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Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe [1 ed.]
 9781614991137, 9781614991120

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VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Innovation and the Public Sector The functioning of the public sector gives rise to considerable debate. Not only the efficiency and efficacy of the sector are at stake, but also its legitimacy. At the same time we see that in the public sector all kinds of innovations are taking place. These innovations are not only technological, which enable the redesign of all kinds of processes, like service delivery. The emphasis can also be put on more organizational and conceptual innovations. In this series we will try to understand the nature of a wide variety of innovations taking place in the public sector of the 21st century and try to evaluate their outcomes. How do they take place? What are relevant triggers? And, how are their outcomes being shaped by all kinds of actors and influences? And, do public innovations differ from innovations in the private sector? Moreover we try to assess the actual effects of these innovations, not only from an instrumental point of view, but also from a more institutional point of view. Do these innovations not only contribute to a better functioning of the public sector, but do they also challenge grown practices and vested interests? And what does this imply for the management of public sector innovations? Series Editors:

Prof. Dr. Victor J.J.M. Bekkers Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Prof. Jean Hartley The University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

Prof. Sharon S. Dawes University at Albany/SUNY, Albany, NY, USA

Volume 18 Recently published in this series Vol. 17. Vol. 16. Vol. 15. Vol. 14. Vol. 13. Vol. 12.

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Vol. 11. Vol. 10. Vol. 9.

M. Fenger and V. Bekkers (Eds.), Beyond Fragmentation and Interconnectivity – Public Governance and the Search for Connective Capacity A.-V. Anttiroiko, S.J. Bailey and P. Valkama (Eds.), Innovative Trends in Public Governance in Asia A.-V. Anttiroiko, S.J. Bailey and P. Valkama (Eds.), Innovations in Public Governance A. Meijer, K. Boersma and P. Wagenaar (Eds.), ICTs, Citizens and Governance: After the Hype! D. Griffin, P. Trevorrow and E. Halpin (Eds.), Developments in e-Government – A Critical Analysis V. Bekkers, H. van Duivenboden and M. Thaens (Eds.), Information and Communication Technology and Public Innovation – Assessing the ICT-Driven Modernization of Public Administration M. Lips, J.A. Taylor and F. Bannister (Eds.), Public Administration in the Information Society – Essays on Risk and Trust M. Veenswijk (Ed.), Organizing Innovation – New Approaches to Cultural Change and Intervention in Public Sector Organizations V.J.J.M. Bekkers and V.M.F. Homburg (Eds.), The Information Ecology of E-Government – E-Government as Institutional and Technological Innovation in Public Administration

This series is a continuation of “Informatization Developments and the Public Sector” (vols. 1–9, ISSN 0928-9038)

ISSN 1871-1073 (print) ISSN 1879-8454 (online)

Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

V Video Surveeillance P Practices a Policies in Europee and

y Edited by

C. Willliam R. Webster W Stirling g Managemeent School, University U of Stirling

E Töpffer Eric German Insstitute for Hu uman Rights

Franciisco R. Klauser K Instittute of Geogrraphy, Univeersity of Neucchâtel

and

Chaarles D. Raab R

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S School of Soccial and Poliitical Sciencee, Universityy of Edinburggh

Amstterdam • Berrlin • Tokyo • Washington, DC

Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

© 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-61499-112-0 (print) ISBN 978-1-61499-113-7 (online) Library of Congress Control Number: 2012946286 The papers in this book have been previously published in 2 special issues of the journal Information Polity (ISSN 1570-1255) issue 16(4)2011 and 17(1)2012.

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LEGAL NOTICE The publisher is not responsible for the use which might be made of the following information. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Video Surveillance C.W.R. Webster et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, 2012 © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.

v

Introduction C. William R. Webster a, Eric Töpfer b, Francisco R. Klauser c and Charles D. Raab d a

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Stirling Management School, University of Stirling E-mail: [email protected] b German Institute for Human Rights E-mail: [email protected] c Institute of Geography, University of Neuchâtel E-mail: [email protected] d School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh E-mail: [email protected]

Video surveillance cameras and systems, commonly referred to as Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) despite their increasingly networked character, are a defining feature of modern society. Their widespread use, as fixed or mobile devices, deployed for a range of purposes and by a variety of public and private actors, is now unsurprising and generally accepted in most countries. The normality of these surveillance practices, and the technologies used, are a world away from the early tube cameras used for local broadcasting and the isolated monitoring of industrial processing in the 1930s and 1940s. The diffusion processes, which have led to the exponential growth of these cameras and systems, have included evolutions in the design, function and capabilities of systems, especially around opportunities for extended, combined and automated systems offered by new information and communication technologies. These technologies have been shaped by a raft of interested parties, including engineers, manufacturers, clients/service users, politicians and regulators. The changing and contested terminology used to denote and describe the socio-technical practices around these systems illustrates both the variety of applications and their wider social and political context. ‘Video surveillance’, ‘video observation’, ‘video protection’ and ‘visual surveillance’ share the semantic reference to viewing and imply monitoring rooted in the technological practices of optoelectronics, but they convey different meanings about the benefits and uses of technology. In the same way, terms like ‘spy cameras’, ‘big brother cameras’, ‘security cameras’ and ‘public safety cameras’ convey different meanings and different perceived ‘impacts’. An example of the political significance of language and terminology is provided by the French Government, which decided to replace the term ‘video surveillance’ with ‘video protection’ in all legal texts and regulations in an attempt to influence the perceived societal meaning of these systems (see the chapter by Heilmann). In contrast, the German Federal Data Protection Act aims to frame the phenomenon as neutrally and comprehensively as possible, and relevant Section 6b of the Act regulates the ‘observation of publicly accessible premises by optic-electronic devices’.

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Broader academic interest in video surveillance followed the proliferation of CCTV cameras and practices in a wide range of public and private settings in the mid-to-late 1990s. The most rapid and spectacular diffusion of public space CCTV is often attributed to the United Kingdom, where the installation of new camera schemes was supported by central government funds and operational advice, as well as political rhetoric to assist in the ‘fight against crime’ [11]. However, around the same time public CCTV schemes were also launched in other European countries such as Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany and France, usually without any reference to the British experience. Thus, the time was ripe for CCTV to be discussed at a European level. Seeking guidance for an ongoing national debate about the pros and cons of public area CCTV, the Dutch Presidency of the European Union put the issue on top of the agenda of a major EU crime prevention conference held in Noordwijk in November 1997. The conference concluded: ‘Cameras as crime prevention tools are in general new and cost-effective ways to offer reassurance to citizens as to their safety. […] Cameras should be part of a comprehensive local and/or national crime prevention policy. Ideally, they should be monitored by trained personnel and the public should be aware of their use. Privacy should be safeguarded’ [10: 66]. In the wake of this event, higher ranks of the police entered into a more systematic knowledge exchange in the emerging arena of European police co-operation that facilitated the cross-national transfer of CCTV as crime prevention policy [3]. At once, voices resisting the spread of surveillance and pushing for regulation increasingly articulated their concerns at the national and the European level. A 1998 report to the European Parliament on ‘Technologies of Political Control’ recommended that CCTV systems in the Union should be subject to a common and consistent set of codes of practice [13: 17], and on 7 September 2001 grass-roots privacy advocates coordinated a first ‘International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance’ in seven countries of the global North. When it became necessary to upgrade existing privacy legislation due to the implementation of the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46 in the late 1990s, policy makers in several EU member states used the opportunity explicitly to regulate video surveillance. In further attempts to harmonise the processing of personal data by controllers of CCTV cameras, both the Council of Europe and the EU’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party drafted guidelines how to apply existing European legislation, albeit with questionable success. Public agencies had previously encouraged the provision of CCTV in a range of discrete settings, including banks, car parks and motorways. But it was the widespread and permanent deployment of these systems in public places, including residential areas, and where ordinary citizens and service users routinely came under surveillance by the state, that also generated so much academic interest. The British experience, which signalled the ‘surveillance camera revolution’, has been portrayed as the farthest reaching example in terms of CCTV development, and has become the point of reference for studying video surveillance in the social sciences and other disciplines. The academic studies and discourses that have sought to comprehend this ‘revolution’ have been dominated by perspectives emanating from law, criminology, sociology and geography. Legal scholars have discussed novel regulatory approaches designed to address issues relating to privacy and data protection [6]. Criminologists have sought to understand the effects of CCTV on crime, the perceptions of crime and on disorder, anti-social and other behaviour deemed undesirable [4,12]. Sociologists have located the rise of public space CCTV in wider global trends and the emergence of late capitalism, in which the shift from industrial societies struggling with the distribution of the fruits of technological progress to societies mainly concerned with services and the calculation and management of risks has led to a new context and the rise of a ‘new penology’, including techniques for crime prevention such as CCTV [9]. Geog-

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raphers and urban scholars have pointed to the economic transformation of cities and towns and the emergence of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’ as the driving force behind attempts to promote central areas as places of consumption [2,5,8]. These were to be rendered safe and attractive for customers by means of surveillance cameras directed against any nuisance, including ’undesirable’ persons and behaviour. Alongside the grand narratives about surveillance in society has been a burgeoning of descriptive studies of specific cases. Typically, these are intended to highlight the use of CCTV in a specific setting or to calculate a systems ‘impact’ on levels of crime and disorder. Additionally, there has been a series of ethnographic studies where the users and the subjects of surveillance have been observed and asked about their experiences and attitudes. Although often descriptive, these micro-studies have started to show the significance of context and the institutional settings in which cameras are deployed, as well as their importance as explanatory factors in how video surveillance works, how it is used, and how it is integrated into the broader polity. In relation to video surveillance, issues of governance and public policy are rarely explicitly addressed by social scientists. This book aims to fill this gap. It brings into focus the ways in which the implementation of cameras and systems, and their operational and technical features, are the product of decisions and policies made in a variety of contexts and by a variety of authorities and interested parties. This perspective suggests that the surveillance camera revolution must not be understood as just a technological phenomenon, and that the context in which the cameras are deployed shapes their diffusion and use. If we follow this line of argument, it is easier to understand why one country may encourage the use of surveillance cameras, but for historical and cultural reasons, another may choose to limit their use. Equally, one country may have a strong tradition of legislation and regulation, whilst another may lean towards voluntary or self-regulation. Understanding the contextual environment surrounding the deployment of video cameras, including public attitudes toward surveillance, mass-media representations of the systems, and beliefs about the capabilities of technology, is critical to understanding why video surveillance cameras have diffused so widely in society, and how they are currently used. With this in mind, this book aims to revisit video surveillance by presenting some contemporary thinking and research on the use of CCTV, and by drawing out issues relating to governance and public policy. The use of video surveillance cameras and systems in public places in modern society raises a range of government and public policy issues both in terms of the regulation of new technologies and also in terms of relations between citizens and the state. The deployment of these systems is naturally of interest to governments because they are concerned with influencing, or controlling, the behaviour of citizens. As such, surveillance cameras embody a power relationship between the surveyor and the surveyed. Because surveillance cameras are intrinsically powerful, their use by public agencies for the ‘public interest’ is often perceived only to be acceptable when subject to democratic and regulatory control. In Switzerland, for example, recent police CCTV projects, in St. Gallen, Lucerne and Renens, have been subject to a public vote, thereby increasing opportunities for democratic debate and scrutiny. In this case, public participation in the decision-making processes has contributed to further legitimise and publicise the deployed systems. If we take a governance or public-policy perspective of the widespread diffusion of surveillance cameras, then issues about who shapes the public policy-making process, who benefits from diffusion, and how the cameras are used and regulated, come to the fore. What has been remarkable about the surveillance camera revolution is not just the speed of diffusion, but also that this diffusion has taken place alongside concerns about citizen-state relations, the impact of mass surveillance on the behaviour of the users and the subjects of surveillance, the erosion of privacy,

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and the perceived threat to civil liberties and human rights. Despite these concerns, and others that relate to the efficacy and financial implications of mass video surveillance, surveillance cameras and systems enjoy a high degree of popularity amongst politicians, practitioners and the general public. Today, the presence of surveillance cameras and systems in many countries is taken for granted and their existence no longer feels ‘revolutionary’ – they are just a normal part of everyday life. However, many of the concerns raised at the start of the revolution remain unanswered and are as pertinent today as they were in the 1990s. This book places particular emphasis on studies of video surveillance in different national, institutional, cultural and linguistic settings, as they relate to the provision of these systems in public service and democratic contexts. Part One comprises theoretically informed contributions from a variety of academic disciplines; Part Two presents more descriptive case studies from a variety of settings, illustrating important points even within these empirical constraints. Whilst current academic debates on CCTV are heavily influenced by Anglophone literatures and examples, one of the central aims of this book is to bring together a more international collection of authors and studies in order to help elucidate specific national and institutional characteristics, and to highlight broader cross-cultural trends in current CCTV developments and policies. Whilst many previous studies lack appreciation of how specific circumstances and contexts act as catalysts in shaping, accelerating and exemplifying novel trends and solutions in surveillance matters, we hope to develop a more solid, empirically informed understanding of the position and role of video surveillance in modern society, and of its governance and public policy dimensions.

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The Chapters in Part One In her chapter, Emmeline Taylor examines the use of video surveillance cameras in the setting of schools in England. Through new empirical research, she explores the experiences of CCTV amongst teachers and pupils, and demonstrates how schools have become some of the most surveillanceintensive environments in modern society. There are important issues in this environment for surveillance, about the policy processes which have led to so much surveillance in this setting, the governance of CCTV in school settings, and the long-term implications of exposing children to such intensive surveillance practices. Gemma Galdon Clavell next explores the diffusion of CCTV in a specific region of Spain: Catalonia. The main thrust of her argument is that the specific context of Catalonian institutions and decision-making structures has shaped the provision of CCTV locally, and that common assumptions about national governments shaping CCTV diffusion are not borne out in Spain. In this respect, she asks us to ‘zoom in’ and pay attention to local decision-makers, politicians and service providers as they influence the diffusion process as well. The evolution of the technological capabilities of surveillance systems, especially in relation to the need to interpret video images quickly and accurately, is examined by Christoph Musik. He analyses two contexts in detail: ‘facial expression recognition’ and ‘automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies’, demonstrating how the computerisation of video surveillance is leading to a second generation of intelligent systems. As Musik notes, ‘the thinking eye is only half the story’; such developments raise issues about the design of these systems and who shapes their intelligence, and consequently their use. Following this, Fredrika Björklund utilises analytical approaches emerging from ‘governmentality’ perspectives to analyse critically the diffusion of video surveil-

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lance cameras in Sweden. Emphasising situational prevention, the generalisation of distrust and the informed citizen, her claim is that Swedish society is undergoing an evolution that involves the blurring of traditional institutions and practices, and new ways of governing shaped by global pressures and technologies such as video surveillance cameras. ‘Pure flour in your bag’ refers to an argument brought forward by those who advocate video surveillance, and refers to those citizens who are ‘whiter than white’ and are said to have nothing to fear from surveillance cameras. Two further chapters highlighting theoretical perspectives round off this section of the book. Both of these chapters develop an elaborate problematic related to issues of governance and public policy in the field of CCTV surveillance. The first one, by Pieter Wagenaar and Kees Boersma, provides a strongly ethnographic account of surveillance strategies and practices in the securitisation of Schiphol International Airport. Anchored in, and testifying to, the now well-established tradition of ethnographic control-room research, the approach pursued here focuses on the micro level, locating the various policy issues surrounding CCTV in the context of a specific range of control practices and issues in a particular geographical locale. Yet the aim is not only to provide isolated insights into the micropolitics of security and surveillance in the Schiphol context, but also to re-position this question as part of a broader set of issues: how exactly does CCTV surveillance permeate particular places and moments? How and by whom are the aims of CCTV negotiated and defined? How do these then legitimise particular interventions? Pete Fussey’s chapter is driven by a concern to understand the forces, processes and mechanisms shaping the contemporary intensification and extension of surveillance infrastructures in East London, the location of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Exploring the role of this large-scale event in facilitating and promoting the installation of novel CCTV systems in East London, Fussey points up the importance of circumstances and contexts in the formation of surveillance practices and rationales, thus bringing to the fore some of the main driving forces underpinning contemporary CCTV policies.

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The Chapters in Part Two Five case studies make up the second section of the book. These are shorter pieces, rather less theoretical and a little more descriptive, but which nevertheless offer important insights for the governance of video surveillance cameras. In the first case study, Eric Heilmann presents a historical account of the introduction and use of video surveillance cameras in France, with specific reference to the introduction of regulatory and legislative arrangements. He highlights the traditional tension between central and local government, how this has influenced the provision of these systems, and the significance of political rhetoric for the continuing installation and operation of video surveillance cameras. The essence of Heilmann’s argument is that France has changed from a country that resisted video surveillance to a country where it is widely accepted. Chiara Fonio next analyses the diffusion of video surveillance in Italy with specific reference to the legislative framework and political processes. In particular, she points to discrepancies in regulatory requirements and the practices associated with video surveillance and the lack of a solid evidence base influencing the use of these technologies. For Fonio, the silence surrounding the growth of video surveillance in Italy relates to a lack of public debate and an apparent unwillingness to evaluate robustly the use and impacts of these technologies. The remaining chapters further develop and illustrate the conceptual and analytical challenges raised earlier in the book. Ola Svenonius investigates the organisational changes induced by a EUR 55m pro-

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ject in public transport security in Stockholm, including the installation of more than 20,000 additional high-tech cameras. The chapter argues that ‘the Project’ produced very complex and contradictory effects with regard to the organisational structure in the policing of public transport in Stockholm. This led to increased privatisation and centralisation of decision making, whilst also maintaining and, in some sense, even reinforcing the chaotic diversity of the involved actors, interests and sources of authority. The chapter also elucidates two further implications of the Project: first, the induced shift in the approach taken towards transport security, from a focus on recorded crime-rates to passenger perceptions of risk and insecurity; and, second, the development of a more coherent normative framework underpinning and bringing together the actor-network involved in the control and securitisation of the Stockholm public transport system. The troubled story of CCTV in central Hamburg, where five cameras were installed in 2007 on a small plaza only to be taken down again two years later, is described by Nils Zurawski. Providing a focused discussion of the policy-makers involved, their mutually intertwined interests and positions, as well as the larger debates at the time, the case exemplifies the interpretative flexibility of CCTV systems as a vehicle for different actors with different agendas and arguments. This shows that CCTV cannot be reduced to a single meaning assigned by a single actor, but must be understood as the expression of processes involving a range of actors, guided by common goals, acting from mutually enhanced positions and driven by converging benefits, whilst also pursuing their own specific agendas and projects. In Hamburg, the latter aimed at urban regeneration and crime prevention. The final case study, by Gemma Galdon Clavell, Lohitzune Zuloaga Lojo and Armando Romero, offers a ‘country report’ of CCTV in Spain, including the relevant legal framework, public perceptions of CCTV, and related policy debates. In providing this account, the chapter also touches on at least two broader, yet fundamentally interrelated issues. First, it is concerned with urban policy mobilities in security and surveillance matters – namely, the transnational circulation and reproduction of best practices in the field CCTV surveillance – and, second, it addresses the question of how specific national political traditions and memories (for example the memory of Franco’s authoritarianism) shape contemporary trends in surveillance matters. Both questions are of fundamental importance if we are to understand not only the transnational commonalities, but also the remaining national and local specificities in contemporary CCTV policies.

Crosscutting Themes and Issues What are the themes and issues that emerge from these chapters to guide our thinking and future research? Of course, the specific insights gained might differ in other national and local contexts, depending on the precise circumstances of each system. Interactions and relationships may vary across cases and settings in terms of the actors, strategies, interests, instruments, stipulations and regulatory mechanisms involved. Indeed, a central challenge for future research will be to undertake further comparative empirical investigations into the ways in which different video surveillance projects, in different cultural contexts, both resemble and differ from each other. However, the contributions in this collection also raise a series of more general, cross-cutting themes and issues that are worth highlighting. These can be organised under three broad headings, as outlined below.

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Fragmentation of Authority and Interacting Forms of Expertise in CCTV Policies On different conceptually and empirically informed grounds, the contributions to this book reiterate the need for the conceptualisation of CCTV surveillance to be constantly ‘in the making’, i.e., to consist of myriad micro-scale negotiations and decisions between various actors whose positions are defined by intertwined domains of expertise and forms of authority [1, 7]. The book thus provides muchneeded accounts of both the fundamentally dynamic nature of surveillance – as a policy process rather than as a definitive and static policy result – and of the fragmentation of authority, processes of shaping, and development through a trajectory of planning, installation, and use of CCTV systems. Following on from this, one of the key issues relates to the role and importance of private actors and expertise – especially the technical know-how provided by technology companies – in contemporary security governance, as Svenonius’ study of Stockholm shows. Looking at current trends towards the ever-more complex assemblage of various forms and functions of surveillance, there is good reason to assume that the technical expertise of private companies is likely to become even more important in future years. This trend is particularly driven by rapid technological progress, which enables not only the growing combination and integration of various semi-co-ordinated, heterogeneous forms and functions of surveillance, but also the increased automation of ‘intelligent’ monitoring techniques, capable of identifying pre-programmed ‘risk behaviour’ or previously identified ‘risk persons’. Increasingly, we can observe this emergence of ‘smart’ CCTV systems. Typically they combine the optical technologies usually associated with CCTV systems with the processing capabilities of modern computers, thus effecting a convergence of information and communication technologies, allowing visual images to be cross-referenced with computer databases and other software. For example, digital-image software can be combined with databases to achieve facial recognition or number-plate recognition. Computer algorithms can be utilised to assess current behaviour and to predict future behaviour, for example via crowd-analysis software or infra-red movement and noise-detection systems. CCTV systems can be combined with other new technologies, including listening and speaker systems, metal detectors and sniffing devices, geo-location technologies and Geographic Information Systems. At a more basic level, the technical standardisation and networking of systems permits the integration and convergence of systems. Most of these technical developments are being pioneered by private companies and the security industry. It is therefore of major importance to investigate further the wider sociopolitical effects of the largely unquestioned public-private interdependences in contemporary security governance, and to reflect critically upon the potential impacts of business interests in security and surveillance matters on the everyday life of citizens and social groups. Drivers of CCTV Second, and following directly from the previous point, this book shows that CCTV surveillance responds to a range of different goals, benefits, agendas and projects. CCTV is the product of relationships that are mediated by various resonating or conflicting interests, motivations and needs. This of course also means that the aims and modalities of CCTV surveillance, as they are negotiated and defined by the actors involved, are not pre-determined or value-free, but are shaped by complex relationships and interactions that rely on various drivers and impulses. Wagenaar and Boersma’s study of Schiphol addresses this problematic on a micro-scale, contributing in empirical depth to our understanding of the ways in which the practices of CCTV surveillance

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merge within a particular milieu, and of the ramifications of this. Zurawski’s work in Hamburg also testifies to this issue. There are at least two key points to highlight. First, the blurring and shifting lines of argumentation in the political debates and decisions affecting the Hamburg CCTV project illustrate that, in conceptualising CCTV’s driving forces, we need to recognise not only the overlapping coalitions of interest in contemporary security governance, but also the multiple tensions and conflicts arising from the ways in which specific systems are framed, approached and exploited for particular needs. Second, with regard to these tensions and conflicts, this case study also reveals the weight of nonprofessional and non-political players – local community groups, academic experts, individual opponents, shopkeepers, etc. – in CCTV-related debates. In sum, the role of civil society should not be underplayed or forgotten completely in accounting for the policy processes and decisions concerning CCTV. The drivers of CCTV surveillance must be related not only to specific needs and interests, but also understood as a function of socially available and normatively loaded ‘imaginaries of surveillance’.

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Commonalities and Specificities in Contemporary CCTV Policies The third cross-cutting theme overlaps with the book’s overall ambition to elucidate different national and institutional characteristics, whilst also identifying broader transnational trends in current CCTV developments. Drawing upon the chapters in this collection, there are a number of specific points to highlight. For example, the case study by Galdon Clavell et al. underlines not only the impact of Spain’s political past on current CCTV developments – i.e., national specificities – but also the country’s current predisposition to learn from international experience and best practice, thus pointing up the relevance of transnational commonalities and processes of policy transfer. We must take into account both the contemporary and the historical background in a given socio-political context if we are to understand the converging and diverging national dynamics unfolding in the field of CCTV surveillance. In a different way, the chapters by Wagenaar and Boersma, and by Fussey, address the same problematic. More generally, security and surveillance at large sporting events and in the aviation sector are usefully approached from two complementary perspectives, as both the product of and as the producer of a broader set of developments in contemporary security governance. On the one hand, airports and ‘mega’ events are portrayed as being firmly embedded in transnational circuits of imitation and institutional learning. On the other hand, airports and large events are themselves understood as laboratories for testing and developing novel surveillance solutions that are subsequently adapted for more normalised use. From both directions, airports and large events can be understood as strategic examples for studying the current dynamics and global re-calibrations of security governance. Here we encounter an important issue of scale and context, one which we believe should be further pursued in future empirical investigations into the commonalities and specificities of contemporary CCTV projects and debates. Relevant questions to address are: how do specific places and times act as laboratories in the production of novel trends in CCTV surveillance? What kind of mechanisms, and what types of public and private interests, are mediating these ‘exemplification’ processes – trivialisation and normalisation – of surveillance? How, in turn, do specific forms of expertise and bodies of knowledge relating to CCTV become authorised to act in specific places and at specific moments? What are the resonances and dissonances between globally established ‘CCTV solutions’ and locally anchored surveillance practices as they are negotiated in situ?

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Self-evidently, this book makes no claim fully to answer these questions. From different conceptual and empirical angles, our ambition has been to bring to the fore some of the key aspects and issues accounting for the international diversity and complexity of CCTV as it is practiced, understood, debated and studied. As such, the entire collection is also intended as an invitation for further research into the current and future politics and practices of video surveillance. Finally, we would like to thank the ‘supporting cast’ who have allowed us to bring this book to fruition. Firstly, thanks are due to John Taylor, the Editor-in-Chief of Information Polity, for the opportunity to dedicate a double Special Issue (Vol. 16, No. 4, 2011 and Vol. 17, No. 1, 2012), to the topic of video surveillance. This book has emerged from those edited collections. This has been a very timely exercise, one that has drawn together a variety of contemporary thinking on this topic. We would also like to thank the team at IOS Press for their support and patience whilst the bringing the present book into existence. We are particularly grateful to all those anonymous reviewers who gave their time to undertake the crucial role of peer review, and to Joy Charnley, who completed the translation, from French into English, of Eric Heilmann’s case study. Finally, special thanks are due to all the authors who have contributed so many thought-provoking pieces on this topic area. Combined, they represent an impressive collection of contemporary theoretical and empirical work taking different perspectives on the surveillance camera revolution. References [1] M. Akrich and C. Méadel, Anthropologie de la télésurveillance en milieu privé, Research report Pirvilles-CNRS and

[2] [3] [4] [5]

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[6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Institut des Hautes études sur la sécurité intérieure (IHESI), Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Paris: Ecole des Mines, 1999. R.S.J. Coleman, You’ll never walk alone: CCTV surveillance, order and neo-liberal rule in Liverpool city centre, British Journal of Sociology 51(4) (2000), 623–639. Council of the European Union, Note from the French delegation to the Police Cooperation Working Party on electronic surveillance and video surveillance, Council Register Doc. 5045/99, Brussels, 1999. M. Gill and A. Spriggs, Assessing the impact of CCTV, Home Office Research Study 292, London: Home Office, 2005. S. Graham, Towards the fifth Utility? On the extension and normalisation of public CCTV, in: Surveillance, CCTV and Social Control, C. Norris, J. Morran and G. Armstrong (eds.), Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998, 89–113. M. Gras, The Legal Regulation of CCTV in Europe, Surveillance and Society 2(2–3) (2004), 216–229. F. Klauser, Interacting Forms of Expertise in Security Governance: The Example of CCTV Surveillance at Geneva International Airport, British Journal of Sociology 60(2) (2009) 279–297. H. Koskela, The gaze without eyes: video-surveillance and the changing nature of urban space, Progress in Human Geography 24(2) (2000), 243–265. C. Norris, J. Morran and G. Armstrong (eds.), Surveillance, CCTV and Social Control, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. Recommendations of the EU conference, ‘Crime prevention: towards a European level’, Noordwijk, 11–14 May 1997, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research 5(3) (1997), 65–70. C. Webster, The diffusion, regulation and governance of closed-circuit television in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 230–250. B.C. Welsh and D.P. Farrington, Crime prevention effects of closed circuit television: a systematic review, Home Office Research Study 252, London: Home Office, 2002. S. Wright, An appraisal of technologies of political control, Working Document PE 166 499, Luxembourg: European Parliament, 1998.

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Author’s Biographies Fredrika Björklund, Södertörn University, Sweden ([email protected]) Fredrika Björklund is associate professor in political science at Södertörn University, Stockholm. She coordinates the multi-disciplinary research project ‘Balancing Integrity and Legal Security: A comparison of Popular Surveillance in Germany, Sweden and Poland’, financed by the Swedish Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies. Besides her interest in surveillance studies she has published within the research fields nation-building, ethnic politics and citizenship studies. Kees Boersma, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands ([email protected]) Kees Boersma is Associate Professor at the VU University Amsterdam in the Department of Organization Sciences. His research interests include: science and technology studies, disaster management and crisis response, and organization culture – and he has published widely on these topics. He is co-editor of the book Internet and Surveillance, published by Routledge and a member of the Management Committee of the Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) COST Action IS0807.

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Chiara Fonio, Catholic University of Milan, Italy ([email protected]) Chiara Fonio is a post doctoral fellow at the Catholic University of Milan where she is a senior researcher of ITSTIME, based in the Department of Sociology. Dr. Fonio’s main research interests are the deployment of surveillance technologies in the urban environment (i.e. surveillance cameras, surveillance technologies at mega-events) and on surveillance trends in post-authoritarian societies. She is currently active in two European research projects: IRISS (FP7) and SMART CIBER (CIPS). Pete Fussey, University of Essex, UK ([email protected]) Pete Fussey is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex, UK. Dr Fussey’s main research interest focuses on surveillance, control and the city, particularly in relation to crime and terrorism. He is currently researching the form and impact of the 2012 Olympic security strategy on its wider urban setting and is currently working on two large-scale ESRC and EPSRC funded research projects looking at counter-terrorism in the UK’s crowded spaces and at the future urban resilience until 2050. His other work focuses on organised crime in the EU with particular reference to the trafficking of children for criminal exploitation. He has published widely on these issues and recent books include Securing and Sustaining the Olympic City (Ashgate) and Terrorism and the Olympics (Routledge). Gemma Galdon Clavell, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain ([email protected]) Gemma Galdon Clavell is a researcher and Associate Lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the Universitat de Barcelona, where she focuses on issues related to security, the city, privacy and technology. She has previously worked for the UN Institute for Training and Research, the Transnational Institute, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and several academic institutions. She currently teaches police at the Catalan Institute for Public Security and is a guest lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma

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de Barcelona, the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez in Mexico and the Erasmus Universiteit in Rotterdam. She is currently involved in the international advisory board of Privacy International, the Latin-American Network on Surveillance Studies (LASSN) and the EU-funded projects Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) and Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies (IRISS). Eric Heilmann, University of Bourgogne, France ([email protected]) Eric Heilmann is professor in information and communication sciences at the University of Bourgogne. He has authored many studies and books on video surveillance, starting from the mid-1990s. Eric Heilmann is today considered as one of the pioneers and leading experts on issues of public safety and surveillance in France. Francisco R. Klauser, Neuchâtel University, Switzerland ([email protected]) Francisco R. Klauser is Assistant Professor in political geography at Neuchâtel University, Switzerland. His work focuses on the relationships between space, surveillance/risk and power, with a particular focus on public urban space and places of mobility. His research interests also include urban studies and socio-spatial theory. He has published two edited books on surveillance-related topics and coordinated special issues with Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Urban Studies and Information Polity. Furthermore, he has co-authored two books on video-surveillance in German and French and, in recent years, developed an international portfolio of work on issues of security and surveillance at sport mega-events and in the aviation sector.

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Christoph Musik, University of Vienna, Austria ([email protected]) Christoph Musik is currently a recipient of a DOC-team-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Department of Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna. His dissertation project – an ethnography of image processing algorithms – is integrated in an interdisciplinary research project called ‘Identification Practices and Techniques in Austria, 18th–21st century’. He has a research interest in Science and Technology Studies, especially in relation to the development and negotiation of machine vision, with a focus on pattern recognition technologies. In 2011 he was a visiting PhD student at the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University (UK). He also participated in several applied research projects at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna (2007–2010) in the areas of Security and Surveillance Studies and Higher Education Research. Charles Raab, University of Edinburgh, UK ([email protected]) Professor Charles Raab was Professor of Government in the University of Edinburgh, and is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professorial Fellow. He serves on boards of many research projects and academic journals, and on governmental expert groups. With the Surveillance Studies Network, he coauthored A Report on the Surveillance Society (2006) and an Update Report (2010) for the UK Information Commissioner. He has conducted research on policy and regulatory issues, including privacy, data protection, surveillance, police co-operation, identity management, data sharing and egovernment, and his many publications include (with C. Bennett) The Governance of Privacy (2003; 2006) as well as reports for the European Commission, UK and Scottish government agencies, and civil society groups. He was the Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution for an Inquiry resulting in Surveillance: Citizens and the State, HL Paper 18, Session 2008–09. He participates in several EU-funded research projects concerning surveillance, security, privacy and democracy.

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Armando Romero Cruz, Universidad de Burgos, Spain ([email protected]) Armando Romero Cruz holds a Masters degree in Public Management from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has worked at the urban agency for ecology of Barcelona and the University of Girona. His research interests include immigration and public health, intercultural dynamics and the different uses of public space and its re-appropriation by civil society. He is currently living in Cyprus as an EVS and collaborating with NGO’s dedicated to peace building. Ola Svenonius, Södertörn University, Sweden ([email protected]) Dr. Ola Svenonius is a political science researcher and lecturer at the Södertörn University, Sweden. He is active in the fields of surveillance studies, critical security studies, and public administration. His research interests include security policy and governance, surveillance, and consumer rights. Ola Svenonius defended his PhD thesis “Sensitising Urban Transport Security – Surveillance and Policing in Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw” in December 2011. The thesis is a comparative study of security policy change and the introduction of surveillance technologies in three European public transport systems. Ola Svenonius is an expert member of the Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) COST Action IS0807 and the Surveillance Studies Network Emmeline Taylor, Australian National University, Australia ([email protected]) Emmeline Taylor is a Lecturer at the Australian National University. Her research has focused on the societal impacts of surveillance technologies and exploring the disproportionate attention focused on specific populations. She has published extensively on the growing use of surveillance in educational institutions and its integration into pedagogical apparatus. Recent projects include examining the surveillance processes experienced by migrating populations, developing offender perspectives on property crime, and evaluating the effectiveness of alternatives to custody and approaches to decarceration.

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Eric Töpfer, German Institute for Human Rights, Germany ([email protected]) Eric Töpfer is senior researcher at the German Institute for Human Rights, Berlin, Germany. His research is focussed on policing, new surveillance and civil liberties at the domestic and European levels. He has written extensively on video surveillance and European police cooperation, including articles in the European Journal of Criminology, Kriminologisches Journal and Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP. Pieter Wagenaar, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands ([email protected]) Dr. F. Pieter Wagenaar is assistant professor at the VU University Amsterdam, Department of Governance Studies. His research interest is in the informatization of public administration, and in administrative history. He has published in Public Administration, the International Review of Administrative Sciences, Administration & Society, Administrative Theory & Praxis and the International Journal of Public Administration. C. William R. Webster, University of Stirling, UK ([email protected]) Dr William Webster is a Senior Lecturer in Public Management in the Stirling Management School, University of Stirling. He is the Director of the MBA in Public Services Management and a member of the European Group of Public Administration. He is the Chair of the Living in Surveillance Societies (LiSS) COST Action IS0807 (www.liss-cost.eu/) and a lead researcher on the ‘Increasing Resilience in Surveillance Societies’ (IRISS) European Commission FP7 funded research project (http://irissproject.eu/). He is a recognised expert on the emergence of new surveillance technologies in public

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service and policy settings and is a leading authority on the policies and practices surrounding the provision of closed circuit television/video surveillance cameras and systems in public places. His research interests also include the normality of technologically mediated surveillance practices in society, the governance and regulation of privacy and data protection, and the exploration of the defining characteristics of emerging surveillance societies. Lohitzune Zuloaga Lojo, Public University of Navarre, Spain ([email protected]) Lohitzune Zuloaga obtained her PhD in Sociology at the Public University of Navarre, where she is a member of the Social Changes Group. Her dissertation and subsequent research has focused on public security, fear of crime and victimization measurement. She worked as a researcher on the ‘Counterterrorism crisis communications strategies for recovery and continuity’ (SAFE-COMMS) European Commission FP7 project, where she coordinates the work at the University of Burgos. She also coordinated the project ‘Integral Security: Spain 2020’ for the Fundación Alternativas. She is a visiting researcher at Centroamerican University “José Simeon Cañas” in El Salvador and the Center for Citizen Security Studies (CESC) at University of Chile.

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Nils Zurawski, University of Hamburg, Germany, ([email protected]) Nils Zurawski is based within the Institute for Criminological Research at the University of Hamburg. He has developed research interests in ethnicity, identitly, culture, surveillance and the internet. He has been involved in a number of research project in the areas of surveillance (CCTV, consumption, theory, anthropology of surveillance, doping), identity, urban studies, space, political anthropology, violence, Internet and media, qualitative methods. He is an active researcher in the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) and the LiSS COST Action.

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Contents Introduction C. William R. Webster, Eric Töpfer, Francisco R. Klauser and Charles D. Raab Author’s Biographies

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Awareness, Understanding and Experiences of CCTV Amongst Teachers and Pupils in Three UK Schools Emmeline Taylor

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Local Surveillance in a Global World: Zooming in on the Proliferation of CCTV in Catalonia Gemma Galdon Clavell

17

The Thinking Eye Is Only Half the Story: High-Level Semantic Video Surveillance Christoph Musik

37

Pure Flour in Your Bag: Governmental Rationalities of Camera Surveillance in Sweden Fredrika Björklund

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Zooming in on ‘Heterotopia’: CCTV-Operator Practices at Schiphol Airport Pieter Wagenaar and Kees Boersma

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Eastern Promise? East London Transformations and the State of Surveillance Pete Fussey

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Video Surveillance and Security Policy in France: From Regulation to Widespread Acceptance Eric Heilmann

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The Silent Growth of Video Surveillance in Italy Chiara Fonio

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The Stockholm Security Project: Plural Policing, Security and Surveillance Ola Svenonius

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From Crime Prevention to Urban Development – Politics and Resistance Concerning CCTV Cameras in a Plaza in Central Hamburg Nils Zurawski

122

CCTV in Spain: An Empirical Account of the Deployment of Video-Surveillance in a Southern-European Country Gemma Galdon Clavell, Lohitzune Zuloaga Lojo and Armando Romero

133

Author Index

145

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Awareness, understanding and experiences of CCTV amongst teachers and pupils in three UK schools Emmeline Taylor E-mail: emm [email protected]

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1. Introduction CCTV research has historically focused on four discrete dimensions: its evaluation (for example [20, 31]), the formulation of metanarrative discourses of surveillance (for example see [11,18]), its operation (for example, see [24,27] and the impact on privacy (for example, see [12,33]). What has consistently been missing from the research agenda is detailed accounts of how different groups understand and attribute meaning to the use of CCTV, and how experiences of the technology vary by individual, group, and location. This paper seeks to report the views and perceptions of pupils and teachers under visual surveillance in their schools. The ndings are organised into three central themes. Firstly, it outlines the level of awareness of CCTV at the schools amongst teachers and pupils. Awareness is inextricably linked with a number of other themes, such as the effect of CCTV upon behaviour, CCTV as a deterrent against criminal activity, and perceptions of the impact of CCTV on privacy, because in order for individuals to conceive of any of these phenomena they must rst be aware of the presence of CCTV in their locale. Second, it explores the meaning that the participants attribute to CCTV such as its objectives and the role they perceive it to have in the school. The third and nal area of investigation explores the impact and effectiveness of CCTV.1 In other words, what effect is CCTV perceived to have (impact) and does it full the objectives that the participants believed it to have been implemented to achieve (effectiveness)? 2. Understanding and experiences of CCTV There have been a limited number of studies that consider the perceptions of those monitored by CCTV. Zurawski and Czerwinski [38] surveyed 41 Hamburg residents to understand ‘the general knowledge that citizens of Hamburg have about CCTV in relation to their general socio-spatial perceptions . . . of the city’ (2008: 52). Similar projects have been conducted such as Fischer and Helten [16]. However, 1 This paper is limited to exploration of these three themes. Other ndings emerged from the research, such as the impact of CCTV on privacy (see [34]) and the regulation of schools by the Data Protection Act 1998 (see [35]) for further details of these ndings.

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E. Taylor / Awareness, understanding and experiences of CCTV amongst teachers and pupils in three UK schools

hitherto studies have tended to focus exclusively on the impact CCTV has on feelings of safety and / or spatial perceptions rather than a detailed understanding of how it is perceived by those subject to its eld of vision. In addition, there has only been minimal consideration of the school as a unit of research within the CCTV and surveillance paradigm. Monahan [26] has written on the emergence of surveillance technologies in schools in the United States analysing secondary data to argue that public debate has been dominated by discussion of isolated violent events in schools by the mass media. More recently, McCahill and Finn [25] conducted research in three schools to explore how the subjective experience of surveillance differs by class and gender; and in addition the present author has studied the impact of CCTV in schools on privacy (2010a), and the regulation of school CCTV systems by the Data Protection Act 1998 [35]. It has been highlighted that ‘what is often missing in this literature is a detailed micro-sociological account of the construction and operation of visual surveillance systems in different institutional settings’ [22: xiv]. This research aims to begin the process of lling this void by examining the perceptions of individuals under CCTV surveillance in educational institutions. 3. Methodology The ndings presented below emanate from research conducted in three schools in the North of England. Each of the schools has been given a pseudonym to preserve anonymity; ‘Single Sex Comprehensive’, ‘City Comprehensive’ and ‘Urban High’. The schools were self-selecting in that they responded to the research request that was made to all schools that reported having more than 20 CCTV cameras in operation within a chosen Local Education Authority (LEA). The consultation was comprised of focus groups with pupils and semi-structured interviews with teachers and staff members.

