CCTV

A Technology Under the Radar?

Inga Kroener

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317169086
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

Central state and non-covert surveillance began in earnest at the start of the twentieth century. By the start of the twenty-first century, the UK was one of the most surveilled societies on earth. This groundbreaking volume by Inga Kroener analyses the particular combination of factors that have created this surveillance state. Kroener argues against the inevitability of the rise of CCTV that is so often found in this literature, to map out the early history of CCTV, tracing its development from a tool for education, safety and transport during the 1950s, to one of politics in the 1970s and 1980s, to eventually become a tool of surveillance during the 1990s. Within this analysis, the complex role of the public in 'allowing' the widespread and rapid dissemination of CCTV is discussed and the representation of CCTV in the media is also studied. This volume will be of interest to all scholars working in the fields of surveillance studies; science, technology and society departments; and social historians more generally.

Chapter 1

Surveillance

Introduction

In a recent report from the Surveillance Studies Network for the Information Commissioner’s Office (2006) it was argued that:

We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense. In all the rich countries of the world everyday life is suffused with surveillance encounters, not merely from dawn to dusk but 24/7. Some encounters obtrude into the routine, like when we get a ticket for running a red light when no one was around but the camera. But the majority are now just part of the fabric of daily life.

We are undoubtedly surveilled in everyday life. However, it is a mistake to assume that all encounters with government run technology are also surveillance encounters. Technologies (even those with potential surveillance capabilities) inhabit a variety of different roles and definitions. In the above example, a red light camera is cited as being a surveillance technology. However, it could also be argued that it is primarily a road safety technology. Information is not being collected and processed in order to surveille the population generally, but to target the specific instance of driving through a red light. Although within the surveillance studies community the subtleties of taking this position are often carefully worked out (technologies are also perceived as mundane, ordinary, and with a variety of uses), this argument that we have entered a surveillance society often finds its way into public discourse in far simpler terms.

Claims in the academic sphere that we have entered a surveillance society are not always wholly negative. However, in terms of public discourse, statements that we are living in a surveillance society are often cited as an absolute. In the chapters that follow, I build a history of CCTV that eventually leads to an argument for greater public engagement in relation to CCTV (and surveillance technologies more generally). I argue that defining the society we live in as one based on surveillance may actually reinforce political rhetoric in this area. Rather than suggesting that we have reached a certain level of surveillance, it might be more beneficial, in terms of promoting public debate and engagement in this area, to suggest that surveillance technologies have multiple dimensions and purposes, and the uses to which these are put are open to interpretation and change. Arguing that we are already in a surveillance society implies that there is nothing left to resist. I believe there is, and will pursue this argument in the chapters that follow.

The focus for this book is CCTV and video surveillance. However, the wider context of surveillance is also important. As I mentioned in the introduction to this book, I want to move away from thinking about CCTV purely as an inevitable part of the surveillance society that various commentators suggest we have already entered, are entering, or have always been in. In Chapters 3 and 4 of this book I discuss the various uses to which CCTV was put prior to being used as a tool for surveillance, or a tool for politics.

For now though, it seems appropriate to talk about the wider context of surveillance that has developed and evolved over recent years. In this chapter, I therefore provide an introduction to the idea of a surveillance society. I then move on to develop a history of surveillance in Britain.

Surveillance and Society

In twenty-first-century Britain, personal data is collected on the general population every day. Whether in the form of photos and videos taken from smartphones; a supermarket loyalty card; the CCTV cameras on every street corner; the biometric information contained in passports; or the digital cookies tracking your movement online. Personal information is collected in innumerable ways every day by a wide variety of people, technologies, organisations, and institutions. This is not always a passive activity – information is not just taken from people. People also give their personal information away every day in return for products and services, or in order to connect to a range of people on social networking sites. Whether this shows willingness to give away personal data is less clear. Without giving away personal information and identifiable information, that person may be locked out of whatever activity, website, or institution is asking for that information. So, consent is something that is often ‘forced’ upon people. Of course, you can choose to opt out of using social networking sites but when it comes to opting out of things like providing biometric information for new passports, it is much less straightforward. You can choose not to do it, but you will not be allowed to have a passport. You will therefore not be allowed to travel and that is when consent becomes a complex issue. And of course a personal choice to opt in or out of the use of social media but not travel may not be a decision so easily made by members of Generation Y, whose experience of the world has been digital since birth. Opting out of travel may well be an easier choice for millions of young people in their teens and twenties than opting out of social networking.

