During this weeks lecture we had the opportunity to present our findings as a team against public CCTV while the other half of the class were in favour. Before I had started researching the topic I was in favour, however after some time researching I completely changed my mind on how I viewed public CCTV. Below are a number of strong points and questions from what we found as a group from reliable sources on the internet:
Questions to be asked:
Advantages that could be used as arguments from the opponent group: May prove to be effective in catching Petty crimes. Response: Most of the time cameras that catch such crimes are through private cameras anyways which are owned by the shop or office itself. Disadvantages of having public CCTV installed:
Some state that the abuse of cctv cameras is a conspiracy theory, however the American Civil Liberties Union and a number of news websites talk about a scandal which happened during the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, for example, the FBI - as well as many individual police departments around the nation - conducted illegal operations to spy upon and harass political activists who were challenging racial segregation and the Vietnam War. This comes to show how these cameras can be abused not only by hackers but the institution itself. Case study of CCTVS not being effective: Londoners are under greater surveillance than anyone else in the democratic world. Sociologists carrying multiple studies on this issue have found that they have not reduced crime throughout the years. As found in one study on a BBC article, the "reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre." The same study from 2005 for the British Home Office, also found that cameras did not cut crime or the fear of crime (as had a study back in 2002, which was also for the British government). References BBC News, 2005. CCTV systems fail to cut crime. BBC News. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/leicestershire/4294693.stm [Accessed 6 March 2017]. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2192911.stm Li.A., 2016. Pros and Cons of surveillance cameras in public spaces. Available at: https://reolink.com/pros-cons-of-surveillance-cameras-in-public-places/ [Accessed 6 March 2017].
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Rita Curmi2nd year Student Archives
May 2017
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