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3.1. Focus groups Four focus groups with pupils were held, with a total of 21 participants. Focus groups were used for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was envisaged that pupils would not have engaged in in-depth thought or discussion about CCTV prior to the focus groups. The method facilitates the development of ideas and the elicitation of a wide variety of different views in relation to a specic topic [6: 338]. An individual may answer in a certain way during a focus group, but as he or she listens to other’s views they may qualify or modify their initial opinion. They provide insight into how individuals collectively make sense of a phenomenon and construct meanings around it. Furthermore, focus groups can limit the concern about ‘getting the right answer’ associated with the ‘question-followed-by-answer’ approach of one-to-one structured interviews. The aim was to allow the pupils to explore their own views without feeling inhibited or tested in any way. The selection of focus group participants was a joint product of the project aims, which were emphasised in discussions with gatekeepers, and the latter’s subjective assessment of the pupils who would be able to engage with the subject matter and articulate their perceptions and opinions. Thus, in one case, members of the Student Council were selected because the gatekeeper perceived them to be the most appropriate candidates because they were used to being consulted on a wide range of issues. In another school, a PSHE class and a Sociology class were viewed by the gatekeeper as the best place to draw participants from because he viewed the research as having some relevance to them, and therefore could justify their withdrawal from their lesson. In each of these cases the teacher of the class was asked to select a group of pupils to form the focus groups. It is unknown what criteria the teacher employed to do this.

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3.2. Semi-structured interviews Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the views on CCTV held by teachers and staff at the school. The interviews aimed to explore the experience of CCTV from the staff perspective as individuals who are subjected to its operation whilst going about their working day. For this reason, semi-structured interviews were particularly suitable as ‘they generate representations that embody the subjects’ voices minimizing at least as much as possible, the voice of the researcher’ [6, p. 96] As far as possible, the interviews were designed to develop organically with the emphasis on the interviewees’ personal experiences, meanings and perceptions, rather than elicit answers to a rigid, predetermined set of questions. Bryman [7] emphasises the importance of exibility when using semi-structured interviews: ‘Flexibility is important in such areas as varying the order of questions, following up leads, and clearing up inconsistencies’ (2001: 323; see also [6, p. 92]). This was of particular importance as the aim was to draw out the individuals’ perceptions and attitudes regarding the use of CCTV, rather than generate responses based on preconceptions as to what these might be. In total, eight teachers were interviewed (one at Single Sex Comprehensive, three at City Comprehensive, and four at Urban High). The Site Manager was also interviewed at Single Sex Comprehensive and City Comprehensive. 3.2.1. The case studies A brief description of each of the schools is provided below.

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4. Single sex comprehensive This school is a single sex comprehensive with over 1300 pupils and is located three miles from a large city centre. The school site consisted of three large external buildings with a large grassed area setting the school back from the main road. There is twelve foot high fencing all around the perimeter (although in places this has been torn down). Access to the school for both cars and pedestrians is through a large iron gate which is electronically controlled by reception via a CCTV camera and intercom. The gate is open at the start and end of the school day, but should be locked at all other times. The CCTV system was funded by a consortium made up of the LEA, the police and school funds. A number of crime prevention strategies were reportedly implemented alongside the CCTV system. These included improved lighting in the school grounds and the heightening of the perimeter fence. The school was also protected from unwelcome intrusions by the electric gate and manoeuvrability around the school was limited by an electronic fob system that operated the internal doors to a number of corridors. The CCTV system was made up of 33 cameras located both internally and externally. All of the external cameras are capable of 360 degree vision and feature pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) capabilities. The cameras were located throughout the school, with no areas deemed ‘off-limits’, although notably there were no cameras in the pupil’s toilets (it was reported that this was being considered at the time the study took place). Classrooms, the dining hall, corridors, locker areas, and changing rooms all had CCTV coverage. The cameras were in operation and constantly recording 24 hours a day. They operated on an automatic 7-day turnover system whereby tapes were automatically recorded over after a period of a week if the images were not required. The system was supported by mobile phones and handheld radio transceivers operated by the site managers. The monitoring hub was located in the reception area of the school but was not constantly staffed, and there were no staff specically dedicated to the monitoring of the CCTV system. The hub featured a

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9-split screen and one single screen for targeted observations. All the controls for operating the system, zooming in on targets, panning the areas, switching camera, etc., were also located in the reception area. The images generated by the cameras could be accessed by any computer in the networked system by any member of staff. A separate screen was located in a private ofce for viewing recordings of serious incidents away from the vicinity of the reception desk.

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5. City comprehensive City Comprehensive is a large secondary school with more than 1,000 pupils. Although it is a mixed school in terms of gender, at the time of the research there were many more boys than girls. The school had a higher than average proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, indicating a higher than average level of deprivation amongst the pupil intake.2 This was also reiterated anecdotally by teachers at the school. In terms of ethnicity, approximately half of the pupils were White British. There were many minority ethnic groups represented and there was a high proportion of pupils for whom English was a second language. The proportion of pupils with a statement of special educational need was above average. In a similar vein, the number of ‘looked after children’3 was regarded was being high by the most recent Ofsted report, as was the number of pupils who joined and left the school during the academic year. The school building was built in the early part of the 2000s. It consists of a number of buildings that are adjoined and form a large courtyard in the centre. There is also a separate complex of buildings which house the sports facilities. The school building is situated in relatively large grounds which are demarcated by a large perimeter fence. It is also anked by two major roads. There are approximately 80 cameras at the school. A map was provided which gave the exact location of each camera. The system was tted in two waves and thereby consisted of what were described as ‘old’ and ‘new’ cameras. It was explained that there was much deliberation regarding the placement of the ‘new’ cameras to afford the maximum (and uninterrupted) coverage, as the ‘old’ system had resulted in frustration because their positioning and location were regarded as ill-conceived. Corridors were often covered by more than one camera to increase the likelihood of an incident being captured. The cameras were located both internally and externally. The cameras outside were 360 degree dome cameras, whereas internal cameras featured pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) capabilities, but these were reportedly never used. The camera coverage was extensive, but not ubiquitous. Some classrooms had cameras, whereas others did not. Classrooms tted with cameras tended to contain equipment such as projectors, computers, sports equipment, musical instruments and scientic apparatus. In contrast to Single Sex Comprehensive, cameras were located in the pupils’ toilets (of both sexes). In this instance, 360 degree cameras were installed, although it was stressed by the Site Manager that when cubicle doors were closed they were positioned so as not to be able to see under or over them. There were two Site Managers at City Comprehensive and one had responsibility for monitoring the cameras which he described as taking up ‘a large chunk’ of his working day. Indeed, in terms of the three schools, City Comprehensive was the only one in which a member of staff was tasked with proactively monitoring the CCTV screens. There were several monitoring stations located around the school so 2

These ndings are taken from the most recent Ofsted Inspection Report conducted at the school. Full references are not provided so as to preserve the anonymity of the school. 3 The term ‘looked after’ was introduced by the Children Act 1989 and refers to children who are subject to care orders and those who are voluntarily accommodated by local authorities in England.

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that the Site Manager could access the cameras with relative speed if required. There was a central monitoring hub housing the recording equipment. 6. Urban high

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Urban High had approximately 1500 pupils at the time of research, with an adjoining Sixth Form College catering for approximately 350 students. The pupil intake was relatively diverse, including economically prosperous and signicantly disadvantaged families, although it is commonly regarded as being predominantly middle class (and this is reected in the majority of its catchment area). Pupils were from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, but the majority, approximately two thirds, according to the latest Ofsted information, were from White British backgrounds. There were almost 450 pupils for whom English was a second language (although command of English was very secure). The number of pupils who had special educational needs was below the national average. The school is considered to be very popular with parents and is heavily over-subscribed each year. The latest Ofsted inspection described it as a ‘very good school’ with some ‘excellent features’. Standards of attainment were above average. Urban High had recently been redeveloped and the school building replaced by a new ‘state-of-theart’ school completed just before the turn of the century. Much consideration was reportedly given to maximising the protection from criminal damage, protecting pupils from unwanted intruders and deterring bullying in the design of the school. It was reported that alongside the CCTV system, a key element of the design of the school was to allow for ‘natural surveillance’. As such, large internal windows were used for senior teachers’ ofces allowing them to overlook the corridors (or perhaps more importantly give the impression to pupils that they were potentially being observed in panopticon-esque fashion). In the reception area, staff had access to CCTV screens. The Site Manager was unsure exactly how many cameras the school had but estimated it to be between 50 and 60. There was also a ‘control ofce’ where the CCTV footage was recorded and could be viewed. Similar to City Comprehensive, the use of CCTV extended to the pupil’s toilets, the justication for which was to enable staff to ensure that groups of pupils were not hiding in the toilets, intimidating or bullying other pupils. 7. Awareness of CCTV in the school When asked, the research participants were all aware that there were CCTV cameras in operation at their school. However, there were varying responses regarding whether their presence was noted day to day.4 In the main, teachers indicated that they were not particularly alert to the fact that there were CCTV cameras in operation at the school as indicated by the extracts outlined below: When I rst joined, I wasn’t really aware of the cameras in the school. They didn’t tell us. I saw cameras around and about but no-one really stopped me and said ‘there are cameras here, here and here.’ (Teacher 1, City Comprehensive) 4 None of the teachers or pupils referred to the use of signage informing them of the presence of CCTV. The ICO Code of Practice stipulates that ‘adequate signage’ is required in order for visual data to be processed ‘fairly and lawfully’ under the Data Protection Act 1998. Although all of the schools had signs at their main entrance, at least, the absence of any reference to them in interviews and focus groups indicates that they were not necessarily salient.

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Teachers who worked at the schools when CCTV was installed felt that it was a fait accompli, whereas those who were hired after installation were not informed about the CCTV system prior to taking up their post. Teachers described becoming used to the presence of the cameras over time, for example:

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I don’t really take heed of them now. They’re just there. You don’t notice them, I don’t worry about them . . . I think I was more aware of them when I rst started but you just get used to them. I don’t notice now, but now that I’ve spoken to you I’ll probably get all paranoid again [laughs] (Teacher 3, City Comprehensive). This teacher reported initially being more wary of, even ‘paranoid’ about, the cameras but that this feeling subsided as the cameras became part of the school environment. This provides support for the argument, presented by Graham [21] amongst others, that the use of CCTV becomes normalised over time., The teachers did not perceive themselves to be the true objects of observation. Rather, they believed that the CCTV cameras were being utilised to control pupil behaviour and/or to deter or detect perpetrators of criminal activities5 The consensus amongst teachers was that it was ‘easy to forget’ that the cameras were there. In contrast to the teachers, pupils were far more aware of the use of CCTV cameras in their school and many claimed to know the exact positioning of the majority of cameras. Following some deliberation, in one focus group the consensus was that pupils knew where they were located, and equally as important, where there wasn’t any camera coverage, as demonstrated in the extract below: [Pupil 1: FG1: UH] . . . if I was walking around [the school] now I could say where they [the cameras] were. I couldn’t sit here and list all the places. . . well probably most of them actually. I’m saying you know when there is one coming up. If I’m walking down the corridor, I know the places where they are. I know where to look for them. [Pupil 3: FG1: UH] Yeah, that’s true. I know the places where there aren’t any. Like I know that there aren’t any on the stairs and I know that there aren’t any where everyone goes and smokes. Even if the pupils were unable to identify and recall the exact positioning of the CCTV cameras, they could quickly identify the areas that were not covered. Another pupil stated that although an individual may not be aware of the exact location of all the cameras in the school, they would always check to see if there was one in the vicinity before engaging in any deviant behaviour. This implies that although pupils may not be fully conscious of the cameras at all times, they have internalised their presence to the extent that they would remember to look for them. Sometimes you might not know exactly where they all are but if you were gonna do something then you’d have a look about and check. What I’m saying is; you don’t need to know exactly where they are cos you can just look up to check (Pupil 2, Single Sex Comprehensive). A number of pupils commented that they felt there were an excessive number of cameras in operation at their school as outlined in the quote below: [Pupil 2, FG 2: CC] I couldn’t tell you how many there are, but there’s a lot! You’re pretty much always gonna be on one of the cameras. It’s a bit weird thinking about it now – like someone could be watching you whenever they want. Sometimes you forget. It’s like being followed and you don’t know. You think you’re alone and you’re not. [Pupil does a pretend shiver to signify that they nd this creepy]. It’s weird! 5 A similar nding was reported in a survey conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), in which just one per cent reported that they believed the CCTV was being used for ‘staff monitoring other than for training’ and no respondents stated that it was used for ‘teacher training observation’ [1].

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The pupils often identied themselves as the intended objects of the CCTV cameras which may explain to some extent the relatively high level of awareness of the cameras. If people believe themselves to be under scrutiny it is understandable that they will have a heightened sensitivity to the apparatus of their surveillance. 8. Understanding the purpose of CCTV There were different views on what the primary purpose of CCTV was. Often there were multiple objectives cited by the same individual or group. Importantly, there was a discernable dichotomy of opinion regarding the focus of CCTV surveillance between teachers and pupils. 8.1. Crime prevention The teachers invariably cited ‘crime prevention’ as one of the main objectives of CCTV, although this term was used very loosely. They believed that CCTV had been installed to prevent illicit or deviant activity. When this was explored further, it transpired that the main crimes it could be used to tackle were break-ins and intrusion by strangers, as reected in the quotes below: I think CCTV is there to prevent crime. It’s a deterrent. To stop people breaking in, or at least make them think twice. (Teacher 4, Urban High) The cameras will be able to capture any intruders on the site. It can alert staff to the presence of someone in or around the school. (Teacher 3, City Comprehensive).

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In particular, ‘Single Sex Comprehensive’, used the CCTV in a bid to alleviate the threat posed by intruders coming onto the school premises. It was explained that the school had historically had a problem with local gangs and the school often became a site where contentions and conicts would be played out. As one teacher expressed it: The risk from pupils within the school is minimal. The risk here is that someone from outside will come in. We get a lot of ex-pupils coming in, occasionally in cars which will y down the drive, whiz round and then they are off again. You get older boys hanging around outside waiting for youngsters coming out. We presume that it is gang-related unless we see a [school] uniform. Our staff put themselves on the line all too frequently. The CCTV helps us to manage the situation, monitor what is taking place and compile the evidence that we need (Teacher 1, Single Sex Comprehensive). The same individual did not see CCTV as having a deterrent effect because the intruders ‘couldn’t care less’ about the cameras. However, it was noted that at times the alleged gang members would deliberately attempt to hide their identity by using items of clothing such as bandanas, hats and hooded tops, although this behaviour was not linked exclusively to the CCTV cameras per se but rather any eld of observation that could potentially provide a positive identication of them: They have scarves up to their eyes and their hoods up. You get to recognize them, the same characters, but you can’t identify them if you understand what I mean? Even capturing them on the cameras is useless most of the time in respect of identifying them to the police. I guess it can be of some use to us as we can monitor whether it’s the same individuals or whether perhaps a new spat has broken out. (Teacher 1, Single Sex Comprehensive). Although crime control was invariably considered to be the primary objective of CCTV, it transpired through the course of the eldwork that it was actually used mainly for an entirely different purpose: to control pupil behaviour.

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E. Taylor / Awareness, understanding and experiences of CCTV amongst teachers and pupils in three UK schools

8.2. Monitoring and controlling pupil behaviour It became apparent from the interviews and focus groups that CCTV was also regarded as a tool of discipline and control to prevent deviant or delinquent behaviour among the pupils. The extract below exemplies that the CCTV cameras are presumed to be focused upon pupils rather than teachers: [Teacher 2, Urban High] The main purpose, I suppose, is as a deterrent against people being naughty in school. Stopping ghts and things like that in the corridors or outside. Stopping them getting up to no good. [Interviewer] Any people in particular? [Teacher 2, Urban High] Yes, the pupils. I would hope the teachers are behaving! Teachers were perceived to be exempt from the scrutiny of the cameras as they were considered to conform unquestionably to the accepted behaviour codes of the school. Indeed, the very suggestion of their not doing so evoked a humoured response of mock outrage from the teacher. Furthermore the possibility of CCTV cameras being installed in areas over which teachers had a sense of ownership, the staff toilets or the staff room, evoked objections from the teachers: I certainly wouldn’t expect them to be put in the staff toilets. They are in the pupils’ toilets for a reason. It’s not needed in the staff toilets. If there was a problem then perhaps I would be happy for them (Teacher 3, City Comprehensive). The view that one of the main objectives of the CCTV cameras was to ensure good behaviour from students was also held by some of the pupils. For example, one pupil at Single Sex Comprehensive stated that the cameras were:

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To keep an eye on people. Check that they aren’t getting into trouble or breaking the law. It’s just to keep everyone in check innit? (Pupil 1, Single Sex Comprehensive). These quotes support the argument that CCTV is used in schools to ensure compliance with the rules of the school, which reect those of the wider society. However, the presence of the CCTV cameras did not always promote ‘habituated anticipatory conformity’ as outlined by Norris and Armstrong [25: 6]. Some pupils would misbehave if they were inclined to regardless of being potentially observed by CCTV: If they are gonna misbehave then they will. If they are gonna be good then they’ll be good. I don’t think it makes a massive difference to their behaviour. I think it’s the teachers that do that rather than cameras (Teacher 4, Urban High). These ndings are congruent with those found in a survey conducted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers [1]. It found that 50 percent of respondents stated that the CCTV was used for ‘pupil behaviour monitoring’ and 16 percent reported that it was for ‘pupil behaviour control’ [1]. Similar to the teacher above, the respondents of the ATL survey were not convinced that the CCTV cameras actually improved pupil behaviour; 50 percent of the teachers in the survey reported that they did not think that the pupils at their school behaved differently when they knew that they were being lmed by the surveillance cameras [1].

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8.3. CCTV as a ‘guardian of truth’ A recurrent theme to emerge was the view that CCTV could be used to protect the innocent from false allegations. The premise was that CCTV could present a value-neutral reection of reality should an individual’s actions, and invariably teachers’ actions, be called into question, as the following quote indicates: Another purpose, I suppose, is to make sure if something happens we can check who was there and what was going on (Teacher 1, City Centre Comprehensive). One teacher attributed the need to be able to verify events to a growing ‘litigation culture’ in the United Kingdom:6 In our day and age the CCTV becomes a necessary evil. No one wants it, but within this culture of litigation and allegation it is necessary to protect ones’ self. It is necessary to document the true version of events. It cannot be one word against another, as it will be battled out in the courts and the truth doesn’t always prevail. You have to be really careful and having a veriable version of events has just become an unfortunate consequence of the society we now live in. I certainly would not want that taken away (Teacher 1, Single Sex Comprehensive).

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In this respect, CCTV was viewed as a ‘guardian of truth’ with some teachers welcoming what they considered to be an impartial medium that could be called upon should they need to negate any false allegations that may be thrust upon them (usually by pupils or parents). In a similar vein, some teachers approved of the cameras because they felt that they were a useful resource to draw upon to try and get pupils to give a truthful version of events. They were called upon as an ‘all seeing eye’ that could verify or disprove a pupil’s version of events. As one teacher stated, simply referring to possible CCTV footage was enough to elicit confessions from some pupils: Sometimes you might mention the cameras if an incident has taken place and you are not yet sure of the facts. It can make people own up. They’ll deny everything and then you say ‘OK, I’ll go and watch the CCTV footage then’. They’ll go ‘no, no, no’ because they realise that they would be in a lot more trouble if they lied and then they were found out. It can be useful in those situations. You can denitely call their bluff (Teacher 2, Urban High). Similar methods for utilizing the CCTV cameras have been identied in other schools, although not always quite so positively as the teacher from Urban High. For example, a newspaper presented the story of a primary school that used the CCTV system (installed in every classroom, the canteen and reception area) to get to the bottom of a hidden pair of shoes [22]. The school bursar explained: ’Someone hid a child’s shoes and we found it on the tape so we knew where they were and who had hidden them. No one was owning up so we rewound the tape. If the teachers say, "I will rewind the tape" it makes them own up’ (quoted in [22]).7 6 A growing litigation culture against schools has been identied in the in the UK and has been reported in the mass media. For example, David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said many of his members had become concerned about the growth of litigation for incidents such as accidents in the classroom, exclusions, and exam results [5]. 7 The Information Commissioner’s Ofce (ICO) described this use of the CCTV system as ’deeply intrusive’ as it presented ’privacy concerns for teachers, students and their parents’ (quoted in [22]).

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9. Impact and effectiveness of CCTV This section reports the impact that CCTV was considered to have, exploring themes such as fear of crime, feelings of safety and the perceived ability of CCTV to reduce crime. Clearly, the effectiveness of CCTV for each individual is dependent upon what they believe the objectives of CCTV are. For example, an individual who believes the main objective of CCTV is to identify perpetrators of crime might describe it as being very ineffective, whereas someone who regards it as primarily a deterrent against bad behaviour by pupils in the classroom might nd it very effective. It is important that this is borne in mind whilst exploring notions of effectiveness. The multidimensionality of CCTV is often overlooked in sociological and criminological explorations of its effectiveness in favour of a one dimensional review of its quantitative impact upon crime statistics. 9.1. Deterring crime and deviance Whether CCTV is effective in the prevention of deviant or criminal acts is reliant upon CCTV having a deterrent effect. Deterrence is often cited as a key attribute of CCTV [13,20,32] but there have been mixed ndings regarding the deterrent effect of CCTV. An evaluation funded by the Home Ofce [17] stated that there were deterrent effects in three of their case studies (‘Hawkeye’, ‘City Hospital’ and ‘Eastcap Estate’), with a further one case study (‘Borough’) displaying evidence of an initial deterrent effect which the researchers infer may have worn off after time (2005: 5). Indeed, they note that any deterrent effect of the cameras may well wane after the initial implementation:

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The bulk of the observed reduction in crime occurred between the time at which installation works began and the live date of the system, suggesting that the installation works provided a deterrence to local offenders, which was sustained, although not increased, following the installation of the cameras. The initial impact was dramatic [18: 5]. This nding has been replicated in research conducted by Armitage, Smyth and Pease. They found evidence that some offence categories showed the most signicant reductions after the cameras had been installed but before they actually became operational, suggesting a deterrent, as opposed to detection, effect. In Burnley, crime began to decline approximately one month before the cameras were installed, suggesting that publicity may have played a part in the crime reduction effects [3]. Opinion was divided across the three school case studies. It was mainly the teachers who alluded to a deterrent effect of the cameras and, in line with the ndings throughout this paper, the cameras were viewed as having an impact on both the criminal behaviour of offenders external to the school as well as the misbehaviour of pupils attending the school. I think it can make people think twice. You know; if you knew there were four cameras pointing your way then maybe you’ll reconsider (Teacher 2, City Comprehensive). The Routine Activity Theory [10] assumes that offenders go through a process of rational thought before they perform a criminal or deviant act. The perspective that offenders rationalise their actions and consciously weigh up the benets against the risks was also adopted by one of the teachers who felt that CCTV could contribute towards tipping the balance so that the risks would be perceived as being greater than the rewards for a would-be criminal. I think it makes things harder. I guess it increases the risk being taken. You get enough things like that then surely they [an offender] would just give up and move on. It wouldn’t be worth it would it? (Teacher 1, City Comprehensive).

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However, this view was rejected by another teacher who did not believe that all criminals went through a process of rationalising their actions before committing a crime. I don’t know whether the fact that there is a camera there would make someone stop and think ‘oh hang on’. If someone is going to break in, then they’ve already made that decision. The CCTV, I guess, is just another thing to get around, like getting through the window, getting past the alarm . . . Thing is, wouldn’t a lot of people like that be on drugs anyway – would they even care? (Teacher 3, City Comprehensive) This perception of CCTV as ‘just another thing to get around’ supports Gill and Loveday’s [19] nding that ‘CCTV cameras were no bigger a threat than anyone or anything else’ (p. 82). Furthermore, it is in line with the assertion that not all criminals make rational and informed decisions about whether to commit a crime or not. It has been claimed that impassioned, or ‘expressive’ crimes might not be affected by CCTV as they are less likely to be underpinned by rational thought processes [9]. Deisman [13] argues that deterrence will only occur if the offender is aware of the cameras, believes there is a heightened risk of detection, and believes this detection will increase the chance of being positively identied and ultimately apprehended. Deterrence therefore can only work if the offender is aware of the cameras, believes them to pose a real threat in terms of successfully identifying them (or resulting in the rapid despatch of a ‘capable guardian’ to the scene) and/or the offender is reasonably motivated to avoid detection. One teacher described how a previous school that he had worked at implemented ‘dummy’ cameras, thus alluding to a belief in the deterrent effect of the cameras:

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At the last school I worked at there were dummy CCTV cameras, so it must have thought of as a deterrent to something. Whether that worked or not, I don’t know (Teacher 3, Urban High). As Norris notes, the potential deterrence of CCTV can only ever generate ‘non-events’, which by their nature are unobservable and so empirically difcult to determine [26: 6]. It would be interesting to explore whether a ‘dummy’ system would return the same impact as a live system that was never, or very rarely, monitored or reviewed, and whether any impact was sustainable. Pupils were not convinced about the deterrent properties of the CCTV cameras. For example, in the extract outlined above, one pupil attending City Comprehensive stated in respect to the impact CCTV can have upon an incident taking place: ‘it’s not gonna stop it’. They could not see how CCTV could function in order to prevent something from happening, in this case a bag being stolen. 9.2. Feelings of safety There have been mixed ndings in terms of whether individuals report feeling safer in areas with CCTV. Sarno et al. [29] found that CCTV did make people feel safer. However, the majority of claims to CCTV improving safety have come from promotional materials and are usually not supported with any empirical evidence. Conversely, where studies have been conducted, they have shown that CCTV has little discernable impact on feelings of safety among the general public. For example, in November 1994, 32 CCTV cameras were installed in Glasgow city centre. Fifteen months after installation, only 41 per cent of people questioned were aware of the cameras [30]. Surveys revealed that feelings of safety in the city centre did not improve following CCTV installation. Furthermore, there was no difference in awareness of CCTV between those who felt safe in the city centre and those who did not (Ibid.). CCTV cameras were regarded as being protective by teachers, for example:

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It can be useful for managing the school: to ensure that the pupils are safe and in the right place. If something were to happen such as a re, or some people were to get on the premises with the intention to cause harm then the CCTV may be our rst line of defence (Teacher 1, Single Sex Comprehensive). In contrast, the pupils reported that CCTV did not make them feel safer. However, it is important to recognise that perceptions of feeling safe, and an actual increase in the safety of an individual are very different. As this study did not seek to identify changes in the actual frequency of incidents, it is impossible to comment on whether the perception amongst pupils (that CCTV didn’t increase their safety) or teachers (CCTV improved pupil safety) was more accurate.8 A number of pupils stated that they would prefer the presence of a member of staff as they felt that the cameras would be fairly ineffective if an incident were to take place: It should be actual teachers looking out for bad behaviour, not cameras. Cameras do not stop people from doing things they shouldn’t. The cameras aren’t watched, I don’t think. I think they just record most of the time. What good is that? It’s not going to stop people being naughty. If a teacher was watching through the camera then they are not close to the place they are watching so it’ll take them a while to get there. The ght or whatever will probably be over by then or the damage will have been done (Pupil 1: FG 2: CC).

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Furthermore, some pupils were confused as to how the cameras could make anyone feel safer. This was mainly due to the fact that the cameras were not proactively utilised in any of the schools; instead, they were a tool to be used after an event rather than for intervening in a developing situation or preventing something happening. [Pupil 4: FG2: CC]: I don’t think it makes you feel safer. Why would it? What’s it gonna do? It might record you being beat up or having summat taxed [stolen] but it’s not gonna stop it. It’s not gonna give you your things back. [Pupil 3: FG2: CC]: Maybe it could if it identies who took things from you? [Pupil 4: FG2: CC]: Yeah, maybe; but I’m just saying it won’t stop it in the rst place. If you don’t wanna report it then what’s the use? No one would ever know – just you, them and the camera. I wouldn’t report it. It could just make it worse. [Pupil 2: FG2: CC]: Grassing, man. The extract above demonstrates that the presence of CCTV did not always make pupils feel safer. Although CCTV could potentially prove the identity of an assailant, this was not regarded as benecial to the victim who might not want to report the incident for fear that they might exacerbate the situation. This nding is important for understanding the role that CCTV can play in the school environment. It demonstrates that an unmonitored CCTV system is reliant on victims reporting incidents in order for any visual evidence to be collected. In light of this, the teachers’ fairly optimistic assessment of CCTV protecting pupils and discouraging misbehaviour, is actually reliant on processes external to the CCTV system i.e. the willingness of the victim (or others) to report the occurrence of an incident. The 8 Given the inconclusiveness of the effectiveness of CCTV, if CCTV improves feelings of safety without actually reducing the likelihood of something happening, this can create a false sense of security and increase risk. For example, an individual might choose not to walk through a poorly lit alleyway on their way home but rather take a longer route. However, seeing that there is a CCTV camera monitoring the alleyway they may perceive that they are being afforded a degree of protection and opt for that route instead. On the other hand, it has been argued that the presence of CCTV might make people more security-conscious as well as making places safer because there are more people using them as a result of the CCTV.

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use of the word ‘grassing’ is particularly pertinent in the quote above as it reects a culture of silence amongst pupils whereby you don’t ‘tell’ on another pupil. Yates [37] has reported similar ndings in ethnographic research conducted into working class youth and crime and describes the phenomenon as the ‘neighbourhood dogma’ of ‘not grassing’..The use of CCTV instead of the physical presence of staff was viewed as having potentially disastrous consequences in events requiring urgent intervention: If someone got stabbed in school, they would never get a teacher there in time to stop them. And anyway, if that kind of thing is going to happen then it will whether there are cameras there or not. It could happen anywhere: on the way home from school, at the bus stop, in the park. Those cameras don’t do nothing. There are loads of ghts still (Pupil 2, FG2: CC). Increased or decreased feelings of safety are bound up with the perception of how CCTV impacts upon criminal or deviant behaviour. Here we see that the pupil does not feel any safer because they do not believe CCTV can have any impact upon an event taking place. CCTV is considered to be a reactive tool which has little impact on the occurrence of events. It is also apparent that these pupils did not believe CCTV to have a deterrent effect upon perpetrators of crime and deviance within the school. The theme of deterrence is further explored below. As illustrated in the preceding sections, CCTV was believed to have numerous functions within the school environment, such as deterring intruders, preventing crime and protecting innocent individuals from false claims made about them. Importantly, this will impact upon the view of those consulted as to how effective the CCTV system is or can be. It is paramount to recognise in terms of efcacy that individuals may discuss CCTV with different expectations of it. For example, one teacher could regard CCTV as being very effective at deterring pupils from ghting in the corridors, but they may see it as inadequate and ineffective at preventing vandalism to the school property out of school hours. The point here is that the implementation of any CCTV system must be based on tangible objectives upon which evaluation can be based. Furthermore, any such evaluation must take into consideration the impact the system has upon those that are subjected to it on a day to day basis.

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9.3. CCTV and displacement Linked to the themes of awareness and deterrence is displacement. An individual may decide not to commit a criminal or deviant act in an area covered by CCTV cameras, but rather than being completely deterred they simply move to a location where there is no coverage. In this respect, deterrence is only spatial. Within the connes of the school, acts being displaced from one area to another do not provide real reductions in criminal or deviant acts as they still occur on the premises. Evidence of the possible displacement of deviant or illicit behaviour was identied by pupils when discussing their awareness of cameras, they noted that smokers would simply move away from areas with camera coverage. [Pupil 2, FG1: UH] I know the places where there aren’t any. Like I know that there aren’t any on the stairs, and I know that there aren’t any where everyone goes and smokes. [Pupil 4, FG1: UH] That’s true. Why don’t they put them there – everyone knows that’s where people go to smoke and to wag it [play truant], so surely they’d be better off there than in the middle of the corridor where no-one is gonna do anything anyway? [Pupil 2, FG1: UH] But that’s why people go to smoke there – cos they are not there. If you put them there, then they’d just go and smoke somewhere else. [Pupil 4, FG1: UH] I guess so, but then they’d be off the school premises, so in a way it wouldn’t matter.

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The extract above supports the assertion that CCTV displaces criminal and deviant activities, rather than prevents them. Evidence of displacement has has been reported in numerous evaluation studies, for example (see [3,8]). However, all professionally conducted evaluations of CCTV have considered displacement over much greater areas than a school campus. For example, the displacement of car crime from one car park to another located some distance away, or from one town centre to a neighbouring town centre. Displacement has not been measured in such small units of distance that would exist within the school premises. 10. Discussion and conclusion This paper has outlined the understanding and meaning that teachers, pupils and staff attribute to the use of CCTV in their schools. In doing so, it has generated numerous themes to assist in understanding the impact that CCTV can have upon individuals, and wider society. The school as a microcosm of society can provide useful indicators for understanding the phenomenon of CCTV and surveillance. In particular, the research presented here provides evidence that CCTV becomes normalised to those who experience it on a routine basis, and acceptance is generated on the premise that CCTV monitors “them” and not “us”. In addition, despite the overarching perception that CCTV is implemented as a crime control technology, it is often used for myriad different purposes. These are each discussed below.

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10.1. Normalisation and habituation: Lessons in surveillance The rise of the surveillance school represents a process whereby intense technological surveillance is normalized through habituation. Throughout the research, pupils and teachers stated that although they initially might have been aware, wary or worried about the presence of the cameras this heightened sensitivity soon dissipated as the cameras were appropriated into everyday life. In the words of the Site Manager at Single Sex Comprehensive, the CCTV soon became ‘part of the wallpaper’. Even those teachers that described the CCTV as initially making them feel ‘paranoid’ explained that after time they didn’t ‘worry’, ‘notice’ or ‘take heed’ of them after they had been installed. Encouraging conformity is a key aspect of the school and is identiable in numerous mechanisms, rituals and apparatus: the school uniform depersonalizes and embodies conformity, the school bell signals when to start things and when to end, the timetable regulates the passing of time, and the subject offerings reinforce the notion that pupils are passive recipients of others’ ontologies. Foucault argues that the school as institution disciplinaire functions to create ‘subjected and practiced bodies’ that are required for the successful operation of society [15: 138, 211]. In this respect, Foucault’s theorizing is not dissimilar to the functionalist perspective that sees education as a means to socialize society’s members to adhere to the dominant norms and values that underpin it. The presence of CCTV as part of the everyday lived experience of the pupils could potentially stultify objection to intense surveillance practices amongst the next generation. It suggests that, given time, the majority of young people will come to accept surveillance practices if they are integrated into the structure and routine of their everyday life. This has important implications for CCTV, as well as the growing use of biometric surveillance technologies in schools such as Automated Fingerprint Identication Systems (AFIS), facial recognition, palm vein scanners and radio-frequency identication (RFID) microchips. 10.2. Generating acceptance: “Us” and “them” Support for CCTV is often based on the belief that CCTV is utilised to scrutinise the behaviour of “them”, the criminal, rather than “us”, the law-abiding citizen. In this binary conception of CCTV,

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acceptance is generated on the premise that CCTV operates as a source of protection for “us” that is solely aimed at controlling “them”. In institutions such as the school this becomes markedly less intuitive, but the research indicates that the dichotomy is still evident but has been transmuted. Pupils are understood by teachers to be the obvious, common sense subjects of observation – they become the “them” – whereas the teachers themselves, although clearly falling within the eld of vision, rarely considered themselves to be targeted by the CCTV cameras. CCTV was disproportionately targeted at pupils in the school, and furthermore, both teachers and pupils were aware of the unequal application of surveillance. The targeting of some individuals over others based on the prejudice and stereotypes of operators has previously been reported [21,23,27]. However, the playing eld has always been level in the rst instance, whereby the system itself provided an equal chance of surveying any individual in a given space regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, dress, etc.. In these previous studies, the prejudice and discrimination lies purely with the camera operators and their propensity to derive suspicion in stereotypical derivations of an offender’s appearance and/or behaviour. The emergence of CCTV in the school environment and its imbalanced application to inhabitants of that school, however, represents an inherent prejudice in the design and application of CCTV. For example, CCTV was installed in locations exclusively frequented by the pupils, such as the pupil’s toilets, and not in staff locations such as the staff room or staff toilets. The systems in these schools were intrinsically biased towards the young people who were monitored explicitly on their status of youth and as pupils. It could further be argued that this is indicative of the perception of young people as subordinates who are not yet in full possession of their full rights as citizens [36], or as evidence of a growing criminalization of youth. It also presents parallels to other institutions that are underpinned by control. For example, the prison in which inmates are the main focus of monitoring, and the hospital in which patients are the primary subjects of observations.

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10.3. Uses of CCTV and effectiveness Despite an overarching assumption that CCTV is used solely as a crime prevention tool, numerous other uses were identied in the schools, such as tackling bullying, reducing truancy, and deterring pupils from smoking. Opinions on the effectiveness of CCTV in fullling these objectives were mixed, with some teachers believing it was ‘helping’, ‘working’ and being ‘effective’, whilst others conceded that they were not sure exactly how effective it was. Despite this, there was an overwhelming belief that it must be having some positive impact else it would not be in use. There is currently no independent or veriable research to assert the effectiveness of CCTV in schools in tackling any of the objectives it is attributed with. Research into the effectiveness of CCTV in schools is desperately needed in order to verify or refute the claims that it is a rational and effective response to tackling crime and deviance.

References [1] [2] [3] [4]

Action Rights for Children, Schools and the Freedom of Information Act, Available at: http://www.archrights.org. uk/issues/schoolsfoi.htm (accessed: 20 May 2009), 2008. R. Armitage, To CCTV or not to CCTV: a review of current research into the effectiveness of CCTV systems in reducing crime NACRO, Community Safety Practice Brieng, 2002. R. Armitage, G. Smyth and K. Pease, Burnley CCTV Evaluation, in: Surveillance of Public Space: CCTV, Street Lighting and Crime Prevention, K. Painter and N. Tilley, eds, Monsey New York: Criminal Justice Press, 1999, pp. 225–249. A. Bacard, The Computer Privacy Handbook: A Practical Guide to Email Encryption, Data Protection and PGP Privacy Software, New York: Peachpit Press, 1995.

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[27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38]

E. Taylor / Awareness, understanding and experiences of CCTV amongst teachers and pupils in three UK schools BBC News, Schools alarmed by litigation culture [Internet], 24 May 2002. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ education/2005722.stm. (accessed: 7 February 2009). K.M. Blee V. Taylor, Semi-Structured Interviewing in Social Movement Research, in: Methods of Social Movement Research, B. Klandermans and S. Staggenborg, eds, University of Minnesota Press, 2002, pp. 92–117. A. Bryman, Social Research Methods, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. J.N. Burrows, Closed Circuit Television on the London Underground, in: Designing Out Crime, R.V.G. Clarke and P. Mayhew, eds, London: HMSO, 1980, pp. 75–83. W.J. Chambliss, Types of deviance and the effectiveness of legal sanctions, Wisconsin Law Review, Summer, 1967, pp. 703–719. R.V. Clarke and M. Felson, eds, Routine Activity and Rational Choice; Advances in Criminological Theory, Volume 5, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1993. C. Dandeker, Surveillance, Power and Modernity: Bureaucracy and Discipline from 1700 to the Present Day, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. S. Davies, Big Brother: Britain’s Web of Surveillance and the New Technological Order, London: Pan Books, 1996. W. Deisman, CCTV: Literature Review and Bibliography, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2003. J.W. Docking, Control and Discipline in Schools, London: Harper and Row Ltd, 1980. E. Durkheim, Education and Sociology, Glencoe: Free Press, 1922. F. Fischer and B. Helten, What do people think about CCTV. Findings from a Berlin survey, UrbanEye Working Paper No. 13. Available at: www.urbaneye.net/results/ue wp13.pdf, 2004. (accessed: 18 May 2009). M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of a Prison, London: Penguin Books, 1977. A. Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Vol. 2, The Nation-state and Violence, Cambridge: Polity, 1985. M. Gill and K. Loveday, What do offenders think about CCTV? in: CCTV, M. Gill, ed., Leicester: Perpetuity Press, 2003, pp. 81–92. M. Gill and A. Spriggs, Assessing the Impact of CCTV, Home Ofce Research Study 292. London: Home Ofce, 2005. S. Graham, Towards the fth utility? On the extension and normalisation of public CCTV, in: Surveillance, Closed Circuit Television and Social Control, C. Norris, J. Moran and G. Armstrong, eds, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. J. Lewis and S. Condron, Caught on a classroom spy camera – the primary school pupil who hid this girl’s shoes, in: Mail Online [Internet], 11th January 2009. Available at: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1111826/Caught-classroomspy-camera–primary-school-pupil-hid-girls-shoes.html (accessed: 31 May 2009). D. Lyon, Surveillance as Social Sorting, London: Routledge, 2003. M. McCahill, The Surveillance Web: The Rise of Visual Surveillance in an English City, Willan Publishing, 2002. M. McCahill and R. Finn, The Social impact of Surveillance in Three UK Schools: ‘Angels’, ‘Devils’ and ‘Teen Mums’, Surveillance & Society 7(3/4) (2010), 273–289. Available at: www.surveillance-and-society.org. (accessed: 11 August 2010). T. Monahan, The Surveillance Curriculum: Risk Management and Social Control in the Neoliberal School, in: Surveillance and Security: Technological Politics and Power in Everyday Life, T. Monahan, ed., London: Routledge, 2006. C. Norris and G. Armstrong, The Maximum Surveillance Society; The Rise of CCTV, Oxford: Berg, 1999. C. Norris, J. Moran and G. Armstrong, Surveillance, Closed Circuit Television and Social Control, Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998. C. Sarno, M. Hough and M. Bulos, Developing a Picture of CCTV in Southwark Town Centres: Final Report, Crime Policy Research Unit, South Bank University, 1999. The Scottish Ofce Central Research Unit, The Effect of Closed Circuit Television on recorded crime rates and public concern about crime in Glasgow, Crime and Criminal Justice Research Findings (30) (1999). E. Short and J. Ditton, Does CCTV effect crime? CCTV Today 2(2) (1995), 10–12. L. Siegel, Criminology, 4th Edition. USA: West Publishing, 1992. F. Stalder, Opinion. Privacy is not the antidote to surveillance, Surveillance and Society 1(1) (2002), 120–124. Available at: www.surveillance-and society.org/articles1/opinion.pdf, (accessed: 4 September 2008). E. Taylor, I spy with my little eye: the use of CCTV in schools and the impact on privacy, The Sociological Review 58(3) (2010), 381–405. E. Taylor, UK Schools, CCTV and the Data Protection Act 1998, Journal of Education Policy (2011). B. Warnick, Surveillance cameras in schools, in: Harvard Educational Review 77(3) (2007), 317–343. J. Yates, You Just Don’t Grass: Youth, Crime and Grassing’ in a Working Class Community, Youth Justice 6(3) (2006), 195–210. N. Zurawski and S. Czerwinski, Maps and Meaning: Views from a Survey on Safety and CCTV in Germany, Surveillance and Society 5(1) (2008), 51–72. Available at: www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles5(1)/maps.pdf. (accessed: 18 May 2009).