The term ‘surveillance society’ was coined in 1985 by Gary T. Marx, who stated that ‘with computer technology, one of the final barriers to social control is crumbling – the inability to retrieve, aggregate, and analyse vast amounts of data. Inefficiency is losing its role as the unplanned protector of liberty’ (1985, p.26). This idea that we have entered into a new type of society – one based on surveillance – has been extended by a variety of theorists over the last few years. In his seminal 1994 book The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the Surveillance Society, David Lyon argues that this type of society exists due to details of individuals being ‘collected, stored, retrieved and processed every day within huge computer databases’ (p.3). A few years later, Lyon added to this argument to suggest that as surveillance systems grow, they are becoming less apparent and far more efficient, structured and elusive (2001, p.2).

Theorists in this area of study use examples of information collection, processing and storage to argue that we have entered a surveillance age, or surveillance society. This idea is based on the notion that the changing information flows embedded in the use of new information and communication technologies has led to an increase in surveillance, and the emergence of a new type of society (Gandy 1989; Lyon 2001). Surveillance has become part of the everyday and is embedded in a range of technologies and practices (Murakami Wood and Webster 2009). Others state that it is the rise of computer networks that have meant we have entered into a network age or network society (Castells 1996). These ideas of networks, information and surveillance are also tied together with notions of risk and the idea that we have entered a new era for society – one based on ideas of risk (as I mentioned in the introduction), and strategies concentrating on how to manage this risk.

Surveillance in particular has become a measure used to try to reduce risk. Examples of this can be seen in the widespread use of CCTV. This strategy of managing risk via the increased use of surveillance technologies such as CCTV cameras is coupled with a move towards what has been termed by Norris and Armstrong as a ‘stranger society’; a decline of communities and communication (1991, p.29). Young (1999, p.70) argues that this loss of communication leads to ‘less direct knowledge of fellow citizens’, which leads to ‘much less predictability of behaviour’. This ‘stranger society’ is intensified by the development of gated communities, the privatisation of public space, and the widespread use of CCTV cameras (Norris and Armstrong 1999, p.23). Although these developments are implemented in order to manage risk and in the case of CCTV cameras to reduce the public’s fear of crime (as I will show in Chapter 5), they may instead have had the opposite effect. Spitzer has suggested that ‘the more we enter into relationships to obtain the security commodity, the more insecure we feel; the more we depend on the commodity rather than each other to keep us safe and confident, the less safe and confident we feel’ (1987, p.50).

There is a danger with all of the aforementioned theories arguing that we have entered into a new type of society based on technological means (the ability to collect and store greater amounts of information due to improving technological capabilities) that we veer into a technologically deterministic argument – that society is determined by technology. This sort of argument feeds the belief that technologies are unstoppable drivers of change (and that our society becomes based around these), and there is little point in attempting any form of change in relation to the uses of these technologies. I will come back to this issue throughout the remainder of chapters in this book.

Surveillance in Popular Culture

Surveillance has become normalised. We are confronted with surveillance practices and technologies every day and in a variety of ways. As I mentioned earlier, some of these seem to be welcomed, or at least tolerated; others are treated with more caution. We are immersed in a society that has a long history of making reference to surveillance through popular culture. In terms of literature, there are a number of books that make surveillance their main theme, such as: We, 1984, A Handmaid’s Tale, The Castle, Mistrust, The Traveller, Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Clinic – to name but a few. Surveillance has also provided rich material for films, such as: Gattaca, Minority Report, THX-1138, The Truman Show, Code 46, Modern Times, Metropolis, A Scanner Darkly, Brazil, Caché, The Conversation, Enemy of the State, The Lives of Others, and Look. The references to surveillance and the societies envisaged in these literary texts and films tend to veer towards the dystopian.

