Your City is Watching You

“From the first known use of closed-circuit television cameras to monitor crowds in London’s Trafalgar Square during a state visit by the king and queen of Thailand in 1960, urban video surveillance has come a long way. The Brookings Institution calculates that today it would cost $300 million in storage capacity to capture a year’s worth of footage from Chongqinq’s vast camera network. But by 2020, thanks to the steady decline of cost for digital storage devices, that figure could be just $3 million per year. ‘For the first time ever,’ they warn, ‘it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders — every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.’ What’s worse is the active involvement of American firms like Cisco, which is supplying the city with network technology optimized for video transmission for an undisclosed sum.”

— “Your city is spying on you: From iPhones to cameras, you are being watched right now,” Anthony M. Townsend, Salon [links added]

More:

“Recording Everything: Digital Storage as an Enabler of Authoritarian Governments,” John Villasenor, Center for Technology Innovation, Brookings Institution

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Watching You

“‘I woke up to pounding on my door’, says Andrej Holm, a sociologist from the Humboldt University. In what felt like a scene from a movie, he was taken from his Berlin home by armed men after a systematic monitoring of his academic research deemed him the probable leader of a militant group. After 30 days in solitary confinement, he was released without charges. Across Western Europe and the USA, surveillance of civilians has become a major business. With one camera for every 14 people in London and drones being used by police to track individuals, the threat of living in a Big Brother state is becoming a reality.”

— Naked Citizens, a short documentary distributed by Journeyman Pictures [32:41]. See it here:

Trains, Cameras, and Crime

The Chicago Transit Authority spent $26 million installing 3,600 surveillance cameras in stations and on trains throughout the rail system. What happened? Crime increased.

“Surveillance cameras aren’t cure-alls—they’re tools, and imperfect ones at that. They can be easily foiled by the latest in apparel technology, including hooded sweatshirts and hats. They tend to break. They are susceptible to dirt, and bad weather, and darkness. And even if a suspect is photographed, he still has to be identified and located, which, for overworked police officers, can be a daunting task. While there are more than a million closed-circuit surveillance cameras in London, a police report found that, in 2008, one crime was solved per 1,000 cameras—an abysmal ratio.”

— “Chicago Installed Thousands of Cameras on its Rail Platforms. Crime Jumped by 21 Percent.” Justin Peters, Slate

CTA’s response: It’s installing another 850 cameras.

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Camover

Berlin has seen a rise in the use of police surveillance video, Closed Circuit TV (CCTV). And Berlin being Berlin, not everyone is happy about this, thinking it an invasion of privacy. One response has been the game of “Camover,” in which teams of young activists compete for points by creatively trashing surveillance cameras. The team with the most points by February 19th wins. That’s when the Europäischer Polizeikongress (European Police Congress) meets in Berlin.

Le Grand Frère Vous Regarde à Paris

Tourists aren’t the only ones in Paris with cameras; les flics have them as well. 200 new surveillance cameras now spy on the streets of the French capital, and by spring there will be 1200 more. Police at video monitors will be on the lookout for crime, terrorists, traffic jams, and inappropriate tutoiement. You have been warned.

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Image (“Le Grand Frère Vous Regarde à Paris, after Caillebotte”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Blind Justice

This week’s Washington City Paper carries Arthur Delaney’s television review – he writes about the Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) system of DC’s Metropolitan Police Department. He says it’s a turkey.

Mr. Delaney’s verdict is the only one this TV program has seen. MPD CCTV imagery has never been used to obtain a conviction in court.