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Local surveillance in a global world: Zooming in on the proliferation of CCTV in Catalonia Gemma Galdon Clavell Institut de Govern i Pol´tiques P´ubliques (IGOP-UAB), Autonomous University of Barcelona, M`odul de Recerca A, Barcelona, Spain E-mail: [email protected]

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Abstract. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems are a growing phenomenon in most Western countries and a xed item on security agendas in urban environments around the world. But while several authors have studied the proliferation of CCTV from a comparative perspective, in most cases the analysis is focused at the national level, assuming that local processes are no more than the locus of implementation of national agendas. Moreover, issues related to political congurations and recongurations, historical factors and internal dynamics of power have seldom been tackled, and some of the assumptions about proliferation patterns in the most widely researched areas have become general assumptions. The new empirical research ndings presented in this article offer a detailed and empirically evidenced account of the political and policy environment surrounding the uptake of video surveillance in Catalonia and suggests that zooming in on local processes adds complexity to the understanding of the process of CCTV proliferation at the global level. Specically, the article addresses: the role of local/global interaction in the emergence of CCTV as a new orthodoxy, the relationship between video surveillance and economic and commercial pressures on urban restructuring, the role of party politics and political ideologies in surveillance policy, and the specic articulation of the interaction between video surveillance and urban disorder. The article ends by exploring both local narratives and global-local policy dynamics, concluding that there is a need to conduct further research on the specic ways in which CCTV policy travels through borders and between the scales of government, and the processes by which it becomes embedded in diverse geographic, political and institutional settings. Keywords: CCTV, urban policy, policy transfer, Barcelona

1. Introduction Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) systems are a growing phenomenon in most Western countries [2, 37,47] and a xed item on security agendas in urban environments [4] around the world. Whether we see the ‘camera revolution’ as part of a disciplinary network for inducing obedience in the ‘surveillance society’ [2,13], as a sign of a growing tendency to rely on technical solutions to social problems [8,40], as part of a business-led shift from social prevention of crime towards a situational prevention of crime [10], as a strategy for removing disorder from places of spectacle and consumption [28], or the ‘preventive turn’ in security policy [19], or whether we understand video surveillance as a symptom of a global shift away from the social and political towards the economic, it would be impossible to ignore the fact that the global choice for CCTV is here to stay – at least for the foreseeable future. However, in a context strongly inuenced by New Public Management and where there is a widespread tendency towards the introduction of private sector methods into the public sector and urban management, with the resulting

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emphasis on efciency, efcacy and economy and on the quantitative assessment of policy results, this support for CCTV would appear counter-intuitive as there are numerous reports questioning the efcacy and cost effectiveness of CCTV [1,20,36], some dating back to the early and mid-90s [22,24,46]. This leads us to conclude that conventional models of policy formation – which are usually based on either rational deliberation over a known set of variables, an incremental logic and a thorough cost-benet analysis, or clear-cut cases of policy modeling and borrowing – are insufcient when it comes to helping us making sense of the policies linked to the emergent ‘surveillance society’. Moreover, it shows the need to analyze the role of surveillance within a broader range of considerations and imperatives [8]. Several authors have already concluded that an adequate analysis and understanding of CCTV requires taking into consideration technological, political, social, cultural, historical, commercial and psychological aspects. But while several of these streams have been covered by recent studies, the political aspects, policy processes and departures from widespread assumptions on the proliferation of CCTV, especially at the local level, have often been overlooked and are under-researched [16,18,26,49]. Additionally, while several authors have studied the proliferation of CCTV from a comparative perspective [23,26,27, 37] and identied both common trends and differences between countries, in most cases the analysis has stopped at the national level, based on an assumption that local processes are no more than the locus of implementation of national agendas. One of the contentions of this article, however, is that in the case of local security policy, the ‘micro’ scale is precisely where the pressures of the post-9/11 security climate [32] are being negotiated, in line with the changing nature of local governance and the actual reality of the much-hyped ‘New Localism’ [21]. It is in the context of the ‘dramatic shift’ in the governance of crime and insecurity in late-modern societies [19,11], of the need for politicians to be seen to be ‘doing something’ to relegitimize their role, of the economic pressures on the urban environment to attract investment, and the crisis of the post-war welfare consensus, that CCTV as a policy alternative seems to be nding its window of opportunity [29]. Nevertheless, while the impact of new political approaches, global pressures and emerging denitions of surveillance and crime on the uptake of CCTV in the British context have been explored at length, most academic studies of CCTV in other countries have rarely gone beyond description. Issues related to political congurations and recongurations, historical factors and internal dynamics of power have seldom been tackled, and some of the assumptions about proliferation patterns in the most widely researched areas have become general assumptions. The research presented in this article argues that these issues – local political processes, established policy networks, historical factors, etc. – play a critical role in dening the interaction between the ‘push-and-pull’ factors that surface as surveillance enters the institutional agenda. Moreover, they are crucial to the understanding of how policy solutions to urban disorder are disembedded from specic contexts and reembedded into different settings and how policy transfer and harmonization works. The aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the process of CCTV proliferation at the global level through the lens of the experience in a specic region of Spain (Catalonia), where a tight legal framework means that the Department of the Interior keeps a record of every single surveillance camera requested and/or installed in public areas, thus providing a unique insight into proliferation dynamics. The following sections of the article set out the research methodology (Section 2) and the legal framework specic to the Catalonia region (Section 3). The article includes results of eld work incorporating both a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the proliferation of CCTV and a consideration of the push and pull factors, lters and ideologies shaping the emergence of CCTV as a public policy at the local level (Section 4). The local data is tested (Section 5) against some of the assumptions that have become commonplace in surveillance and urban studies, such as: the role of local/global interaction in the emergence of CCTV as a new orthodoxy’ the relationship between video surveillance and economic

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and commercial pressures on urban restructuring, the role of party politics and political ideologies in surveillance policy and the specic articulation of the interaction between video surveillance and urban disorder. The article concludes (Section 6) by exploring both local narratives and global-local policy dynamics, arguing that there is a need to conduct further research on the specic ways in which CCTV policy travels through borders and between scales of government and becomes embedded in diverse geographic, political and institutional contexts.

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2. Methodology This article examines the local policy process and context of public open-street CCTV in 72 towns and cities in Catalonia between 1999 and 2010, it includes every municipality that has submitted a request to install cameras in public places, such as streets and parks, and every camera that is managed by the police and regulated by the ‘Organic Law on Video Surveillance’ (LO 4/1997). In order to trace the political path and context underlying a proposal to install CCTV in each city, administrative les on CCTV kept by the regional ‘Department of the Interior’, which is the ultimate authority for the installation of policemonitored CCTV once the ‘Catalan Commission to Control Video-Surveillance Devices’ (CCDVC)1 has approved a system, have been reviewed and cross-referenced. In total, approximately 400 les and several hundred reports issued by the CCDVC between 2000 and 2010 and archived, as required by law, by the Department of the Interior have been reviewed and assessed. Furthermore, local authorities requesting authorization to install CCTV are required to ll in a questionnaire to justify the need for a scheme and to assess their proportionality in relation to the perceived problems that are to be addressed through surveillance, these have proven to be an invaluable tool for exploring the stated motives for requesting CCTV in each locality. Additionally, these les have provided important quantitative data on the number of cameras and square meters affected and which have been used here to ‘map’ the density of CCTV in relation to population and territory. In order to complete the picture at the regional and national level several semi-structured interviews with members of the CCDVC and the Catalan and Spanish Data Protection Agencies have been completed. In conducting the research the preference for ‘off-the-record’ comments was widespread when addressing issues relating to security or the police. Interviewees are therefore referred to by job position rather than by name. At the local level every city with CCTV in Catalonia has been examined and in every case the councilor responsible for community safety,2 the head of the local or municipal police and at least one opposition councilor were contacted. The intended purpose of these interviews was to conrm the data gathered through the administrative les, to get a sense of the community power structure built around the debate over whether or not to request authorization to install CCTV, and get a picture of the local policy process and actors involved. Where necessary, other actors, such as local CCTV providers were also approached. Additionally, press coverage of CCTV in Catalonia since the early 90’s has been reviewed and assessed. This has proven to be extremely useful in terms of tracing back policy processes that have often survived different power congurations, leaving few written documents behind. Press coverage has also been used to corroborate dates and quotes, and to conrm the shifts in the discourse around CCTV. However, the press coverage tended to be sketchy and incomplete, with a very uneven coverage of local processes in 1

Comissi´o de Control de Dispositius de Videovigil`ancia de Catalunya (CCDVC) in Catalan. The local councilors in charge of CCTV have different job titles in different municipalities, but they usually fall under the local department for community safety (Regidoria de Seguretat Ciutadana), governance (Regidoria de Governació) or public space (Regidoria de Via Pu´ blica). 2

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mainstream dailies, which rendered any attempt at producing comparative data useless. Press coverage has therefore been used as background material and not as key documentation used to support the main lines of argument presented in this article. In many cases, due to the enormous number of documents and the large amount of data compiled and reviewed, qualitative judgments and broader categorizations have been utilized to make the information more manageable. This has been achieved via statistical tests and by using SPSS to carry out statistical analysis. In order to produce more than just a succession of veriable facts and to challenge our data by introducing social, demographic and political variables, the Statistical Institute of Catalonia’s Database Idescat has been used to cross reference research data with regional information on the 72 municipalities within Catalonia. A univariate data analysis to quantify expected trends and explore unexpected patterns was undertaken. Here the intention was that an approach based on the use of quantitative analysis can contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of CCTV at the local level, and also to bring to the fore new ways of understanding video surveillance in open, public spaces in a broader context of urban policy and political change in the 21st Century.

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3. The legal framework The Spanish legal framework for CCTV is similar to the French framework and draws strongly on the wording of the ‘Loi Pasqua’ passed in France in 1994. In Spain, the ‘Organic Law’, by which the Spanish Police Forces are authorized to use video cameras to regulate public spaces, was passed in 1997 and developed and nalized two years later with a Royal Decree (RD 596/1999). The initial draft of the law was distributed just one month after the Conservatives (Partido Popular, PP) won the general election and was criticized by United Left (Izquierda Unida, IU) and the Socialists (Partido Socialista Obrero Espa˜nol, PSOE). Concerns raised by progressive sectors of the Judiciary and opposition parties led to the introduction of several guarantees to the legal process in terms of obtaining formal authorization for the set-up of CCTV systems in public areas, including: the need for an a priori favorable report by an independent regional Commission of Guarantees presided by a Judge, the obligation to destroy the footage after a maximum of 30 days, and the mandatory annual renewal of the schemes.3 In the Spanish context, Catalonia, together with the Basque Country, is the area where public CCTV is most highly regulated. A Decree to regulate police-controlled CCTV and create the Commission to Control Video-surveillance Devices was passed in May 1999, and the Commission has been meeting regularly since that time. At these meetings, each application submitted to the regional Department of the Interior by the municipalities is presented by a member of the Commission, which agrees on a nal report to either approve the petitions (with or without limitations), reject them or request more information. The Commission’s strict understanding of the principles of proportionality, appropriateness and minimum intervention set out by the Organic Law go a long way towards explaining why CCTV in Catalonia has not yet become a widespread phenomenon. Nevertheless, in the following paragraphs issues relating to the motives, dynamics and processes at the local level, before the questionnaires are submitted to the Department of the Interior are explored. Therefore, the data utilized in this article is based on the documents submitted by the town councils, on the debates inside the plenaries and the media coverage in the process of agenda setting, regardless of what the nal outcome of the petitions has been. 3 For a thorough description of the Spanish legal framework for CCTV, see the ‘CCTV in Spain’ case study in this volume. For a more detailed description of the functions of the Commissions of Guarantees, see [12].

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4. Mapping CCTV surveillance in Catalonia When the proposal to pass a law to regulate public CCTV launched a public debate in 1996, it put the spotlight on the existence of local surveillance schemes which had previously been set up, taking advantage at that time of the lack of legally enforceable regulation. At the time, the press focused on four specic cases: Canet de Mar (3 cameras established in 1991), Calafell (6 cameras established in 1992), Vilassar de Mar (3 cameras established in 1994), and Palam´os (4 cameras established in 1994). The rst thing the CCDVC did in late 1999 was to ask the Department of the Interior to send a letter to each municipality in the region informing them of the need to obtain authorization for whatever surveillance systems they already had in place. Those letters led to 13 positive responses, from the regions of Sant Just Desvern, Salou, Berga, El Vendrell, Viladecans, Viladecavalls, Gav`a, Tarragona, Barcelona, Reus, Palam´os, Poliny`a and Mollet del Vall`es. Surprisingly, only one of the above mentioned four pioneers replied to the Commission’s request,4 and the rst CCTV scheme to be installed in an open, public space in Spain did not surface until several years later.5 Of the 13 petitions, ve were approved straight away, ve were rejected and three were returned because the Commission felt they had not been given enough information to process the application. Thus, as early as 2000 the CCDVC made it clear that it intended to be more than just a bureaucratic formality and use its powers to apply the law in a restrictive sense. This tight control of the adjustment of local petitions to the legal framework, together with the potential for the systematization of the information provided by municipalities, made possible by a mandatory questionnaire, is unique to the Catalan context. The existence of detailed information on every single camera placed in public space (monitored by the police and managed and funded by the local council) permits a level of analysis that is probably not possible elsewhere. The questionnaire, developed by the Commission in 2002,6 asks applicants to provide the exact number of cameras to be installed and the square meters to be surveilled by the device, as well as to explain the need for the scheme and to assess their proportionality in relation to the perceived problems that are to be addressed through surveillance. Even though it may be the case that applicants make inaccurate assessments of the extent of the areas to be covered (by providing the square meters of the area to be controlled and not just the areas surveilled by the camera, or by ignoring the mobile capabilities of the lens), this information provides a useful the starting point for the analysis. The resulting gures provide an interesting perspective on how the ‘surveillance revolution’ has landed in Catalonia. Figures 1 and 2 provide different visualizations of the geographical distribution of the demand for CCTV. Figure 1 shows the ratio of surveillance cameras per total population, while Fig. 2 represents the ratio of square meters under surveillance in relation to the total population. These gures highlight the value of going beyond numerical appraisals of the proliferation of CCTV in order to assess the impact of surveillance. The gures illustrate, for example, that councils in cities with populations of less than 50,000 tend to request authorization to control larger areas, while bigger cities and provincial capitals tend to limit the geographic scope of the cameras. 4

Vilassar de Mar had canceled its scheme after a complaint by the Ombudsman in 1996. The city of Lleida installed dozens of CCTV cameras between 1991 and 1996, initially to control the city’s main commercial street following pressure from shop owners. Their initial application was rejected on the basis that the city council did not provide enough objective data of the existence of risk in those areas, but the Mayor decided that too much money had been invested and that the CCTV systems were necessary (interview with local councilor, March 2010). Lleida’s CCTV will probably be approved in the next few months (summer-autumn 2011) after years of back and forth reports between the Commission and the city council. 6 Interview with member of the Commission of Guarantees (February 2010). 5

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Fig. 1. Ratio of surveillance cameras requests to the CCDVC by population in Catalonia.

The gures also show an uneven distribution of CCTV across Catalonia, which is divided into four provinces of similar size. The province of Barcelona, which includes the capital city and metropolitan area, concentrates 70.8% of the municipalities with CCTV, while the remaining 13.9%, 12.5% and 2.8% are distributed between Tarragona, Girona and Lleida, respectively. Furthermore, they highlight the markedly locally-driven character of the uptake of CCTV in the region, as only one of the province capitals, Lleida, was an early adopter of video surveillance. This suggests an unusual ‘bottom-up’ (or local to supra-local) policy approach to CCTV provision. At rst sight, Figs 1 and 2 seem to portray an over-concentration of cameras in coastal towns. This would be consistent with the ndings of Hempel and T¨opfer [26], who identied the seaside towns of Bournemouth (UK), Hy`eres (France) and Westerland (Germany) among the very early adopters of CCTV. In order to conrm this trend, the data on the municipalities that asked to install CCTV in public spaces has been contrasted with data on the importance of the tourist industry in the local economy (number of hotel beds per capita), and the results were then compared to see whether municipalities with CCTV are more likely to have more hotel beds per capita. The results, presented in Fig. 3, show that

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Fig. 2. Ratio of square meters (m2) of surveillance camera requsts to the CCDVC by population in Catalonia.

a signicant amount of towns with demand for CCTV (72.2%) have less than 25 hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants, with cities with 25–500 hotel beds per 1,000 inhabitants being slightly under-represented. Moreover, while this is difcult to see at rst sight on Figs 1 and 2, most of the areas adopting CCTV are actually not seaside towns, but located several miles inland. This nding conrmed the need to cross-reference available data with other social, economic and demographic variables, to test general assumptions about the proliferation and role of video surveillance at the local level, and to provide a picture of the local reality of CCTV. Therefore, in order to complete the mapping of CCTV proliferation at the local level, other relevant variables have been tested, such as population, income per capita, number of police ofcers and percentage of migrant population. These have been chosen for different reasons: population and income as a way of measuring the effect of size and economic status on the likelihood that the ‘protection’ of the electronic eye will be requested, police deployment on the basis of the number of times the questionnaires refer to the inability of the local police force to cover the areas demanding surveillance, and the percentage of foreign population as a reection of the potential relationship between fear and ethnic diversity in the popular discourse on community safety [41].

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Fig. 3. CCTV camera requests to the CCDVC by number of hotel beds in Catalonia.

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Fig. 4. CCTV camera requests to the CCDVC by population density in Catalonia.

As Fig. 4 illustrates, municipalities with a population greater than 10,000 account for most requests to install CCTV, with those with over 50,000 being responsible for 54.2% of the requests although they represent only 5.6% of the municipalities in the region. As for income (Fig. 5), cities with a low and medium-high average income are over-represented in the questionnaires, while wealthier municipalities are under-represented. In terms of police deployment, Fig. 6 shows, that while most Catalan municipalities (77.6%) do not have a local police force, most of those which request permission to install CCTV (75%) have between one and three police ofcers per 1,000 inhabitants. Cities with more than 3 police ofcers per 1,000 inhabitants, which make up only 2.7% of total municipalities, represent 5.6% of requests to install CCTV. Finally, Fig. 7 suggests a relationship between percentage of foreign-born residents and the demand for CCTV, as only 6.9% of municipalities requesting CCTV have low amounts of immigrant population, while representing 45.1% of total municipalities. Cities with high and very high levels of immigration are, on the contrary, over-represented, submitting 45.9% of the requests for CCTV while making up only 10.5% of municipalities.

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Fig. 5. CCTV camaera requests to the CCDVC by per capita income of towns in Catalonia.

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Fig. 6. CCTV camera requests to the CCDVC by per capita police numbers in towns in Catalonia.

Fig. 7. CCTV camera requests to the CCDVC by proportion of the ‘foreign-born population’ in Catalonia.

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Fig. 8. Political afliation of local community safety councilors at the time of rst request for CCTV.

Cross-referencing the data from the questionnaires with social, economic and demographic data from the towns which have submitted requests to install CCTV produces a ‘picture’ of the typical CCTVseeking municipality, which could be described as a middle-sized town with low-to-average GDP, a signicant amount of immigrant population, without a major tourist industry and with above average police deployment. Smaller towns with wealthy residents and low levels of foreign-born residents, on the contrary, would be the least likely to request the video-surveillance of public spaces. For a region in which CCTV has not been the object of a detailed public debate or evaluation, the gures reveal that public cameras are far from anecdotal, especially if we take into account that 64.43% of the Catalan population live in the 72 municipalities being studied. Even if the distribution and the impact of video surveillance in Catalonia is highly uneven, the data available shows both a local protagonism in the adoption of CCTV and a lack of integration between discourses on the reasons underpinning the need for video surveillance on the actual socials and demographic contexts where it is adopted. While a shortage of police ofcers and preeminence of a tourist-related industry do not seem to have a strong impact on the likelihood of adopting CCTV, crossing demographic data with the requests submitted to the CCDVC shows a strong link between number of inhabitants, a high proportion of immigrants and requests for CCTV surveillance. With the aim of testing the Catalan reality against some of the assumptions made in the literature on surveillance it is important to take into account political aspects of the policy process. With this in mind the data from the questionnaires was crossed with the political afliation of the councilors responsible for community safety at the local level. In this case, there was an unexpectedly strong correlation between political afliation and likelihood to request permission to install public CCTV. This is illustrated in Fig. 8. Almost 64% of the municipalities that have requested the installation of video surveillance in the last ten years had a Socialist councilor in charge of community safety7 at the time of the rst application, even though only 29% of municipalities had a Socialist Mayor in the 2007–2010 period. This is particularly relevant in a country where the Socialist Party, which has been in power at the national level since 2004 and has led the governing coalition at the regional level since 2003, has never publicly stated its support for CCTV, nor offered a legitimizing logic or central funding for the uptake of video surveillance. 5. Zooming in and beyond While there has been a boom in literature on surveillance and CCTV in recent years [35], there are still several aspects of the ‘camera revolution’ that are under-researched. Among them, the specic process 7 It is more useful to compare the political afliation of councilors and not political parties because in Catalonia it is very common to nd local coalitions of more than three parties, which would make any comparison impossible.

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by which CCTV proliferation is shaped, ltered and negotiated at the local level, and the way in which global pressures nd echo in local policies and policy networks. Interestingly, while urban studies and urban sociology have concentrated on the impact of an increased local concern over issues of law and order, urban disorder and incivility [7,17], surveillance studies has tended to focus on the technological x and broader topics regarding the social consequences of the electronic eye [31]. The overlap between these two approaches is still under-explored and there are very few academic studies dealing with CCTV as public policy at the local level, although there are a few notable exceptions [8,15]. Furthermore, the existing literature rarely provides empirical evidence on how CCTV ts into a broader agenda of urban regeneration and global inter-city competition. In the context of an under-developed eld of analysis and a scarcity of empirical data, some features of the particular political, economic and socio-cultural landscapes that have been explored – which could well be country-specic – have almost become standard assumptions. In his book Reclaiming the Streets, for instance, Roy Coleman claims that “while not all city regions across the globe are embracing camera networks in the same way and to the same extent as the UK (. . . ) it is arguable that the powerful vernacular that underpins the camera network (. . . ) emerges out of, and reinforces, a trans-local neoliberalization process that is articulated by an increasingly powerful group of new primary deners who are shaping the urban political landscape” [8: 4]. While this might be the case, there is still very little evidence on the way in which the ‘powerful vernacular’ and the ‘trans-local neoliberalization process’ is taking shape outside of the UK. The remainder of this article is an attempt to contribute research evidence about the Catalan case to the eld of surveillance studies, while also setting them against some of the assumptions made in the literature on local surveillance policy – specically, the role of the local sphere, the impact of the entrepreneurial turn, and the role of party politics and ideology.

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5.1. In and beyond the local sphere Globalization has modied the way states relate to other tiers and spheres of government, rendering political administration a much more complex matter. In the context of a globalized economy, with free trade and new technologies, government is no longer a top-down exercise, but a network of interdependent relations between different levels of power, different actors and different interests [4,10]. In this process, regional and local contexts have emerged as a key institutional arena. After decades of neglect, the notion of ‘the local’ has been attracting increased academic and political attention. However, as Brenner and Theodore point out, “much of the contemporary political appeal to the ‘local’ actually rests upon arguments regarding allegedly uncontrollable supralocal transformations” [5: v]. Among them, globalization, the nancialization of capital, the erosion of the national state and the intensication of interspatial competition. Much of the recent literature on this ‘New Localism’ has thus stressed the relationship between the local and the global, sometimes to point out the need for cities and local areas to carve out a space for themselves in a globalized world [7], and in other instances to emphasize the role that cities play in a global process of post-Fordist political and economic restructuring – approaching cities as the arena where the shift from production to nance, from social reproduction to privatization takes place [5,42]. There is no agreement, however, on whether the global economy is prompting a hollowing-out of the state in favor of the local-global dynamic, or if these current shifts simply reect a functional reorganization. In the context of surveillance, authors have tended to see the local sphere as the place where a new ‘neoliberal statecraft’ is being developed [8] and to consider CCTV as part of a broader effort to domesticate and control public space [17]. In most cases, the local is again treated as the battleeld of supra-local forces, the place where global pressures take the shape of public-private

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partnerships and impose a redenition of urban policy in economic terms, prioritizing security and the ‘management’ of disorder through surveillance and control [7] over social concerns. The case of CCTV in Catalonia certainly conrms the existence of a process of decentralization and increased autonomy at the local level [4], but the shift is not due so much to the appropriation of traditional state competences such as law and order by local government (many municipalities have had local police forces for many years), but from the leading role adopted by local councils in the uptake of CCTV as a solution to security and safety problems and/or in response to pressure from their constituencies. None of the 72 municipalities studied were ever offered regional or state funding for video surveillance schemes, and proponents of CCTV have not beneted from a legitimizing rhetoric at the supra-local level (as has been the case in the UK and France [15,40]). On the contrary, CCTV as a tool against incivility and petty crime has been constructed at the local level, with local powerful actors, public and private, re-appropriating surveillance as a tool and a political discourse. Interestingly, in this process CCTV has been stripped of its early association with the need to ght terrorism. Out of all the documents reviewed, the terrorist threat is only mentioned in some of the requests submitted by the City Council of the capital city, Barcelona, and the reference to terrorism is only ever one paragraph that has been copied from application to application. Moreover, this particular justication of the need for CCTV appears for the rst time in 2003, a year before the Al-Qaeda bombing of the Madrid trains which caused nearly 200 deaths. In all applications, the need for cameras is justied on the basis of the existence of ‘conict’, ‘incivility’, ‘vandalism’, petty ‘drug trafcking’, ‘alcohol consumption and noise’ and the like. This shows that cities are not necessarily simply places where global processes are echoed or national policies are enacted. They can also play an active role in lobbying for supra-local policy agendas. In policies that are oriented towards community safety and public space management, the Catalan case shows a clear locally-driven initiative for the adoption of CCTV as a solution to urban disorder. In interviews with members of the Commission of Guarantees, the pressure to be more ‘permissive’ was mentioned more than once, and always as coming from ‘below’ (the local level).8 At the same time, two of the local councilors interviewed complained about the strict rules of the Commission, and the Barcelona City Council went as far as to appeal against one of the rulings of the Commission in 2003. They argued that its members had used ‘subjective criteria’ when assessing the impact of the proposed CCTV scheme on fundamental rights and in their decision to reject the application since it could ‘severely affect’ people’s rights to ‘demonstrate’ and ‘to one’s honor, privacy and image’. The appeal was rejected. The Catalan case also suggests that regional dynamics are difcult to systematize in the case of CCTV. The province of Lleida, for instance, accounts for only 2.8% of municipalities that have submitted requests for CCTV, even though its capital city was the rst in Spain to install cameras in public space in the early 1990s. In the province of Barcelona, where most requests are concentrated, six cities requested permission to install CCTV prior to a request for cameras from Barcelona in 2001. This would support the suggestion that, in Catalonia, the camera revolution is being led at the local level, and that policy transfer or borrowing between municipalities, if it exists, is generally horizontal, bottom-up and not top-down. 5.2. In and beyond the ‘entrepreneurial turn’ Many authors agree that the rise of surveillance is part of a broader process of urban restructuring and political realignment [7,8,25]. In a world of global competition, conventional wisdom is built around 8

Interviews with members of the Commission of Guarantees (February and June 2010).

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economic success as a necessary pre-condition for everything else. The push to restructure and reform cities “in order to provide adequate frameworks for meeting the challenges of today, such as sustainable urban development, increasing competitiveness in a global economy, strengthening social cohesion and nurturing local democracy” [38: ii] has multiple sources and many claim it has created a new vernacular at the global level. In this new vernacular, CCTV “contributes to a strategy of socio-spatial transformation” [8: 5] where private and commercial interests impose their vision of an ‘ordered city’ in which investment can ourish. In the case of Catalonia, however, it is difcult to establish a strong link between CCTV and global economic competitiveness. On one hand, while Catalonia started its affair with CCTV in the 90’s in four afuent, seaside towns, today there is not a strong correlation between CCTV and tourism, the proximity to the beach or the inuence of the hotel industry (see Figs 1 and 3 above). This suggests that video surveillance and the security that it is supposed to provide are not primarily a ‘service’ to be offered in a process of city marketing. On the other hand, while Barcelona is the city with the largest number of CCTV cameras, it is also the municipality where those cameras cover less square meters, and surprisingly, the four cities where cameras cover the most ground have less than 25,000 inhabitants and are hardly in a position to compete at the regional – and much less global – level. Furthermore, this new consensus has been linked to the success of ideas associated with ‘New Public Management’ and the ‘Entrepreneurial Government’, with its emphasis on efciency, effectiveness and economy in public policy [7,16]. However, none of the CCTV schemes set up in Catalonia in the last ten years has ever been systematically evaluated. While every request has to be renewed annually, and the Commission requires each municipality to provide gures on the impact of CCTV on crime or ‘vandalism’, most police forces do not collect detailed data for specic streets or squares. This makes a robust evaluation impossible. Therefore, while efciency might be part of the rhetoric that advocates surveillance as a policy solution, it is difcult to see how CCTV could be understood as part of a drive towards an increased rationalization and accountability of public policy. The adoption of CCTV and the drive to make cities more secure has also been seen in light of a broader process of the strengthening of public-private partnerships and the emergence of private investors as important players in urban policy [7]. In the case of Catalonia, again, this is difcult to see. 10% of the requests reviewed included quotes, which allowed us to see who was going to benet nancially from the public investment in CCTV. Surprisingly, the companies signing the quote were in most cases local and their main source of business was alarm systems, not CCTV, which shows a lack of specialization in the eld. In four cases, the quotes were signed by individual local engineers. This picture, which reveals the lack of a signicant surveillance-related ‘business’ with lobbying capabilities was conrmed by one local provider. He mentioned how contracts tended to be awarded to companies that already had strong ties to the Town Hall, who would then sub-contract to others.9 Whatever public-private partnerships (formal or informal) exist at the local level, CCTV does not seem to be strengthening them nor creating business opportunities worth lobbying for. Although it is difcult to establish a link between CCTV, organized economic interests, a logic of efciency and New Public Management, or the emergence of new surveillance-related public-private partnerships, this cannot cloud the fact that the uptake of CCTV in Catalonia is following some sort of general pattern in terms of logic and timing, and that private interests do play an important role in urban policy. 9

Interview with local CCTV provider (July 2010).

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5.3. In and beyond political ideologies Consistent with the over-reliance on the UK context in the academic literature on CCTV and urban policy, many authors have established the link between the ‘Entrepreneurial Turn’ and the impact of the ‘New Right’ since the late 1970s and early 1980s [3]. Authors argue that during this period, the policy emphasis shifted away from the initiative of the public sector towards public-private partnerships [43], from inclusion and welfare towards control and punishment [45], from the social and the political towards the technical and economic. This would, again, be part of an ideological attack on the post-World War II consensus, “a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites” [25: 19]. The new orthodoxy built around this political project would have crossed the political spectrum during the 1990s, putting issues of law and order, control and surveillance at the center of urban policy [8,28]. The ability of this shift to permeate right and left wing political agendas would explain why, for instance, video surveillance was adopted in the UK as a national, statesponsored strategy under New Labour. Similarly, some of the early adopters of CCTV in France were municipalities led by Socialist mayors. While in France only the press seems to have picked up on the left wing role in the provision of CCTV at the local level,10 in the UK many have explored the role of New Labour in turning the UK into the most surveilled country on earth, accounting for one-fth of all CCTV cameras worldwide [8]. Outside of these two countries, the link between surveillance and political programs has not been explored in any great detail. At rst glance, the Catalan case would seem to t the European trend. 64% of the towns and cities that have requested video-surveillance did so while having a Socialist mayor or community safety councilor, while only around 30% of towns were governed by the socialists during this 10-year period (see Fig. 8 above). However, unlike the case of the UK, surveillance in Catalonia has not been part of any supra-local Socialist agenda or theorized policy or ideological shift. There has been no political or nancial incentive to adopt CCTV, and since 1996, when the Organic Law was presented in Parliament by the Conservatives (Partido Popular, PP) and the Basque Conservative Nationalists (Partido Nacionalista Vasco, PNV), the Socialists have been reluctant to publically endorse surveillance and have been critical of it.11 Even today, when interviewing local Socialist councilors, despite being responsible for installing CCTV, the message they want to convey is that the surveillance of open, public space is not their policy nor their strategy to combat crime, or not the only one, in any case.12 So why is it that a party that has publicly stated its doubts about surveillance, that has never included CCTV in its political program, that has consistently refused to provide the legitimizing rhetoric for surveillance and that has even threatened to take the Conservative mayor of a major Spanish city, Valencia, to Court after announcing a plan to install surveillance in parks and squares13 is at the same time leading most processes at the local level in Catalonia? This question can be explored more fully by looking at regional and local specicities. While the rhetoric of law and order is very present in Spanish society, being as it is a post-authoritarian society, CCTV has never been a preeminent element in the political discourse. Neither the Socialists nor the Conservatives have waved the banner of surveillance. In the case of Barcelona, for instance, when the decision to install the rst CCTV scheme in the city 10

See Le Monde, “Des e´ lus socialistes r´einventent une s´ecurit´e de gauche” 02/01/10; Le Figaro, “Delano¨e s’est converti à la vid´eosurveillance” 15/10/08. 11 El Pais “Interior estudia colocar videoc´amaras en las calles de Euskadi para controlar las algaradas”, 26/06/96. 12 Interview with Barcelona’s Councilor for Community Safety (April 2010) and the Head of Crime Prevention (February 2010). 13 20 Minutos “El PSOE recurre contra las videoc´amaras junto a colegios y en parques” 21/06/10.

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Fig. 9. Pilot CCTV scheme in Barcelona (2001). (Colours are visible in the online version of the article; http://dx.doi. org/10.3233/IP-2011-0251)

center was taken by the Socialist council in 2001 (a two-camera system along Carrer Escudellers, one on the corner with La Rambla and the other one, ironically, on the corner with Plac¸a George Orwell – see Fig. 9), the Conservative opposition criticized it, arguing that the local government was only promoting video surveillance to save on police units14 and questioned the legality and impact on crime of CCTV.15 The rst endorsement of CCTV by the Conservatives appeared in 2006, when both the Partido Popular (PP, Conservatives) and Converg`encia i Uni´o (CiU, Conservative Nationalists) included CCTV in their political programs as an ‘effective complement to improve community safety, together with an increase in the number of police units in the streets’ and urged the Council to stop ‘turning a deaf ear’ to citizen demands for camera surveillance.16 Additionally, in Catalonia, the emerging crime and disorder rhetoric to justify surveillance has not evolved alongside increased appeals for community involvement in security policy, which seems to be the rationale underpinning the adoption of ‘tough on crime’ approaches by progressive forces [7,28]. 14

Minutes of the local Plenary Session, 24/07/09. Questions submitted to the Socialist mayor by the Conservative Nationalists (CiU) on 05/07/01, 23/01/02, 08/03/02 and 25/10/05. 16 ABC, “CiU y PP centran en los problemas de inseguridad su estrategia contra Clos” 03/04/06; Qué, “Fernandez D´az (PP) reclama c´amaras de videovigilancia en la v´a p´ublica de Barcelona”, 22/03/09. 15

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Fig. 10. Number of requests for CCTV to the CCDVC by year (2000–2009).

When looking for clues on the agenda-setting process in the questionnaires, stable, tight-knit policy communities are evident. References to organized, government-approved neighbourhood associations and shop-owner confederations as main proponents and beneciaries of CCTV are common, as was conrmed in telephone interviews. The policy process linked to CCTV is so closed to participation that in most cases its adoption as public policy is never debated in the City Council’s plenary sessions, leaving the opposition parties, not to mention other actors, out of the process. This secretiveness, together with the lack of a justifying rhetoric, makes it difcult to identify the exact ways in which the proposals of the different actors enter the policy process. On the other hand, it conrms that the adoption of CCTV as a policy solution has not been embedded in community empowerment rhetoric by those in power, as seems to be the case elsewhere.

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5.4. In and beyond CCTV In order to make sense of public policy, it is important to understand how problems end up constituting public policies and the roles played by all actors involved in the policy network that emerges around any given issue [30]. The eld work conducted in Catalonia shows that similar outcomes, a generalized uptake of CCTV as policy solution, can be the result of very different articulations, contexts and dynamics. A story characterized by the interplay of different institutions, actors, rules and norms at different levels of governance and in a changing environment is probably easier to t into the ‘organized anarchy’ described by Kindgon [29] than into any rational, performance-led understanding of public policy such as that put forward by the advocates of New Public Management. In this context, it is clearly necessary to use a complex, dynamic approach that takes into account issues of time [34], historical specicities and local concerns in order to begin to draw conclusions from a region that started its affair with CCTV in the 90’s in four afuent, seaside towns, but where today there is not a strong correlation between CCTV and tourism or proximity to the beach. Moreover, in Catalonia the four provincial capitals, all of them with Socialist mayors, have adopted CCTV at different speeds and with different degrees of enthusiasm – but in most cases later than many of their European counterparts [27]. The late adoption of surveillance could be due to the lack of a national ‘political rhetoric, policy, operating guidance and nancial assistance’ which could have given the process some unifying logic or calendar, as was the case in the UK under New Labour [48]. Or maybe the existence of a tight legal a priori

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control of every single CCTV scheme, together with the zeal showed by the Commission in reviewing the local petitions, with its strict understanding of the principles of proportionality, appropriateness and minimum intervention, could go a long way in explaining the late and uneven deployment of CCTV in Catalonia. It is evident, for example, how the limitations imposed on Barcelona in 2003 when the city requested permission to install three more cameras and one was rejected and another limited in its scope and hours of operation by the Commission, seemed to have a deterrence effect throughout the region. The number of requests decreased between 2003 and 2005 and incivility bylaws and increased police presence in the streets took a much more prominent role in the ght against urban decay and deviant behavior (illustrated in Fig. 10).17 This would also suggest that contextualizing CCTV policy in broader crime and disorder policies is useful in the case of Catalonia, where the issue is distinctively framed as an incivility and low-level crime problem. At the same time, issues of incivility, petty crime and disorder are associated, in the public mind and the media, with immigration, which would corroborate the results obtained by crossing the data from the questionnaires with percentages of foreign-born population (see Fig. 7 above). CCTV proliferation, therefore, is linked to growing fears related to the increasingly multi-ethnic composition of Catalan society, a fear that manifests itself in the demand for greater protection from crime. The leading role played by some city councils in the uptake of CCTV, could thus also be interpreted in relation to other policies being placed on the regional and national agenda by local councils, such as a demand to exclude non-documented migrants from access to social services or to impose the need for police-issued ‘civility certicates’ to those wanting to renew residence permits. While there are not any ofcial statements about CCTV at the national level, there have been instances where the ‘security’ demands of the local councils have been met with reminders by the central state of the need to respect the law and not discriminate18 – in the same way that some demands for CCTV have met with the opposition of the Commission of Guarantees. As mentioned earlier, this policy dynamic adds a new angle to the understanding of the local/state relationship under globalization, as well as framing of video surveillance in broader discourses of fear. The analysis of the uptake of CCTV in Catalonia based on the questionnaires submitted to the Commission of Guarantees presented here reveals a picture that adds complexity to most academic accounts of the political processes underpinning the ‘camera revolution’ – highlighting complex local/regional dynamics, the role played by long-established economic interest and the lack of overall coherence of the policy discourse on surveillance.However, a local-centered analysis is nonetheless still insufcient to provide an overall picture of the policy environment. 6. CCTV as a ‘glocal’ strategy? As mentioned earlier, the logic and timing of CCTV proliferation around the world reveals similarities that cannot be overlooked, nor be attributed only to the technological improvements that have made surveillance technologies relatively affordable and widely available, as availability in itself does not sufce to create windows of opportunity. The fact that in the last few years surveillance scholars have addressed the rise of CCTV in Europe [2,26], Canada [33] Australia [44] and Latin America [6] indicates a degree of international policy convergence which reveals the existence of patterns of transnational 17 18

Interview with Barcelona’s Councilor for Community Safety (April 2010). El Pa´s, “Corbacho avisa a Vic que es ‘ilegal’ negar el empadronamiento a los ‘sin papeles”’, 11/01/2010.

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policy modeling. However, this article argues that the proliferation of public CCTV in Catalonia reveals a number of highly specic characteristics (historical, political and rhetorical) and departures from widespread assumptions about the global economic and political processes in which CCTV emerges as a policy solution, which cannot and should not be ignored. Indeed, if CCTV is being established as a widespread policy orthodoxy, it becomes crucial to understand the political, economic and social contexts and relations where CCTV is implemented, if we are to make sense of the policy processes, alliances, inuences and outcomes. In this respect, this analysis points to the need to conduct further research on policy transfer dynamics between municipalities in a globalized world. While most up-to-date literature on policy transfer has concentrated on the US-UK exchange, “facilitated by the common language, shared ideology and strong personal political relations” [9: 776], the Catalan case shows that globalization might be increasing the instances of policy transfer or modeling, even if the absence of a shared language, ideology and political relations between early adopters of CCTV and local actors in Catalonia makes policy learning difcult. In addition, it presents a unique case where, contrary to what happens elsewhere [26], the state is absent from the policy process that makes CCTV emerge as a local policy solution. When supra-local institutions with formal authority intervene, such as the Data Protection Agency, the Commission of Guarantees or the Judiciary, it is to curtail local demands for surveillance. It might be the case that the ‘fast policy transfer’ [39] and the search for success stories elsewhere could make special sense at the local level, where popular pressure requires ‘quick xes’ and resources and powers are scarce. In this context, policy prescriptions that “are available without time-consuming, costly policy formation and the rolling out of ‘untested’ policies” [9: 776] would be a particularly good t, especially if they happen to t a global program of increased economic competitiveness and the vision of the ordered city put forward by powerful local oligarchies [10]. If this is the case, the global situation would seem to emerge as a counter-force used at the local level to legitimize the uptake of CCTV. Indeed, there have been a few local references to the proliferation of CCTV in the UK, presented in order to give legitimacy to the widespread diffusion of video surveillance in open-street, public places in Catalonia. In 2003, for instance, Barcelona’s City Council submitted a report on CCTV in Birmingham in order to inuence the Commission of Guarantees, and local security councilors mentioned having read similar reports before deciding to opt for video surveillance.19 Thus, in Catalonia, references to the embracing of the surveillance society by ‘Northern’ (i.e. ‘more advanced’) countries and the existence of large networks of CCTV abroad is used as an argument to reinforce and give legitimacy to the demand for video surveillance. This reinforcing interaction between the local and the global that has been identied in Catalonia points to the need to further study the processes through which policies are disembedded from, and reembedded into, new political, economic and social contexts and relations [39], as well as to pay attention to the ways in which policymakers use the success stories built around surveillance at the global level to legitimize their policy prescriptions [8], reinforce existing policy networks [10] and contribute to the global vision of the ordered city as a precondition for economic success. As such, after looking at the CCTV policy process in Catalonia David Lyon’s [33] assertion that the deployment of CCTV does not seem to t a single logic or overall plan appears to be accurate. The urge to control what happens in public space through CCTV fullls many functions and underpins different processes in different places, and specic historical developments, legal frameworks, public discourses and political dynamics alter not only the way CCTV proliferation takes place, but also how it is put forward as a policy alternative. In spite of 19

Interview with the Head of Crime Prevention in Barcelona (February 2010).