To take a closer look at one example, the novel We depicts a world in which there are no social classes and only numbers to identify people. In this society, there is ‘I’ (the benefactor) and ‘we’ (the collective group of people). Any sense of individuality has disappeared and people therefore have no sense of the self or individual identity. The book is set in the One State – a nation constructed almost entirely of glass, allowing the Bureau of Guardians (political/secret police) to watch the public at all times. The lead character – D-503 – lives in a glass apartment (and all the people live in glass houses). Though far less well known than 1984 (We was written in 1920/21 but banned from print in Russia until 1988), it might be argued that We is the first piece of dystopian literature, and a book that certainly influenced Orwell. Alongside the themes of bureaucracy, rationalisation, and identity, the idea of a society constantly under surveillance is defined in a strongly negative way.

For Leavis, this is one of the main functions of literature, to give us a ‘collective consciousness away from other ideologies in society’. Literature maintains a ‘critical function’ that allows people to question advances in science and technology (1962, pp.26–9). For Eagleton, this may be too simplistic and he argues that literature cannot necessarily distance itself from the dominant ideology or challenge it, but instead has a particular relationship with it. This relationship means that literature does reflect the ideology of its time but also maintains some distance (allowing the reader to see the ideology from which it derives) (1976, pp.17–18). Hillegas argues that ‘quality science fiction’ (such as dystopian or anti-utopian literature) makes a significant comment on human society. He argues that it is a vehicle for social criticism as well as satire (1967, p.8). For some, these cultural outlets reflect society’s ambiguity towards new technologies (in this case, surveillance technologies). It is sometimes referred to as a form of public resistance (see for example, Staudenmaier 1985, chapter 7).

So, some popular culture maintains a critical stance towards surveillance, aiming to provoke a sense of disquiet or unease about the advancements presented. However, other areas of popular culture define surveillance in a very different way. For Lyon, TV programmes such as CSI provide reassurance about surveillance practices and provide credence to ideas such as ‘CCTV works’. Even more than this, programmes such as Big Brother ‘encourage deliberate disclosure’ and ‘make full, intimate visibility to watchers a commendable condition’ (2007, pp.139–40). I will come back to this idea of popular culture providing a form of justification for the use of surveillance technologies in Chapter 4.

A Brief History of Surveillance in Britain

Pre-modern Surveillance

Although various theorists argue that we have, in recent times, entered a surveillance society, the history of surveillance is a long one. Informal surveillance, or the collection of information on people, can be seen throughout history. For example, Lyon (1994, p.24) cites the Domesday Book in the eleventh century as a primitive form of surveillance. Commissioned in December 1085 by William the Conqueror, the book was completed in August 1086. At the time of completion, it held records for 13,418 settlements, containing information of the amount of land owned, how many people occupied areas of land, and other resources and buildings present on the land. Its purpose was to record the value of land and its assets. Although primarily serving a financial function, the Domesday Book also collected data on England’s inhabitants (and for the first time in a comprehensive manner). These sorts of developments in writing and administrative capacity have facilitated changes in governance, and what might be argued to be the birth of a primitive surveillance capability. Lyon argues that these changes are ‘highly pertinent to the development of surveillance as a dimension of modernity; printing facilitated the development of modern democratic governance’ (1994, p.23).

Surveillance of the general population began to increase during the fifteenth century, with a host of religious organisations collecting information on and keeping records of births, marriages, deaths and baptisms. The practice gathered pace during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, alongside accompanying cultural changes as stepping stones toward the birth of modern England, described as an ‘extensive Tudor-Stuart practice’ (Tricomi 1996, p.18) of informing on religious non-conformism during the early part of the English Reformation (Archer 1993, p.3). Intelligence gathering was carried out by court aristocrats, with a number of institutions and offices uniting or contributing to a ‘culture of surveillance’ (Archer 2993, p.4)

Although there was an increase in religious surveillance during the sixteenth century, political surveillance became comparatively more important due to the emergence of the nation-state and its ‘new needs and a developing capacity to gather and use information’ (Marx 2005). Centralised state surveillance emerged with the birth of the nation-state, which made ‘extensive use of undercover techniques to protect their political, military and economic interests’ (Fijnaut and Marx 1995, p.8). Surveillance also became an exclusionary force during the sixteenth century, with the government collecting information on those it felt threatened by:

