CRIM3563 VISUAL
CRIMINOLOGY -- VISUAL SAMPLE -- Video Surveillance and the Right
to be
Invisible.
INTRODUCTION
For my project I am going to
look
at
the topic of video surveillance from the perspective of modern
surveillance theory. I will include pictures of surveillance
cameras around
the city of Fredericton, which are used for both public and private
purposes. At the side is an image from a city webcam which
broadcasts
images of the Westmorland Bridge, (at
http://www.fredericton.ca/en/webcams.asp).
Most cctv is employed by
private companies for their own security, yet its deployment outside
physical premises into the space within which the public is invited
(expressly or implied), makes it a public issue.
TOPIC
The issue of video
surveillance
is an important one for modern society due in part to the ubiquity
of
the camera, but also to the unexamined consequences of everyday life
being subject to surveillance, and potentially, control. They
are now an accepted feature of daily life for most Canadians,
especially in urban areas, and have become part of the urban
landscape,
seeming to be everywhere, photographing perpetually the minute
transactions which the private individual conducts in public.
A person is
videotaped when they buy gas, when they get money at the bank,
inside
commercial stores, and when they walk down the street. They are
surveilled driving through fast-food lines, entering buildings
(private
and public), entering the hospital and walking around the
university,
and from inside bank machines and inside elevators. Largely
innocuous, they are a low-key, but ever-present element of modern
urban
life.
(Can
you
identify
the
camera
in
the
picture
on
the
left? Click on it to see
a closeup).
Used largely by private
companies
for security reasons, video cameras nonetheless comprise a network
of
video surveillance which contains public life. In a city like
Fredericton the use of public cctv is largely confined to the
Piper's
Alley area. However, there is a vast 'network' of private camerage.
Available to police and
courts during investigation and prosecution video footage becomes
part
of the criminal justice system's arsenal. While cities themselves
might
not want or be able to afford an extensive cctv system, private
company
cameras create a network of visual control accessible by the state,
a
feature of neoliberal governance and control. In this sense, control
is
downloaded onto the private sphere, but still usable by the state.
The focus was initially on
'semi-public' areas, areas largely
controlled by private companies, but to which the public is invited,
either expressly or implied, but not inside stores themselves.
However,
cameras are located within private areas to which the public is
invited
(malls), and also located within public areas (schools), to which
the
public has less access. 
GENERAL ISSUES OF SURVEILLANCE
Underlying Foucault’s metaphor
of
surveillance is Bentham’s panopticon, a design for a prison
conceived
in the late eighteenth century (Semple). The panopticon was meant to
be
a vast, circular building with cells housing prisoners about its rim
and a dimly lit central tower with inspectors at its centre. From
their
central tower, only a few inspectors would have been needed to
monitor
multitudes of inmates, and those inmates could never be sure when
they
were being monitored. Their cells would have been illuminated, but
the
tower would not, and thus the prisoners would have found it
difficult
to tell whether the observers were actually there, and whether they
were watching any particular cell. In the panopticon, the gaze was
to
be sovereign in that the prisoners were seen but they could not see.
There was no need for violence or coercion because inmates would
have
become individualized.
Power so perfected rendered
its
practical use unnecessary.
FINDINGS
Visuals have been
collected from various locations around the city. The initial focus
was
public cameras on city streets and sidewalks, or cameras that might
captute those areas, such as entrances to underground parking
garages.
However the collection was expanded to include those around private
businesses, and those in semi-public areas, (explained below).
Visuals were taken in the McDonald's
parking
lot on Prospect Street (4), City
Hall (4, downtown), the Piper's
Alley
area (2), and the Ultramar on
Beaverbrook (7). To be added are places like the Irving on Regent,
the
parking lot at the medical building, and the Burger King drive
through.
Also of relevance might be the Regent Mall, Canadian Tire, other as
bars, and so on.
ANALYTIC SIGNIFICANCE
Video surveillance is an
important topic
because of the implications for understanding the organization of
public life, the development of systems of control, and theorizing
the
self in modern society.
First, public life in
twenty-first
century society is contained and controlled in a way unimaginable in
the past. While village life in the agricultural past might have
been
known and controlled through gossip, ridicule and shame, city life
in
the post-industrial present is controlled through ever-present,
anonymous and (almost) invisible automated technology.