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the signicance of local contexts, however, all policy developments appear to be contributing to a shared policy outcome: the widespread uptake of video surveillance as a response to growing anxieties about crime and disorder in urban environments. This growing policy synchronization suggests that making sense of the camera revolution requires a deeper understanding of both (diverse) local processes and policy transfer patterns. This article, which explores the proliferation of CCTV in Catalonia, in the context of existing literature, provides an analytical and empirical contribution to this endeavor. Acknowledgement This article has been written as part of the Institut de Govern i Pol´tiques P´ubliques, Autonomous University of Barcelona (IGOP-UAB) Doctoral Program: ‘Public Policy and Social Change’. Funding for the eld work has been provided by AGAUR. The author would like to thank Miquel Pybus Oliveras from IGOP-UAB for his invaluable ideas and assistance in processing and visualizing the data. References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

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[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]

R. Armitage, To CCTV or not to CCTV? A Review of Current Research into the Effectiveness of CCTV Systems in Reducing Crime, NACRO Community Safety Brieng. London: NACRO, 2002. K. Ball, D. Lyon, D. Murakami Wood, C. Norris and C. Raab, A Report on the Surveillance Society. Wilmslow: Information Commissioners Ofce, 2006. Available at: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/data protection/ practical application/surveillance society full report 2006.pdf. T. Barnekov, R. Boyle and D. Rich, Privatism and Urban Policy in Britain and the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. I. Blanco, Governance Urbana I Pol´tiques d’Inclusi´o S`ocio-Espacial, Unpublished Dissertation, UBA, Barcelona, 2004. N. Brener and N. Theodore, Spaces of Neoliberalism. Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe, Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. F. Bruno, M. Kanashiro and R. Firmino, Vigilˆancia e Visibilidade. Espac¸o, Tecnologia e Identicac¸aˆ o. Editora Sulina: Porto Alegre, 2010. A. Cochrane, Understanding Urban Policy. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. R. Coleman, Reclaiming the Streets: Surveillance, Social Control and the City, Devon: Willan, 2004. I. Cook, Mobilising urban policies: The policy transfer of US Business Improvement Districts to England and Wales, Urban Studies 45(4) (2008), 773–795. A. Crawford, The Local Governance of Crime: Appeals to Community and Partnerships, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. A. Crawford, The governance of crime and insecurity in an anxious age: The trans-European and the local, in: Crime and Insecurity, A. Crawford, ed., 2002, Cullompton: Willian. A. De la Iglesia, Las comisiones de garant´as de la videovigilancia, Revista de Derecho Pol´tico 68 (2007), 213–246. D. Forest, La vid´eosurveillance dans les lieux publics et ouverts au public: dispositif et application de la loi du 21 Janvier 1995, M´emoire D.E.S.S, Universit´e Paris XI, Paris, 1999. M. Foucault, Surveiller et Punir. Naissance de la Prison, Paris: Gallimard, 1975. P. Fussey, New Labour and new surveillance: Theoretical and political ramication of CCTV implementation in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 251–269. P. Fussey, An interrupted transmission? Processes of CCTV implementation and the impact of human agency, Surveillance and Society 4(3) (2007), 229–256. N. Fyfe, Images of the Street. Planning, Identity and Control in Public Space, London: Routledge, 1998. D. Garland, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. D. Garland, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. M. Gill and A. Spriggs, Assessing the Impact of CCTV, Home Ofce Research Study 292. London: Home Ofce, 2005. E. Goetz and S. Clarke, eds, The New Localism: Comparative Urban Politics in a Global Era, London: Sage, London, 1993. ´ R. Grandmaison and P. Tremblay, Evaluation des effets de la t´el´e-surveillance sur la criminalit´e commise dans 13 stations du M´etro de Montr´eal, Criminologie 30 (1997), 93–110.

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G. Galdon Clavell / Local surveillance in a global world: Zooming in on the proliferation M. Gras, The legal regulation of CCTV in Europe, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 216–229. N. Groombridge and K. Murji, As easy as AB and CCTV, Policing 10(4) (1994), 283–290. D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. L. Hempel and E. T¨opfer, CCTV in Europe. Final Report, Urbaneye Working Paper No.15 (available at: www.urbaneye. net/results/ue wp15.pdf), 2004. L. Hempel and E. T¨opfer, The surveillance consensus: Reviewing the politics of CCTV in three European countries, European Journal of Criminology 6(2) (2009), 157–177. C. Johnstone, Crime, disorder and the urban renaissance, in: New Horizons in British Urban Policy. Perspectives on New Labour’s Urban Renaissance, C. Johnstone and M. Whitehead, eds, Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004. J. Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, New York: Longman, 2003. P. Knoepfel, C. Larrue, F. Varone and M. Hill, Public Policy Analysis, Bristol: The Policy Press, 2007. D. Lyon, Surveillance Society. Monitoring Everyday Life. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2001. D. Lyon, Surveillance as Social Sorting. Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination, New York: Routledge, 2003. D. Lyon, Introduction. In: A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada (Part One). SCAN (available at: https://qspace. library.queensu.ca/bitstream/1974/1906/1/SCAN Report Phase1 Final Jan 30 2009.pdf), Ottawa, 2009. A. Martin, Understanding resistance to digital surveillance: Towards a multi-disciplinary, multi-actor framework, Surveillance and Society 6(3) (2009), 213–232. G. Marx, Desperately seeking surveillance studies: Players in search of a eld, Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 36(2) (2007), 125–130. L. Mazerolle, D. Hurley and M. Chamlin, Social behavior in public space: An analysis of behavioral adaptations to CCTV, Security Journal 15(3) (2002), 59–75. C. Norris, M. McCahil and D. Wood, Editorial. The growth of CCTV, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 110–135. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Devolution and Globalisation: Implications for Local Decision-Makers, Paris: OECD, 2001. J. Peck and N. Theodore, Exporting workfare/importing welfare-to-work: exploring the politics of Third Way policy transfer, Political Geography 20 (2001), 427–460. B. Rochette and E. Marchandet, Vid´eosurveillance et t´el´esurveillance, m´ediations techniques et m´ediations politiques, in: Les risques urbains. Acteurs, syst`emes de pr´evention, M. Ansidiei, D. Dubois, D. Felury and B. Munier, eds, Paris: Anthropos, 1998. R. Rodr´guez Borges and V. Camps, El Discurso del Miedo. Madrid: Plaza y Vald´es, 2010. S. Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991. W. Solesbury, Reframing urban policy, Policy and Politics 21(1) (1993), 31–38. A. Sutton and D. Wilson, Open-street CCTV in Australia: The politics of resistance and expansion, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 310–322. L. Wacquant, Punir les pauvres: le nouveau gouvernement de l’insecurit´e sociale. Marseille: Agone, 2004. B. Webb and G. Laycock, Reducing Crime on the London Underground: An Evaluation of Three Pilot Projects, Home Ofce Crime Prevention Unit Series, London: Home Ofce, 1992, p. 30. C. Webster, Closed circuit television and governance: the eve of a surveillance age, Information Infrastructure and Policy 5(4) (1996), 253–263. C. Webster, Relegitimating the democratic polity: The closed circuit revolution in the UK, in: Democratic Governance and New Technology, J. Hoff, I. Horrocks and P. Topps, eds, London: Routledge, 2000. C. Webster, The diffusion, regulation and governance of closed-circuit television in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 230–250.

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The thinking eye is only half the story: High-level semantic video surveillance Christoph Musik Recipient of a DOC-team-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at the Department of Social Studies of Science, University of Vienna, Universit¨atsstraße 7/Stg. II/6. Stock, A-1010 Vienna, Austria Tel.: +43 1 4277 496 15; E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. An increase in video surveillance systems, paired with increased inquiry for efciency, leads to the need of systems which are able to process and interpret video data automatically. These systems have been referred to as ‘algorithmic video surveillance’, ‘smart CCTV’, or ‘second generation CCTV surveillance’. This paper differentiates and focuses on ‘high-level semantic video surveillance’ by referring to two case studies: Facial Expression Recognition and Automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies. Once in operation these systems are obscure, therefore, the construction process of high-level semantic VS is scrutinized on the basis of a ‘technology in the making’ approach. Keywords: Algorithmic video surveillance, smart CCTV, technology in the making, facial expression recognition, event recognition, computer vision

1. Introduction

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“Look, Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” There is nothing extraordinary about this quotation. Somebody is telling a person called Dave that he looks really upset, and that he should sit down and take a stress pill. This type of situation is likely to be an everyday occurrence in western society, movie fans however will easily recognize the quotation as the computer HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s and Arthur C. Clark’s classic “2001: A Space Odyssey”. In this science ction lm from 1968 the intelligent computer HAL 9000 “displayed image understanding capabilities vastly beyond today’s computer systems. HAL could not only instantly recognize who he was interacting with, but also he could lip read, judge aesthetics of visual sketches, recognize emotions subtly expressed by scientists on board the ship, and respond to these emotions in an adaptive personalized way.” Rosalind W. Picard 2001 [29] HAL 9000 had capabilities that strongly refer to Facial Recognition Technologies (FRT), Automatic Lip-reading, Motion Analysis, Behavioural Pattern Analysis (BPA), or Facial Expression Recognition. All these technologies can be ascribed to the eld of Pattern Recognition and Computer Vision (a subeld of Computer Science) and many of these technologies have been mentioned and analyzed by scholars in the eld of Surveillance Studies. In this context Norris and Armstrong coined the term ‘algorithmic surveillance’ [27], exemplifying it with ‘intelligent scene monitoring’, ‘digital facial recognition systems’, and ‘license plate recognition’. The term has been adopted by Introna and Wood for the analysis of the Politics of Facial Recognition Systems [12]. They dene algorithmic surveillance in a

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literal sense as surveillance that makes use of automatic step-by-step instructions, especially of computer systems, to provide more than the raw data observed. Another popular term for algorithmic surveillance is ‘Smart CCTV’, recently used by Gates when analyzing the failure of FRT in a CCTV system in Tampa, Florida [7] and also used by Introna and Wood [12]. Surette, using the metaphor of ‘The thinking eye’, introduced the term ‘second generation CCTV surveillance systems’ which are ‘smart’ and exploit digital technologies for articial intelligence scene monitoring, e.g. the detection of people, unauthorized trafc, or unusual behaviour [37]. In contrast to this there are ‘rst generation CCTV surveillance systems’ that are ‘dumb’, and based solely on human monitoring. The terms algorithmic surveillance, Smart CCTV, and second generation CCTV surveillance systems have been widely used synonymously. The covering term to use is ‘algorithmic video surveillance’, the term ‘smart CCTV’ should be avoided, because it is likely to promote CCTV as being brilliant, clever, effective, or knowing (to name only some of its synonyms). Also the term ‘second generation CCTV surveillance system’ xes a limit where there is none and moreover is too imprecise: For example, the detection of unusual behaviour entails much more than simply detecting a person, but would also be considered second generation. Thus, ‘algorithmic video surveillance’ should be used as an umbrella term, but it does make sense to distinguish precisely within this term. There is a big qualitative difference between automatically detecting a person in a specic scene, recognizing who this person is, detecting in which direction this person is moving, or detecting that the person’s behaviour does not t dened norms. Computer scientists, such as Turaga et al. [39] note that human actions and activities can be recognized on four different levels:

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1) 2) 3) 4)

Input video or sequence of images Extraction of concise low-level features (e.g. tracking and object detection) Mid-level action descriptions from low-level features (action recognition modules) High-level semantic interpretations from primitive actions

Following this scheme, low-level ‘algorithmic Video Surveillance’ can detect that there is a person present and track this person in a specic area of surveillance. Mid-level surveillance systems can use the extracted low-level information and recognize that the person is walking or running. Finally, on the high-level this walking or running can be interpreted under certain circumstances as suspicious behaviour, to give one example. Especially the development and deployment of such high-level semantic Video Surveillance (VS) changes the relationship between humans and machines, because interactivity between the two is itself changing. Machines are gradually becoming more able to act autonomously and gain a higher grade of agency [32]. Once those systems are in operation they are obscure [12]; the system’s mode of decision-making is black-boxed, the consequences however can be extensive. 1.1. Aim and focus This article argues that computer and machine vision technologies referred to as ‘algorithmic video surveillance’, ‘smart CCTV’ or ‘second generation CCTV surveillance’, especially high-level semantic video surveillance systems are not fully comparable with human vision abilities and therefore the metaphor of the thinking eye for the connection of a video camera to computer hard- and software is only half the story. Nevertheless, this comparison between machine vision and human vision is widely drawn. The article aims to show based on a ‘technology in the making’ approach, that state-of-the-art high-level semantic Video Surveillance (VS) is able to accomplish certain tasks, but does not fulll expectations of simulating human vision abilities. Instead the article shows that it reduces and oversimplies human

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vision abilities, because on the one hand it is not technically feasible yet and on the other hand lacks ‘social knowledge’. The main concern of the article is to disclose what kinds of reductions of complexities of vision and perception are made and how this impacts our conception of how we see and perceive. This allows us to reect on what an integration of such technologies into contemporary societies means and what kinds of new orderings will take place once these technologies are integrated into social life.

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1.2. Structure On the basis of a ‘technology in the making’ approach the article presents and discusses two high-level semantic Video Surveillance (VS) applications, which highlight different aspects of this kind of VS. First, the ‘technology in the making’ approach is outlined, which tries to combine concepts from Science and Technology Studies (STS) with the Surveillance Studies’ examination of the construction of code. Then two case studies are presented: ‘Facial Expression Recognition’ and ‘Automated multicamera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies’. The rst of these is located more in basic computer vision research, but also incorporates applied research elements. The second case is an applied research project designed for a very specic task (recognition of exploring bank robbers) and place (Austrian bank branches), but does also deal with basic computer vision research questions like multicamera tracking. Therefore the rst case has a more far-reaching universal claim, the second is limited to a concrete environment. Furthermore, ‘Facial Expression Recognition’ can draw on the tradition of facial expression research, which can be traced back to the 19th century, whereas the automated event recognition project had to generate new empirical data through interviews, observation and document analysis. The two different types of high-level semantic VS have one crucial aspect in common: in both cases the so-called ‘ground truth’, the basis for teaching a machine to see had to be created. In the rst case the ‘ground truth’ corresponds with the question ‘what a specic facial expression, e.g. anger, looks like’; in the second case the ‘ground truth’ corresponds with the question ‘what suspicious behaviour of an exploring bank robber looks like’. In the empirical section the article traces the construction of both cases ‘ground truth’ to show how categories of both facial expressions and “normal” or ”suspicious” behaviour are created. In the concluding section of the paper the impact of complexity reductions of vision and perception and associated policy issues are discussed. 1.3. Methods While both case studies aim at analyzing ‘technology in the making’ they nevertheless differ in the methods applied. For the rst case ve explorative in-depth interviews with computer scientists and behavioural scientists from Germany and Austria working in the eld of Facial Expression Recognition were conducted in 2009 and basic papers in this area of research were surveyed. In addition, the history of facial expression research has been traced back to its beginnings, because the knowledge applied in Facial Expression Recognition systems is strongly grounded in its history. The second case study ‘Automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies’ presents empirical social scientic ndings that have been produced by the author of this article in the framework of an interdisciplinary research project within the Austrian security research programme

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KIRAS.1 In this programme projects developing security technology are obliged to integrate a partner from the Social Sciences and Humanities in order to ensure socio-political compatibility. In this case the project consortium was managed by a Software Consulting company and was performed in cooperation with computer scientists, a commercial bank, social scientists and the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Ofce, Department of Crime Prevention and Victim Aid. For the social scientists the project was methodologically challenging as their role was far from being obvious at the beginning of the project. This role could be described as ranging from ‘gleaf’ or ‘annex’ to a fully integrated and critically reecting partner of the technological development. A key question for the social scientists emerging over the course of the project was whether it is possible to identify and dene suspicious behaviour in the context of a bank (more precisely the behaviour of exploring bank robbers) and if so, how this could be translated into the programme of the technical system. This question was addressed by observing “normal” behaviour, describing activities of bank customers in detail. Observations in two different bank branches, as well as video analysis of seven project-cameras installed in one additional branch, were performed. The method of non-participant observation was used, combined with video-analysis in Social Research [17]. Within four observation sessions a sample consisting of 236 people was observed. To contrast the observations of “normal behaviour” of bank clients with the behaviour of exploring bank robbers records of interrogation footage of apprehended bank robbers were surveyed.

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2. ‘Technology in the making’ and the co-production of technology and society It is incontestable that nowadays technology plays a crucial role in surveillance contexts. In the past visual surveillance has been a matter of face-to-face communication, now it is also characterized by high-technology applications [24]. As can be observed for surveillance [27], technology is pervasive in all areas of everyday life, and is an ever-present part of social reality. In most cases of daily life technology works in the way we expect it to and therefore we are usually not interested in how exactly a specic technology functions. If a technological artifact is not performing adequately more often we are not able to x it ourselves, because we do not have sufcient knowledge and the skills to do so. The technological artifact then appears as a ‘black box’ and as ‘ready made technology’, which seems to operate in a xed and predictable manner [35]. This article’s entry into science and technology will be through the back door of ‘science and technology in the making’ and not through the more grandiose entrance of ‘ready made science and technology’ [19]. The main purpose is the understanding of how technology, in this case high-level semantic Video Surveillance (VS) technology, is being constructed in computer scientists’ laboratories. Of course this does not mean to forget the wider societal context in which these construction processes occur. The development and deployment of high-level semantic VS and the production of society are connected in a seamless web, so one can speak about a process of co-production. Generally technology “both embeds and is embedded. . . in all the building blocks of what we term the social” [14, p. 2]. This means that expectations and imaginations of high-level semantic VS are inseparable intertwined with the “ways in 1

KIRAS (acronym from the Greek kirkos for circle and asphaleia for security) supports national research projects which aim to increase the security of Austria and its people. The protection of critical infrastructure was selected as the rst thematic focus. The programme started in 2005 and is scheduled for a duration of 9 years. KIRAS is an initiatve of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG. For more information see http://www.ffg.at/en/kiras-security-research.

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which we choose to live in” [14, p. 2]. The development of technology both shapes as well as being shaped by the specic societal context in which it is embedded. Analyzing high-level semantic VS ‘in the making’ allows grasping these co-production processes of technology and society in detail. In the following a theoretical discussion of high-level semantic VS technology in the context of co-production is presented.

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2.1. On the co-production of technology, knowledge, code, and society Studying high-level semantic VS technology initializes the question of what kind of knowledge and computer codes are applied, transformed, and co-produced in the same way. Both can be regarded as social, active, not natural, and both are constructed, produced, manufactured. Here one can draw on laboratory studies [18,22]. Laboratory studies analyze the manufacture of techno-scientic facts and knowledge in situ in scientists’ laboratories. “Facts are not something we can take for granted or think of as the solid rock upon which knowledge is built” [18, p. 1]. Knorr Cetina gives meaning to the “decision-ladenness” and selectivity of fact-fabrication. Thus, it is important “to study the process by which the respective selections are made” [18, p. 7]. In the context of high-level semantic VS we have to bring to mind the specicity of knowledge. Basically it concerns the pressure to translate implicit into explicit knowledge. This pressure, which can be found in more and more areas of life, is generated through the increasing application of Information Technologies (IT) on the basis of computers. So far, most decisions and activities have been based on implicit or tacit knowledge of the people involved. By tacit knowledge Polanyi [30] means that ‘we can know more than we can tell’. Tacit knowledge is not captured by language or mathematics, but has to be performed. Nowadays these activities and decisions based on implicit or tacit knowledge are increasingly delegated to IT systems. In this process, the implicit or tacit knowledge has to be made explicit. Thus, rules of activities and decisions have to be identied and specied in a way which answers to specicities of computer programmes. In further consequence, they have to be formalized and codied [32]. The process of making tacit knowledge explicit has been described as an issue of reduction; this issue especially refers to FRT [12,15], the process of reducing complexity has consequences. In the case of FRT, for example, minorities are easier to recognize [12]. The problem with algorithmic surveillance systems is, that the issue of reducing information is a requirement, because systems only operate with the binary codes of 1s and 0s [8]. Getting inside the production of these computer codes – that distinguish between one group and another – is becoming more and more important [24]. Moreover, these processes are now the only parts “completely open to human discretion and shaping” [8]. This is especially important when that coding is done from afar, removed from the point of application [23] and therefore ignores the specialities and peculiarities of this point of application. The crux of the matter is that coding, especially relating to classication such as social sorting [24] never occurs in an objective or neutral way, but is embedded in specic social practices. Bowker and Star see software in many ways as “frozen organizational and policy discourse” [1], in which policy is coded into software. In this view software, like technology, is ‘society made durable’ [20]. This means that specic social practices, normative notions of good behaviour, political assumptions, and cultural values are either consciously or tacitly inscribed in the software [8]. Moreover, “algorithmic systems thus have a strong potential to x identities as deviant and criminal” – what Norris calls the technological mediation of suspicion [25]. However it is not only the individual person that is singled out for attention, in some circumstances coding and classication processes may have profound effects on the shaping and ordering of human life in general, creating new social classes [24].

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3. High-level semantic video surveillance: Case studies In this section the two case studies of high-level semantic VS are presented by describing the extent of research, possible application areas, and especially by understanding the construction of both cases ‘ground truth’. 3.1. Facial expression recognition

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A relatively new eld of research in computer vision are technologies of Facial Expression Recognition. These technologies aim at determining the mood and emotions of a person automatically and in real time. A specic facial expression is related to a specic basic emotion, like happiness or anger. First approaches for facial expression recognition emerged in the 1990s, today we can nd research in this area in at least 70 research institutions around the world. The contextualization of facial expression recognition exists especially in two areas: Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) and Video Surveillance (VS). In the case of HMI machines (robots, computers etc.) are required to be able to detect and interpret human facial expressions automatically. The aim is to improve interaction between humans and machines in general [13], because it is argued that humans expect machines to behave like humans [40]. Facial Expression Recognition technologies could, for example, be integrated in ticket machines or personal computers, to recognize when the user becomes frustrated and then to provide help as a result of the recognition. The second area of application is Video Surveillance. Facial Expression Recognition is intended to become part of workplace monitoring systems, research on the impact of advertisements on consumers in public as well as in private space, consumer research (one example is the commercial software FaceReaderTM2 ) and in the detection of terrorists, e.g. under the US security program SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observational Techniques), which was introduced in 14 US airports in 2006. 3.1.1. Historical embedding of facial expression recognition For a long time science has tried to make human beings, and especially the human body, readable. The human face was, and still is, of special interest. It has been measured not only for identication claims, but also in the hope of gaining access to the ‘inside’ of human beings. One can look back upon the ideas of the ancient worlds from Aristoteles’ Historia Animalium to pre-Confucian China, with its face readers, to meet with physiognomy, “the study of the systematic correspondence of psychological characteristics to facial features or body structure.”3 In the past physiognomy has been situated between the poles of the sciences and the arts, and is today said to be non-scientic. On the other hand it is rmly grounded in daily life. We are not able to go through life without being confronted with physiognomy [34]. In late 18th century the founder of scientic physiognomy, Swiss Johann Caspar Lavater, wanted to be able to recognize human character in the outlines of the human face on a scientic basis. Lavater worked with graphics and illustrations that were produced by different artists. These artists also had the task of standardizing and homogenizing the heterogeneous material for further usage (the German term ‘Umzeichnen’ in the words of Swoboda [38]). The artistic image had to be transformed into a scientic image for further analysis. Lavater also produced graphics on his own; most important were pictures 2 According to the producer... “the world’s rst tool that is capable of automatically analyzing facial expressions” Noldus Information Technology, http://www.noldus.com/human-behavior-research/products/facereader 3 Encyclopaedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/458823/physiognomy.

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of the silhouette, which he produced with the help of a special machine, objectivity was reached by mechanical picture-making [3]. The next step was to produce lines and angles that allowed mathematical calculations, classications, and a specic order [38]. The era following Lavater can be characterized as the pathway from physiognomy to mimic and facial expressions, especially Charles Darwin’s studies of facial expressions. Darwin’s book The expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals from 1872 has to be read in physiognomical tradition, even though there is a radical change [28] away from the steady parts of the body and physiognomy (bodily frame and the bones), to the exible parts of the body and the face, pathognomy and mimic [2]. On a more direct route classical physiognomy was continued, particularly in the phrenology of Franz Joseph Gall [2,34]. Darwin’s book The expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals – which was published only four months after The Descent of Man, and which was actually planned to be published only as a chapter of the latter – was revisited by American psychologist Paul Ekman less than 100 years later in the mid 1960s when he started his research on facial expressions and emotions. Ekman and his colleagues created the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) on which virtually all efforts to recognize facial expressions are based. At the beginning of Ekman’s research the fundamental question was if facial expressions are universal or specic to each culture. The result was that specic facial expressions are recognized as a specic emotion in every examined culture [4]. According to Ekman there are six basic emotions that are expressed in the same way in every culture worldwide: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, and Surprise. However emotions are not only determined biologically, they are also culturally inuenced and there are different display rules in every culture. Display rules are informal norms about when, where, how, and to whom one should express emotions [4]. Subsequently, Ekman focused on physiology and especially on facial muscles. In 1978 Ekman, together with Wally Friesen, developed a tool for measuring the face – the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) – which was revised in 2002 by Ekman, Friesen and Hager [6]. The FACS is a mode of coding the over 10.000 possible facial expressions of human beings and is based on the human anatomy of facial musculature. According to Ekman, FACS today is used “by hundreds of scientists around the world to measure facial movements“ [5]. In addition to it “computer scientists are working hard on how to make this measurement automatic and speedy” (ib.). The aim of FACS was to create a comprehensive system of categories that can be used for dening all muscle movements of the face that are distinguishable with the human eye [4]. The movements of the face have been summarized into 44 Action Units. With the help of FACS, experts can describe facial movements; these have to be measured, classied, and then a specic emotion can be interpreted. 3.1.2. The ‘ground truth’ of Facial Expression Recognition – A matter of selection The basis for teaching a machine to recognize facial expressions is the engineering of a so-called ‘ground truth’ or ‘ground reality’ of ‘what a specic facial expression, e.g. anger, looks like’. But what does ground truth mean? In the following interview passage a computer scientist explains: I3a: 4 “. . . And maybe back to the ground truth question. That is, I said all our algorithms are based on machine learning and for machine learning you supervise machine learning that means that you give the machine example data to train from. So for instance if you want a machine to recognise a specic person then you show the machine images of this person and you tell the machine that this image shows that person. You give the correct answer already in the training phase. If you want to 4 Quotes from the interviews mentioned in section Ç1.3 Methods’ are coded with I (for Interview) and the number of the Interview (1-5) at the beginning of the interview passage in bold letters. Interview 3 (I3) consists of two persons, which are marked with I3a and I3b.

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recognize laughing or fear or whatever you show the machine images of laughing or afraid persons and you tell the machine these images show laughing or afraid persons. And so the machine can recognize it later. But in the training phase this information has to be given and this is called ground truth.” The ground truth does not exist from the beginning, but has to be generated. The machine has to learn from the computer scientist rst. The computer scientist teaches the machine what the ground truth looks like, for example what the facial expression of fear looks like. In another passage, the comparison of machine learning and human learning is quoted as an example: I3a: “. . . but it’s pretty much to human learning. If you learn vocabulary then you have been given vocabulary. You have to match the German word to the English word. If you don’t know the vocabulary and you hear the English word, you know the German word, you don’t have to see it anymore. But during learning, of course, you have to match it. That’s what the machine does.” Two things that mean the same have to be matched. Just like a German word has an equivalent in English and vice versa, an emotion, e.g. fear, has an equivalent in a facial expression, displayed on a digital image. But what does this equivalent look like? Who tells the machine which specic facial expression corresponds to which emotion? In the interview data can be found two different approaches: One is the ‘FACS expert approach’ and the other is the ‘computer scientist layperson approach’. a) Facial Action Coding System (FACS) expert approach: I3a: Cohn-Kanade. That’s a really standard database. Many, many people are working with that. I3b: These databases are generated on the basis of ground realities. Cohn-Kanade facial expressions database is connected with the Facial Action Coding System. INTERVIEWER: What does it mean ground reality? I3b: For facial expressions there is a full coding of a face. That if you move your one eye up and if you are smiling so your lips are going up. Databases are generated by persons sitting in front of a camera.

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INTERVIEWER: But people are said to do facial expressions? I3a: In Cohn-Kanade they are advised to give an extreme facial expression. So if they have to smile, in the rst streams they are neutral and in the ending they are really smiling. So they generate smile, it is not natural as when I am talking with you, but I am really forced to laugh. INTERVIEWER: Is any expert controlling these expressions? Like in an experiment if anybody tells me to smile and is there anybody who says yes that’s a correct smile or too much fake? I3a: It depends on the database. In the Cohn-Kanade database it is like that. There is an annotation which tells you in which ways the person is smiling and it has been annotated by an expert to give evidence. INTERVIEWER: And do you know more about these experts, from which profession do they come from? Are they psychologists? I3a: Usually they are FACS experts, usually they annotate such data. The ground truth is produced by experimental articial data that has to be annotated by experts. People are asked to give an extreme facial expression in a laboratory. Even if this is not a “natural” expression

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experts annotate facial expressions that are said to be naturally and biologically caused [5]. The ground truth is co-constructed by “laypersons” and FACS experts in a laboratory. What counts as an emotion, e.g. fear, is thus a co-product of “articial” facial expressions and expertise based on biological and natural facial expressions. b) Computer scientist layperson approach In the computer scientist layperson approach, the pictures used are not from a FACS database, but rather from several other picture collections:5

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I4:6 It is a mixed collection of images from very different sources. That starts with any databases, progresses with self-photographed pictures, also pictures collected from the internet and ends with pictures that we win from the TV... 7 I4: . . . Our procedure of training the library is a fully layperson approach. This means that people are not trained, they are just like you and me. They are doing the annotation on the basis of their practical knowledge. This is a layperson approach, operating with practical and tacit knowledge. The individuals annotating the data, for example stating that they recognize fear in a specic image, are computer scientists and students. They have no special training on facial expression recognition. The ground truth is based on a library of pictures from very different sources. The aim of the picture library is to have a variety of pictures from many different sources and not to have pictures that have been produced in laboratories under specic conditions and have been annotated by FACS experts. The computer scientist explains the rough estimation of facial expressions data with the absence of FACS experts in the annotation process. On the other hand real-time ability is more important than exact results and therefore the system has to work with simple features. The essentiality for the system’s real-time processing is a demonstration of the “naturalness” of the system. The system needs to be as fast as humans are, exact expert knowledge could block real-time processing. What we see in the two different approaches (‘FACS expert approach’ and ‘computer scientist layperson approach’) is that the construction of the Facial Expression Recognition ‘ground truth’ is a matter of selection. There is no truth from which to start with, it has to be constructed. The two different approaches to constructing a ground truth show that it is necessary to choose which knowledge is workable and in what way it should be processed and codied. The word ground truth itself refers to the longing for truth that can be found in the face and in the biological body. But who is right? Is it expert’ knowledge of knowing exactly where to look in order to be able recognizing a real emotion? Or is it the practical knowledge of laypersons that is used to recognize emotions in facial expressions in everyday life? Or is it the system itself that constructs a denition of a specic emotion on basis of statistical models? 3.2. Automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies The second case study of dealing with ‘Automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies’ could not draw on existing knowledge, but had to instead generate new empirical data 5

The following interview passage is originally in German (see below), English translation by author. Original text in German: Das ist eine Mischsammlung aus allen m¨oglichen Quellen, die man so auftut. Und das f¨angt an bei irgendwelchen Datenbanken, geht weiter bei Bildern, die wir selbst fotograert haben, das sind Bilder, die wir aus dem Internet sammeln und endet bei Bildern, die wir aus dem Fernsehen gewinnen. 7 Original text in German: Bei uns und bei dem Verfahren, wie wir diese Bibliothek trainiert haben ist ein v¨ollig laienhafter Zugang, d.h. die Leute sind nicht trainiert, das sind einfach nur Menschen wie du und ich, die einfach aus ihrer Erfahrung heraus die Annotation durchf¨uhren. 6

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through interviews, observation, and document analysis. These methods have been mentioned before (see 1.3 Methods). In the following section, the negotiation process of the ‘ground truth’ of suspicious behaviour of exploring bank robbers in Austrian bank branches is described. 3.2.1. The ‘ground truth’ of Suspicious Behaviour – A matter of context Norris and Armstrong demonstrated how categories of suspicion are constructed by CCTV control room operators [27]. With high-level semantic VS systems this process is brought forward to programming, and therefore computer scientists seem to act in place of CCTV control room operators in constructing categories of suspicion. In this specic case it is not only the computer scientist constructing suspicion (and in the same way normality), but also security experts of a commercial bank, Police experts, as well as social scientists. The contribution of the social scientists tended to be twofold: on the one hand the collection of data for generating a ground truth was what the computer scientists asked for, on the other hand the process of generating ground truth was critically reected. At the beginning of the project the bank’s security experts and the Police security experts strongly put forward the assumption that it is possible to uncover potential bank robbers in their process of exploring bank branches when deciding which branch they will rob. Furthermore they suggested that potential robbers will desist from robbing one particular branch if they are addressed in person in or in front of the respective branch. In their view automatic detection of such critical behaviour could assist in averting anticipated criminal action. Security experts have been interviewed to make use of their “gut feeling” when designing an applicable system that automatically detects suspicious behaviour. The outcome was a predenition of a set of suspicious behaviour terms in collaboration with all project partners. This set includes lingering time in the bank foyer without using a machine (e.g. the ATM), or interacting with a member of staff over an extended period of time, or also staying at a machine for an unusually long period of time. However, it was not possible to gather accurate knowledge about the actual behaviour of bank robbers exploring objects. Thus the determined criteria remained questionable regarding their relevance for implementing an effective and applicable system. Selections were made, on the one hand because attendance time and interaction/interactivity had been mentioned as potential indications for suspicious behaviour, on the other hand because it was technologically feasible. In a further step the behaviour of people staying in a bank branch was analysed to learn about “usual” or “normal” behaviour of bank customers. The average time people stayed in the bank foyer (where machines like ATM, bank statement printer and bank counters can be found) is 03min 08s (median 01min 58s). 38 out of 236 people (16%) stayed longer than 5 minutes and 10 out of 236 (4%) stayed longer than 10 minutes. The outlier percentage concerning attendance time of bank clients is rather high, so a simple detection of time is not practical and there is no evidence indicating longer attendance time to be unusual or even suspicious behaviour. In fact, all longer attendance time periods can be explained and appear as usual behaviour; many bank clients had to wait in the line in front of the ATM machine or bank counter, others had problems with a machine, requiring the assistance of a bank ofcer and some just took their time lling in a transfer form. Facing people staying at the bank foyer without using a machine or without interacting with a member of staff over an extended period of time could be another interesting point to examine 17 out of 236 (7%) people observed did not exhibit any usual activity; almost 50% of these accompanied somebody performing usual activity. The other half was inside the bank foyer for a very short period of time. Most of these clients just glimpsed inside, observed the line and left. One main conclusion of the observation is that usual behaviour in bank foyers is very diverse, although the specic context of a bank determines the expected human behaviour to a considerable extent. There

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is a great range of different behaviour patterns, making the detection of unusual or suspicious behaviour difcult. One way could be to detect those with specic deviation from the average attendance time, but this is questionable, because there is no evidence that those differing from the average attendance time are suspicious. Additionally, there is information that many bank robbers exploring a bank branch behave like ordinary customers or are in fact bank customers. Then, in the case of detecting those with specic deviation from the average, the usual would become the normative. This may have serious consequences for the watched. The pressure to adapt may increase for those entering a bank foyer and if they do not behave awlessly they might provoke adverse consequences. Those simply diverging from the norm would attract attention instead of real bank robbers. One must consider that the detection of suspicious behaviour of bank robbers is like nding a needle in a haystack. In Vienna’s 512 bank branches there are estimates of 70 million people entering and leaving a bank branch in the course of one year. By contrast there were 63 bank robberies in Vienna in 2008. 4. Concluding discussion

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The main concern of this article was to disclose what kinds of reductions of complexities of vision and perception are made when developing high-level semantic Video Surveillance technology. This was obtained by exploring this kind of technology ‘in the making’ in two case studies to be able to understand how it is embedded in social practices and how it impacts our conception of how we see and perceive. The rst case study ‘Facial Expression Recognition’ showed that there are different ways to construct and reach the ‘ground truth’ of specic facial expressions. Thus the ‘ground truth’ of facial expressions is a matter of selection and it is not clear what the “right” approach is. Moreover, both approaches have different ambitions: the rst one pursues precision, the second one promptness and real-time ability. The second case study ‘Automated multi-camera event recognition for the prevention of bank robberies’ expressly underlined the importance of context information. It was not possible to dene clear categories that represent “suspicious” or “normal” behaviour of exploring bank robbers. This may stem from missing knowledge about the exploring behaviour of bank robbers and the fact that “normal” behaviour of bank clients is too diverse. Though it is technically feasible to automatically measure the attendance time of bank clients this information does not provide substantial information about “suspicious” or “normal” behaviour, because a deviation from the average attendance time can bear different meanings. 4.1. Reduction of complexity Both high-level semantic Video Surveillance cases presented in this paper contain different steps of reductions of complexity: 1. On the level of conception it is the fragmentation of the body and missing integration of contextual information. For example, in the case of Facial Expression Recognition only the face is incorporated. All other body parts and the situation in which the Facial Expression Recognition occurs are neglected. 2. On the level of engineering reduction has especially to do with the displacement from one frame of reference to the next. This means that in comparison to face-to-face interaction the frame of reference moves away from the complex situation in reality, across the way of the digital picture to representation in numbers. For example, in the second case study the event recognition of “suspicious” behaviour was attempted by measuring attendance time of persons, as this task was technically feasible.

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3. The third level of reduction is the immediate processing of data. During this process the observed data has to be ltered and smoothened to obtain unique ndings, which in turn means specic thresholds have to be predened by the computer scientists, for example when precisely a facial expression represents the emotion anger.

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4.2. Context is crucial In summary it can be stated that in both cases the technical and rule-governed component of vision and cognition dominates and therefore has largely ignored the social and interpretative component. The whole complexity of human vision and cognition is simulated in its structure and framework. Widely denied is the involvement of complex information about the contextual face-to-face situation. This is of importance, because information as well as human action and activity are not self-explanatory, but rather are negotiated out of social context [33]. This also concerns face-to-face control, which is negotiated, not absolute. Furthermore it is “based on a complex moral assessment of character which assesses demeanor, identity, appearance and behavior through the lens of context-specic relevancies.” [26, p. 276]. Technology that only focuses on visually observable objects and body movements hides the processes of negotiating the meaning of these visually observable objects and body movements in face-to-face interactions. Human vision is not the sum of isolated observed components. Instead we can start from the premise that vision is subject to change, culturally and historically [15]. Charles Horton Cooley, a precursor of symbolic interactionism, distinguished between spatial and social knowledge. The former, based on sense perceptions, gives rise to exact or quantiable natural science. The latter only emerges in the negotiation and communication of other people’s way of thinking [9]. Current high-level semantic VS systems do not integrate this kind of social knowledge, which is of outstanding importance to understand human behaviour or facial expressions in a specic situation. This is why the metaphor of the thinking eye for the connection of a video camera to computer hard- and software is only half the story. These systems are not comparable with human vision abilities and it can be still stated that the lm computer HAL 9000 displays “image understanding capabilities vastly beyond today’s computer systems.” [29] Under these circumstances of systems reducing complexity signicantly and focusing on quantiable elements we can reect on what an integration of such systems into contemporary societies means and what kinds of new orderings will take place once these systems are integrated into social life. For example, automatically measuring attendance time or facial expressions can provide an indication for “suspicious” behaviour or for the emotional constitution of a person. The crucial point is that it is not the synonym. “Suspicious” behaviour or the emotional constitution of a person are very complex entities constituted not merely of attendance time or facial expressions, but rather of many different elements. We have to make that difference clear. Furthermore, attendance time or facial expressions are ambiguous; they are context and situation dependent. 4.3. Socio-technical implementation For all practical purposes this asks for careful distribution of power and agency of high-level VS systems to machines and human users in consideration of managing possible risks and adverse effects. If such a system is proportional it should be implemented in a concrete context of application. Workplace studies have particularly demonstrated the importance of how technologies are being applied in situated actions, and how they can fail if they do not meet users’ needs [16]. A consequence is that a high-level semantic VS system must support the complex sociality of the specic work setting, in which it is going to be implemented in [10]. It has to be purpose-built and one-off [11]. This also means reecting about implications if employed in another place or at another point in time. Both sophistication and generalisability of high-level semantic VS have to be challenged.

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4.4. Transparency and reexivity A high degree of transparency and full disclosure of reduction processes is a good basis for reection. We have to make clear that current high-level semantic VS systems cannot act autonomously, but must be integrated into social settings with professional staff who understand how the algorithms applied work. The more they know about the used ‘ground truth’, tolerances, thresholds, and the reduction of complexity, the better they can handle this technology and minimize possible risks such as false positive ndings. Against this background high-level semantic VS systems can be regarded as ‘upskilling’ rather than ‘deskilling’: it can be assumed that along with the implementation of such systems, operators have to be trained in order to manage and work with these systems. A reduction in operators is unlikely, because human analytical skill is still required and inevitable. Transparency is not only a matter of importance for operating staff, it is also a matter for the people being observed; at the very least they need to be made aware that their behaviour is being observed and analyzed by computer algorithms. It should be asked if and to what extent this has to be explicitly stated on the site of operation and in what way this information is established by law (e.g. data protection law). In addition it should also be discussed, if and how people have to opt in and consent to be observed and analyzed. This seems to be especially difcult in indenite public places with a high volume of people and movements. This paper’s ‘technology in the making’ approach showed that transparency is the starting point for the reection on high-level semantic VS, but it has to be noted that transparency and disclosing how it works is not enough. Computer scientists and engineers should be made aware of their work being part of social practices and shaping society and social life in a signicant way. Of course, not all implications of high-level semantic VS can be predicted or affected by computer scientists, but their work is inseparable intertwined with the “ways in which we choose to live in” [14, p. 2].

