[mibbitier]

Please don't peddle the "UK CCTV" bullshit. It's simply not true.

CCTV in the UK is widespread in large cities, but operated by individual shop owners, and has been since the 80s when cameras became cheap enough. There is no big government CCTV operation. Closest thing is probably the London congestion charge cameras, or individual towns who decide to install their own to cut down on crime.

And if you go out of the cities, you can go forever without seeing a CCTV camera.

[sambeau]

I worked on the original 1990s UK CCTV research.

The UK CCTV is widespread in large cities and operated BY THE POLICE FORCE. It is also on most major roads: look for the blue cameras.

CCTV does not 'cut down crime' in fact it does the opposite: it increases crime by a small but measurable effect.

[irahul]

> CCTV does not 'cut down crime' in fact it does the opposite: it increases crime by a small but measurable effect.

Do you know why CCTV increases crime?

I am not doubting your argument. I am militantly opposed to 1984esque surveillance. I am just curious.

[sambeau]

It's fairly simple.

A crime is just a crime statistic. The more police you have the more crimes are recorded so crime goes up. CCTV is like adding an extra cop (sitting in front of 30 cameras).

CCTV generally does not deter any crimes but it acts on the the kind of crimes that are usually ignored: mostly public order offences linked to alcohol.

CCTV operators spend their nights following couples and women hoping to see sex acts. Occasionally they spot someone urinating against a wall and call the cops.

Urinators, drunken vandals, soliciting prostitutes are seen and logged where they would mostly be ignored—crime goes up.

[ramblerman]

Did you just try to argue that CCTVs actually cause more crime because "cctv records more crimes so crimes go up".

I don't particularly like CCTVs but this is terribly weak reasoning however you try to twist it. This is akin to me arguing a new cancer test actually causes cancer because we now detect more cases of cancer.

[sambeau]

There is more subtlety in my comment than that.

Most people and politicians generally do not understand the difference between a measurable statistic and a physical event. Often in the eye of the law and the lawmakers there is none. Everything you know about crime at a macro-level is actually knowledge of a crime statistic.

Millions of pounds of CCTV cameras were sold on the back of my study that showed a 33% drop in crime that was in fact caused by the simultaneous removal of one of the three police officers patrolling the area. A subsequent study that took this effect into account and showed a 3% rise in crime was buried so as not to embarrass the politicians who ordered the expensive equipment.

Usually a rise in crime is statistics while a fall in crime is good policing. Similarly, politicians call for a 10% drop in cancer deaths but never tell us which death-rates they want to go up to compensate.

[jlgreco]

My guess, and I share your attitude towards surveillance, is that installing CCTV cameras increases crime in the same way that broadening the legal definition of rape "increases" the number of rapes.

That is to say, more things are counted than before. Although CCTV cameras may not help solve crimes (I don't know if they do or not), perhaps they make it easier to count crimes.

[sambeau]

Pretty much spot on.

[JohnTh]

> Do you know why CCTV increases crime?

1. See "Perceived security compared to real security" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security

2. CCTV moves the community's mindset on a crime/non-crime level - "You are (or not) a criminal", "You are a suspect until proven the contrary" (aso.) - and this generates thoughts which aren't always good ones ranging from curiosity/challenge ("wh/if I'll try to overcome this...") till repulsion. An educational way of keeping the criminality rate low is way better than "Big Brother" way. Note, that I don't preach Anarchism here but another way of community management. The force and surveillance must be in the background.

[ZoFreX]

The blue cameras on main roads are for congestion tracking.

[switch007]

ANPR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recogni...) is a big mass surveillance operation.

"The UK has an extensive (ANPR) automatic number plate recognition CCTV network. Effectively, the police and security services track all car movements around the country and are able to track any car in close to real time. Vehicle movements are stored for 5 years in the National ANPR Data Center to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence."

"What we're trying to do as far as we can is to stitch together the existing camera network rather than install a huge number of new cameras," - Mr Whiteley chairman of the ANPR steering committee said"

[alan_cx]

What you describe is the privatisation of CCTV. Yes it is owned by the likes of shopkeepers, but all of it is accessible by the state on demand. So I'm afraid its not bullshit at all. Its just not owned by the government. That should be nice and safe, right? When you get don to it, its rather clever.

[im3w1l]

That makes a huge difference though. You have to go out and talk to people and ask for tapes. That ownership structure makes many automations very hard which is a good thing. Routinely scanning for suspicious activity? Nope. Automatically follow a single person from one camera to the next? Nope.

[ZoFreX]

> Yes it is owned by the likes of shopkeepers, but all of it is accessible by the state on demand

Yes, if they walk into the shop with a warrant and ask to see their tapes. They can't track us all walking around in realtime, which is a huge distinction.

[lelandbatey]

I'd like to expand on your point. There seems to be a misconception that most/all cctv cameras are operated by the government. Currently, and nearly all cameras are owned and operated by private parties, and such as shop owners. No one but the owners have access to the footage from these cameras, and and in fact most are set up to record to static media (tapes or hard drives).

[keithpeter]

I take your point, but there was a little local difficulty in Birmingham UK recently with Police operated CCTV with car number plate recognition.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/25/birmingham-cctv-mus...

Of course, CCTV simply pushes street crime away from the central areas.

[pbhjpbhj]

>CCTV simply pushes street crime away from the central areas //

I've heard that argued for many years but never seen the stats. Do you have a reference for us?

[keithpeter]

Good challenge - mixed results...