Increasingly intransigent and expensive political (religious) and economic problems with the low countries and Spain, including tense military stand-offs in the 1580s, coupled with a fourfold increase in the national population between 1500 and 1600, resulted in rising prices of essentials, food scarcities, popular dissention and riots, an increase in the proportion of the London poor greater than that of the city’s population, collective Xenophobia about aliens, and the ‘obsessional’ surveillance that was the response of the government to perceived challenges to its authority and to fears about alien infiltration and corruption of its national life. (Habib 2008, p.118)

During the seventeenth century, public health information relating specifically to morbidity and mortality started to be collected for the first time, due to a ‘fear of plague epidemics’ (May 1991). The Office of the Registrar General was established during the eighteenth century, collecting data on births and deaths in England, and continuing the trend of surveillance of diseases. It was not until the nineteenth century, however, that this surveillance of diseases and mortality had ‘evolved as a means of collection and interpretation of data related to environmental and health monitoring processes for the definition of appropriate action; for prevention and healthcare’ (Goodwin Gerberich et al. 1991, p.163).

More widespread and regular information collection about the population, rather than a focus on births and deaths began with the first Census in 1801 (which was then repeated in 1811, 1821 and 1831). However, the information collected was not particularly detailed. The data might have included the name of the head of the household and their occupation, and possibly the number of males and females in the household. The first detailed national Census was taken in 1841, which gathered more detailed information, including: name, age, occupation and place of birth.

Modern Surveillance

For many theorists, modern surveillance is linked to industrialisation, capitalism, and the growth in administration of the nation-state and modernity. For example, Lyon (1994, p.24) argues that ‘systematic surveillance … came with the growth of military organization, industrial towns and cities, government administration, and the capitalistic business enterprise’. I will come back to policing in more detail later in Chapter 3 but briefly touching upon it now, surveillance of the public began to be a part of the everyday life of a policeman and the public:

The new police received an omnibus mandate: to detect and prevent crime, maintain surveillance of the daily life of their areas and report on political opinions and movements, union activities and even recreational life … Upon their introduction they made themselves obnoxious by imposing more vigilant surveillance of public houses, cracking down on foot-racing, wakes and fairs and introducing the novel and hated ‘move-on’ system. (Storch 1980, p.34)

The police operated on foot during this time, known as the ‘beat system’. This system ‘presented an intrusion into working class neighbourhoods not previously kept under routine surveillance. Their interference into the lives of the poor was unsolicited and deeply resented – most strongly … in the “move on” system as an attack on the traditionally sanctioned freedom of assembly on the streets’ (Bailey 1981, p.74).

Surveillance of the population at this time (late nineteenth century) therefore represented not only a monitoring of citizens but also an exclusionary tactic. A growth in urbanisation meant that those who did not play an active role in civil society were put under increasing surveillance. A number of criminal registries were set up during this time, with the introduction and inclusion of photography, body measurements and fingerprinting from 1871 onwards (De Leeuw and Bergstra 2007, p.9). Dandeker (1990) characterises developments during the nineteenth century as one of ‘great transformation’. Cohen (1985, p.13) agrees and argues that during this time ‘master patterns and strategies for controlling deviance in Western societies’ were established. Thus there was a move during the latter half of the nineteenth century towards a more centralised and modern form of surveillance (Cohen 1985).

Centralised state run surveillance really began in earnest at the start of the twentieth century. In England the ‘combination of warfare and welfare’ created the basis of the surveillance we see nowadays (Lyon 2003, pp.23–4). Improvements in transport also increased the need for national forms of identification, such as the driving licence, which was introduced in 1903 (De Leeuw and Bergstra 2007, p.9). 1915 saw the introduction of the passport, which included details of the individual such as name and date of birth, a photograph and signature. Surveillance had by this point become a way to prove citizenship, rather than as a method of exclusion for certain elements of society, which it had mainly been prior to this time. In this sense surveillance had become an inclu...