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4.5. Policy related issues In conclusion two policy-related issues arising out of the ‘technology in the making’ approach of the paper are resumed. Institutions (e.g. public services, private companies) planning to invest in or implement high-level semantic video surveillance are advised to consider the ‘upskilling’ nature of these. With these technologies we are confronted with the need for new forms of qualications. Thus, they do not necessarily replace human labour, but have to be understood as co-produced with the ‘upskilling’ of human labour. In this respect the integration of the social sciences and humanities in the technological development is vitally important. This is due to the complexity of the social setting of potential sites of operation. This complexity needs to be considered all along the process of technological development. This insight invites us to balance the relationship between technological and social developments and thus, to really perform sociotechnology. For public research funding this implies to promote problem-centred instead of technology-centred research projects. Technology-centred projects make use of resources for the sake of developing one specic technology that is promoted as ready-made solution for a pre-dened problem from rst to last. In contrast problem-centred projects would involve an open interdisciplinary engagement already at the problem denition level, which will potentially lead to different comprehensive sociotechnological solutions.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Ulrike Felt, Stephan Gruber and Daniel Messner as well as the two anonymous referees who have all helped with developing this paper further. I also beneted from presenting parts of the paper at various conferences, workshops and summer schools. Above all I am indebted to Sheila Jasanoff and Stefan Vogtenhuber. I am also grateful to my informants from the eld of computer science and would like to thank Fiona Zisch for very helpful comments on the manuscript. References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

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R.W. Picard, Building HAL: Computers that sense, recognize, and respond to human emotion, in: Human Vision and Electronic Imaging VI, part of IS&T/SPIE9s Photonics West, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, ed., 2001. [30] M. Polanyi, The tacit dimension, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1966. [31] W. Rammert, Gest¨orter Blickwechsel durch Video¨uberwachung? Ambivalenzen und Asymmetrien soziotechnischer Beobachtungsordnungen, TU Berlin Technology Studies Working Papers,TUTS-WP-9-2002. [32] W. Rammert, Technik – Handeln – Wissen. Zu einer pragmatistischen Technik- und Sozialtheorie, Wiesbaden, VS Verlag, 2007. [33] R. Richter, Verstehende Soziologie, Wien, Facultas, 2002. [34] C. Schm¨olders, Das Vorurteil im Leibe: eine Einf¨uhrung in die Physiognomik, Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1997. [35] I. Schulz-Schaeffer, Sozialtheorie der Technik, Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 2000. [36] L. Suchman, Feminist STS and the Sciences of the Artifcial. in: The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, E. Hackett, O. Amsterdamska, M. Lynch and J. Wajcman, eds, Third Edition, Cambridge and London, MIT, 2008, pp. 139–164. [37] R. Surette, The Thinking Eye. Pros and cons of second generation CCTV surveillance systems, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 28/1 (2005), 152–173. [38] G. Swoboda, Lavaters Linienspiele. Techniken der Illustration und Verfahren graphischer Bildbearbeitung in einer physiognomischen Studiensammlung des 18. Jahrhunderts, Dissertation, Universit¨at Wien, 2002. [39] P. Turaga, R. Chellappa, V.S. Subrahmanian and O. Udrea, Machine Recognition of Human Activities: A Survey, CSVT 18(11) (2008), 1473–1488. [40] M. Wimmer, C. Mayer, S. Pietzsch and B. Radig, Tailoring Model-based Techniques to Facial Expression Interpretation, in: achi, First International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interaction, 2008, pp. 303–308.

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Video Surveillance C.W.R. Webster et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, 2012 © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-113-7-52

Pure our in your bag: Governmental rationalities of camera surveillance in Sweden Fredrika Bj¨orklund Political Science, S¨odert¨orn University, 141 89 Huddinge, Sweden Tel.: +46 8 608 4093; E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Surveillance is an important governance technique of modern societies and is linked to particular governmental rationalities. This article examines the Swedish policy on camera surveillance, using the analytical framework of governmentality, the art of government, in advanced liberal societies as its theoretical framework. The focus is on three features that characterise current developments in the Swedish policy. These are labelled situational prevention, generalisation of distrust and the signicance of the informed citizen. The study shows how prevention, i.e. situational prevention, was successfully introduced as a main rationale for monitoring only after the technology had been in place for some years. Monitoring as a form of general situational prevention, the congruent generalised distrust that affects the public and the Swedish requirement to inform citizens about cameras are viewed as elements of a governmental rationality based on the notion of the autonomous, free and self-responsible subject. Accordingly, the popular idea that camera surveillance is an indicator of an expanding security state must be modied. Keywords: Sweden, camera surveillance, situational crime prevention, advanced liberalism

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1. Introduction How should we view the fact that modern governments are attracted to camera surveillance to such a large extent? What theoretical explanations are useful for interpreting this phenomenon? In this article I take advantage of analytical frameworks developed from the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, a term for the complex form of power in modern societies [8], to read the Swedish policy on camera surveillance over the last few decades. While camera surveillance is a global phenomenon and may be expected to some extent to demonstrate similar characteristics in all societies, it should be kept in mind that every national ambition in this eld also has its specic rationality. Thus, the focus of this article is the specic nature of the Swedish governmental rationality of camera surveillance and its consequences for the relationship between the state and the citizens. In studying surveillance, the Orwellian idea of an evil state spying on its citizens is readily available for the conspiratorially inclined. Certainly, the image of a Panopticon penitentiary originating from Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century [2,33] and reused by Michel Foucault 200 years later is a more sophisticated model on the same theme. Moreover, in the academic literature, the Panopticon has been extremely inuential as a depiction of societal monitoring. Foucault’s thesis of state power – or rather institutional control – as self-discipline is constructed on the assumption that certain conditions, created by the surveillance situation, make people as individuals supervise and correct themselves according to

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existing norms of normality. No explicit or repressive authoritative exercise of correction is needed to generate norm-conforming behaviour [7]. Power is thus transacted more or less automatically, deprived of what is in other circumstances its relational, purposive character. As a result, individuals become their own supervisors. The model of a perfect prison inspired the Foucauldian examination of the self-disciplinarian surveillance society [10]. It could be argued that the mechanisms of open street camera surveillance produce similar conditions. People are subjected to surveillance but ignorant as to who is supervising and in what specic situations they are being monitored [5]. Given the prospect of constantly being watched, people automatically correct their behaviour. Many surveillance studies relate to this model by adopting, challenging or suggesting improvements to it [15,21,22,24,25,29,34,39,40]. Nonetheless, there is a growing literature that seriously questions the Panopticon as an analytical tool. One of the shortcomings concerns the postulation that surveillance always has to be hierarchically organised, i.e. a top-down activity [14]. A second issue is whether the premise of surveillance as a prison-like enclosure actually holds for modern societies [34]. Thirdly, it is appropriate to ask whether the idea of discipline itself is a concept that is more relevant for 19th century rule than it is for current social relations. In fact, Foucault in later works distanced himself from the idea of self-disciplining elements in surveillance, i.e. internalisation of control [9]; and the very notion of discipline should perhaps be replaced by something else. Yet there is still a need to describe the transformation in the relationship between the state and citizen as an exercise of governmental power. Alternative models that have been suggested to capture surveillance in modern societies, such as the surveillant assemblage, which “operates by abstracting human bodies from their territorial settings and separating them into a series of discrete ows” [14, p. 606], and surveillance as synopticon, “the many are watching the few just as much as the few are watching the many” [4, p. 301], are not particularly suited for this purpose. According to Haggerty, surveillance can be regarded as one of the most important technologies of governance in our times [16]. Asserting this is far from saying that camera surveillance should be considered a simple, neutral government tool with a direct impact. In fact, we have to discuss the idea of government as something that is strongly related to specic social and historical conditions. The art of government in contemporary societies, or to use the terminology of Nicolas Rose and others, advanced liberal societies, differs from earlier periods in fundamental ways [1,6,30–32]. While the welfare state projects of the last century were characterised by explicit state planning and management in economic and social affairs, government in advanced liberal societies is accomplished by techniques “that create a distance between the decisions of formal political institutions and other social actors, conceive of these actors in new ways as subjects of responsibility, autonomy and choice, and seek to act upon them through shaping and utilizing their freedom” [31, pp. 53–54]. Governance at a distance informs various aspects of society that previous state organisations had more programmatic ambitions for, such as the role of expertise, enterprises, organisations and citizens [31]. Here the focus is solely on the relationship between the state and its citizens. Government in advanced liberal societies is constructed in theory around autonomous self-responsible individuals who exercise their freedom as a freedom to choose. Citizenship is “modelled” on the image of the consumer who realises her life-projects on the market. By acting as enterprising individuals who seek self-fullment on a micro level, citizens also full their commitments to the state [31]. Thus: “The regulation of conduct becomes a matter of each individual’s desire to govern their own conduct freely in the service of the maximization of a version of their happiness and fullment that they take to be their own” [31, pp. 58–59]. The very notion of individual freedom, with the responsibility

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for activities undertaken this entails, is the platform for governing the citizenry but at the same time is also the “apolitical” content of policy. Advanced liberalism or neo-liberalism as governmentality, the art of government, is not a retreat from governmental intervention; rather, it is a re-inscription of governance techniques [1]. The advanced liberal government lacks an explicit program; it is based on mechanisms or social technologies of a more indirect nature. Political and economic goals are translated into choices and commitments by mechanisms of government such as networks or manners of identication [31]. However, in this article, the notion of advanced liberalism should not be construed as something that requires a complete change in the social organisation. The intention is simply to examine this governmental rationality, using the framework noted, through the example of camera surveillance in Sweden.

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2. Prevention, distrust and the informed citizen In this article my intention is to trace the rationality behind a governing technique, that is, the practice of camera surveillance in a specic national context. By studying legal instruments, other authoritative documents and political debates, I explore the way camera surveillance has been established as a specic means of public control. These documents incorporate a variety of arguments and narratives about technological progress, effectiveness and societal demands, which may be investigated as a rationality. But rst and foremost, the rationality of camera surveillance is reected in how the society and its constituent elements, citizens, are represented in documents and political declarations. In depictions of the social reality we nd indicators of a modied account of state control, i.e. the rationality of government in an advanced liberal context. The empirical material is approached with a fairly traditional qualitative content analysis. Three aspects of camera surveillance, situational prevention, the generalisation of distrust and the signicance of the informed citizen, will be discussed below. These aspects can be considered logical outcomes of the invention of camera surveillance as such, but at the same time they also suggest a specic governmental rationality, or governmentality. Firstly, the idea of monitoring only makes sense within the context of preventive measures, so familiar in crime policy. But the technology as such, when deployed in public spaces, works differently from other preventive measures since the camera eye does not discriminate between people; everyone is technically scrutinised in the same way [13,23]. It paves the way for general surveillance, or rather renders impossible a directed type of surveillance, when cameras are deployed on open streets. Situational prevention [3], the term used, has gained tremendous popularity as a means to govern, replacing the once favoured policy of preventive attention to social factors associated with crime. Clearly, monitoring may also be analysed as a practice of repressive control, one that primarily affects not people in general but particular, exposed groups [26,27,29,35]. Camera surveillance may reinforce segregation and promote discrimination by separating out the “deviant” or “not welcome” in a specic social context [21]. However, these aspects will not be addressed in this article. Still, the focus here does not conict with the forms of social control mentioned above; different surveillance processes may exist alongside each other. Secondly, a generalised prevention can hardly be separated from a generalisation of distrust. If a person is the focus of prevention, he/she is by denition not regarded as a reliable person. This is not to say that we are all considered suspects all of the time, but any one of us may be at least a potential wrongdoer. Distrusting people in general suggests a large repressive, moralising state but, within the frame of advanced liberal rule, the inclination is instead to consider crime an act of free choice: the

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rational alternative is to abide by the law given the unpleasantness associated with being caught on camera doing something illegal. As will be apparent from this study, both the notions of general prevention and generalised suspicion are reinforced discursively in documents and political debates. Reasons are shaped by the technology while, at the same time, political rationality opts for more surveillance. Thirdly, free choice would be irrelevant if the public were not sufciently informed to make a choice. In other words, being informed about the presence of a camera should dissuade people from committing an illegal act. But choice here may also have another sense. In a non-authoritarian state, individuals should also have the freedom to accept or reject monitoring. Specic measures, such as warning signs, may enforce the idea that people have a choice both between being a good citizen or not and between being monitored or not. In fact, as the Swedish maxim “pure our in your bag” illustrates, these two sets of choices tend to coincide. It is argued here that the maxim “if you have pure our in your bag, you have nothing to fear” (den som har rent mj¨ol i påsen har inget att frukta), used frequently in the Swedish context of camera surveillance, is a linguistic legitimisation that establishes the relationship between the state and the individual in a governmental rationality constructed on the basis of the notion of the autonomous individual. This maxim demonstrates the reversed burden of proof, suggesting that consent to be supervised is a morally superior behaviour. Evading monitoring indicates that someone may not be reliable or decent; indeed, they have something to hide. By approving surveillance, people choose to behave in a moral, responsible way.

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3. The preventive turn At present, we see a revived interest in crime prevention; both policy practitioners and academics are attracted to this idea. Internationally as well as in Sweden, prevention is promoted as an instrument to combat crime and as a security measure to protect the state security interests. But the notion today is not usually focused on prevention in general; it concerns a particular kind of arrangement. The main concern is to obstruct crime and terrorism promptly, in specic predened situations, for example, preventing terrorism at an airport through security measures, such as security checks or biometrics, or discouraging burglary in shopping malls through camera surveillance. This situation-directed type of prevention is designed for certain sensitive contexts, not primarily for particular individuals of interest (although there are certainly other agendas). The situational measures differ considerably from the kind of crime prevention measures that involve improving social and moral conditions for people who risk falling into a life of crime or helping former convicts return to normal life in society. Situational prevention is qualitatively different to crime prevention that involves social support and providing assistance to individuals at risk. Zedner argues that the meaning of the word prevention is slowly changing from socially-directed measures to situation-directed measures. The latter has become a major component of government crime and security policies today. Concepts such as “the preventive state” illustrate this shift and state’s pre-occupation with prevention in general [41]. Situational prevention redenes the notion of a perpetrator. Social prevention focuses on specic individuals who are supposedly in the risk zone for committing crimes. The underlying assumption is that extraordinary conditions affect their chance of ending up as criminals. With situational prevention, these extraordinary conditions are no longer in question. The expectation behind situational prevention is that “Offenders are, for the most part, deemed to be normal, mundane individuals who give in to temptation as and when criminal opportunities arise. . . . ‘Opportunity makes the thief”’ [11, p. 2]. Hence, situational prevention also transforms citizens into potential victims [3]. This “new” perspective

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has far-reaching normative consequences and it is interesting to note that it ts in well with a general economisation of society; everything may be subject to rational cost-benet calculations. This includes criminal temptations but it also affects the measures taken to combat crime. The Swedish example illustrates the international trend toward situational prevention, although the change is also nation-specic. The idea of prevention has long had a strong foothold in Swedish crime policy, although the connotation of the word is different to what it was in the past. In the traditional Social Democratic policies pursued by governments from the 1950s to the 1980s, crime prevention was integrated with the idea of levelling out living conditions in society. Crime was understood to be a social imperfection that could be cured, for example, through support for dysfunctional families and investments in housing areas at risk. Individuals on the wrong track should above all be helped to improve, not punished for their wrongs; in other words, they should be rehabilitated. Crime policy was featured by social engineering and clearly associated with the welfare state model [38]. However, in the 1980s the Social Democratic Party changed its crime policy in a more repressive direction, stressing the importance of punishment and also arguing for prolonged periods of imprisonment. The preventive ambitions were downplayed. When right-wing parties eventually gained power, this trend continued in ofcial Swedish crime policy. But the introduction of camera surveillance set the technological conditions for a new discourse on prevention, better synchronised with the new tough attitudes towards criminals. With camera surveillance, prevention was gradually re-established in Swedish policy, but with a signicantly different content. Obviously, the term prevention, as used in ofcial Swedish documents on camera surveillance in the 1990s, meant situation-directed rather than socially directed measures. This is not to say that there were no other objectives involved. Additional, albeit secondary, arguments for extended camera surveillance were to avoid accidents and to make it easier to identify someone who was guilty of a crime and thus increase reliability in legal processes. In fact, the latter argument is a very realistic outcome of camera surveillance that decision makers have not paid much attention to. As we shall see, in ofcial documents, direct crime prevention turned out to be considered as the big merit in technological monitoring.

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4. Prevention and monitoring the public in Sweden Certainly, the introduction of camera surveillance in Sweden is related to international trends and technological developments. Actually the treatment appeared before the disease; that is, the technology was at hand before there were any distinct ideas about how to use it. However, Sweden was early in establishing legal regulations in the eld. The rst law on the subject came in 1977 with the Act on TV Surveillance (Lagen om TV o¨ vervakning 1977:20). This act was amended in 1990 and again in 1998, resulting in the present Act on General Camera Surveillance (Lagen om allm¨an kamera¨overvakning 1998:150). A report initiated by the government was delivered in late 2009 suggesting revisions to the act [37], and a government bill based on this report may be expected. However, the proposals in the report primarily concern how competencies are divided among different administrative units and legal instruments, and do not alter the current regulations in any substantive way. The present legislation species that camera surveillance of public spaces in Sweden is allowed under certain conditions; normally the local County Administrative Board (L¨ansstyrelsen) has to give authorisation. In banks and specic areas in stores, no permission is needed provided that specic conditions are met; it is sufcient that the board receives notication. There are also exceptions for police surveillance with specic aims, as well as for other public agencies such as the National Road

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Administration. As a rule, the presence of a camera has to be announced by a warning sign, but some activities are excluded from this requirement as well. Besides giving permission, the 21 county administrations in Sweden supervise adherence to the act on camera surveillance of public spaces, or as it is expressed, “places to which the public has access”. However, the act on camera surveillance of public spaces does not cover all technical monitoring of the public. The deployment of cameras in ”semi-public spaces”, such as workplaces, residential areas and schools is not regulated by this act. Instead, the Personal Data Act (Personuppgiftslagen 1998:204) applies, and the Swedish Data Inspection Board is the supervisory authority. At the beginning, prevention was not the main object of concern in ofcial documents on camera surveillance. The act of law in 1977 was motivated exclusively by privacy concerns. The government bill preceding the act [42] established that the purpose of the act was to address the issue of personal integrity (privacy) in camera surveillance practice. The intention was solely to establish rules against infringement of public liberties. Camera surveillance was not yet regarded as a powerful measure to combat crime. In fact, the objectives to, and the need for, monitoring by cameras were sparsely discussed. Uneasiness about the effects of camera surveillance dominated the arguments. The bill referred to a public report on personal integrity published in 1974, which determined that extensive use of such equipment, making widespread monitoring of the citizenry possible, could not be accepted from a personal integrity point of view. One of the Swedish county boards, when asked to give its opinion on the proposed act, claimed that such a process, leading to general control of citizens by monitoring, must be resisted. It is also important to note that when the rst act was promulgated, the Swedish premodier “allm¨an” before camera surveillance, translated here as general surveillance, had not yet been added. This came later with the 1998 act. In the late 1980s, surveillance of the general public still seemed unthinkable in Sweden. A total ban on camera surveillance was an option but was rejected. Thus, the idea of how camera surveillance could be used as a measure to combat crime was rather vague in the rst legislative process; instead, the focus was on its potential negative effects. This is also true of the revised act from the late 1980s. The 1989 government bill [43] was concerned with the progress of the monitoring technology and how it affected protection against infringement of privacy. However, both in this bill and the previous one, the metaphor of balance, used frequently later on, was introduced to legitimise the need to adapt protection of privacy to the different interests involved in camera surveillance use. But there was little discussion of privacy infringement as something that had to be weighed against desired outcomes of increased use of camera surveillance. This theme was only added to the agenda in any seriousness when the focus shifted to crime prevention. With the new 1998 Act on General Camera Surveillance, monitoring changed from an extraordinary measure that lawmakers handled with a certain amount of reluctance to an ordinary measure integrated in the social control system. The number of camera surveillance systems in Sweden was to increase rapidly in the years to come. Today Sweden, like many western countries, is a society with a high level of technical monitoring [34]. However, public institutions operate only a certain number of all camera surveillance systems; a large proportion of cameras are deployed through private initiative [18]. But privately operated cameras are still part of Sweden’s public crime policy. Given the structure of different kinds of networks for monitoring and granting administrative permission, privately operated cameras are included formally as well as informally in general crime reduction ambitions. Certainly, this is an issue that, in itself, foreshadows a transformed state-citizen relationship. “The blurring of public- and private-sector surveillance neutralizes traditional safeguards against government abuse” [28, p. 4]. But it is also a signicant feature of the neo-liberal government structure, based on private enterprise and functional outsourcing.

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The focus of contemporary debates in Sweden is not whether a specic area ought to be subject to surveillance but rather the other way around: what areas should be exceptions to the rule, protected from cameras. The authorisation practice applied has not in any substantial way reduced the expansion of monitoring. In addition, modern cameras are also much more technically advanced than those initially deployed. Most importantly, the technical capacity to record and store material using digital technology makes camera surveillance a powerful measure of control if used in that way. It is reasonable to argue that the more cameras there are, and the more technically advanced they are, the better the preventive effects ought to be, presuming that camera surveillance has any preventive effect at all. In the government bill of 1998 [44] that preceded the new act, prevention was introduced as the main aim of camera surveillance; the government now explicitly related surveillance to specic positive outputs. The purpose of proposing a new act, it was argued, was to regulate camera surveillance in such a way it could be used effectively to prevent crime and reduce accidents while still maintaining sufcient protection against violation of privacy. (It is worth noting that accident prevention seems to be a rather hopeless ambition in the Swedish context, where cameras are seldom manned and no one is there to alert.) Eleven years later, the purpose of the 1998 act was described, as follows, in a Social Democratic motion in Parliament. “When the present Act on General Camera Surveillance was launched the ambition was that the interest of preventing and solving crime should play a more salient role in relation to the interest of privacy than in the former act” [45, p. 2]. This reection, long after the event, strengthens the argument that there was, in fact, a radical change in policy. The “fact” that camera surveillance prevents crime was reiterated several times in the 1998 government bill, although with some reservations made since there was still insufcient research at that point on the effects of camera use in combating crime. Nonetheless, it was argued that the right to implement camera surveillance, preferably for preventive purposes, should be enhanced. Crime prevention and camera surveillance were also a salient theme in the general parliamentary discussion following the presentation of the government bill. The suggestion that camera surveillance prevents crime received strong support [46] although there were members who were not convinced that cameras had a deterrent effect on crime and argued that this issue needed further investigation [47]. Henceforth, a variety of instructions and reports were produced with a more or less explicit aim to promote the crime prevention argument. Despite uncertainties about preventive effects as the new act came into force, prevention was still three years later the main argument used for camera surveillance of the general public. In 2001 the Minister of Justice formed a special committee to evaluate the act. It was established already in the directive that cameras could be useful as a means of crime prevention. In addition there were other positive outputs mentioned, such as the value of material recorded for investigating crimes already committed and the reduction of accidents. The Ministry of Justice acknowledged that there was insufcient evidence demonstrating the effects of camera surveillance in preventing crime and asked for further research. Nonetheless, the committee was instructed to primarily focus on camera surveillance from a crime prevention perspective. Notwithstanding doubts about preventive effects, the Ministry of Justice maintained that there was a great deal of information indicating that camera surveillance was effective in preventing crime if used the right way. Thus, the results of the committee were, in a way, predetermined by the instructions; the committee was supposed to “consider and provide suggestions for how camera surveillance could be used effectively and strategically in crime prevention efforts” [48]. Thus, the committee could hardly dismiss camera surveillance as useless; instead, it had to nd ways to make the method useful. The Camera Surveillance Committee delivered its nal report in November 2002. Once again it was established that camera surveillance, aside from preventing accidents, is primarily an instrument to

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prevent crime. But, the results of the committee’s own investigation were not encouraging; the committee was forced to admit that preventive results using camera surveillance were poor [36]. However, it may under certain circumstances prevent or at least contribute to a reduction of crime in society. Referring to international experience, the committee suggested that the effects are most signicant if cameras are used in combination with other preventive measures. There were also some more or less concrete ideas presented in the report, on how camera surveillance might be used more appropriately for preventive purposes [36]. In Sweden, as elsewhere, growing doubts have been voiced about the material effects on crime prevention. The Swedish Crime Prevention Board (a research and development center subordinated to the Ministry of Justice), which regularly publishes reports, referred to national and international investigations, calling into question the results of camera surveillance as a preventive measure [17– 20]. The general conclusion was that camera surveillance may work under very limited circumstances and in specic locations such as car parks, places with very high crime rates and on crimes such as planned burglaries. But, according to the board, camera surveillance is not a universal key to combating crime [20]. Still, in the political arena, prevention persists as a purpose of camera surveillance that is vigorously defended. In Parliament in 2006, the Minister of Justice once again argued that camera surveillance, when used properly, may lead to productive crime prevention results [49]. Technological development, such as intelligent surveillance systems, may increase the opportunities to use cameras both in crime prevention and in investigations of crimes already committed [50]. It is clear that the Minister, as a result of reports from the Crime Prevention Board among others, chose her words with care in statements concerning the positive effects. But other speakers in the debate, also referring to technological advances, were less impressed with the research. The reports from the Crime Prevention Board was criticised as being irrelevant, in view of the fact that it had not considered that poorly functioning cameras were used in the investigations [51]. Nonetheless, prevention was the main approach when a new public evaluation of the Act on General Camera Surveillance was proposed in 2008. In the instructions to the evaluating committee, it was noted that the evaluation should primarily concern the use of cameras for preventive purposes [52]. The report, published in 2009, again conrmed the reliability of camera surveillance but with an appropriate reservation: It is claimed that it is very likely (but not certain) that camera surveillance is effective in crime prevention work. In addition, the committee apparently qualied the denition of prevention. In order to prevent crime, “it is important that the material is delivered to the police and contributes to solving crimes” [37]. So it is not simply the presence of cameras that is supposed to be preventive. The public must also be convinced that they are used effectively in the judicial process. Still, it is a matter of situational prevention. In summation, crime prevention was actively promoted at the expense of other potential outcomes such as improved legal processes. Moreover, the ambition to prevent crime also obscured the quest for privacy protection. Despite uncertainty about effectiveness, the authoritative institutions are stubbornly sticking to camera surveillance as a situationally preventive device. Despite the gloomy results from camera surveillance presented in national and international reports [19], in 2009 Social Democratic Parliament Deputies still argued in a motion on camera surveillance that “the risk of being detected is the most effective measure of crime policy” [53, p. 1]. The conclusion has to be that the idea of prevention was promoted despite limited proved effectiveness because the idea was attractive as such. It tted into a new order of society as well as a new attitude toward citizens; in effect, a new governmental rationality was about to emerge.

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5. Generalising distrust With the 1998 act, the Act on General Camera Surveillance, a new terminology for monitoring the public was added to the legal vocabulary. In the preparatory works preceding Parliament’s decision on the new act, camera surveillance was mentioned for the rst time as an issue that concerned the public. It was no longer camera surveillance as a new, unspecied technology that was on the agenda for revised legislation; it was the monitoring of a specic, albeit all-inclusive, group of people, the general public, that necessitated legal regulations. The addition of “allm¨an” (general) indicated that the objective of surveillance was now xed and while “general” seems to include everyone, the term was, in fact, also a demarcation. The target group was not specied as potentially criminal or as marginalised elements of the social space; it was the general public. In contrast, groups and individuals, dened in advance as being of particular interest for state security reasons and serious crime investigations, may under certain circumstances be secretly monitored by the police and security service. Such monitoring was, and still is, regulated in the Act on Secret Camera Surveillance (Lagen om hemlig kamera¨overvakning 1995:1506) and the Act on Measures to Prohibit Certain Serious Crimes (Lag om åtg¨arder f¨or att f¨orhindra s¨arskilt allvarliga brott 2007:979). Actually, “the public” was introduced in the legal context of camera surveillance at the same time crime prevention emerged as an appealing aim. With the target group specied, prevention also inevitably took on the specic character of a situation-directed measure. Certainly, general camera surveillance can hardly be promoted as socially directed prevention because, if it was, it would encourage looking on monitors for people who look like they might commit a crime at some time. That is, lming would be guided by preconceived notions of what a future criminal looks like. Camera surveillance of the public has to be neutral with respect to the appearance of particular individuals and their potential deeds. It targets situations involving criminal acts, at least rhetorically it must be this way, in a democratic state governed by law. It is not possible to know whether camera surveillance is here to stay, as a legal instrument, but it certainly embodies a new kind of direction in crime policy. Monitoring is a situation-directed instrument for combating crime but when used en masse it also represents, somewhat paradoxically, a shift from an incident-based policy to a systematically oriented one. This governing technique is used not just on occasions that call for specic attention; it is there as a structure of control. That is, when cameras are installed as a regularly deployed device, social control becomes something different from what it used to be. Public authorities and private enterprises using cameras have to consider each and every person that passes the camera as an object to be monitored; the average citizen as well as the dedicated law-breaker has to consider that they may be under surveillance. This situational, but systematised, control affects the notion of the potential offender as well as the distinction between the general public and the offender. The potential offender no longer is a marginalised man governed by social misfortune and destitution. He or she is someone who takes a risk in a specic situation by chance made available to him or her; it could be anybody seeking to take advantage of a situation. The 2002 camera surveillance report articulated the essence of this rationale: “The basic platform of situational crime prevention is that crime is a rational behaviour that is preceded by a decision to commit, or not commit a crime in a specic situation” [36, p. 98]. The focus is on the temptation produced by a specic situation. Therefore, the situation has to be rearranged in order to make it less tempting; that is, crime has to be made an irrational rather than a rational activity. This is where camera surveillance enters the context, revising the calculation of the risk of being detected. The following quote from a Social Democratic Deputy in the parliamentary

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debate in 2006 illustrates how calculations of risks have been integrated discursively in the arguments on surveillance: “People refrain from snatching a handbag if they know that there are cameras” [54, p. 7]. The prospect of being caught on camera increases the risk of being captured and discourages the thefts of handbags. It is also clear from the quote that the potential bag snatcher or pickpocket represents a general category of “people”, so more or less everybody is an object of prevention and thus also as an object of general distrust. It is easy to nd examples of similar generalisations constructed discursively in Swedish political debate; this is not an issue that separates the parties. According to the Minister of Justice in the parliamentary debate in 2008, one of the main questions to consider in the context of camera surveillance is: where, by whom and for what purpose do people want to be looked at [55]. Thus, the Minister presupposes that everybody is, in principle, content with being monitored; the extent of surveillance as such is not up for discussion. Another short quote from the debate illustrates this way of generalising even more clearly. In a motion proposed by a Christian Democrat member of Parliament, a revision of the camera surveillance act was supported by the argument that it would mean more rights “for us who are monitored” [56]. In the last assertion, prevention is not just generalised; it is also internalised into a general “we the objects of monitoring”. In a corresponding manner, a speaker from the Centre Party argued that “you should not have any blind faith that state control of us citizens . . . would actually make us so much safer” [57]. We are all included as the object of control, or protection, which consequently means that none of us is completely reliable. If we happened to be in a situation where there was no control, then we could give in to the temptation to break the rules. This generalised “we” is often changed to the, in Swedish, equally generalising, equally internalising “you”. For example, the sophisticated technology is mentioned as a problem, stemming from the difculties of recognising when “you are monitored” [58]. Indeed, the idea of general camera surveillance feeds a generalisation of distrust. Without having any opinion as to whether this is based on any sensible assumptions about human nature, it has to be concluded that the generalisation of distrust does not t well with the notion of general social trust often presented as a model of the good society. Camera surveillance promotes a morally unattractive position of distrust. However, in fact, neo-liberal rule is indifferent to the idea of social trust. But there is also the other side of the coin here, making general distrust into a morally advisable position, which ts well with a new governmental rationality. The rationale is the same as for security checks at airports, for instance. Everyone must be checked on equal terms because suspecting one person more than any other conicts with our moral opinions about human equality and the right to equal treatment. Autonomous individuals demand equal recognition, in other words, not being treated worse than others. 6. The signicance of the informed citizen One aspect of camera surveillance as a means of crime prevention is crucial, namely public awareness of cameras. Cameras cannot prevent crime if nobody is aware of their existence. Cameras that potential offenders do not know about are of no use in deterring crime; in other words, ignorance about the existence of cameras means that they cannot be relevant for the choice to be a law-abiding citizen. Therefore, since cameras are not always easy to detect, warning signs have a specic purport in camera surveillance as crime prevention. By law, in Sweden camera surveillance has to be indicated by signs or in an otherwise distinct way. This requirement to provide information has been included in laws ever since the 1977 Act on TV Surveillance. In a motion put forward by the Liberal Party in 1997, the reason for the requirement to provide information was formulated clearly: “In our opinion, general

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camera surveillance is acceptable if it prevents crimes and accidents. By denition, camera surveillance is, generally, crime-preventive only if it is done openly” [59]. Surveillance is not effective as prevention if it is done covertly. But this is not the only reasoning for the warning signs; they also have other advantages. Obviously, information has a very specic function in establishing the “friendly” image of surveillance as well as demonstrating a specic image of the institutions carrying out the monitoring. That is, it is not a question of a capricious, evil state that installs cameras in order to spy on its citizens; it is a state that is eager to maintain order in society in the interest of one and all. Camera surveillance is the measure of a society governed by laws in the name of order and justice. Distrust may affect the supervising state, and warning signs may work as a mitigating measure that counters such reactions. In 2007, the Minister of Justice argued in Parliament in favour of the importance of warning signs as a means to enhance people’s security [60]. Obviously, she was speaking about securing citizens from inappropriate intrusion by the state. At the same time it seems to rule out the possibility that the state could have a hidden agenda. Thus, warning signs are instruments for ensuring preventive effects and a means to legitimise camera surveillance, to reassure that the controlling institutions behave according to the rules in a democratic state. But there is also a third aspect, which concerns personal integrity or privacy. It is a fundamental principle of legislation in the eld that monitoring should not be allowed unless people know about it [43] because that would conict with the claim to privacy. Freedom of choice is in this context a precondition for privacy and the possibility to make a choice requires information. Signs make people aware of the alternatives available: walk within the range of a camera or choose not to. The logic is that if one feels that lming violates one’s privacy, there is an opportunity to go elsewhere; we may choose more privacy if we want. In other words, warning signs make the supervised individual an explicit approver because being the object of surveillance is optional if there are alternatives presented. Obviously, this rationale fails if, for example, there is no or limited public transport to the place a person intends to visit that is free from technical surveillance. But for the basic reasoning, this makes no difference. The implied argument reads: By passing a camera for which there are warning signs in place, people consent to being monitored. But what if someone decides to not pass the camera? Is he trying to avoid being in the eld of vision? Is it a means of defending his privacy? While his intention may be to protect his privacy, the problem is that avoiding cameras, because of the assumption of explicit consent, also becomes an indication that he may have something to hide. That is, he is not willing to prove that his hands are clean. The harder someone tries to avoid, in case of for example, lack few camera free zones, the more suspicious this person will become. To quote an old Swedish maxim, “as long as you have pure our in your bag” there is no reason to fear anything simply because you are being monitored. By consenting to being in the eld of vision, people prove that they do not have any obscure intentions. They are someone who should be trusted. The maxim of “pure our in your bag” is frequently used in the Swedish public debate on the surveillance society. The idea is that, if the our that someone offers is pure (white and innocent) he/she has nothing to fear from whatever measures the authorities implement to keep order in society. There is a strong normative position assigned to this metaphor, still, as previously mentioned, it is a powerful argument among average Swedes for not being that bothered about electronic surveillance. There is moral potential in the logic that “giving consent to being monitored” becomes synonymous with “being innocent”. This does not concern so much the prospect that people may be more adaptable or law-abiding because they are being monitored. Rather it is about a strong incentive to prove one’s innocence by exposing oneself to the gaze of the camera eye. It is normal and decent to be monitored, and suspicions are raised if someone objects or tries to avoid it. Clearly, proving one’s innocence by

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consenting to surveillance also turns the evidence around. Giving consent proves that the person is not guilty, not the contrary; his or her potential guilt has to be established. The legal requirement for warning signs is a necessary condition to produce this social rationality. Originally, “having pure our in your bag” was a linguistic convention which assumed that some people conform to this requirement and some do not. It illustrated the old, established social distinction between “us” and “them”; the trustworthy and the not so trustworthy. Camera surveillance addresses another process of constructing social identity, the process of constructing “the distrusted public”. But distrust is not an end in itself. In the Swedish context of surveillance, it is more a product of a governmental rationality based on the idea of an autonomous individual constantly involved in the act of choosing. 7. Concluding remarks

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Taken together, the three aspects of Swedish camera surveillance discussed above, situational prevention, generalisation of distrust and the signicance of the informed citizen, suggest a fairly comprehensive change in policy. In fact, the introduction of camera surveillance as surveillance of the general public indicates that the relationship between the Swedish state and its citizens is undergoing change. In a way, the shift goes beyond the expanded violation of privacy that is often claimed to be the main issue of concern by voices critical of extensive surveillance [12]. The governmental rationality is strongly intertwined with the invention of the surveillance technique in that government, on one hand, is conditioned by the ability to monitor and, on the other hand, politics constructs the logical argument in which camera surveillance appears to be a reasonable feature of modern society. Swedish camera surveillance viewed as government of advanced liberalism suggests that it is not a question of the state expanding its means of social control, approaching a “totalitarian” security state. Monitoring the public represents a new kind of governmentality based on the neo-liberal individuation of the citizen. It is a governance technique that ts well with the notion of the autonomous individual who exercises her freedom, also in moral decisions, as a freedom to choose. Yet, camera surveillance the Swedish way seems to be an appropriate means for conducting the conduct of individuals so that citizens will embrace both the rational superiority of abiding by the law and being visible. There is a strong public incentive to appear before the camera eye and readily approve of being monitored. Popular images support this kind of norm conformity. References [1]

A. Barry, Th. Osborne and N. Rose, eds, Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government, UCL Press, London, 1996. [2] J. Bentham, The Panopticon writings (edited and introduced by M. Bozovi), Verso, London, 1995. [3] Ch. Borch, Crime prevention as totalitarian biopolitics, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 6(2) (2005), 91–105. [4] R. Boyne, Post-panopticism, Economy and Society 29(2) (2000), 285–307. [5] E. Carlsson, Medierad o¨ vervakning: En studie av o¨ vervakningens betydelser i svensk dagspress, Ph. D. Dissertation, Umeå University, 2009, p. 30. [6] M. Dean, Governmentality: Power and rule in modern societies, SAGE Publications, London, 1999. [7] M. Foucault, Power, knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977 (edited by C. Gordon), Harvester Press, Brighton, 1980, p. 85. [8] M. Foucault, Governmentality, in: The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality, G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller, eds, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1991, pp. 87–104. [9] M. Foucault, About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self Two Lectures at Dartmouth, Political Theory 21(2) (1993), 198–227, 204.

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F. Bj¨orklund / Pure our in your bag: Governmental rationalities of camera surveillance M. Foucault, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, Vintage Books, New York, 1995, (1977). D. Garland, Ideas, institutions and situational crime prevention, in; Ethical and social perspectives on situational crime prevention, A. von Hirsch, D. Garland and A. Wakeeld, eds, Hart Publishing, Oxford, Or., 2000, pp. 1–16. B.J. Goold and L. Lazarus, eds, Security and human rights, Hart Publishing, Oxford, Or., 2007. B.J. Goold, Technologies of surveillance and the erosion of institutional trust, in: Technologies of insecurity: The surveillance of everyday life, K. Aas, H. Oppen Gundhus and H. Mork Lomell, eds, Abingdon, Routledge, 2009, pp. 207–218. K.D. Haggerty and R.V. Ericson, The surveillant assemblage, British Journal of Sociology 51(4) (2000), 605–622. K.D. Haggerty and R.V. Ericson, eds, The new politics of surveillance and visibility, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2006. K.D. Haggerty, Tear down the walls: On demolishing the Panopticon, in: Theorizing surveillance: The Panopticon and beyond, D. Lyon, ed., Willan Publishing, Cullompton, Devon, 2006, pp. 23–45, p. 41. Kamera¨overvakning i Landskrona: En utv¨ardering, Brottsf¨orebyggande rådet, Stockholm, report 14, 2009. Kamera¨overvakning i brottsf¨orebyggande syfte, Brottsf¨orebyggande rådet, Stockholm, report 11, 2003. Kamera¨overvakning och brottsprevention, Brottsf¨orebyggande rådet, Stockholm, report 29, 2007. Kort om kamera¨overvakning, Brottsf¨orebyggande rådet, Stockholm, 2009. H. Koskela, ‘Cam era’ – the contemporary urban Panopticon, Surveillance and Society 1(3) (2003), 292–313, 298. H. Koskela, ‘The other side of surveillance’: Webcams, power and agency, in: Theorizing surveillance: The Panopticon and beyond, D. Lyon, ed., Willan Publishing, Cullompton, Devon, 2006, pp. 163–181. J. Lodge, EU homeland security: Citizens or suspects?, Journal of European Integration 26(3) (2003), 253–279. D. Lyon, Surveillance society: Monitoring everyday life, Open University Press, Buckingham, 2001. D. Lyon, The Search for Surveillance Theories, in: Theorizing surveillance: The Panopticon and beyond, D. Lyon, ed., Willan Publishing, Cullompton, Devon, 2006, pp. 3–20. M. McCahill and C. Norris, CCTV systems in London: Their structures and practices, Urban Eye Project, Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Hull, working paper No. 10, 2003. H. Mork Lomell, Targeting the unwanted: Camera surveillance and categorical exclusion in Oslo, Norway, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 346–360. A.L. Newman, Protectors of privacy: Regulating personal data in the global economy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2008. C. Norris, From personal to digital: CCTV, the Panopticon and the technological mediation of suspicion and social control, in: Surveillance as social sorting: Privacy, risk and digital discrimination, D. Lyon, ed., Routledge, London, 2003, pp. 249–281. N. Rose and P. Miller, Political Power beyond the state: Problematics of government, The British Journal of Sociology 43 (1992), 173–205. N. Rose, Governing “advanced” liberal democracies, in: Foucault and political reason: Liberalism, neo-liberalism and rationalities of government, A. Barry, Th. Osborne and N. Rose, eds, UCL Press, London, 1996, pp. 37–64. N. Rose, P. O’Malley and M. Valverde, Governmentality, Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (2006), 83–104. J. Semple, Bentham’s prison: A study of the Panopticon penitentiary. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993. B. Simon, The return of panopticism: Supervision, subjection and the new surveillance, Surveillance and Society 3(1) (2005), 1–20. G.J.D. Smith, Behind the screens: Examining constructions of deviance and informal practices among CCTV control room operators in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 376–395. Statens Offentliga utredningar (SOU), Allm¨an kamera¨overvakning, 110, 2002, Fritzes, Stockholm (author’s translation). Statens Offentliga utredningar (SOU), En ny kamera¨overvakningslag, 87, 2009, Fritzes, Stockholm (quotation p. 21, author’s translation). H. Tham, Act and order as a leftish project?, Punishment and Society 3(3) (2002), 409–426. P. Vaz and F. Bruno, Types of self-surveillance: From abnormality to individuals ‘at risk’, Surveillance and Society 1(3) (2003), 272–291. M. Yar, Panopticon power and the pathologisation of vision: Critical reections on the Foucauldian thesis, Surveillance and Society 1(3) (2003), 254–271. L. Zedner, Seeking security by eroding rights: The side-stepping of due process, in: Security and Human Rights, B.J. Goold and L. Lazarus, eds, Hart Publishing, Oxford, Or., 2007, pp. 257–276, p. 262. Government bill 1975/76:194. Government bill 1989/90:119. Government bill 1997/1998:64. Motion 2009/10:JU405 (L Astudillo et al., Social Democratic Party (s), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 1997/98:86 (M. Ekendahl, Conservative Party (m)), motion 1997/98:Ju21 (G. Hellsvik et al. (m)), motion 1997/98:Ju910 (O. Johansson et al., Centre Party (c)).