"Mixed findings: Birmingham 14 CCTV cameras in the city centre in the early 1990s failed to reduce overall crime levels. However, recorded crime statistics indicate that CCTV reduced robbery and theft from persons, whilst incidences of theft from vehicles rose. The CCTV system was not designed to target vehicle related crime and so was not installed in many car parks. There was some displacement of crime to surrounding areas. Surveys of the public before and after CCTV installation found little change in general feelings of safety for those using the city centre during the day. Nevertheless, for those using the city centre after dark there was an increase in feelings of safety amongst those aware of the CCTV cameras. It is not clear whether these effects were a direct result of CCTV as the area was also redeveloped at the same time."

from http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn175.pdf

The source cited in that summary in reference [3] is no longer available at the Web address given but is available from

http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/hopolicers/fcdps68.pdf

pages 40 to 57 of that second reference contain a detailed discussion of some statistics from 20 years ago in Birmingham city centre, a location I know well. Once sentence on page 50 seems to suggest displacement of street crime to car theft, only as a suggestion. However the whole section gives you an idea of how hard it is to be definite about displacement or reduction in a city centre subject to shifting building patterns and traffic routing.

[pbhjpbhj]

Thanks. I'd imagine that there would be a noticeable shift in reported crime from areas of higher CCTV concentration to those [local] areas with lower CCTV concentration. It seems that there were no particularly clear displacement effects in the case-studies in that first doc¹.

The second doc² appears to make no clearer claims on displacement either.

Mind you we've 17 years more data now and there must be several areas where CCTV has been installed, removed (or deactivated) and possibly reinstalled.

There really must be better citations than this around. I've no time to dig for them now but these don't convince me that displacement is, if anything, more than a minor effect. Moreover those docs show a shift from direct personal robbery/theft to theft from vehicles; I'd expect that would result in less bodily harm overall at the expense of broken windows and bent door frames, probably a good result.

- - -

¹ http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn175.pdf, 2002

² http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/hopolicers/fcdps68.pdf, 1995

[dogonwheels]

Nothing more than anecdote, but hey:

My Yorkshire village has a playground. They installed CCTV last month. More people complain about the main road changing from a 40mph to 30mph. I don't care if the 'they' is government or centralised or whatever. The numbness to surveillance unsettles me greatly.

[mibbitier]

What do you think they're doing with the CCTV?

They're almost certainly recording to a VHS tape, which cycles every couple of days.

IF some crime or vandalism happens on the playground, they will then grab the tapes, and check them. The chances of a conviction will be far higher with video evidence.

It's not "numbness to surveillance", because it's not really surveillance.

If you want to be free to take videos and photos of random places/things without being arrested, you should also allow that same freedom to owners of property who want to reduce crime.

[jlgreco]

I think an important realization is that the public is not generally okay with CCTV installations when they find out they are the recycling VHS type. They are okay with them by default, and don't even bother asking.

I suspect that if you stop random people on the street, point to a camera, and ask them "What kind of camera is that?" the most common response will be along the lines of "I don't know, who cares?" These would presumably be the same people who don't pay CCTV cameras any mind in their day to day lives.

It is not that people don't mind because they are recycling VHS cameras placed by private citizens, but rather that they just don't care regardless. The fact that there is a widespread myth that all the cameras are government installed and networked actually drives home this point. People incorrectly think this and they still don't really care.

[mibbitier]

That's right. Because the number of instances of "My life was ruined by the state who monitored my every move", or "My love life was ruined when my wife was able to bribe the CCTV operator to find out about my affair"... they don't happen do they.

If CCTV was a problem for people, we'd hear about it. But it's not, so we don't.

The fact I visited a certain shop is on record for 2 days on a crappy VHS tape.... why do I care?

Some tourist probably also took my photograph, but I'm not going to stress about that either.

[jlgreco]

Nobody, as I read it, is suggesting that the current CCTV installations, or even the imagined CCTV installations, present a threat themselves.

The damage being done, in my opinion, is a shifting of the Overton window. It changes our perception of normal so that other hypothetical, actually dangerous or sinister, developments will not seem as unusual or outside the norm.

There is not a massive tracking network of CCTV cameras today, but people seem to have the idea that such a thing exists.. and they don't care. Give it a few more years and you could probably actually install such a system and the only people who said anything would be considered weirdos for caring, just like you find it weird that people are bothered by the current system.

I should emphasis that I do not think the UK is going to turn into East Germany in any foreseeable future.

[mibbitier]

As I say, we've had widespread CCTV in shops in the UK since the 80s. In the last 30 years nothing has particularly changed.

I take your point, in theory an evil genius prime minister could install some mass surveillance system. But what the hell would be the point? And the chance of him not getting found out and called out by the media is negligable. Add to that the utter incompetence of government to do anything IT related, and I think we're pretty safe.

[scotty79]

> They are okay with them by default, and don't even bother asking.

I think it's even stronger.

I for one am not ok with lack of CCTV installations as in:

"They (stole my bike/slashed my tires/robbed my office) and (there was not a single camera to record this/image from only available camera was so crappy that it doesn't help)."

[Evbn]

Why would you imagine it is VHS and not hard drive?

[finnw]

Because at the time it was installed, that was the cheapest option.

[electromagnetic]

Coincidence, but I was from Yorkshire and the village I grew up in put a CCTV camera on the community hall to view the playground as it had gotten to the point that a couple days couldn't go by without someone finding a dirty needle. Once that camera went up, the junkies didn't go there anymore.

A camera is far more cost effective to the parish council than sending someone to search for health hazards every morning.

[robk]

Uh, in Central London I count at least 6 operated by the council or Met or Transport for London (unclear actual ownership of the outdoor ones but they're mounted on public poles and accessible by Met for criminal investigations). This is a short commute. Seems rather pervasive that I'm tracked visibly for about 70% of the distance covered on foot.

[mibbitier]

Central London is a massive city. Obviously there's a shit-ton of CCTV there. It's in no way typical of the UK though.