Closed-circuit television cameras monitor movement outside through
parking
lots and drive-through lanes, and inside bank lobbies and grocery
stores. With cameras mounted on the sides of buildings to monitor
underground parking lots and doorways they also inadvertently
monitor
sidewalks and roadways. Triggered by movement or rolling
continuously,
they can
record good behaviours and bad. Recorded on tape, actions can be
retrieved and reviewed by security personnel and police. All action
can
be recorded, and then decisions made as to how to classify it and
what
to do about it can be made at a later date. The organization of
modern
(urban) life to include videocameras has implications for systems of
control.
Thus, video surveillance
enables
greater control through the diversified use of technology.
Expenditures
which might have been spent on loss prevention can be more
efficiently
deployed through the use of cameras, enabling 'ruling at a
distance,'
(both temporally and spatially).
This is an important point which needs to be spelled out in more
detail. The addition of visualized crime detection and
investigation,
however,
conveys a false sense of security because it does not guarantee
prevention. A crime is not automatically prevented because there is
a
video camera. The unintended consequence, moreover, is suspicion of
everyone in detection of the someone who (might) commit(s) a crime.
For this reason, theories of
the self need to account for the presence of video surveillance. In
earlier theories of socialization and personal development we focus
on
the influence of persons and peers in the process of social control.
However, with modern visual technology, the idea of
the self is a viewed self, a self known to its self as viewed, by
technology.
Traditionally, oneself knew themself as seen by real others.
However,
the modern
self knows itself to be viewed by the camera's eye and the anonymous
other. Another way of looking at it is that in the classic
Benthamite
model, the panopticon is a prison where the many are viewed by the
few.
Surveillance is internalized as the existence of the monitor is
never
certain. However, while the classic panopticon viewed the prisoner,
in
the modern
panopticon the many are still viewed by the few, and it is unknown
which cameras are on and which tapes are reviewed. However, it is no
longer just the prisoners that are viewed but everyone. 
In some research (Koskela
2000),
ever-increasing video-surveillance is
said to be changing the nature of urban space, and poses questions
whether
surveillance can actually make space safer and ‘more
available’ for the modern public. When getting gas at the gas bar, I
do
not feel safer, but instead distrusted and irritated. When walking
in
front of City Hall I do not feel anonymous but spied on. (Look for
example at the above intersection picture and see if you can spot
the
camera, and then click it for a closeup. Many intersections have
similar looking cameras, but used for traffic monitoring and
emergency
vehicles, not surveilance).
In this way, surveillance in
public(ly accessible)
spaces, such as shopping malls, city streets and public
transport is based on power structures and effects human emotions.
Rather than making us feel safer it can make us feel distrusted. It
is
organized through state and corporate power and finance, in an
exercise
to surveil the movement of the populace. Thus, space is
conceptualized from various viewpoints in the argument that
video-surveillance changes the exercise of power, modifying
emotional
experience in urban space and affecting
the way in which ‘reality’ is understood.
Surveillance creates urban
space
as a forum for muting personal expression and creating the illusion
of
safety. However, current theory indicates issues around privacy,
control and subjectivity that need to be theorized more.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion I am going to
look
at the topic of video surveillance and its use in modern society.
The
illustrations will come from a collection of Fredericton's video
cameras. The overarching theoretical explanation is how surveillance
is
an expression of power, and its unintended consequence is the
modification of emotional life, suppressing and shaping expression
as
proper consumer behaviour in late-modern life.
REFERENCES
"'The gaze without eyes': video-surveillance and the changing nature
of
urban space," Hille Koskela, Progress
in
Human
Geography, 2000, 24, 2: 243-265
"The gaze in the city: video surveillance in Perth," Jean Hillier, Australian Geographical Studies,
1996, 34, 1: 195-205.
"Video surveillance, gender, and the safety of public urban space:
'Peeping Tom' goes high tech?", Hille Koskela, Urban Geography, 2002, 23, 3:
257-278.
"Governing through crime: Surveillance, the community and local
crime
reporting," Gareth Palmer, Policing
and
Society, 2000, 10, 4: 321-342.