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Parliament protocol 1997/98:86 (S. Persson, Liberal Party(fp), K. Andreasson, Green Party (mp)), motion 1997/98:Ju22 (G. Schyman et al., Left Party (v)). Ministry of Justice, Instruction 2001:53, (author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2006/07:1463, Minister of Justice B. Ask. See also for example motion 2005/06:Ju273 (R Marcelind, Christian Democratic Party (kd)), Parliament protocol 2006/07:132 (G Wallin (c)). Parliament protocol, 2006/07:132, Minister of Justice B. Ask. Parliament protocol 2007/08:69 (L. Astudillo (s)). Ministry of Justice Instruction 2008:22. Motion 2009/10:JU405 (L. Astudillo et al. (s)), see also Motion 2007/08: Ju417 (L. Astudillo et al. (s), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2006/07:132 (L. Astudillo (s), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2007/08:69, Minister of Justice B. Ask. Motion 2005/06:Ju275 (R. Marcelind (kd), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2006/07:132 (J Linander (c), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2007/08:69 (G. Wallin (c)). Motion 1997/98:Ju20 (S. Persson et al. (fp), author’s translation). Parliament protocol 2007/08:69, Minister of Justice B Ask.

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[54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60]

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Zooming in on ‘heterotopia’: CCTV-operator practices at Schiphol Airport Pieter Wagenaar∗ and Kees Boersma Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Abstract. Airports are places that are heavily surveilled by different (technical) means, including CCTV (Closed Circuit Television). So far, the literature on CCTV has not paid much attention to the practices behind the screens of the CCTV monitors at airports. In this article, we present an in-depth, ethnographic study of the use of CCTV in the Military Police’s control room at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. We nd that, since nobody is ‘at home’ at Schiphol, surveillance through CCTV is a challenge for the police. The operators in the control room are constantly struggling with the question how to spot deviance in a situation where they believe normal behavior does not exist. Our study shows that the categories for singling out the abnormal identied by Norris and Goold are rarely used by the Military Police at Schiphol. Instead, they heavily rely on routine, transmitted, and retrospective surveillance. Keywords: CCTV, Schiphol Airport, surveillance, heterotopia

1. Introduction

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Salter writes that airports can be seen as ‘heterotopias’. They are places: ‘”that are in relation with all other sites, but in such a way to suspect, neutralize, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reect”(Foucault 1986: 24). The airport connects the national and the international (also the national to itself), the domestic and the foreign, in a way that problematizes those connections’ [33, cit. 49]. Therefore, an airport forms: ‘a space which presupposes a system of opening and closing which makes it both isolated and penetrable, not a freely accessible public place, but one which can only be entered with certain permissions and rites’ [24, cit. 121]. As they can only be entered with certain permissions, an airport is heavily surveilled. Not only are we questioned before boarding, are our identities checked, our clothes frisked, our belongings searched, and our bodies scanned, but we are constantly watched as well, through Closed Circuit Television (CCTV). Behind the screens of the CCTV monitors ‘social sorting’ takes place [20]. The state is watching us to decide whether we are t to use the airport and take the ights, or not. Or isn’t it? As it happens, it is individual CCTV operators who do the actual sorting. They can be ofcers of the Dutch Royal Military Police, but also employees of Airport Security (a private security company), KLM Airlines (to a very limited degree), or the Douane (the customs). And, as always, they form communities of practice that ∗

Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

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have their own rules for sorting – which might differ enormously from each other – and might have difculties co-operating [28]. Talking to these operators, it becomes clear that they actually do perceive Schiphol as a heterotopia, a place where no one is ‘at home’, and therefore no one acts normally. Which practices do the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol camera room operators construct to do their sorting? How are these practices transmitted between camera rooms? How do they differ from CCTV-operator practices in different settings? How do CCTV operators surveill a space they experience as a heterotopia, where they feel no one is ‘at home’, and therefore ‘normal behaviour’ does not exist? These are the questions we are trying to address in the article. 2. Schiphol Airport

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‘CCTV at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol seems to be effective. The camera-surveillance that recently started at Schiphol has already been effective in ghting crime at the airport. Last Wednesday, 10 February 2010, the military police ofcially opened the new CCTV control room at the airport that houses all the facilities. The room provides specially trained military police ofcers the ability to monitor the key-places on the airport continuously, 24 hours a day, by means of cameras. Moreover, the camera recordings will be stored for almost one month. The military police has used the new camera system successfully, said a spokesman. “For example we were able to use it in criminal investigations and catch a number of luggage thieves red-handed. Also, in the period before we had our images, we were able to contribute to preventing a loverboy from turning a young girl into a prostitute using Airport Security’s footage.’ [32]. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is the most important hub (Mainport) of the Schiphol Group, of which the other Dutch airports – at Rotterdam, Eindhoven and Lelystad – are also part. Schiphol is the third largest cargo airport in Europe and the fth largest airport measured by numbers of passengers. It is one of the home-airports of Air France-KLM and the SkyTeam Alliance. The Schiphol Group has four shareholders: the State of the Netherlands (69.8% of the shares), Amsterdam (20.0%), Rotterdam (2.2%) and A´eroports de Paris (8.0%). Schiphol is an important part of Amsterdam’s economy. In 2010 some 45.2 million passengers traveled through Schiphol. There were 1.5 million tons of cargo handled, and about 390,000 planes travelled through the airport. In 2010, about 60,000 people were working at the Mainport Schiphol, and some 550 different companies were housed in the Schiphol area that covers about 2,787 hectares. Since Schiphol’s strategy focuses on an integral development of aviation and non-aviation activities on its site, Schiphol Plaza – the publicly accessible mall at Schiphol – is an important part of the hub. For eight years now, Schiphol – under the Military Police’s supervision – has fullled a large number of preventive tasks in the eld of security. Its personnel work together with the Royal Military Police and with qualied security staff of private security companies such as G4S. The responsibilities of the various stakeholders – of which CCTV nowadays forms an important component – are dened in the Platform Security and Public Safety Schiphol [34]. Surprisingly, we know very little about the actual use of CCTV at airports. It is clear that there is a considerable amount of reliance on camera surveillance [14,15], and that it is currently replacing examination as a means of social sorting [1,25]. We do not know exactly how this works, although Klauser et al. show that it does differ from CCTV use in, for instance, shopping malls [15]. CCTV practices at airports, including practices of social sorting, are very relevant to our understanding of everyday surveillance. Many researchers have observed that those working in a camera control room,

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observing shopping malls or city centres target ‘the unusual’ [8,28]. Yet, in a heterotopia like Schiphol, no one is ‘at home’ (everyone is unusual) and all behaviour differs from that in normal situations: at least, that is what the CCTV operators consistently claim. The citation at the beginning of this section holds a promise. CCTV at Schiphol has been introduced to make the place more safe and secure, and in the future CCTV operators will be looking for abnormal behaviour. In the remaining part of this article, we are interested in the following question: if CCTV operators nd all behaviour at Schiphol to be different from that in normal situations, then what clues are they looking for? 3. CCTV: An overview CCTV started in 1967, but began to grow exponentially from the mid-nineties onwards [28,30]. Webster, who studied the CCTV expansion in the UK, referred to this period as an ‘era of uptake’ [5,39] . It has grown ‘rhizomically’, by linking many small, often privately owned, networks to one another [18, 28,37]. Norris and McCahill connect it to the ‘new penology’: not ‘the identication of the individual criminal for the purpose of ascribing guilt and blame, and the imposition of punishment and treatment’, which is what penology used to be, but ‘techniques for identifying, classifying and managing groups assorted by levels of dangerousness’ [27,30]. According to Norris, who we quote literally, using CCTV in this fashion has led to very real changes in the practice of surveillance [26]:

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1) The surveillance gaze has been expanded to a level unimaginable on the basis of co-presence 2) The surveillance gaze becomes removed from spatial constraints implicit in face-to-face surveillance 3) The surveillance gaze becomes freed from the temporal constraints of face-to-face interaction and co-presence 4) Surveillance and authoritative intervention become fully functionally separate 5) The act of surveillance becomes more democratic; all become equally subject to the surveillance gaze 6) The disciplinary project of the panopticon is expanded as inclusionary social control is promoted over exclusion It has been observed that using CCTV for social sorting can lead to ‘deep discrimination’: afuent citizens and marginalised groups can be treated very differently, especially where their mobility is concerned. Yet, how this works exactly, especially at airports, has not been thoroughly researched. Lyon therefore asks for an ethnography of the practices involved [18,19,21]. Such an ethnography is necessary as there is usually very little supervision of CCTV operators’ work and their practices therefore emerge ‘on the job’ [8,23]. Norris and Armstrong were among the rst to study these practices. They found that there are seven reasons why CCTV-room personnel’s suspicion might be triggered, which we quote/paraphrase as [28]: 1) Prejudice (negative attitudes towards male youth in general and black male youth in particular; certain clothing and posture 2) Suspect behaviour (running and loitering) 3) Usual suspects 4) Suspicion based on a person’s location 5) ‘Otherness’ (drunks, beggars, the homeless, street traders)

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6) Those who are disoriented or unfamiliar with their surroundings 7) Those who challenge the right of the cameras to monitor them Other researchers have found similar practices [11], and Goold, who we quote literally, has come up with a more elaborate set of practices [8, cit. p. 143]:

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1) Behavioural: suspicion based on the behaviour or demeanour of the individual, such as acting aggressively towards others, appearing to be drunk in public, or running down a busy high street 2) Categorical: suspicion based on personal characteristics such as age, dress, gender or race 3) Locational: suspicion based on an individual’s location. Examples might include an individual walking through a car park at night or standing close to a bank cash-point 4) Personalized: suspicion based on the prior knowledge of the individual , such as knowledge of previous criminal behavior or association with other known or suspected offenders 5) Protectional: monitoring for the purpose of ensuring the safety of the individual targeted. Examples might include following an unaccompanied child or a woman walking alone through a deserted town center at night 6) Routine: monitoring carried out as part of a set surveillance routine, such as watching security personnel pick up money from a high street bank on a weekly basis 7) Transmitted: suspicion based on information from a source outside the CCTV scheme, or where the initial surveillance was commenced because of an outside request 8) Voyeuristic: surveillance for the purpose of personal interest or gratication, sexual or otherwise These practices are not neutral. They are aimed at watching some people more than others. Young, black males are amongst those targeted most, most researchers nd; especially if they belong to some or other subcultural group, or display too-condent behaviour [3,4,17,22,23,26,29]. Naturally, by focusing on certain groups, CCTV neglects others. Women are nearly invisible to the cameras’ gaze [16,28]. Obviously, who gets watched is also a function of the location the cameras are aimed at. CCTV operators at a railway station have been noticed to look out for people who raise their arms, who get too close to the platforms, and for unattended children running around [17]. In a Berlin shopping mall CCTV operators mainly watched the re alarm [11]. Of course, those under constant surveillance sometimes know they are being watched. According to Smith, shoplifters, prostitutes etc., have devised methods to avoid the cameras, or to use them to their advantage, which has an impact on CCTV effectiveness [9,29, 36]. And there are more obstacles to the effective use of CCTV, for example, an operator practice that is surprisingly rare is that of ‘retrospective surveillance’: running back through the video tapes. Operators rarely do this because it is too time-consuming, although it is expected that the use of digital technology will change this situation [12,17,26]. When we look into the question of how CCTV is actually used, we observe that different parties are involved in its use, and that they do not always co-operate smoothly. CCTV operators often assist the police, but do not always have a clear understanding of police work. Yet, as research shows, the effectiveness of the operators’ work depends on effective co-operation with the police [8,17,23,28]. A similar phenomenon has been observed concerning the co-operation between CCTV-operators and doormen at clubs [35]. If CCTV schemes are led by the police, co-operation turns out to go much more smoothly than if they are not (Goold 2004: 126–138). Naturally, the police realize that CCTV operators can observe them, which is why the cameras tend to have the effect of slightly reducing police use of force. Police ofcers also sometimes signal to the operators that cameras should be turned away in certain situations, and, in some instances, try to embezzle tapes to destroy evidence of police brutality. The opposite also occurs: police ofcers asking CCTV operators to move the cameras in their direction as a back-up. However, the overall consensus is that the effect of CCTV on police work is minimal [7,8, 11,28].

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4. Methodology and methods This article is based on a eld study that was undertaken at the camera control room of the Royal Military Police at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Grounded theory [6] has been integrated with insights from CCTV surveillance literature. The grounded theory approach is inductive and moves from specic to more general analysis. It starts from the data and tries to explain the key phenomena in the data. It then tries to categorize the relationships of the key elements informed by theory. The main concern here is to understand the practices at the camera room of the Military Police. Extensive ethnographic research and eld work was carried out, focused on the everyday practices of the members of the camera room. The grounded theory approach incorporated literature about camera room practices combined with the empirical data from multiple sources at Schiphol. This organizational, ethnographic research has enabled a study of the life- world perspective of the organizational members [41]. The complexity of everyday practices in the camera room was the main focus of the research. Doing ethnographic research means an intensive, qualitative investigation for which multiple sources of information were used: observation, informal talks, semi-structured interviews, and document research [10]. The camera room was visited 10 times in the period November 2010–May 2011 for periods of six days each, including one evening shift. During the eldwork period, representatives of the responsible Safety Region Kennemerland and of Schiphol Amsterdam Airport were interviewed. Unfortunately, the interviews could not be tape-recorded due to the control rooms’ privacy rules. However, the 60 hours spent in the camera room of the Military Police provided the opportunity to collect ethnographic data. A main concern in carrying out this study was to determine how the camera room’s management and the operators use CCTV and the way in which they give meaning to the images. It was important to understand what kind of images triggered the attention of the camera room’s personnel and what kind of action they took on the basis of these images. Next to the literature on CCTV, discussed in the previous sections of this article, in particular Weick’s concept of ‘sense making’ is consistent with this approach. For Weick, sense making is about ‘. . . such things as placement of items into frameworks, comprehending, redressing surprise, constructing meaning, interacting in pursuit of mutual understanding and patterning’ [40, cit. p. 6]. Following Weick, we see the sense making of CCTV by the management and dispatchers as an ongoing process, which is grounded in the camera room practices and rooted in the culture of the organisation. The remaining part of this article presents the sense-making processes by means of the ethnographic description. Vignettes are used, as Orr puts it, containing ‘some combination of the scenes that follow or variations on these themes [that] make up the events of most days’ [31, cit. p. 14]. The vignettes represent a combination of stories about surveillance told by the Military Police, a description of their task complexity, and detailed examples of surveillance practices. Throughout the article, some illustrations about surveillance practices are given, but the vignettes contain the rich descriptions of such practices. The vignettes enable a taxonomy of surveillance in practice at Schiphol. 5. The camera control room in action 5.1. Setting the scene Some 1,350 cameras are in use in the public parts of Schiphol Airport Amsterdam. Their number is growing and will probably double in the near future. At present, there are still blind spots, but these are

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not many, and cameras can often be moved to cover them. About 20% of the cameras are aimed at the gates, and the rest watch Schiphol’s publicly accessible space (Schiphol Plaza), baggage reclaims, part of the luggage hall, and a number of aircraft stands. At the research site, the camera room of the Military Police, images from these cameras are watched. This room has a dual function. On the one hand, it functions as an emergency control room where dispatchers take incoming calls from the public or their colleagues concerning safety issues. In this respect, the control room has tasks that are similar to that of any other emergency response room in the Netherlands [2,38]. On the other hand, the control room of the Military Police is supposed to contribute to the security aspects at Schiphol airport. The CCTV system and the camera control room are meant to support this function. The design of the control room corresponds to this dual function. In the largest part of the room, the dispatchers (or centralists) use four tables to respond to incoming calls about safety issues. On the other side of the room, shielded by a glass wall, are the monitors of the CCTV system, where specialized CCTV operators are at work. The cameras in use can be operated by using a digital oor plan and a mouse, but also by a joystick and a keyboard if the camera numbers are known. An experienced operator knows about half of the camera numbers by heart. The current system has been in use for about a year. Before that, Schiphol also had CCTV, but the Military Police never used it, as it was mainly a matter for the airport itself. There are 13 operators who work eight-hour shifts and take a fteen minute break after every hour. The Schiphol CCTV system is unique in that four parties can make use of the cameras. These are the Military Police (who only operates three workstations), the customs, Schiphol Security, and KLM. Each party uses its own login, as does every individual operator. A fth party, not participating, is the Railway Company. The Military Police can use its cameras, but not retrieve images itself; a difculty subject to ongoing debate with the Railways. There are protocols for deciding which party can use which camera when: there are primary and secondary users. As there are more parties watching, there are also more CCTV operator workstations at the airport. The total number of these is about 50. Military police CCTV operators sometimes share shifts with other parties, or with ofcers in the eld, to further their understanding of other parties’ work. They also send the images to the workstations in the rest of the emergency response room of which they are part. CCTV operators receive three and a half days’ training with a privately owned training company called Politie Opleidingen Centrum Nederland (Dutch Police Training Centre). There is additional training, of similar duration, at the Netherlands Police Academy (Dutch Police Academy). Then there is training on the job, and training in knowledge of the terrain under surveillance. This is especially important for those CCTV operators who have a background in border patrol only. Those with a background in policing often already know Schiphol. Being a CCTV operator at the Military Police is usually not a career in itself, as the Military Police makes its personnel change work every three to ve years. Having to change work so often causes a lot of stress, especially because ofcers do not receive tenure below a certain rank, and studying is necessary for obtaining higher rank. One of the perks of being a CCTV operator is that the job allows for such study, as there are usually few night shifts. A solution to this stress can be leaving the Military Police, but keeping employment in a civilian capacity, because then the rules for tenure and job rotation no longer apply. 5.2. Surveilling high-risk ights (routine operations) What do the Military Police operators actually do? It is striking that, contrary to what Goold, Norris, McCahill and others nd, a large part of their work consists of what Goold calls ‘routine surveillance’ [8].

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There are places that simply need to be watched at certain moments; usually this has to do with highrisk ights. When El Al boards passengers at Schiphol Airport, for instance, one of the two Military Police CCTV workstations observed in this research does nothing but watch this. Naturally, other safety precautions have been taken as well and there is a large Military Police presence in the eld during such moments. El Al observation can take four hours, and there can be several El Al ights a day. Such routine observation also occurs when US troops are shipped via Schiphol and when very valuable goods are transported. Routine surveillance – all of it knowledge- and information-based at Schiphol – happens as well during the landing of so-called ‘100% inspection ights’. These are often ights from the Caribbean, which are inspected because of the suspicion of drug trafcking. The Military Police are especially looking for people waiting for drug smugglers to arrive. These can be found waiting in the arrival hall. CCTV operators cooperate closely with plain-clothes teams in the eld during such observations, and communicate with them all the time. There are certain clues for recognizing drug-smuggler reception teams, which can be summed up as ‘conspicuously inconspicuous’ behaviour. Clearly belonging together but maintaining a ve meter distance, looking ‘Caribbean’, looking like a member of a subculture, smoking marijuana, standing at a considerable distance from the counter while waiting for passengers, being present in the arrivals hall much too early, looking over their shoulders all of the time, but not at the arrivals, and – for some reason or other – carrying two cell phones, these are the clues CCTV operators look for during such observation. These ndings are consistent with what Klauser et al. describe for Geneva Airport: it is not certain categories of people, who are suspicious, it is certain places at certain moments [15]. Yet CCTV operators at Schiphol do sometimes focus on specic social groups: they have very clear ideas about what members of drug-smuggler reception teams might look like. With the actual drug smugglers themselves it is a different matter. They might very well be middle-aged and inconspicuous-looking. Again, Klauser et al. observe a similar thing regarding airport thieves [15].

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5.3. Calls for assistance (transmitted) Then there are what Goold would call ‘calls for assistance’ [7]. Usually, it is not individual ofcers in the eld who ask for it, as many of these have not yet grown used to the possibility of doing so. Yet, it does sometimes happen, for example, if ofcers in the eld suspect they might be heading for a situation where the use of force is necessary. Other observed examples of calls for assistance were a call about a man with a knuckle-duster, or a (false) holdup alert at the Schiphol border exchange. There are also certain incidents that make calls for assistance from the eld obligatory. Examples are ‘incapacitations’, or unattended luggage. When unattended luggage is signaled, usually by Schiphol Security, the public is kept at bay, and the Military Police are called to see if the luggage can be opened. If not, then a specially trained sniffer dog is called for, which can smell explosives. If the dog actually nds explosives the entire hall is cleared and a detonation team is sent for. During this process, the Military Police CCTV operators watch the environment, looking out for people with detonators. Vignette 1 gives three examples of calls for assistance concerning unattended luggage. (False) bomb threats are a regular occurrence as well; they happen once a week. Usually, though, it is teams on the lookout for pick-pockets, drugs trafckers or illegal immigrants who ask for camera assistance. An example is: CCTV operators receiving photos of a girl in a black Adidas sweater, accompanied by her child, and her mother. The plain-clothes Military Police ofcer asks the operators to follow her, and to report on her every movement. Both workstations start looking for her, and soon nd her. They start observing her. Sometimes the girl in the Adidas sweater disappears into a blind spot, and

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Vignette 1: unattended luggage The rst message ‘unattended’ is sent to the response room by a team of the SDBV. SDBV stands for Schiphol Service BV; the private security service of Schiphol, whose surveillance personnel usually are the rst to identify the luggage and make a report. In this case an unattended suitcase is found at Schiphol Plaza. By following the police ofcers by means of the camera images, two SDBV people are seen standing next to the luggage. They are the ones who have called the control room of the Military Police, who now send a unit, including a dog team, to the place of the unattended luggage. In this case the dog observes nothing unusual. There are four bottles of liquor in the bag. The whole incident takes about half an hour and necessitates the deployment of ve Military Police ofcers in the eld, two operators in the control room, and a dog. The second message ‘unattended’ is about two pieces of luggage found unattended at Schiphol Plaza. The CCTV images show that two SDBV professionals are keeping an eye on the luggage. They put a yellow ribbon around it. According to John, the head of the emergency room who is present in the control room during this incident, it makes a big difference to the perception of the public if the ribbon is stretched by the SDBV or by the Military Police (who use red and white ribbons). The latter produces much more anxiety. In this case, the unattended baggage turns out to belong to a man who has consumed too much alcohol. Such a case is a heavy burden for the Military Police because they constantly have to follow the man to force him to keep an eye on his bags. The third call comes from a SDBV professional who has found an unattended plastic bag close to the check-in point. The dispatcher calls a Military Police unit in the eld, who respond with: ‘I think this is the luggage of a passenger who we have previously addressed’. The dispatcher responds, ‘Are you sure that the luggage indeed belongs to passenger you talked to before, and that nothing is wrong?’. The dispatcher explains to the researcher that a remark like ‘probably there is nothing wrong’ is quite difcult to respond to – you have to be sure that everything is all right. The dispatcher urges the unit in the eld to check the luggage carefully.

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then the operators discuss her whereabouts with the plain-clothes ofcer. Eventually, she goes through the customs, and then the operators can no longer follow her. Finally, there is physical safety. When a luggage cart catches re, the Military Police CCTV operators watch it, until remen have put out the re. Planes with malfunctions are watched as well. An example is a high-speed landing of a plane that cannot get its aps down, or the landing of a plane with a at tire, as Vignette 2 shows. Vignette 2: physical safety The dispatchers in the control room use standardized protocols to take action at the time of an incident. If something is wrong with an airplane the airport safety organizations use the VOS system. VOS is the Dutch acronym for Aircraft Accident Schiphol. During a research visit to the control room, an incoming VOS call was witnessed. The call, which was hard to miss because a loud buzzer went off, immediately attracted the full attention of the dispatchers and the information manager. In this case, the captain of an incoming airplane had announced a ‘pan pan’ call to signify that there was a situation on board (a mayday call is reserved for more serious issues). The captain announced he needed to make a high-speed landing, because he could not get his aps down. The people in the control room were fully alert. The CCTV operators found the right camera to get the plane in sight. Apparently there was nothing wrong with the airplane. Schiphol, however, did not take any risks. One could see the re brigade waiting for the landing on the screens. Within ve minutes of the incoming ‘pan pan’ call the plane landed safely and, according to the VOS system, the dispatchers in the control room continued with their daily operations. The dispatchers and the information manager told the researchers that the CCTV images really helped them to get a better understanding of what was going on with the airplane, and that the images gave them a better impression of the actions of the re brigade.

5.4. Voyeurism A category of CCTV surveillance practices that gures prominently in the work of Norris and Goold is voyeurism [8,26]. This hardly appears to occur in the Military Police CCTV observation room at Schiphol. If operators spot football fans dressed in orange, the Dutch national colour, they comment on it. The same goes for stag parties, and people waiting to receive a child they have adopted, carrying welcome banners. It is possible that operators were displaying socially desirable behaviour when

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the camera room was visited, but that does not seem likely, as checking their hotmail and Facebook accounts, or reading sports magazines during particularly slow periods behind the screens, proved to be no problem for them during the research observation. The fact that many observers are female – which is an important difference with other CCTV control rooms that have been studied – and that others present in the emergency response room can see what the observers are looking at, probably contributes to the apparent lack of voyeurism. 5.5. ‘Free surveillance’ (behavioural, categorical, locational, personalised)

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‘Free surveillance’, surveillance other then routine or transmitted, is relatively rare. The Military Police CCTV operators usually do not have the time for it. They consistently reported that, when they do engage in it, they are confronted with the problem that they are on the lookout for unusual behaviour, but that quite a lot of behaviour is unusual at an airport/railway station. Running is not unusual behaviour, as people can be trying to catch a train. Loitering is not strange either: people are waiting to board. Being disoriented or nervous is normal, as many people do not y that often, and, at an international airport, going by ethnicity is not possible either. Nevertheless, CCTV operators have devised practices to go by. Targeting youths from the west of Amsterdam who sometimes show up at Schiphol Airport is one of those. Watching the group of about fty homeless people living at the airport is another. Some of these are known recidivists, and CCTV operators sometimes check their hang-outs to see who is present. The Military Police do not particularly mind their presence, except for the 10 to 15 of them who steal or harass passers-by. Yet, most of the street people at Schiphol just use the airport as a sleeping place. Some of them even make themselves useful by acting as Military Police informers. Pickpockets and luggage thieves are a different matter. Pickpockets usually operate during rush hours, at the railway’s ticket vending machine, and are recognizable for not queuing up, observing the queue to spot victims, working in teams, and for ‘tailing’ people. Luggage thieves can be found near the car rental counter, or near KLM’s check-in. CCTV operators watch these spots, when they have the time, trying to catch thieves red-handed; usually unsuccessfully. ‘Anglers’ are another category that is watched. They are people who try to steal money from pay phones, and usually are homeless. Vignette 3 illustrates this practice. Vignette 3: an ‘angler’ The CCTV room’s operator has signaled an ‘angler’ – a person who tries to steal coins from a payphone using a piece of wire. He informs the centralists in the control room and also makes sure that they can follow the angler through CCTV. The person that is surveilled behaves suspiciously near a public phone at Schiphol Plaza. The operator’s suspicion is founded on the fact that the angler does not use the phone, but is still bending over it. The angler stands with his back to the camera. The operator carefully follows him after he walks away from the phone. The man walks through the Plaza, takes the escalator to the rst oor (near the check-in desks), walks around aimlessly and then disappears. Meanwhile, the dispatcher of the control room informs a unit in the eld about the angler’s suspicious behavior. A description of the man is given: he is wearing jeans, a jacket and a green backpack. The eld unit locates the angler quickly. Meanwhile the dispatchers and the CCTV operator engage in a discussion about the angler’s behavior. The information manager asks everybody to look at the images again. The question then is: can we actually see that he is trying to steal money from the machine? In other words, can we see illegal action on the basis of which we can arrest him? The images are played back and the nding is: no, these images are not sufcient proof. The man stands with his back to the camera in such a way that the operator and dispatchers are unable to see what he is doing. And although the eld unit reports that this man is known to the police, he cannot be arrested because he has not been caught red-handed. The information manager is disappointed that the suspect cannot be arrested, but concludes: ‘once the day will come . . .’

Then there are recruiters for illegal taxi services, who take up position outside Schiphol Plaza. Trying to catch these is something CCTV operators are sometimes formally instructed to do. Vignette 4 illustrates this.

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Vignette 4: recruiting for illegal taxi drivers One of the cameras at Schiphol Plaza is aimed at the taxi stand. A young man is walking around there, apparently aimlessly. The CCTV room’s operator considers this to be suspicious behavior. The dispatcher in the control room explains the situation: at the taxi stand recruiters regularly try to lure passengers into illegal taxis. Proving they are doing this is difcult, however, because the operators can see that people are addressed by the recruiter on the screen, but the conversation itself cannot be overheard. The only remedy is to send a unit to the recruiter, and so disrupt his practices. According to the information manager the images again are not legally sufcient proof to arrest the man, let alone to prosecute him. This is common knowledge among the dispatchers in the control room. However, one of them argues that ‘. . . if one particular colleague had seen the pictures he would have taken action’. The reaction of the centralists is: ‘Yes, indeed, but he instructs eld units to arrest someone quite easily’. Apparently there is always a personal element in the decision whether or not to arrest a suspect. This incident does make the dispatchers send extra personnel to the taxi stand, though, despite the fact that illegal taxis have a low priority for the Military Police.

5.6. Retrospective surveilling

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A category that hardly gures in the work of CCTV scholars like Norris and Goold, but that is very prevalent at Schiphol, is retrospective surveillance. When Norris did his research, camera images were usually recorded on tape, which made it very cumbersome to play them back. Nowadays technology is digital. If it is known when and where a certain incident has occurred, nding images can be a matter of minutes. The fact that there are sometimes several cameras that can have recorded the incident, and that cameras can have been looking in the wrong direction (they are not preset, because of technical complications), complicates matters. Retrospective surveillance is always transmitted. Special teams working on illegal immigration or theft ask for it by e-mail. If the camera room manages to nd images – which are stored for the legal maximum term of 28 days - it saves these to a DVD in a special format, with a special media player attached, so the images cannot be tampered with. Dutch judges accept these DVDs as legal proof. Vignette 5: confronting a frontier-runner The CCTV room’s operator is trying to nd the footage of a people smuggler at Schiphol Plaza. The suspect has been arrested together with his ‘client’ just before they wanted to board. The police, looking for evidence, requested the CCTV room to nd out whether or not the two men were familiar to each other – something the smuggler denied on interrogation. His ‘client’ denied having ever seen the smuggler before as well. If the operator can come up with images that show the two men walking together at Schiphol Plaza, then at least the police can confront them with these images. At the day of his arrest the smuggler wore a green cap, so he can be recognized quite easily. And indeed the operator is able to nd the images. The camera footage reveals that the two men arrived together at Schiphol Plaza. The smuggler – the man with the green cap – remains detached from his client, who is following him, in order to give the impression that they do not belong together. The operator tries to nd out the precise route the two men are taking. She uses a hand-written time-line to reconstruct the smuggler’s whereabouts. The images that she found already sufce for detaining the smuggler for some more days. The operator reects upon this situation. To her, it is very satisfying that she has been able to help the police with the images. ‘This is why I do this job in the rst place’, she tells us. ‘It is exciting that we can use the CCTV system this way, although it is disappointing that the smuggler will be released again after a few weeks’. CCTV to her is a very good help. The only problem with the Schiphol system is that more than one party can use the cameras, which means she never knows beforehand whether the cameras have been pointing in the right direction, or have not been left zooming in too much.

If a theft is reported to the Military Police, the CCTV operators try to retrieve stored images. But their role in tracing the place of departure of undocumented aliens is much more prominent. If asylum seekers manage to get rid of their passports and plane tickets on arriving, their countries of origin and their ports of departure cannot be determined. This means that they are liable to enter a lengthy and costly asylum procedure in The Netherlands. If, however, the Military Police manage to establish from which country these immigrants came, they can report their ndings to the immigration service. Then the

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immigrants can be sent back, and the costs can be shifted to their country of departure, and to the airline they arrived with. This saves The Netherlands 70,000 Euro per case, roughly estimated, which is why the Military Police camera room claims it earns its keep just by this activity. Every passenger bridge used for ights from destinations asylum seekers often come from is watched, and if the immigration team nds immigrants without proper documents, quite a lot of retrospective surveillance takes place. Sometimes 10 to 20 arrivals need to be checked before the asylum seeker is spotted, a thing that is complicated by the fact that they sometimes change clothes. Frontier-running is a related issue. The camera room also uses retrospective surveillance to supply proof of this, as is illustrated in Vignette 5. 5.7. Co-operation The Military Police use three workstations to operate Schiphol’s many cameras, of which two have been observed, but there are about 50 at the airport, as other parties use the CCTV system as well. Private security is one of these, as is the customs, and KLM Airlines. These parties exchange information regularly, although the Military Police are mostly a receiver of information. Naturally, as their tasks differ, so does the information they need. Schiphol Security does not only provide protection, it also tries to ensure passenger ows do not come to a halt, and it is concerned with the tidiness of the airport. The latter is the reason why – contrary to the Military Police – it is on the lookout for street people. Security’s use of the cameras also appears to be less transmitted than the Military Police’s. Customs is mainly interested in the surveilling of objects, not people. Most of the time the different parties appear to be cooperating smoothly. Sometimes, they put the cameras in the proper position for each other, they receive training together, and regularly visit each other’s work-place. Competencies are clear, but sometimes Security exceeds their authority. This happens when they tail suspects, or open unattended luggage. Yet, how exactly this ‘surveillance web’ works cannot be said, as the Military Police are the only party that has granted research access to their camera room.

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6. Discussion and conclusion Which practices, then, do the Schiphol Airport camera room operators construct to do their sorting? How are these transmitted between camera rooms? How do they differ from CCTV-operator practices in different settings? How do CCTV operators, who feel Schiphol is a heterotopia where no one is ‘at home’, and therefore ‘normal behaviour’ does not exist, surveill? If we look at Table 1, it immediately becomes clear that there are huge differences between Dutch Military Police routines and the surveillance described in Norris and Armstrong’s work [28]. The Military Police rarely surveill Schiphol using behavioural, categorical, locational, or personalised surveillance (clustered by us under the header ‘free surveillance’) looking for abnormal behaviour. As it happens, most of the Military Police camera use at Schiphol is ‘routine’ or ‘transmitted’. For example, watching El Al planes board – routine surveillance – consumes four hours of attention of one of the workstations almost every day. Tailing suspects - transmitted surveillance – can go on for hours as well. These activities have priority over all others. Even watching 100% inspection ights stops when a call for assistance arrives. Thus there is very little time for ‘free surveillance’, the kind Norris and Armstrong [28] and McCahill [23] have researched, and the sorting they describe hardly exists either. For that reason the Military Police’s surveillance is not really part of the ‘new penology’. Most of it is still aimed at detecting certain types of crimes, rather than certain groups.

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Table 1 Types of the military police surveillance at Schiphol Airport in order of priority 1. Routine 2. Transmitted 3. Retrospective surveillance 4. Behavioural, categorical, locational, personalised 5. Voyeurism

High-risk ights (terrorism, drug trafcking, US troops) Calls for assistance (unattended luggage, CYA, criminal investigation, safety) Theft, human trafcking Free surveillance (‘anglers’, illegal cabs, thieves, pickpockets, homeless people) Hardly exists

What does often occur is ‘retrospective surveillance’: playing back the images to try and spot undocumented aliens or thefts. And there is a reason for this: the Military Police are highly successful in retrospective surveillance, which is also a very rewarding activity in terms of tax money saved, whereas ‘free surveillance’ is difcult, and the sums that can be saved are minimal. It is hardly surprising that ‘free surveillance’ rarely occurs at Schiphol, which CCTV operators experience as a ‘heterotopia’ that in principle could not be surveilled using the routines Norris and Armstrong [28] describe. What is remarkable is that the same does not go for shopping malls or town centres, as the aforementioned authors point out that successes of free surveillance there are not impressive either. Yet, we need to be cautious in our conclusions. There are about 50 workstations for watching cameras at Schiphol, and only two of these have been observed in this research. The other 48 workstations have different purposes, and therefore – in all probability – different routines. What these are is not known, because persistent attempts to gain research access have failed. However, it is clear that some of the activities behind other workstations overlap with the Military Police’s. The reason that entry was not granted is that most of the unresearched workstations are privately owned, and, as has been observed before [13], when security is privatised, accountability suffers. The ‘rhizome’ comes with very real dangers – a sad note on which to end this article.

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank First Lieutenant Ruud Arends – Chief of the Command and Control Room of the Royal Military Police at Schiphol Airport for his cooperation. He has raised no objection to the publication of the article.

Endnote An earlier version of this paper was presented at: the 33rd European Group for Public Administration Annual Conference, Bucharest, Romania, September 2011, the Public Administration Theory Network Conference, 2011 and at the 16th World Congress of the International Society for Criminology, Kobe, Japan, August 2011.

Conicts of interest The authors contributed equally to this article..

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C. Norris and M. McCahill, CCTV in Britain, Retrieved from urbaneye.net, 2002. J.E. Orr, Talking about machines. An ethnography of a modern job. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Parool (the Amsterdam daily Newspaper), 17 February 2010. Citation translated by the authors. M.B. Salter, Governmentalities of an Airport: Heterotopia and Confession, International Political Sociology 1(1) (2007), 49–66. [34] Schiphol, Trafc Review 2010. Amsterdam: Schiphol. Retrieved from: http://trafcreview.schipholmagazines.nl/ trafcreview.html, 2010. [35] G.J.D. Smith, The night-time economy: exploring the tensions between agents of control, in: Securing An Urban Renaissance: Crime, Community, and British Urban Policy, R. Atkinson and G. Helms, eds, Bristol: Policy Press, 2007, pp. 183-202. [36] G.J.D. Smith, Exploring Relations Between Watchers and Watched in Control (led) Systems: Strategies and Tactics, Surveillance & Society 4(4) (2007), 294–309. [37] F. Stalder and D. Lyon, Electronic identity cards and social classication, in: Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination, D. Lyon, ed., London: Routledge, 2003, pp. 77–93. [38] F.P. Wagenaar, F.K. Boersma, P. Groenewegen and P. Niemantsverdriet, Coping with ‘co-location’: Implementing C2000 and GMS in the Dutch police region Hollands-Midden, in: ICTs, Citizens & Governance: After the Hype! A. Meijer, F.K. Boersma and F.P. Wagenaar, eds, Amsterdam [etc.]: IOS Press, 2009, pp. 119–134. [39] W. Webster, The evolving diffusion, regulation and governance of closed circuit television in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2(2/3) (2004), 230–250. [40] K.E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1995. [41] S. Ybema, D. Yanow, H. Wels and F. Kamsteeg, Organizational Ethnography. Studying the Complexities of Everyday Life, London: Sage, 2009.

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[30] [31] [32] [33]

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Eastern promise? East London transformations and the state of surveillance Pete Fussey Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Largely catalysed by hosting the XXX Summer Olympic Games, East London is currently experiencing signicant urban regeneration at a rate not seen since the period of post-war reconstruction. In doing so, a series of processes that serve to heighten the intensity of cameras in this already saturated video surveillance landscape are occurring. At the same time, these developments, whilst affecting East London, demonstrate a number of key issues, debates and crises germane to the dissemination and operation of video surveillance across the UK as a whole. These include the intensication and cohesion of video surveillance networks; the role of CCTV in urban regeneration schemes; tensions between disparate applications of CCTV and aspirations for a coherent regulatory framework; and, crucially, how CCTV can be justied at a time of severe economic crisis. The paper explores these issues via the identication and analysis of three broad processes operating in East London: the ‘additionality’ of Olympic-related surveillance measures; the centripetal surveillance-pull of Olympic-related regeneration programmes; and the co-option and integration of extant CCTV facilities. The strong emphasis on surveillant economies of scale and the integration of existing surveillance infrastructures invite reection on post-Foucauldian theorisations of networked ‘societies of control’. Keywords: Surveillance, urban regeneration, Olympic security, post-Foucauldian

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1. Introduction A much-quoted – and probably incorrect – statistic is that the UK hosts more surveillance cameras than any other nation. Notwithstanding the onerous and probably impossible task of accurately auditing the country’s cameras, it is reasonably clear that the capital, generally, and East London, specically, is currently saturated with technological surveillance measures. In addition, at the time of writing East London is experiencing a series of signicant urban regeneration programmes on a scale not seen since the post-war reconstruction of the city. At the heart of these changes are developments allied to the hosting of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This paper argues that, via a number of processes, such events are instrumental in driving the further intensication of surveillance infrastructures, particularly CCTV,1 across this urban landscape. Rather 1 Today CCTV is perhaps more accurately characterized as operating on an open circuit rather than in a closed circuit. Increasingly, once-bounded networks are not only breaking open to assimilate other extant CCTV schemes (for example, hitherto closed surveillance systems such as those in hospitals, schools and universities are progressively becoming connected to city-centre schemes) but can now be accessed from remote sources such as the internet. As such, ‘open circuit television’ (OCTV) is probably a more accurate description. ‘Surveillance Cameras’ and ‘Video Surveillance’ are also becoming preferred terms in the literature. One could be pedantic and point to limitations in these concepts too, such as the argument that, once deployed, some cameras may become limited in their ability to survey. However, to ensure coherence with the extant literature and research on surveillance that this paper engages with, the terms ‘CCTV’ and ‘surveillance cameras’ are used interchangeably throughout to refer to both types of system with the understanding that such caveats and debates exist.

