism experienced the greatest percentage reductions in prevalence, while vehicle, property and personal crime experienced the greatest reductions in incidence.
In Stoke, the prevalence for all crime categories except burglary decreased significantly after improvements to lighting. Personal crime, outside theft/vandalism and vehicle crime experienced the greatest reductions of 52 per cent, 40 per cent and 37 per cent respectively. The adjacent and control areas also experienced crime reductions, but these were not found to be significant.
Cost benefit analyses suggest that improved lighting achieves greater gains than CCTV surveillance and at far less cost. There were 641 crimes prevented in Dudley during the experimental year. This amounted to a saving of œ136,266 in property losses alone and œ237, 794 when all tangible losses were included. A cost-benefit analysis found that these savings more than paid off the full capital costs of the intervention in one year.
Like Dudley, the savings from crimes prevented in Stoke also paid off the full capital costs of the lighting intervention in one year. With 266 crimes prevented in the area during the intervention period, a saving of œ65, 892 in property losses and œ103,495 in all tangible losses was achieved.
4. The monitoring of CCTV footage is complex and not always well-performed
It has been noted that monitoring CCTV footage is complex and labour- and time-intensive.
Dr James Martin, a criminologist at the school of political and social inquiry at Monash University, has stated, 'The immediate challenge when monitoring CCTV is information overload. With so many cameras and crowds of people passing by, identifying where trouble may occur is prohibitively complex.'
Dr Martin has further noted, 'The absence of sound greatly compounds this problem...Is that man talking to a girlfriend or intimidating a vulnerable stranger? Are those two men about to start throwing punches or are they simply mucking around? In the absence of more detailed information, camera operators are unable to make an informed judgment.'
A recent overview of CCTV monitoring practices in the United Kingdom has found a variety of significant problems.
There are dramatic differences across control rooms related to the management of systems and cultures across operators.
CCTV managers can come from a range of backgrounds and their CCTV responsibilities can form only part of their role. The lack of effective management in control rooms has lead operators to develop their own styles of monitoring and work patterns. There is inadequate training of CCTV operators and although the Security Industry Authority licensing regime has been implemented from 2006 there is no obligation for operators to get the license which leads to a range of abilities across CCTV staff. Training can be in-house and result in bad habits being passed from one operator to another and compounding the ineffective monitoring practices present in a control room.
A study of surveillance camera monitoring on the Gold Coast has found that 83.57% of an operator's shift during the observational period was dedicated to activities other than specific monitoring of incidents, for example, paper work and answering telephones.
Similarly, business owners in Skinner St, South Grafton, New South Wales, an area which has been plagued with vandalism, have pointed out that investing in CCTV technology was useless if police did not have the resources to monitor or review the footage.
Thrifty Hardware in South Grafton manager Andrew Smith has had windows at the front of his shop kicked in three times in the past four months. After the last incident the police waited 18 days before reviewing the footage.
5. CCTV cameras are a violation of individuals' privacy
It has been argued that the proliferation of CCTV cameras is a violation of individuals' privacy.
The Australian Privacy Foundation argues that knowing they are under observation alters the behaviour of even the most innocent of subjects and that this restriction on the free enjoyment of public places should only be allowed where there is a demonstrable benefit to be gained.
Bruce Schneier in an opinion piece published in Wired on May 18, 2006, similarly argued that being under observation alters how most people speak and behave and is thus an infringement of their liberty.
Mr Schneier wrote, 'How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanour has changed, and our words are subtly altered.
This is the loss of freedom we face when our privacy is taken from us.'
Mr Schneier added, 'Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide.'
Henry Porter in an article published in The Guardian on October 3, 2012, argued that the enhanced capabilities of new high definition surveillance cameras made people immediately recognisable wherever these cameras were placed.
Mr Porter stated, 'That means no privacy in the shopping mall, on the train... at the match, in the street, in restaurants or pubs.'
Paul Chadwick, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, in a Law Week address delivered in 2006 explained that without clear and demonstrable justification the State had no right to intrude on the privacy of the individual.
Mr Chadwick stated, 'The citizen is not under any onus to explain why he or she does not want to disclose aspects of his or her life to government. Government bears the onus of explaining that it has a legitimate reason to know particular details. 'Nothing to hide, nothing to fear', directed at each member of the public, should be turned around and directed at government as: "No legitimate reason to know, no legitimate reason to ask".'
6. CCTV footage can be misused
Critics of CCTV footage complain that those filmed have no control over how that footage is used and further that the footage is susceptible to misuse.
Christine Bartell, in an opinion piece published on ArticleClick.com, argued, 'The video captured by surveillance cameras becomes susceptible to misuse and abuse by viewers. For instance, the video can be used to discriminate against people and for voyeurism.
In the age of the Internet, this is another big deal, as can be seen by all of the "funny" Vimeo videos out there. I doubt the subjects would find them as knee-slappingly funny as everyone else.'
In February 2010 it was reported that the closed circuit cameras monitored at the Darwin Police Station had been turned off because it was alleged that members of the police force had used the cameras to ogle girls.
In an internal email sent by Acting Senior Sergeant Brendan Muldoon to senior police and published in the Courier Mail on February 5, 2010, the Acting Senior Sergeant stated, 'It didn't take that long and somebody has already used the CCTV system inappropriately.
'This occurred at Darwin Police Station where a member or members have used the cameras to check out a group of girls, the footage is very damaging! While this is being investigated, the CCTV system has been turned off at Darwin Police Station.'
The Australian Privacy Foundation has serious reservations about the current use of CCTV footage and has argued that 'Access to images and video, both live and recorded, must be tightly controlled and that any security breaches must be acted upon promptly and effectively.'
Critics of the growing use of CCTV footage are concerned that access is not adequately controlled and that breaches of codes governing the appropriate use of this footage are not always followed up.
Stephen Blanks, secretary of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, has stated, 'If people thought that the police were using these systems just to carry out general surveillance then public support for these systems would be rapidly eroded. We've seen cases where police have unfortunately misused CCTV material or have attempted to destroy CCTV material which exposes police misconduct and we do need a system which gives the public confidence that the police themselves are not in total control of the system.'