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than providing a merely parochial case study, and despite the apparent exceptionality of hosting the Olympics, the paper further argues that the contemporaneous developments affecting East London point to a deeper articulation of several key issues, debates and crises surrounding the application and operation of video surveillance in the UK. These processes, outlined and analysed in this paper, mark both continuities and discontinuities with the drivers and processes that advanced the British surveillance camera revolution of the 1990s. Specically, East London’s transformation points to a number of important issues. These include the intensication, connectivity and cohesion of video surveillance networks; the status of technological determinism; the symbolic role of video surveillance amid regeneration and gentrication programmes; tensions between disparate applications of CCTV and aspirations for a coherent regulatory framework; and, crucially, the new justications that now accompany the installation of video surveillance networks at a time of austerity, where the nancial utility of other CCTV schemes is increasingly questioned. In sum, the rapid urban developments currently affecting East London render a number of key themes relating the development of CCTV in the UK more visible. To unpack these developments and their signicance this paper is organised over ve areas of discussion. First, the urban context hosting these transformations is explored. East London has functioned as a proving ground for new technologies for many years and has acquired even more prominence since the decline of Belfast’s similar role following the Good-Friday Agreement of 1998 that effectively ended hostilities between the Provisional IRA and the UK Government. The paper then identies and examines three prominent processes currently operating in East London that culminate in a net increase in the breadth and intensity of video surveillance across the area. These are: the ‘additionality’ of introducing new surveillance measures to police the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; the introduction of surveillance measures as a component of the wider Olympic-related regeneration programme; and the co-option and integration of extant CCTV facilities towards the Olympic project. The paper then assesses how these processes reect on theoretical positions within ‘Surveillance Studies’ that posit the inexorable expansion and integration of surveillance networks, most notably, post-Foucauldian accounts citing the emergence of networked ‘societies of control’ and, crucially, how the human agent is retained in surveillance networks and ultimately challenge the discourse of technological determinism. 2. ‘Dangerousness’, Surveillance and East London On 6 July 2005, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded the right to host the XXX Olympic Games to London, having been persuaded that the city could organize the event efciently and, crucially, safely [8]. Often constituting the host nation’s largest ever logistical undertaking [5,46], the Olympic and Paralympic spectacle will be accommodated over 64 days, bringing 15,000 athletes, 13,000 coaches 20,000 members of the media, 70,000 volunteers and the holders of nine million tickets to the events [29]. Although ofcial discourse aspires to present the Games as a pan-London, and even nation-wide, phenomenon, the vast majority of infrastructure and activity is focused on East London. In contrast to many prior Olympiads – normally hosted in specially-constructed extra-urban theme parks – these Games will be staged in one of the most populous areas of one of the planet’s most densely populated cities. The area, containing the most diverse and deprived municipalities in the country, has also long been stereotyped as a metaphor for crime and deviance. At the same time, the area has seen enduring patterns of radicalism, rebellion and a commitment to laissez faire markets that would disconcert even the most committed neoliberal ideologues. East London’s unique history has been shaped by an enduring and

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predominant working class that has thrived without the dominant centripetal industries that dene bluecollar cultures in many cities of the midlands and the north. For many commentators, this has elevated the need for mercantile dexterity as a strategy for economic survival; an ‘entrepreneurial proletarianism’ based on the ‘commodication of reality’ [27: 116]. As such, the East End has consistently attracted epithets of danger and criminality, serving as a ‘writhing symbol of respectable fears and anxieties’ comprising a population that perennially ‘dehumanised and classied as deviant by deners whose power-base was in the City’ [27: 106]. Given such reputations, it is perhaps unsurprising that successive generations of policing initiatives have been pioneered here. Latterly, these initiatives have particularly emphasized innovations in electronic surveillance, to the extent that, in the UK, East London only follows Belfast as the most regularly utilized site of such experimentations [18]. Recent CCTV-related measures include the rst public space deployment of Face Recognition CCTV in the UK (and perhaps the world) during the late 1990s (Newham), early experiments with Intelligent Passenger Surveillance video analytics in 2003 (Mile End, Tower Hamlets) and automatic number plate recognition in the early 1990s (at the border of the City of London and Tower Hamlets). Such initiatives have accompanied the development of the gilded cages of Canary Wharf and the City of London at the southern and western fringes of East London [10]. Situating an event of the magnitude of the Olympic Games in this milieu, articulates a number of key issues, debates and crises of central importance to the application and operation of CCTV in the UK. These include the interow and subsequent coherence of surveillance camera networks; limited segregation of and overlaps between Olympic and non-Olympic security; the way in which video surveillance holds particular symbolism within urban regeneration/gentrication programmes; the challenges to regulatory ambitions; and the way surveillance networks are becoming congured and justied at a time of nancial crisis. In doing so, three key processes relating to the Olympic-related redevelopment of East London are identied and examined: the introduction of new surveillance infrastructures as part of the specic 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games security programme; the role of video surveillance in the broader Olympic-related regeneration programme occurring across the area; and the coalescence of existing CCTV facilities into the wider Olympic project. These are discussed in turn.

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3. Capital Gains? Olympic Additionality Since the terrorist attacks at the Munich Games in 1972, hosting an Olympics has stimulated signicant expenditure on security infrastructures. Lately this has translated into a sizable commitment to installing networks of surveillance cameras (see [46] for a classic study). Moreover, mega-event security has a propensity to leak across place and time, subjecting wider urban populations to the gaze of surveillance cameras for a period that extends far beyond the event itself. Such proliferations resonate with a number of key theoretical themes within the Surveillance Studies canon, including the creep and connectivity of systems, discussed below. Preparations for the 2008 Beijing Games, for example, stimulated the creation of a CCTV network that extended beyond the ‘Olympic Green’, across Beijing and a number of cities throughout the country [20]. The extent of these developments has undoubtedly enabled China to lay claim to Britain’s dubious accolade of the world’s most camera-surveyed nation. In addition to the actual numbers of cameras is the issue of capability. In contrast to the varied hardware quality and often ad hoc [35] and sometimes partially atrophied [19] networks that constitute many UK systems, the simultaneous deployment of entire integrated surveillance infrastructures across China’s urban spaces brings a much higher degree of cohesion and hence capacity.

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Nevertheless, signicant additions are being made to East London’s CCTV (and broader security) infrastructure in preparation for the Olympics. Evidence for this comes from a number of sources. First, key gures centrally involved in security planning for the Games have repeatedly emphasized the role of technological surveillance. Lord West, the former Under-Secretary of State for Security and Counter-terrorism, for example, opined that ‘where we can remove the need for people by implementing technology or design, we should’ in November 2009 [52]. Tarique Ghaffur, the rst Metropolitan Police lead for the Games stated at the outset of the planning stages that ‘an event of this scale means technology plays a bigger part in the look and feel of the games and means surveillance will be a major issue’ [21]. Prior to the building of Olympic infrastructures, private security contractors were encouraged to provide technological apparatus, as evidenced in the tenders released by the Olympic Delivery Authority, who required ‘CCTV, security lighting systems and intruder detection systems to be [established,] integrated with, and form a part of, the perimeter security’ [41]. CCTV is therefore a key component of this endeavour. What is notable here is the prominence that perimeter security plays in the Games’ CCTV strategy, an issue that, one can assume, is a product of the IOC’s insistence that perimeters are installed around Olympic venues (although is not a tradition of securing sporting events in the UK). In doing so, the boundaries of Stratford’s Olympic Park will be protected by an instituted Command Perimeter Security System (CPSS) placing CCTV at its heart [42].2 Moreover, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA)3 has further indicated that 2012 Olympic CCTV deployment will reect the congurations of what are perhaps the most intensely monitored and securitized spaces in the public domain: airports. More specically, given the ODA is designing the Olympic Park CCTV network based on recommendations outlined by the government enquiry into airport security following 9/11 (the ‘Wheeler Report’4 ), its surveillance capabilities are likely to be powerful and intense [see 16 for explicit parallels]. Such internal divisions amid the larger securitized area risk cleaving of the Olympic neighbourhood into technologically patrolled geographies of access and entitlement. This emphasis on the secured perimeters is further illustrated by the favouring of surveillance measures within the wider Olympic security programme. In the pre-construction tendering process, for example, private contractors were particularly encouraged to offer surveillance-based measures that undertook access control; searching and screening; command, control and integration; and security guarding functions [20]. According to the Olympic Delivery Authority [41] particular import was given to RFID, biometric, CCTV, and remote-sensing intruder detection surveillance measures. These measures will extend far beyond Stratford’s Olympic Park to establish wider geographies of surveillance across East London. One manifestation of this has been the emphasis on securitised ‘buffer zones’ covering the urban areas to the south of the Olympic Park, from nearby West Ham and Plaistow, which have already been approved – a development which may conict with ofcial declarations that the Games will foster community aggrandizement. Other initiatives include the deployment of extra-spatial surveillance measures, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, that can preside over large geographies at any 2

In an interview with the author, one senior Olympic security planner stated that, so far, this perimeter has cost in excess of £80 million. 3 The ODA is the public organization charged with constructing the infrastructure to host the 2012 Olympic Games. 4 The 2002 ‘Wheeler Report’ into airport security reviewed extant provisions, considered the impact of the 9/11 attacks in the US and suggested procedural, infrastructure and legislative changes that needed to be made. The report contained a number of recommendations regarding governance and procedure at UK airports (highlighting existing structures as ‘inadequate’). In relation to surveillance, it argued for more integrated systems and the wider use of new technologies such as ANPR (see [53] for an unclassied outline).

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given time [20]. Such commitments to broader security, beyond the ‘Island Site’ of the main Olympic development have been made clear from the hasty factoring of ‘policing and wider security’ costs into the controversially revised 2012 Olympic budget during 2007. This revision provided for an additional £600 m (with a further £238 m ‘contingency’), now revised down to £475 m, to cover the expense of providing security beyond the cost of site security during its construction.5 Despite their seeming inevitability, these costs were omitted from the original candidacy le submitted for the chance to host the Olympics. In addition to indicating the huge scale of new security and surveillance measures being deployed to police the Games, a further point, connected to the justication of security measures, is at play here. When the London2012 team was originally bidding to become a host city, the candidature le made a strong play on the sophistication of London’s physical and organisational security architectures alongside the capital being a ‘low-risk environment’ [33]. Yet this later escalation of security costs points to a more cynical presentation of Olympic security nances. At best, it allowed an extremely selective expression of the costs of securing the 2012 Games during London’s candidacy stages. More probably, this discrepancy reects on the increasing difculties in gaining public acceptability for expensive security projects. Rather than advertising security measures to enhance their reassurance value, as applies for more routine forms of security, for 2012 a more complex negotiation surrounding the acceptability of security applies. Here, public support is mediated via the initial presentation of partially visible costs in advance of the highly conspicuous ‘spectacular security’ [2] that follows. Such negotiations connect with more deep-rooted tensions over how CCTV can now be justied that have become increasingly acute in a time of economic austerity (see below). Rather than following a self-aggrandizing logic of expansion, the contemporary proliferation of CCTV is therefore driven by a range of complex and mediated processes.

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4. Redevelopment and regeneration One of the salient features of London’s campaign to host the 2012 Olympics was a commitment to ‘legacy’, largely in the form of a regenerated East London following the conclusion of the Games. Whilst large-scale urban redevelopment has been a feature of the modern Olympiad [5,9,23], until London 2012 the commitment to improving socially disadvantaged areas has been less pronounced (with the notable exception of Barcelona, 1992). As such, the mantra of London 2012 is very much the ‘regeneration Games’, using various orthodoxies of ‘sustainable development’ and articulating aspirations for ‘sustainable communities’. In the UK ‘sustainability’ has adopted a particular meaning, become increasingly associated with net increases of safety and security policies and practices. These notions are ingrained within the regeneration and ‘legacy’ plans for London 2012. Yet behind the many hagiographic invocations of Olympic legacies, lie incidences of sterilized environments comprising fragmented and unsustainable community congurations after the Games. 5 Olympic security planners have informed the author that £1 billion was originally requested for this task. At the time of writing (2010) the coalition government had recently announced a comprehensive public spending review. After promising initial cuts to the Olympic budget of at least £27 million, in December 2010 the £600 m wider policing and security costs were ultimately cut by more than a fth (£125 million). This uneven approach to Olympic security funding where initial costs were not accounted for, then included but inated and subsequently cut in a drastic fashion must have generated substantial difculties for security planners charged with providing a cohesive strategy. Such developments reveal simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal processes impacting on the coherence of London’s Olympic security strategy. The theoretical implications of this are addressed below.

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More broadly, in the UK, as elsewhere, such regeneration programmes, with their attendant commitment to ‘gentrication’, are embedded with selective visions of social order [3] and an incorporation of very specic forms of security apparatus. In the UK particularly, ‘regeneration’ has had an intrinsic connection to the installation of CCTV and, given the enormous scale of Olympic-related redevelopment work in East London, such changes (notwithstanding the complexities surrounding CCTV proliferation outlined above and below) inevitably shepherd signicant numbers of surveillance camera systems into the area. In addition to this, a number of further processes can be seen to drive the inundation of camera surveillance into these spaces. Many forms of redevelopment/regeneration reinforce existing divisions at the micro-social level [47]. This has been borne out by a number of large-scale developments in East London, most notably the Isle of Dogs Docklands development of the late 1980s–1990s [25]. Whilst there has been a growing recognition of these issues in planning circles (for example the former Mayor of London’s policy of incorporating ‘affordable housing’ into new developments), this pattern is likely to reverberate through the post-Olympic community given the primacy given to private sector development agendas [44] and their attendant consequences.6 In turn, parachuting accommodation for the afuent into the existing East London milieu is likely to continue another tradition: where the inhabitants of new gentried padded bunkers demand protection from the heavily stereotyped incumbent populations [1,12,15]. In the UK, as elsewhere, CCTV is an intrinsic and visible symbol that these security concerns are being addressed [11]. Legislative provisions also reinforce the connection between CCTV and regeneration. Most notably, of the exorbitant amount crime and disorder-related legislation introduced during the former Labour government’s latest term in ofce (1997–2010), one has arguably had greatest inuence on the expansion of CCTV in England and Wales: s17 of the Crime and Disorder Act, 1998. This provision committed local government agencies in England and Wales to foreground crime and disorder issues as part of their daily operations,

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it shall be the duty of each authority to which this section applies to exercise its various functions with due regard to the likely effect of the exercise of those functions on, and the need to do all that it reasonably can to prevent, crime and disorder in its area [40]. Indeed, whilst the legislation as a whole can be attributed to creating a context whereby CCTV was a favoured crime prevention policy choice [19], this specic provision resonated in additional respects. At a stroke, local authority housing agencies were obliged to incorporate security features into new developments wherever practicable. These features adopted the orthodoxies of ‘administrative criminology’ – rational choice-informed models that sought to reduce the opportunities for offending and increase ‘capable guardianship’ or the observation of a protected area as a means of deterrence [7] – and were engendered in ‘secure by design’ approaches to the built environment. Unsurprisingly, surveillance cameras (and their assumed deterrence capabilities) constituted a central theme of this approach and thus generated a strong bond between the redevelopment of residential areas and the introduction of CCTV. Private sector developers may also be subjected to similar obligations to provide such security measures. For example, the s106 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1990 allows local authorities to place conditions on private developers to contribute to broader public amenities in order to receive planning permission (known as ‘106 agreements’). In relation to the 2012 Games, a number of 106 agreements 6 Ceding redevelopment projects to private governance is also a traditional ideological commitment of the Conservative Party. Having regained government (in coalition) during 2010, and foregrounded an aggressive strategy of reducing the role of state, this process is inevitably becoming reinforced.

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are being used to ensure planners incorporate security features into their developments (sourced from author interview with Olympic security planner). The scale of Olympic-related regeneration, therefore, necessarily draws large numbers of surveillance cameras into the area. Perhaps the best example of this is the Olympic Village currently being constructed to accommodate competitors at the 2012 Games before later conversion into 2800 (mainly private) housing units. Common to all 2012 Olympic structures, these have been embedded with minimum ACPO standards of ‘Secure by Design’ and, hence, infused with CCTV. At the same time, these innovations will inform a new code of good practice for similar design projects in the future, thus providing a conceptual security legacy that will stimulate continued deployments of surveillance cameras.

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5. Introduction and integration It has long-been recognized that Britain accommodates a large number of surveillance cameras, with McCahill and Norris’ [37] estimation of 4,285,000 cameras perhaps forming the most widely cited statistic. With an accurate census of cameras lying beyond the realms of possibility, estimates are likely to be the only means of ascertaining the scale of CCTV deployment in the UK.7 As noted above, East London has been the site of much of this experimentation. The wider 2012 Olympic security strategy will be built on extremely robust foundations. Nevertheless, the translation of large numbers of cameras into an index of coercion is a common mistake. Camera surveillance does not operate in a vacuum. Instead, its operation and efcacy are determined in relation to the human and social contexts within which they function. Such uncertain human inuences stretch along the entire surveillance continuum from the surveyors to the surveyed. With regard to its subjects, novel technologies affect human behaviour in new and often unpredictable ways [50]. For surveyors, the operational and social context of technological strategies continually mitigate their efcacy, via limited operator engagement with the technology [35]; uncertain impact of the cameras on crime and disorder [22] as well as terrorism [18]; limited capacity to address exponential rises in image data that accompany CCTV expansion and a lack of overall network integration [18]. Such interregnum and fragmentation generates further questions over the extent to which a ‘network’ can be conceptualised thus, as discussed below in relation to post-Foucauldian theory. As Britain’s experiments with extensive CCTV deployment relates, greater numbers of cameras does not always simply convert into a more intensive level of surveillance. This contrast between a theoretically effective technological security intervention and its more mixed operational outcomes serves to illustrate how the utopian claims of technological solutions to crime and terrorism need to be treated with caution. Yet it is also in this respect that some critics of CCTV have often adopted the same deterministic conceptual weaknesses as their proponents. The reality of poorly-functioning surveillance networks does not t easily with characterizations of the malign, omniscient and dystopian state. 7 It is worth reecting that estimates of CCTV deployment vary widely. In 2002, for example, NACRO estimated that 40 000 surveillance cameras were deployed in Britain [38]. By contrast, in 2007 one of the architects of the Government’s CCTV strategy argued that the ‘4.2 m gure’ was probably an underestimation [43]. Part of the problem is that such estimates often account for different things and establish criteria that are far from agreed. The NACRO estimate, for example, attempted to gauge the number of ‘public’ cameras. Although there are some obvious distinctions that can be made between public and private surveillance cameras, there is considerable scope for disagreement (for example, the characterisiation of private cameras that observe public areas, publicly funded cameras that survey semi-private spaces, cameras that have been established with public money, but are maintained using resources from the private sector and so on).

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Perhaps more signicant to the potency of surveillance networks are issues around connectivity and integration. This is an approach that is being actively pursued in the surveillance component of London’s Olympic security strategy. Building on previous experiences of coalescing disparate camera networks into a pan-London operations centre, it is currently proposed that Olympic-related CCTV footage will be ltered through a new control hub in Bow, in the heart of the East End. After the Games, it is proposed that this will then become a satellite to the Metropolitan Police’s newly constructed Special Operations Room, a CCTV command centre in Lambeth, South London that is used to observe major events across the city including the Notting Hill Carnival and London Marathon. These programmes strongly reect another emerging trend governing the expansion of surveillance camera capability in the UK: integrating extant CCTV networks to operate on large economies of scale. In the current period of economic downturn and the reduction of available public funding for CCTV, local municipalities are facing greater difculties in installing and justifying new surveillance camera schemes. One response has been to generate surveillance camera meta-networks that boost the potency of current CCTV capabilities at a reduced cost. At the same time, such initiatives address gaps in connectivity between networks that were ignored in the piecemeal and rushed development of surveillance camera schemes (incentivized via the central government’s largess) during the late 1990s. Such initiatives adopt differing levels of complexity and sophistication. At one end of the spectrum this may comprise a simple exercise in mapping existing public and private surveillance camera networks above a particular size (such as that occurring in one inner-London borough recently visited by the author). Elsewhere, local municipalities are generating substantive meta-systems, knitting together disparate networks via initiatives such as IP-based networks or standardised modes of data transmission. In such circumstances, innovative ways of realising network integration are being developed both in spite of, and because of, limitations in funding provision. Here, Bristol’s launch of the ‘B-Net’ scheme is a case in point. Faced with new constraints on their crime reduction budget, Bristol City Council are deploying an entire network of once-redundant television ducting (installed by the early cable television company ‘Rediffusion’ in the 1950s and 1960s) to connect disparate surveillance camera schemes across the city and the wider South Gloucestershire region into a composite network managed by a control centre in the city. In turn, this initiative links cameras surveying publicly-owned assets including schools, medical facilities and trafc networks and, also, more privatized spaces including city-centre car parks and Bristol University [6]. Future expansion will also strategically link to this network in the pursuit of overall system cohesion [4]. These developments raise numerous operational and theoretical issues. Primarily, however, it illustrates the importance of constrained public nances in driving these shifts towards synthesized networks. Indeed, as one unctuous review in a security industry publication puts it, ‘while other councils are having to make tough decisions about retreating from 24–7 monitoring. . . Bristol is looking to put cameras in’ [45, p. 23, emphasis in original]. This view is echoed by the regional South Gloucestershire CCTV manager, ‘its ironic that the pressure of cuts may hasten innovation’ [45, p. 25]. Despite such innovation, the local authority remains the lead agency within this network. At the same time, the move towards connecting CCTV networks together represents a particular interpretation of key aspects of the UK’s National CCTV strategy. This particularly relates to recommendations 2.6 (to ‘establish technical requirements that will allow CCTV cameras to be used for multiple purposes’), 2.8 (‘establish the gaps in CCTV coverage taking into account the national intelligence model and national threat assessment model’) and 2.12 (‘encourage town centre CCTV schemes to monitor existing CCTV systems in other areas of public space and the transport infrastructure thus creating a hub for public space CCTV’) [28, p. 50]. This particular interpretation of the strategy both identies a burgeoning trend driving the

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expansion of CCTV capability in the UK (which the Olympic development adheres to) and invites a number of additional observations. First, constrained nancial opportunities to install new surveillance camera systems have, perhaps counter-intuitively, generated new initiatives that increase the potency of CCTV capability in the UK. In this respect, the UK, often viewed as an innovator of camera surveillance, is pursuivant of other nations, particularly those that have eschewed large-scale yet disintegrative CCTV deployments in favour of cohesive and networked approaches. From an operational perspective questions can be raised over whether the exponential increases in surveillance data made available by such initiatives are matched by a raised capacity to interpret them. Given the signicance of ‘data overload’ on the effective functioning of CCTV [22], this remains a signicant issue. Ethically, issues of governance and the appropriate use of public nances are also raised and unresolved. Does the drawing of surveillance private schemes into a public network afford a degree of private sector oversight into the operation of public CCTV? Conversely, are local authority employees using their publicly funded roles to observe cameras surveying privately owned assets? Given the nite nature of public nances, to what extent does this represent an appropriate use of such resources? From a theoretical perspective, this move towards the coalescence of CCTV schemes into meta-networks also connects with conceptualizations of the ‘surveillant assemblage’ [24] discussed below. Moreover, within these collectives of surveillance networks are hierarchies. Trends towards network coagulation – as seen generally in the case of Bristol (above), and in the specic pan-London approach – indicate that specic agencies have privileged entitlements within these broader settings. Indeed, in the above examples, the usual suspects of local authorities and the police gain further potency via their hosting of control centres through which data from these expanded networks is ltered. Such processes echo Haggerty and Ericson’s [24] application of Latour’s [32] ‘centres of calculation’, whereby specic dispersed nodal points enable distanciated assembly of data, calculation and, by extension, control. By virtue of its location within these prevailing trends, East London’s Olympic surveillance strategy connects with these broader issues. Moreover, these shifts towards generic economies of scale are not restricted to CCTV installation. They also apply to its regulation. One of the central features of public, policy and academic discussions around surveillance has been the issue of ethics. In an effort to invest the 2012 Olympic Park’s CCTV network with legitimacy and public condence, or ‘to minimise the number of queries from the general public’, as the ODA put it [42, p. 3], a slim London 2012 Olympic Park CCTV System Code of Practice has been formulated. Broadly reecting the raft of similar self-regulatory (and non legally binding) documents in operation across the UK, the code details key points relating to the scheme’s rationale, local consultation, data protection issues and how footage is to be retained. Taking each of these in turn, perimeter integrity is stated to be the focus of the system, as mentioned above. In order to ‘protect privacy’ – and presumably not penetrate the windows of private dwellings – ‘electronic masking’ will be in place.8 Local consultation is also promised, although in practice consultations over CCTV installation historically have been abridged in the extreme in both Newham [31] and across the country [17]. The code also promises full compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998. To do so, the Olympic CCTV system will need to improve on those installed in a number of other London boroughs that have consistently failed to meet minimum statutory requirements over correct signage [36] and public access to data. Finally, a related issue is the weight given to data retention. This currently constitutes a key area of tension between CCTV operators and 8 ‘Electronic masking’ blurs the received image and thus prevents CCTV operators from observing particular spaces. This procedure is widely used, notably in the lavatory areas of police custody suites [39].

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those seeking to regulate them (and, if it proceeds, will likely form a key component of CCTV regulation guidance when nalized during 2011).9 This tension is reproduced here, with the ODA offering to automatically delete stored CCTV footage after 31 days, a limit that more than doubles the Home Ofce’s [28] recommendation of a 14-day maximum. Such contestations demonstrate the challenges of developing overarching regulatory frameworks governing crime control measures that adopt myriad applications such as CCTV.

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6. Discussion Throughout this paper a common theme has been the expansion of CCTV provision via integration of erstwhile fragmented extant networks in order to operate with greater efciency on economies of scale. Much has been written on the theoretical implications of expanding and interowing surveillance networks [34]. In particular, the union of global and local networks, and the integration of extant surveillance infrastructures, appears to lend some initial support to Deleuzian notions of ‘control’ and the ‘surveillant assemblage’ [13,14,24]. Indeed, the co-option and capitalization of latent surveillance provision, in addition to the supply of new technologies in the capital, represents a shift towards integrated ‘ows’ of control, factors presenting ‘inseparable variations, forming a ‘system’, as Deleuze puts it [14, p. 178]. Furthermore, recent developments in video analytics and proling strategies likely to be deployed for 2012 reduce individuals to abstracted data. Here, the atom of the individual self is split into particular ‘dividual’ traits and behavioural categories whilst broader population masses are abbreviated to ‘samples’ and ‘data’. Ultimately, for Deleuze, those populating such categories are consigned to move between an interconnected range of modulated ‘orbits’ within control networks [14, p. 180]. For Deleuze, his adherents and other post-Foucauldian theorists [30], ‘control’, seemingly paradoxically, asserts a heightened inuence whilst becoming less tangible, an abstract entity or ‘a soul, a gas’, as Deleuze puts it. In doing so, society’s coercive apparatus becomes congured in a less visible way.10 However, like many grand narratives of surveillance theory, this explanation is only partial. For London and 2012, however, ‘control’ does not spread in an unrestrained manner. Limitations may be observed across space, purpose and capacity. Across space, intensied security resources poured into Stratford’s surveillance-saturated spaces will inevitably overspill into the surrounding areas. However, the specic footprint of the Olympic security programme will mean that control mechanisms largely converge around East London’s loosely denable security epicentre. Regarding the purpose of these control strategies, more subtle and nuanced calibrating (Deleuzian) functions of control are likely to give way to cruder, more formulaic and rigid visions of order (such as those present at other ‘theme parks’, see [49] for the example of Disneyland). In turn, these dogmatised blueprints of order are codied in legislation (see the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006) and reinforced by zero-tolerance policing strategies. 9 At the time of writing (summer 2010) with great fanfare the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government had recently published a commitment to regulate CCTV (as part of a broader initiative titled with immodesty and inevitable bathos, the ‘Protection of Freedoms Bill’). What has received considerably less attention, however, is that the organization charged with regulating CCTV, the NPIA (part of the Home Ofce), has been threatened with dissolution under the new government’s programme of drastically reducing the size of the UK’s public sector. 10 It is worth highlighting here one of the key points of divergence between such theorizations and the Foucauldian notions that preceded them. Where Foucault [16] famously talked of the tangible ‘moulding’ of subjects into specic ‘normalized’ forms, for Deleuze this process is less determinate. Here, technologies of control apply a continual calibration and illimitable ‘modulation’ to their subjects [14].

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Such incidences of specic forms of ‘order maintenance’ and on the gentrication of East London also reect on another component of these post-Foucauldian approaches: the subtlety and reduced visibility of video surveillance systems. In some regards this argument is justied by new post-nancial crisis drives towards reducing the numbers of cameras and enhancing the capacity and connectivity of those that remain. However, the importance given to the symbolism of surveillance cameras in articulating the perceived safety and security of newly gentried spaces. To achieve this function, they need to be visible. Another element of ‘surveillant visibility’ concerns the aforementioned requirements of ‘spectacular security’ at mega-events [2]. Indeed, despite the IOC’s stated aim of accenting the games as an athletic event and not an exercise in security, at every Summer Olympics since Munich, 1972, this has been readily discarded in favour of overt expressions of visible security [20]. ‘Assemblage’ theories largely emphasise the technological, a theme that is reinforced in the East London context by the aforementioned statements of Olympic security planners. However, in a period of surveillant expansion that simultaneously contends with countervailing recessionary forces, evidence exists that, rather than being effaced, the ‘human-as-surveyor’ is both reasserted and, even, elevated. Whilst the role of human actors in the wider assemblage is acknowledged in post-Foucauldian control theories, they largely argue human contact points are used as proxies, temporarily sited until technological linkages can be deployed [24]. However, given the new post-nancial crisis contestations over surveillance cameras, it is likely that low-tech ‘human’ surveillance will gain prominence. Indeed, in the UK, this reasserts a tendency that has been in place for at least a decade, as evinced by the deployment of Police Community Support Ofcers, ‘Neighbourhood Wardens’ and other human surveillance initiatives. For the 2012 Games, specically, the Olympic security project comprises a coalition of over 30 different agencies. As the history of multi-agency working in the UK and elsewhere demonstrates, information does not ow evenly between constituent partners in such networks [51]. Overall, the converging pull of the Olympic security ensemble is punctuated by unpredictable and ‘messy’ human action that resonates throughout the entire operation. Moreover, as the experiences of all prior Olympic security projects have shown, integration is normally elusive and co-ordination and communication components of the operation have proved to be both crucial yet are also the most common points of failure [20]. Human agents design the algorithmic focus of surveillance technologies, manage their operation and interpret its outputs, even those of second-generation machines. As such, the operations of both traditional and newly inaugurated technologies are hostage to unpredictable human contingencies. Simultaneously, new technologies also impact and, to some extent, shape their social environment by altering the way in which people work and operate. In sum, given the increasing prominence of human surveillance in the post-nancial crisis era, an appreciation of these more complex relationships is crucial in developing and understanding both the efcacy of Olympic surveillance strategies and whether their well-documented social costs are worth it.

7. Conclusion Together this paper has identied a series of powerful drivers relating to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games that serve to expand the scale and intensity of video surveillance capability in East London. Although these drivers relate to an event that is exceptional in both frequency and magnitude, they are tied to currents and processes governing the expansion of the surveillance landscape across the country. Moreover, these trends represent a number of emerging issues that are distinct from those that drove the surveillance camera revolution of the 1990s.

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In meeting the expectations that accompany hosting an event of such global signicance, East London’s security infrastructures are undergoing a process of reinforcement and augmentation. Given post-9/11 fears over the totality of threats, and the nite (if sizable) nature of the resources deployed to mitigate them, choices need to be made over the form, application and direction of these response strategies. In such times of uncertainty, orthodoxies prevail. In particular, these orthodoxies translate into the criminological staples of target-hardening and video surveillance practices that have dominated both urban crime prevention initiatives and security planning for mega-events since the 1970s. In sum, standardized security practices of other Olympiads aimed at creating risk-free ‘total security’ spaces are being conveyed to and imposed upon East London and its suspect populations. Simultaneously, London’s highly developed extant surveillance infrastructure will be buttressed and then coalesced into this strategy with varying degrees of compatibility. At the same time, mega events such as the Olympics are, as Hiller [26, p. 449] correctly notes, ‘instruments of boosterist ideologies promoting economic growth’. In the case of the 2012 Games, such boosterism comes in the form of to the much-lauded ‘legacy’ of a regenerated East London. This results in East London staging an accelerated and exaggerated redevelopment programme that, in turn, provides a powerful centripetal currents drawing increasing numbers of surveillance cameras into the area. Cameras are installed as symbolic security features attracting populations that would have once been hesitant to reside in such formerly-characterised ‘dangerous spaces’. At the same time, as repeated urban redevelopment experiments have highlighted, inhabitants of newly gentried enclaves demand further security and surveillance measures in an unfolding process of micro-social urban rebordering. Nevertheless, despite these commercial developments, public CCTV initiatives face new contestations during the latest global economic crisis. Although there is considerable emphasis on the inexorable rise of video surveillance within the surveillance studies canon, it is important to recognize that public cameras neither simply appear nor, generally, are installed as a narrow expression of singular coercive or commercial interest (although, once operational, they may function as such). Instead, there are specic, plural and sometimes contradictory processes that drive their development. These also often require the complicity of local populations (although not necessarily those, on the margins who are the most likely subjects of video surveillance). At a time when schools and children’s playgrounds remain unrepaired, public sector jobs are melting away and unions are drawing-up their battle-plans, spending nite public resources on CCTV requires greater justication than before. As this paper has argued, this new era of CCTV justications holds signicant implications for its scale, integration, and operation.

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G. Parkins, The CCTV Effectiveness Review and National Strategy, paper given at the Local; Government Agency 2007 CCTV Conference: The Development of a National Strategy, Innovative Systems, Effectiveness and Standards, Local Government House, London, 4th July 2007. [44] G. Poynter, The 2012 Olympic Games and the reshaping of East London, in Regenerating London: Governance, Sustainability and Community in a Global City, R. Imrie, L. Lees and M. Raco, eds, Routledge, London, 2009, pp. 131– 150. [45] Professional Security, Redundant Ducting Makes the Difference, February 2010. [46] M. Samatas, Security and surveillance in the Athens 2004 Olympics: some lessons from a troubled story, International Criminal Justice Review 17 (2007), 220–238. [47] S. Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2001, PUP, Princeton. [48] R. Sennet, The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, 1996, Faber and Faber, London. [49] C. Shearing and P.C. Stenning, From the Panopticon to Disney World: the development of discipline, in: J. Muncie, E. McLaughlin and M. Langan, eds, Criminological Perspectives: A Reader, Sage, London, 1996. [50] G. Smith, Exploring Relations Between Watchers and Watched in Control(led) Systems: Strategies and Tactics, Surveillance and Society 4 (2007), 280–313. [51] W. Webster, The Evolving Diffusion, Regulation and Governance of Closed Circuit Television in the UK, Surveillance and Society 2 (2004), 230–250. [52] Lord West of Spithead, Olympic and Paralympic Safety and Security, Presented at Olympic and Paralympic Safety and Security Conference, Royal United Services Institute, London, 13 November 2009. [53] J. Wheeler Airport Security Report. Unrestricted brieng available online at: http://www.parliament.uk/briengpapers/ commons/lib/research/briengs/snbt-01246.pdf (2002) [accessed: 12 July 2010].

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Video surveillance and security policy in France: From regulation to widespread acceptance Eric Heilmann Professeur des universit´es, Universit´e de Bourgogne, 2, boulevard Gabriel, 21 000 Dijon, France E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. This article presents a historical account of the introduction and use of video surveillance cameras in France. Specic reference is made of the introduction of regulatory and legislative arrangements and to political debates surrounding the provision of video surveillance cameras. A feature of the French context has been a desire by national government to install cameras more widely in public places and a resistance to do so by local regions (departments). This highlights a traditional tension between central and local government in France and the signicance of political rhetoric to the ongoing installation and operation of video surveillance cameras. Keywords: CCTV, France, security policy, uses

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1. Introduction All over Europe, video surveillance is now central to public security policy. In France the situation has evolved over a number of years. The government rst began to take action on this issue in the middle of the 1990s, and at that time the policy was to regulate the use of video surveillance rather than to promote it. Throughout France, the introduction of these methods was pushed forward by local politicians, keen to nd ways to put a stop to the increasing number of criminal acts and satisfy the legitimate expectations of their citizens. When Nicolas Sarkozy became President in May 2007, the approach of the Ministry of the Interior changed radically. Up until that time, video surveillance had been used selectively in those urban places which were the most vulnerable to attacks on both people and property but from 2007 onwards it started to be seen as a tool which had to be used in all circumstances and all places. Whilst deciding to reduce police numbers (9,000 posts were lost over the course of three years), the Ministry launched an ambitious plan which aimed to convince regional and local authorities to use video cameras. Was this their only objective? How did central government proceed? What were the results? These are some of the questions that this article will seek to answer. 2. State regulation In the 1990s remote surveillance systems were used above all by private companies seeking to prevent crime in the commercial sector (for example shopping centres, banks, jewellers). Few towns had decided Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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to make use of these systems on the streets, in fact fewer than a dozen in 1990 and sixty in 1999 [6]. The laws on decentralisation which dene how responsibilities are to be shared between central government and local authorities effectively gave the latter greater political and nancial autonomy, but when it came to issues of security, mayors above all used the resources they had to increase the size of their municipal police force and/or to develop other ways of preventing crime. For example, over a period of about twenty years, the number of police working in municipal police forces tripled, from about 5,600 in 1984 to 16,500 in 2004 [14]. In the 1990’s there were a lot of companies that produced and installed surveillance cameras – 150 in 1999, employing 2,900 people – but they were small: only 35% of the turnover of the ve biggest companies was generated by these products, whereas they represented 87% of the turnover in the sector that deals with transfers of funds [9]. Another striking aspect from this period is that the debates around video surveillance brought into opposition two radically different ideological views which disagreed on the ways of maintaining law and order. On the one hand there were the left-wing parties, supported by independent institutions responsible for the protection of private life (for instance the CNIL – Commission Nationale de l’informatique et des Libert´es/National Data Protection Agency) and by campaign groups which strongly criticised the intrusive nature of these new surveillance techniques and questioned their usefulness. On the other hand, there were the right-wing parties, supported by senior police ofcers who referred to growing threats from terrorism and violence in the inner cities, claimed there was a ‘security decit’ and emphasised the positive ways in which these systems could support the police [17]. During the second period of ‘cohabitation’ between a right-wing Prime Minister (Edouard Balladur) and a left-wing President (Franc¸ois Mitterrand), March 1993 until May 1995, the political divide over security questions was very much in evidence. 2.1. A law to regulate the use of video surveillance

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It was in this context that the French Ministry of the Interior decided to use a new law on security matters passed in January 1995 (Loi d’Orientation et de Programmation pour la S´ecurit´e/LOPS) to legalise the use of video surveillance. The terms used by the parliamentary rapporteur throw a great deal of light on government policy in this area. He explained that: “It is not a question here of forcing local and regional authorities and private companies to buy video surveillance equipment but, on the contrary, of regulating the growth of these systems which, even more than the remote detection of cars, can constitute a threat to private life. For indeed the only places adequately covered by laws currently in force are strictly private places or professional premises which are covered by workplace legislation. However, video surveillance calls into question not only civil liberties but also the coherence of the organisation of public security. That is why I believe that, without denying the usefulness of such practices, they must be strictly reglemented. Video surveillance must be used highly selectively and restricted to the most vulnerable areas”1 The introduction of safeguards to regulate the work of video operators was the subject of heated discussion during the preparatory stage. Specialists in the eld of civil liberties campaigned for the CNIL, an independent body with high moral standing in the country, to be put in charge of ensuring that the legislation being prepared was respected. However, the Ministry of the Interior wanted to entrust this 1 Translated from original French. Law Number 95-73 (21 January 1995), Loi d’Orientation et de Programmation Relative à la S´ecurité, Journal ofciel, 24 Janvier 1995. [17].

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task to the pr´efet, who in each d´epartement represents central government and had no reason to oppose the installation of cameras which the police might nd useful [18]. In the end, Parliament decided to accord authority to the pr´efets, who were to give their authorisation once a request had been discussed by the ‘Video Surveillance Agency’ (Commission D´epartementale de la Vid´eosurveillance). This authorisation laid out all necessary precautions, in particular regarding the measures to be taken to ensure that the law was complied with. Indeed, the law stipulated the places for which an authorisation was required before video surveillance could be installed, and this included public places such as streets, buildings and public facilities and private places or institutions open to the public (for instance shops and sports centres). The law gave the public a right to ‘clear and permanent’ (‘clair et permanent’) information wherever surveillance cameras were in operation and the right to see any recordings in which they gured. Finally it set out that “video surveillance of public places is to be carried out in such a way as not to include the inside of residential buildings or specically their entrances” 2 . The video surveillance agencies in each d´epartement started work at the end of the following year (1996). Information about the work of these agencies between 1997 and 2004 is provided in a report by the Ministry of the Interior [6]. This tells us that during this period, they authorised the installation of 61,600 video surveillance systems, more than half of them in 1997 and 1998 (34,270), a period which thus served to bring systems already in place into line with regulations. After 1998, the agencies authorised between 4,000 and 5,000 new systems annually. The number of requests turned down was low (165 in 2004 for example) and the number of complaints from members of the public was even lower, totalling 14 for the whole of France in 2002, 16 in 2003 and 17 in 2004 [6]. Most video surveillance systems were found in commercial settings: banks (28,100), department stores (4,500), chemists (1,100) and car parks (920) and almost 600 towns and cities chose to use video surveillance techniques, 275 specically on the streets [6]. It should be stressed that these systems were concentrated in about a dozen d´epartements, the most urban ones with the highest density of population (Paris and the surrounding region, Lyons and its d´epartement, the regions of Provence and the Cˆote d’Azur) and between them they had more than a third of all authorised video surveillance cameras. In addition, from the year 2000 onwards, the left/right political divide over the use of video surveillance for security reasons gradually diminished. After the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the defeat of Lionel Jospin (Socialist candidate) in the rst round of the presidential elections in April 2002, beaten into third place by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the extreme right, the left-wing parliamentary parties no longer opposed the idea of using cameras in the ght against urban crime. The notable exceptions were the Communist Party and the Greens, whose politicians regularly opposed the installation of cameras in the areas where they were in power. Looking carefully at a map showing where these cameras are makes this abundantly clear. Thus, the region surrounding Paris (Ile-de-France), which is run by the Socialists, had already spent 24 million Euros on video surveillance in public transport between 1998 and 2002 (30% of the budget available for security) and from 2003 to 2007 this rose to 70% of the budget available. Similarly, the city of Lyons, which has a Socialist mayor, set out a vast plan for the installation of cameras; between 2001 and 2007, 180 cameras were installed, requiring 7.3 million Euros of investment and an annual budget of 200,000 Euros to run the system (not including staff costs) [1]. There are plenty of examples of large and middle-sized, right-wing or left-wing, towns and cities gradually investing in these systems. 2

Translated from original French. Law Number 95-73, Article 10.II [5,17].

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2.2. Systems used for local security Even though the video surveillance market underwent considerable expansion at that time, turnover progressing from 224.4 million Euros in 1993 to 490.3 million in 2003 (+118%), this growth was not backed up by active support from the government. This is in contrast to the situation in Great Britain in the 1990s, where the Home Ofce played a major role in the development of video surveillance [16]. In France, cameras were paid for almost entirely by municipalities, d´epartements and regions. In other words, they were above all a means used by towns and cities to meet the expectations of their inhabitants and address local problems. As a study carried out in three French cities shows (Lyons, Grenoble and Saint-Etienne), they generally managed to do so by bringing together a coalition made up of local authorities, businesses and technology-providers amongst others, whose arguments in favour of the project contributed to its gradual acceptance [4]. This was similar to the strategy described by Coleman and Sim in Liverpool ten years earlier [2]. France’s central government was not inactive, but the measures it took remained limited, aiming mainly to adapt regulations to take account of difculties on the ground or to understand new security issues. Thus, a law passed in May 2007 made it possible for small towns which on their own may not have the resources to nance a video surveillance system, to join together in order to do so3. Similarly, the ‘antiterrorist’ law passed in January 2006 allowed the police to get access to images from video surveillance equipment belonging to someone else (local authorities, public transport providers and so on), whereas previously this had only been allowed in the context of a judicial enquiry or, failing that, if the body responsible for the video surveillance asked the pr´efet for police intervention. This new possibility applied to all systems, whatever their purpose. The same law stipulated that the equipment used (cameras, transmission networks, facilities for stocking images and so on) had to conform to technical norms set out by the Ministry of the Interior, but that was the extent of it. In a circular sent to all its departments in April 2006, the Ministry reminded everyone of the limits established, stating that “the installation of a video surveillance system must not lead to any additional costs for the police”4. As a result, it was very rmly indicated that the police should neither directly manage a video surveillance system nor have anything to do with operating cameras [3].

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3. State promotion and funding A few weeks after his election, the new President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in an interview with the press on 8 July 2007 that he had asked the Ministry of the Interior ‘to think about an extensive plan for installing cameras’ as a means of combating crime and the terrorist threat. On 26 July, the Minister of the Interior Mich`ele Alliot-Marie announced her decision to triple as quickly as possible France’s video surveillance capabilities. On the 9 November she gave more detail about her aims in an ofcial address: “I have both quantitative and qualitative ambitions. Quantitatively, I want to triple the number of cameras on the streets in two years, increasing from 20,000 to 60,000. Qualitatively, I would like modern equipment, giving police the possibility to have access to images recorded by municipalities and those in charge of major public spaces (transport, shopping centres, sports centres. . . )”5 3

Law Number 2007-297 (5 March 2007) on the prevention of crime. The structure aimed for ‘state institutions for cooperation between towns’ (‘´etablissements publics de coop´eration intercommunale’) [10]. 4 Translated from original French [3]. 5 Translated from original French [7].

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In order to achieve these objectives, the Ministry needed to convince the public and local politicians that this massive use of video surveillance to ensure public security was justied. In the remainder of this article, it will be shown that this was only partially successful. 3.1. The only doctrine was beliefs As we have seen, up until then, the use of video surveillance was selective and limited to the places where people and property were the most at risk. Moreover, this reasoned use of cameras was in line with the doctrine developed by the Ministry of the Interior concerning the ght against terrorism. A condential report written in 2005 by the ‘General Inspectorate of the Administration’ (Inspection G´en´erale de l’Administration/IGA) shows this:

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“It is not advisable in the coming years to go in the direction of installing cameras absolutely everywhere; it would be more in line with the legal situation, nancial constraints and operational needs to dene priority areas. [. . . ] First of all, within our legal framework, having cameras everywhere is not compatible with the exercise of civil liberties. Financially, it would be a very expensive solution, not a good use of public money, which can be used to ght terrorism through other channels such as intelligence. From an operational point of view, the police’s antiterrorist strategy would not necessarily be reinforced if cameras were installed all over the country. Having too many images runs the risk of making it difcult to make intelligible use of them”6 The report’s conclusion is logical, calling for priorities to be dened and for surveillance systems to be used in a limited fashion so that specic areas and activities can be targeted. These recommendations were however not followed by Nicolas Sarkozy who, once he became President, decided to encourage the use of video surveillance cameras all over France and to invest considerable sums of money in them. Having severely criticised the ‘inaction’ of his predecessor (Jacques Chirac) and made security a major theme of his electoral campaign, Sarkozy needed to take some initiatives quickly in this area and video cameras have one characteristic which made them entirely suitable for this purpose: members of the public, who are also voters, can see them. Apart from this symbolic aspect, the plan to install cameras also served the practical purpose of increasing the effectiveness of the police, whose performance had been weak. In order to do so, the government had to convince municipalities to extend and/or modernise their systems so that the police could get access to the increasing volume of images recorded. Up until then, systems had been designed with the needs of local security in mind, but it now became necessary for them to correspond to what was required by the police, who were looking for productivity gains in the judicial eld, specically the number of crimes solved. On this point, it is important to indicate that in order to obtain the support of politicians and the public for this approach, the government systematically referred to the British experience. Thus, in her July 2007 declaration, as in all the others that were to be made by supporters of the presidential camp, Mich`ele Alliot-Marie declared that: “The effectiveness of video surveillance in signicantly improving security in our daily lives is unquestionable. Experiences in other countries have clearly proved this, especially in the United Kingdom, where child murders and terrorist crimes have been solved. On a daily basis, local experiments show this is the case. So we can only conclude that our country has fallen behind” 7 6 7

Translated from original French [14: 14]. Translated from original French [7].

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Any well-informed reader familiar with the work done by British researchers on the effectiveness of video surveillance will be surprised by this declaration. For some studies conclude that these systems have no impact at all and others show them to have a limited effectiveness, which varies considerably depending on the crime committed, the type of area being lmed, the equipment used and the staff running the system [10]. In addition, up until 2009, no work of this type had been done in France [12]. This is indeed something that is peculiar to France, for the evaluation of public security policy is almost non-existent. It also means that the doctrine behind the push to increase coverage by CCTV cameras was above all based on beliefs, an unshakeable faith in the effectiveness of video surveillance systems.

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3.2. Subsidies to win over local authorities In addition, another technique used by the Ministry of the Interior was to provide money for local authorities to have systems installed. The method used was based on the one pioneered by the Home Ofce in the 1990s (CCTV Challenge Competition for example), which meant that the Ministry contributed to the costs of installing cameras (as long as other partners also provided funding), but did not cover the running costs. The main measure involved using the interministerial fund for the prevention of crime (Fonds Interminist´eriel de Pr´evention de la D´elinquance/FIPD)8. In concrete terms, each year the Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Crime (Comit´e Interminist´eriel de Pr´evention de la D´elinquance) sent a circular to pr´efets, outlining the areas eligible for funding according to the government’s priorities. It was then up to the pr´efets to award funding on a local basis, according to the instructions received and the amount of money available. A total of 72.1 million Euros (and an increasing proportion of the funds available to the FIPD) have been spent on video surveillance: 13.4 million in 2007 (309 projects, 30% of funds), 11.7 million in 2008 (347 projects, 30% of funds), 17 million in 2009 (538 projects, 45% of the budget) and 30 million in 2010 (almost 60% of the budget) [8]. As the project has gradually been rolled out throughout the country, these subsidies have mainly been paid out to local authorities who wish to install CCTV on their streets (three quarters of all projects), along with transport companies, schools and providers of social services. The rate at which equipment is nanced varies from 20% to 50% depending on the complexity of the system and the density of cameras installed, but it can be as high as 100% when the subsidy is nancing a connection between a town’s video operators and the departmental or national police (39 in 2009). By the end of 2006, 53 towns and cities had put in place a system such as this but by the end of 2009, with the help of the FIPD, 80 more towns had such a system [8]. In addition, in order to provide support for these systems, two administrative structures were created. The rst, the National Committee for Video Surveillance (Commission Nationale de la Vid´eosurveillance) is a consultative organisation responsible for advising the Ministry of the Interior on technical advances and the principles behind the use of the systems. The members of this committee were appointed in November 2007 and they started work in the following months, discussions being chaired by a businessman who had been giving advice to local authorities on these issues for some years. Little is known about the work of the committee, given that their advice is not published. The second body, the Committee for Strategic Operations (Comit´e de Pilotage Strat´egique) is responsible for devising and proposing all the measures necessary to realise the National Equipment Plan. Ofcially, this committee has members who are highly qualied (‘aux tr`es hautes qualications’) but in reality this expertise does 8 Created in March 2007, the FIPD has a specic budget to be used for nancing crime prevention measures. These funds are provided by the income from trafc nes.

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not yet exist in the Ministry of the Interior, which is why, for example, when the committee decided to put together a methodological guide to their activities, the task was entrusted to a specialised private lawyer’s ofce9. Nevertheless, the committee’s range of activities gradually expanded and in 2010 they took over from the pr´efets the allocation of FIPD funds. As far as regulation is concerned, the organisation and running of committees within d´epartements responsible for dealing with requests for authorisation submitted to pr´efets were revisited so as to simplify and accelerate the process from January 2009 onwards10 . In spite of all these efforts, the ofcial objective of tripling in two years the number of cameras on the streets was not achieved. At the end of 2009, there were 27,000 cameras on the streets in France, a far cry from the 60,000 promised by the Minister of the Interior in 2007. This may explain why the Ministry of the Interior became so active within Parliament, where discussion was beginning on a bill which determined the objectives and the funding of police for the next four years (Loi d’Orientation et de Programmation pour la Performance de la S´ecurit´e Int´erieure/LOPPSI). In the course of debates, the Minister of the Interior returned to an old rhetorical device which consisted in underlining the incompetence and/or idealism of opposition politicians who saw the increasing use of video surveillance as ineffective, expensive and a threat to freedom. In no particular order, the ‘angelic Socialists’ (‘les socialistes ang´eliques’), ‘the ideologists’ (‘les id´eologues’) and ‘the great thinkers who live in posh areas’ (‘les grands penseurs qui vivent dans les beaux quartiers’) were all denounced. A more fundamental point was that the government presented several amendments to the bill in order to give new impetus to the installation programme. The rst aimed to give pr´efets the right to override a mayor who refused to allow video cameras to be installed. This initiative was mentioned as early as November 2009 by Nicolas Sarkozy when he visited the Paris suburbs and chaired a round table on security. He said at that time, “I will not allow security to be approached ideologically, I want results and pragmatism”11. This strategy of increasing the tension between camps ended up being counter-productive because it served to bring together once again local politicians on both the left and right, who traditionally close ranks when central government attempts to reduce the powers of mayors. In the end, the government was forced to withdraw this amendment even before debates had begun in Parliament. The second initiative was more successful since it presented a signicant nancial advantage for politicians. It allowed a local authority to entrust the running of its video surveillance system to a private company, which had been forbidden by law up until then. This proposal was adopted by Parliament in autumn 2010. The government’s third initiative was apparently harmless and came down to a question of wording. The amendment voted on read: “In all legal texts and all regulations, the words “video surveillance” are replaced by “video protection”’12 . In arguing for the passing of this amendment, the government presented the following points: “The law of 21 January 1995 states purposes which can justify the installation of a video protection system. Such systems serve to protect public buildings and facilities and their access routes, assure the security of installations which play a role in national defence, regulate trafc, record trafc offences and prevent attacks on people and property in places which are particularly vulnerable 9

See www.videoprotection.interieur.gouv.fr [accessed June 2011]. Decree Number 2009–86 (22 January 2009) which modied decree Number 96–926 (17 October 1996) on video surveillance, Journal Ofciel, 24 January 2009. 11 Translated from original French, see http://www.elysee.fr/president/les-dossiers/securite/2009/deplacement-en-ile-defrance-24-novembre-2009/lutte-contre-l-insecurite.7001.html [accessed June 2011]. 12 Translated from original French, see www.senat.fr/dossier-legislatif/pjl09-292.html [accessd June 2011]. 10

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to mugging or theft. Reading these objectives, it is clear that recording images serves to protect people and property and the words ‘video surveillance’ are therefore inappropriate because the term ‘surveillance’ can lead members of the public to think, wrongly, that such systems could represent a threat to their private lives. There is thus a case for replacing ‘video surveillance’ by ‘video protection’, which better reects the legislator’s intentions as well as the measures taken to help the public”13 This amendment was passed without much debate. The extremely rapid vote deserves a series of comments by way of conclusion.

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4. Conclusion The fact that the government could express its desire to legislate on the words used by the public to describe one object or another brings back very bad memories. Of course, George Orwell’s 1984 and his ‘newspeak’ come to mind, but also the work of the German philologist Victor Klemperer on the language of the Third Reich. Klemperer demonstrated the power that words have to ‘think in the place of’ the person using them and, even more importantly, to have an impact upon consciences and contaminate minds [13]. So is the French government turning into an authoritarian regime? The answer must be ‘no’. It is however legitimate to wonder about an initiative such as the one described above in the current political climate in France, for this initiative is a good example of the way in which those in power act at any given moment. So how can we interpret their wish to get rid of words whose meaning is not orthodox? We can rst of all see this as a sign of the government’s arrogance, convinced they would be able to impose on the public (who ‘think, wrongly’ as the justication for the amendment points out) their opinions concerning the meaning to be attached to the development of surveillance technologies. This is a very clumsy way of trying to close down the debate on the balance between the defence of civil liberties and individual security, a discussion which continues to be entirely justied. This legislative initiative also indicates the great difculty the government has had in getting local authorities to support its plans. Indeed, as the article has shown, up until 2007 video surveillance was a tool in the hands of mayors who had the power to decide to use it (or not) to support the work of the police. By developing a national scheme for installing cameras, the Ministry of the Interior has clearly indicated to local politicians that they are no longer in charge and, even though central government has excluded the possibility of becoming actively involved itself, systems must be designed in such a way that police can get access to the images. Yet as Senator Charles Gautier rightly points out, “If the purpose of a system is to clear up crimes, which is entirely the job of central government, why should local and regional authorities pay for it?”14 Launched by central government, the plan relies mainly on nances provided by local and regional authorities and that is precisely the problem. By providing a contribution to installation costs (through the FIPD), the government has a carrot with which it can convince politicians and by demanding the replacement of ‘video surveillance’ by ‘video protection’ it has the stick which the public might use to beat mayors who refuse to install cameras to ensure their population’s ‘protection’. It remains to be seen whether a carrot and a stick will be enough to see 60,000 cameras suddenly appearing on the streets of France, but there is reason to doubt it. 13 14

Translated from original French, see www.senat.fr/dossier-legislatif/pjl09-292.html [accessd June 2011]. Translated from French, interview with La Gazette des communes, 23 March 2009, p. 30.

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Acknowledgement Translated by Joy Charnley. References Chambre R´egionale des Comptes (France), Rapport d’Observation, May, Chambre R´egionale des Comptes, 2010. R. Coleman and J. Sim, From the dockyards to the disney store: surveillance, risk and security in Liverpool city centre, International Review of Law, Computers and Technology 12(1) (1998), 27–45. [3] Direction G´en´erale de la Police Nationale (France) Note de service a` Mesdames et Messieurs les directeurs d´epartementaux de la s´ecurit´e publique, 5 April 2006 (unpublished). [4] P. Field, New International Journal of Criminology VII (2010), [on line] URL: http://champpenal.revues.org/7931. [5] French Law Number 95–73, Loi d’Orientation et de Programmation Relative a` la S´ecurit´e, Journal Ofciel, Law No. 97–73, 24 Janvier 1995. [6] French Ministry of the Interior, Rapport Relatif aux Conditions d’Application de l’Article 10 de la LOPS du 25 Janvier 1995’s. Ofce for Civil Liberties (Bureau des Libert´es Publiques), French Ministry of the Interior, 2005. [7] French Ministry of the Interior, Intervention de Mich`ele Alliot-Marie lors de l’installation de la Commission Nationale de Vid´eosurveillance, 9 November 2007 (available at: http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/sections/a votre service/videoprotection/commission-nationale-videosurveillance/commission-videosurveillance/view) (accessed: 29.7.2011). [8] G. Geoffroy, Rapport d’Information No.2728 sur la Contribution de l’Etat au D´eveloppement de la Vid´eosurveillance, Assembl´ee Nationale (France), July, 2010. [9] P. Haas, Atlas Economique. En Toute S´ecurit´e, Technopresse, 2001. [10] E. Heilmann, La vid´eosurveillance, une r´eponse efcace a` la criminalit´e? Criminologie 36(1) (2003), 89–102. [11] H. Jouanneau, S´ecurit´e publique, La Gazette des Communes (18 February 2008), 26–33. [12] F. Klauser, Lost surveillance studies: a discussion of French research on CCTV, Surveillance & Society 6(1) (2009), 23–31. [13] V. Klemperer, LTI, La Langue du Troisi`eme Reich, Carnets d’un Philologue. Paris, Albin Michel [1947], 1996. [14] T. Le Goff, L’ins´ecurit´e saisie par les maires, Revue Franc¸aise de Science Politique 55(3) (2005), 415–444. [15] P. Melchior, ed., La Vid´eosurveillance et la Lutte Contre le Terrorisme, (condential note), 2005. [16] C. Norris and G. Armstrong, The Maximum Surveillance Society. The Rise of CCTV, Oxford, Berg, 1999. [17] F. Ocqueteau, Usages policiers des technologies de l’information, Panoramiques 33 (1998), 68–73. [18] F. Ocqueteau and E. Heilmann, Droit et usages des nouvelles technologies: les enjeux d’une r´eglementation de la vid´eosurveillance, Droit et Soci´et´e 36–37 (1997), 331–344.

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[1] [2]

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The silent growth of video surveillance in Italy Chiara Fonio Dipartimento di Sociologia, Universit`a Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Largo Gemelli, 1, 20123 Milano, IT, Italy E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. This paper aims to analyze the growth of video surveillance in Italy through a focus on the legislative framework and the politics, in particular urban security policies. The paper explores whether the decentralization of security polices has impacted on the implementation of surveillance cameras within national urban contexts. A specic emphasis will also be given to the limited empirical data available, namely a qualitative research carried out in the city of Milan in 2005 [4]. Efforts are made to understand potential discrepancies between the national Data Protection Authority provisions on video surveillance and the reception of it by the camera operators. This contribution also seeks to shed light on “lost surveillance studies” [15] within a non-Anglophone framework in order to sketch out an approach to surveillance that differs from countries where the issue has been broadly explored (inter alia [21]). Keywords: CCTV, Italy, Milan, regulation politics, security, surveillance, urban, video surveillance

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1. Introduction While the proliferation of video surveillance cameras in the public space has been explored from different perspectives by focusing on several case studies which have been investigating this trend mainly in Northern European (see, inter alia [13,17,18,20,27]) and North American [25] contexts, much remains to be learned about the implementation and regulation of surveillance cameras in Southern Mediterranean countries. As Klauser [15] and Samatas [26] have shown, neither surveillance studies nor the expansion of CCTV are conned to English speaking countries, it is thus essential to take into account other contexts with different socio-cultural backgrounds that present some peculiar features. First, the lack of literature (both in Italian, with a few exceptions, and in English) focused on the Italian case seems to go along with a marginal presence of this issue in the public debate. This contribution, thus, aims at “lling the gap” in the state of art concerning video surveillance IN. For the rst time an evaluation of what has been done so far concerning the regulation and governance of CCTV and data focused on the only qualitative empirical research carried out in a major city (published in Italian in 2007) are available to non-Italian readers. If the extremely limited available data does not allow broad generalizations, an assessment of the legal framework and the emergence of national trends seem to be achievable. Second, while it is beyond the scope of this paper to investigate the overall Italian socio-cultural background, it is important to acknowledge that contemporary dynamics of surveillance, resistance (or lack of) and also the notion of privacy and anonymity in South Mediterranean countries might diverge from Northern European “approaches”. Much remains to be learned regarding legal, social and cultural

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similarities and differences. In a country like Italy where a weighty surveillance past has been neglected until recent times [6], one might argue that it is not surprising that surveillance studies are still at an early stage. Within this context, either surveillance cameras within urban environments used to monitor ordinary citizens constantly proliferate without a proper public debate or the regulation of video surveillance has remained unknown even to those in charge of using the cameras [4]. Third, while changes in the regulatory regime of video surveillance in Italy suggest that this has been an issue of concern to the national Data Protection Authority (hereafter DPA) since the late 1990s, the legal framework came into force in a statistical vacuum, as explained in the following pages. This contribution, thus, examines three key issues: 1. the regulation of video surveillance in Italy and the changes in the regulatory regime; 2. CCTV and urban security polices; 3. empirical data on the city of Milan. The last area of discussion considers the outcomes of a qualitative research carried out in a major city and also looks at discrepancies between the DPA’s general provision on video surveillance and the reception of it by CCTV operators.

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2. Early growth of legal regulation of CCTV in Italy While it is difcult to assert exactly when and where video surveillance was used for the rst time in Italy in a public accessible space, one might argue that early growth of the CCTV started in the 1990s. In fact, in 1999 the Italian Data Protection Authority1 claimed that, because video surveillance was an important issue of interest to the public, the DPA along with La Sapienza University (Rome) were carrying out a rst evaluation to assess the diffusion of this tool at a national level (DPA press release, March 8th 1999). The research, the rst of this kind, focused on the “visible surveillance cameras in central and semi-central areas of four cities: Milan, Verona, Rome and Naples” [14: 3]. While “visible” indicates that all the cameras, whether private or public, were included in the research, it is not clear what central and semi-central areas exactly mean. The outcome was an estimate density of CCTV (213 in Milan, 67 in Verona, 796 in Rome and 89 in Naples) [14: 5] in specic areas. In all the four cities CCTV was largely conned to the private sector, in particular, banks. However, I am not concerned here with quantitative data but with the conclusive remarks which clearly address the necessity of a specic regulation as far as video surveillance that encompasses requirements such as proportionality and technical capabilities [14: 48–49]. This rst evaluation, along with an increasing number of requests made by public bodies to install video surveillance, urged the DPA to issue some guidelines in 2000, the so called “video surveillance decalogue”. The latter is the rst attempt to deal with the growth of surveillance cameras in a legal vacuum. In absence of specic provisions, the DPA acted within the existing legal framework, namely the Act no. 675/1996 “Protection of individuals and other subjects with regard to the processing of personal data” (Italian Data Protection Act). In particular, personal data collected through video surveillance shall be processed lawfully and fairly (art 9, a) and shall be collected and recorded for specic, explicit and legitimate purposes and used in further processing operations in a way that is not inconsistent with said 1 The Garante per la protezione dei dati personali is a collegiate body including four members, who are elected by Parliament for a seven-year term. It was set up in 1997 and it is an independent authority which aims to protect fundamental rights and freedoms in connection with the processing of personal data, and to ensure respect for individuals’ dignity.

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purposes (art. 9, b). Additionally the data subjects shall be informed about the purposes of the processing for which the data is intended (art.10). In the case of CCTV, this means that data subjects should be informed that they are going to access or nd themselves in an area under video surveillance, especially if the latter is not clearly visible. Video surveillance shall be proportionate and – if not necessary – detailed images should be avoided. Proportionality applies also to data retention which must be a pre-determined criteria and processors (CCTV operators) shall be designated to determine that proportionality. The following provisions on surveillance cameras operate within the new Personal Data Protection Code which came into force in 2003. In 2004 the new general provision on video surveillance enhanced the decalogue since in the years following the implementation of the guidelines, several complaints were submitted to the Authority pointing out that the use of audiovisual equipment was “often in breach of law” [Foreword, 9]. The core elements of the aforementioned provision are four principles (which are in the Personal Data Protection Code), specically lawfulness, data minimization, proportionality and purpose specication. The l rouge that connects all principles emerges from the following statement included in the proportionality principle: “One should refrain from making what is simply the less expensive, easiest or most rapidly applicable choice, which might fail to take into account of the impact on other citizens’ rights and/or different, legitimate interests”. In emphasizing the right to privacy of the data subjects, the DPA suggests adopting a non-technologically driven approach to security and to consider video surveillance tools as the ultima ratio when other measures are unfeasible or not sufcient. In particular the Authority draws attention to potentially redundant uses of CCTV which should be deployed only if there is a real danger. The provision also covers general and specic requirements, such as the information notices that should be placed close to the areas under surveillance and the data storage period that should be limited to 8 days except for some specic cases and places (i.e. banks). Other aspects which had not been covered by the decalogue were, for instance, some contexts, such as hospitals and schools that are considered particularly sensitive places. Video surveillance “may be admissible if absolutely indispensable” and the cameras can be in operation only after the closing time of the schools. With respect to public bodies, such as municipalities, the provision highlights that it is unlawful to use video surveillance to monitor large cities’ areas if some specic conditions are not fullled. As shown, this provision seems to consider video surveillance not as a mere technical security tool, but as socio-technical device that might have important implications, such as the limitation of the freedom of movement in the public space (Foreword) or the infringement of the privacy of minors [9: 4.3 Schools and Other Institutions]. The potential social implications of video surveillance are also raised in the section focused on data minimization (unnecessary, excessive and/or redundant uses of video surveillance are to be ruled out 2.2), on the above mentioned proportionality principle and on public bodies by highlighting that it is “unlawful to perform pervasive video surveillance of whole areas of a city” (5.1) as it should be used only if there are actual dangers. This provision undoubtedly improves and also updates the previous guidelines in light of changed political dynamics concerning urban security policies. 2.1. CCTV and urban security From the late 1990s, urban security has increasingly become an issue to be proactively addressed by local municipalities. It has been claimed that in the name of urban security, local municipalities not only actively addressed criminality but also dened the perception of security of their citizens [23: 28]. This new approach to urban security led to the growing role of local governments, regions and of mayors who

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have powers over policing. Moreover, through the law 128/2001, for the rst time local police forces can be formally involved with the Provincial Committee for order and public security (before only state police was involved in the works of the committee). This shift has caused, on the one hand, an increasing direct demand from the citizens to the mayors to live in safer cities and on the other, a new model of “integrated” security exemplied in the following years by the so called “local agreements for integrated security”. Regional directives in the eld of urban security have been developed and local municipalities have often reacted to the citizens’ claims for security through technological means, such as video surveillance. The trust in technology seems a direct counterpart of the fragmentation originated in the 1990s: local dynamics (i.e. the relevant role of local governments) and new vulnerabilities (i.e. migration ows) fostered the urge to offer rapid answers. The involvement of the municipalities in the eld of security as key players of policing [11] and the escalating use of CCTV in urban environments have been recognized also by the DPA which has recently (April 2010) issued a new provision on video surveillance. As a matter of fact the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI) is even mentioned in the introduction of the provision: local governments, along with the Ministry of Interior, were consulted before issuing the provision. This might suggest a direct link between the escalation of video surveillance and the role played by local actors that have been progressively more reliant on surveillance technology to cope with security related issues within urban spaces [3: 166]. Moreover, this provision seems to reect a new “governance model” shaped by recent laws (law number 38/2009; 94/2009; 125/2008) related to urgent urban security measures that provide considerable powers to city mayors. It is also worth noting that local municipalities have not only been empowered but also nancially supported by the Ministry of the Interior. I estimate that in 2009 the Ministry of Interior allocated around 30,000,000 Euros to maintain public order and enhance urban public security through video surveillance [19]. Public funding was specically allocated for local municipalities that plan, inter alia, “to invest in video surveillance technology”. The new regulatory regime was issued in light of the above mentioned laws and public investments, therefore it varies from the 2004 provision. While the latter drew more on international safeguards (such as article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, the Council of Europe’s guidelines of 20-23 May 2003 and the documents drafted by the European data protection authorities within the framework of the Article 29 Working Party) and on an overall “social” approach to video surveillance, the recent provision seems driven by changes that occurred at a national level with regard to new governance polices. The new provision on surveillance cameras emphasizes more specic requirements and settings (i.e. the information notice, biometrics and “smart cameras”, trafc surveillance cameras) than the four core principles. It should be noted that in accordance with this new provision, if the purposes of surveillance cameras are the maintenance of public security and order, prevention and repression of crime, the information notice is not mandatory but it is highly recommended by the DPA since “it [the information notice] enhances the role of video surveillance and could be an efcient deterrent” [10: 3.1.2]. However, if the recorded data is monitored and processed by law enforcement agencies, the information notice is mandatory. This could be misleading as usually in the public realm CCTV is used (or it is claimed to be used) for public security purposes and crime prevention, and it is run by the local police. Therefore, it is not clear what the recommendation of the DPA really entails. Local municipalities are explicitly mentioned as far as data storage is concerned, as they are allowed to retain the images for longer than 24 hours (up to 7 days) for security purposes. New requirements

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concerning trafc enforcement cameras focus on the collected data which shall be limited only to number plates and with the aim of detecting trafc regulation violations. Biometric and smart cameras, such as those able to detect suspicious movements, shall be subject to prior checking by the DPA as the generalized and uncontrolled use of biometric data could stigmatize the data subjects [10: 3.2.1]. With regard to specic settings it is worth noting that this provision does not mention places of worship and burial grounds which, on the contrary, were considered particularly sensitive in the previous general provision [9: 4.5]. The main difference between the two provisions seems related to the overall approach to video surveillance. In 2004, surveillance cameras were the “last resort” when other measures had been considered rejected or unworkable. Six years later, both the widespread use of CCTV by public bodies and a new national legislative framework, have led to a “softer” provision that takes surveillance cameras for granted. Video surveillance is not exceptional anymore, rather it is an everyday practice increasingly used by city mayors to promptly answer citizens’ security concerns. Changes to local governance models have certainly played a crucial role in both the diffusion of this tool and the encouragement of its use, regardless of national empirical data concerning the effectiveness, cost-benet analysis and the potential privacy implications. It is not clear to what extent the European legislation and guidelines have inuenced the last national provision. However, what seems to be specic about the regulation of CCTV in Italy in comparison to other European countries [12] is that, as mentioned in the Introduction, the legal landscape came into force in a statistical vacuum. In this respect, Italy and France share the same peculiarity, namely the absence of statistical evaluation of public CCTV systems [15]. The Italian academic debate is almost nonexistent and the aforementioned evaluation carried out by the DPA is neither an updated nor a comprehensive source. Additionally, the DPA has not been a generator of CCTV literature and there is a lack of, i.e., comparative studies on the European regulatory systems and their effectiveness. It is also difcult to assess the effectiveness of national safeguards to protect citizens’ privacy. The Italian specicity in the regulation of CCTV is that a relatively early engagement of the DPA neither either by a proper public debate nor by evaluation studies which, as epitomized in the empirical study analyzed in the following pages, might have suggested a more careful approach. Another peculiarity lies in the changes brought about by new governance polices which, as shown, raise issues as far as power relations and key players are concerned. The growing role of local governments – fostered by a new governance model- shaped the last DPA provision on CCTV. Within this context, the role played by the DPA seems rather “weak” albeit considerable efforts concerning regulatory measures have been made. 3. The “eyes” of Milan As briey mentioned, empirical research focused on video surveillance is almost nonexistent. Therefore, it is complicated to provide up-to-date national information concerning the proliferation of surveillance cameras in Italy. Public funding allocated by the Ministry of Interior suggests that open street CCTV is used for urban security purposes both in big cities (such as Milan, Naples and Rome) and in very small municipalities that successfully applied for public funding. (i.e. San Giovanni Lipioni with a population of less than 300 residents has received 35,100 Euros for video surveillance) [19]. Before a more in-depth analysis as far as the case of Milan is concerned, it is worth considering that there are recent reports issued by Regional Governments [i.e.] [23] that have begun to describe the practice of video surveillance in Italy. Additionally, the city of Genova and the regions of Emilia-Romagna and

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Veneto are partners of the European Forum for Urban Security and are consequently involved in the project “Citizens, Cities and Video surveillance” which aims to create a charter for the good use of video surveillance in European cities2 . However, both from the public data issued by Regional Governments and from the report by European Forum for Urban Security [3] emerges an extremely fragmented picture. The data are mainly descriptive and there is almost no reference to empirical research focused on the use and the impact of CCTV. For instance, while the total costs of video surveillance systems’ installation in the city of Bologna (EmiliaRomagna) is available [3: 156], the impact of CCTV is unknown as “it is difcult to measure precisely the project’s results, as the crime statistics are not sufciently detailed (notably from a geographic point of view) and do not allow a full analysis of crime rates” and the preventive aspect is not clear [3: 158–159]. On the other hand, the Regional Security Monitoring Center (Veneto Region) carried out, in 2007, an inquiry into video surveillance. Yet the data are limited to only 215 out of 581 communes [3: 213]. According to the police chiefs, in 60% of cases video surveillance has contributed to a reduction in petty crimes and public disorders but “it should be noted that in 21% of cases it has been observed that these illicit activities have been moved to other areas” [3: 214] not covered by surveillance cameras. Very few Italian Regions have updated statistics and gures on video surveillance. One the most comprehensive report is the aforementioned report issued by the Piemonte region in which there is “a rst analysis of video surveillance systems in Piemonte”. Although there are quantitative data (i.e. number and distribution of the cameras in the eight provinces; the costs of the systems, etc.) there is a lack of information regarding the impact of video surveillance and a general lack of concern relating to the application of DPA provision on video surveillance. The patchy overview that emerges from these few sources is neither enough to draw conclusions on the use of surveillance cameras in Italy, nor it can offer any insights on if and how the regulatory regime has been implemented. Bits of fragmented and often unreliable information are also available in the mainstream media which are nonetheless more interested in the “spectacle of security” [1] rather than in the progressive erosion of privacy in the public space. Additionally, national mass media have perpetuated a rhetoric narrative based on uncorroborated claims that more surveillance implies safer cities. The only qualitative data based on an empirical research was collected during a study, namely an ethnographic research, carried out in the city of Milan in 2005 [4]. The following case study exemplies both the growing role of local municipalities in the proliferation of video surveillance and also raises some issues of those concerns related to substantial discrepancies between the provision on video surveillance and its implementation. In the last 15 years there has been a considerable increase in the use of video surveillance in Milan (capital of the Lombardia region) as a crime prevention and deterrence measure. The rst surveillance systems were set up in the late 1990s and they have been progressively augmented since 1997. The vice-mayor has repeatedly claimed that Milan is the most monitored city in Italy with more than 1,000 open street CCTVs [2] distributed all over the city, especially in green areas and in the surroundings of transportation hubs (i.e. main train stations). It should be noted that, thanks to a regional law (4/2003), situational crime prevention measures have been nancially supported by the region. The latter, along with local municipalities, sustains projects aimed at improving safety and assisting the local police. Once again the legal framework has facilitated the use of CCTV in urban contexts such as Milan. 2

http://www.cctvcharter.eu/

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Open street CCTV is run by the local police either at control rooms located within the monitored areas or at the central police station. However, real time monitoring mainly takes place in the control rooms. The ethnographic research was carried out in four control rooms selected on a number of considerations, inter alia, the most surveilled city areas. The aim was to describe the practice of CCTV thorough a combination of research approach (participant observation and semi-structured interviews). The study was mainly carried out through 70 hours of participant observation (from April to July 2005) distributed on various days and times of the week in order to verify how the cameras were monitored and operated at diverse times and by different operators. Due to the small size of the control rooms it was not always possible to take notes which also helped because the operators were more willing to talk extensively and informally about their job than if they had thought they were being properly interviewed. The observational study and the interviews with the operators were focused on four main aspects:

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1. the target of surveillance (who was monitored and why); 2. the security strategies (was CCTV effective? Do they have statistical data in order to assess the benets of video surveillance?); 3. the operators’ training (in particular, what kind – if any- training they had); 4. potential privacy implications (were the operators aware of privacy related issues? Were they familiar with the 2004 provision on video surveillance issued by the DPA?). On the basis of the study, the targets of surveillance were primarily ethnic minorities, in particular North Africans and East Europeans, who were tracked for no particular reasons other than for their appearance [4], thus on the basis of a categorical suspicion [20]. When prompted about the choice of the target of surveillance, the operators did not convey a comprehensive explanation but rather reiterate statements such as “they commit crimes” or “people inclined to steal” without statistical evidence. In some cases, pervasive monitoring persisted for more than 30 minutes with no objective nor reasonable justication but rather on grounds of race or ethnic origin and thus driven by ethnic proling and a prior suspicion [2,4]. Behavioral patterns did not play a crucial role in determining who had to be tightly monitored. Two social categories were also caught by the “electronic gaze” based upon their appearance, namely young people and women. The ndings hence conrm the tendency towards both the masculinization of space and the objectication of women [16]. Additionally, the outcomes of the observation conrm that the construction of deviance by some operators draws on the association between certain kinds of youth-style clothing and crime [27]. Security strategies appeared “surgical”, namely the underpinning approach was to use video surveillance as prevention and deterrence in specic parts of the city without taking into consideration either crime displacement or more holistic and long term plans to deal with crime related issues (in particular, drug trafcking). The operators did not have statistical data to claim that video surveillance had been effective in decreasing crime rates in the areas of observation as data and crime rates before and after the installation of CCTV were not available. Several raised doubts about the benets of this security tool and could not gure out why a great amount of money was invested without cost-benet analysis [4]. As far as the training is concerned, they claimed to have had a mere technical preparation that, in most cases, did not go beyond mechanical knowledge. Consequently, the large majority of the operators failed to recognize the potential social impacts of this tool, inter alia social sorting, privacy invasion and lack of a holistic approach due to a focus on only ascribed characteristics of the targets of surveillance. They were not familiar with the DPA’s provision on video surveillance, hence the use of zooms often seemed redundant and the system did not seem to be proportionate to real dangers. Obviously the legal framework was not a priority in the operators’ daily monitoring of the cameras and a use of CCTV in

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breach of the privacy law was often observed during the research. Moreover, the absence of guidelines for the use of video surveillance caused an overall subjective approach which drew more upon individual skills and knowledge than upon legal and ethical considerations [2,4]. The information notice was nonexistent or not provided in accordance with the existing provision and the privacy of the citizens was particularly at stake due both to the unnecessary use of zooms and the location of some cameras (i.e. CCTV overlooking a building’s entrance). It is unclear if alternative solutions less prejudicial to privacy had been tested before the implementation of video surveillance and if the effectiveness of the measure had been veried at all. The discrepancy between the provision and the practice of video surveillance emerged in many aspects. Surveillance cameras were considered only technological devices and little attention was paid to social implications [4]. In particular, the technical capabilities of the system overlaid important social concerns. The latter were not carefully considered and neither had camera operators been exposed to privacy legislation during training nor was there a deontological code in order to avoid any deviation from the provision or to ensure that CCTV was run ethically. Therefore, as stated above, subjective judgments and personal skills played a central role. The system, in fact, was not run within the parameters of the provision as it exceeded the proportionality principle. Large areas of the city of Milan were monitored and the lack of data concerning the crime rate before, during and after the CCTV installation suggests a reductive approach both to security strategies and to the right to privacy within public spaces. Moreover, the right to be informed about the presence of cameras was not respected in several of the four monitored areas as the information notices were not clearly visible or not close to the areas under surveillance. The divergence between the provision and the reception of it became apparent also during interviews with the operators who corroborated the researcher’s assumption of a lack of knowledge as far as the DPA’s provisions are concerned.

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4. Concluding remarks While there has been a relatively early engagement of the national DPA to safeguard citizens privacy with regards to video surveillance, open street CCTV, at least in the case of one of major cities in Italy, did not comply with the legislative framework. This perhaps relates to the fact the general power of the supervision authority is rather weak albeit section 153 of the Personal Data Protection Code clearly addresses the tasks to be discharged by the Authority. These tasks, for instance, shall consist in “verifying whether data processing operations are carried out in compliance with laws and regulations”, “ordering data controllers or processors”, “drawing the attention of Parliament and Government to the advisability of legislation”, “giving opinions whenever required”; “raising public awareness of the legislation applying to personal data processing”; “drawing up an annual report on the activity performed and implementation of this Code” [22]. One might argue that punishments or on the spot inspections to verify unlawful or unfair uses of video surveillance are rare in comparison to the widespread uses of this tool by public bodies. While it is true that the DPA has played its role by means and provisions which –as shown- specically address the regulation of video surveillance, there is a need to verify if and how the legislative framework has been implemented. The attention paid by the DPA to the proliferation of video surveillance and the subsequent changes in the regulatory regime have not triggered more careful evaluations by public bodies which in some cases, such as in the case of Milan, rely on CCTV without in-depth analysis. Furthermore, the increasing role of local governments and Regions along with new governance polices and signicant public investment that encourage the use of surveillance, have not only shaped the last

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DPA’s provision but have also facilitated a technologically driven approach to urban security further amplied by the media without a proper public debate that goes beyond the rhetorical claims. The use of video surveillance in Italian cities has been silent so far, as there is a substantial lack of empirical research and national assessment to measure social and economic costs and benets of this tool. As the little amount of publicly available data shows, the role of video surveillance in urban safety policies has not been properly evaluated. Despite the data concerning public funding that reveals a picture conrming the extensive deployment of surveillance cameras, the lack of quantitative and qualitative research and the discrepancy between the privacy law and the “reality of things” require carefully analysis in order to avoid an overly reductive approach. References

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P. Boyle and K. Haggerty, Spectacular Security, International Political Sociology 3 (2009), 257–274. D. Calenda and C. Fonio, ed., Sorveglianza e Societ`a, Bonanno, Roma, 2009. European Forum for Urban Security, Citizens, Cities and Video Surveillance, 2010, http://www.cctvcharter.eu/leadmin/ efus/CCTV minisite chier/Publication/CCTV publication EN.pdf. [4] C. Fonio, Videosorveglianza Uno sguardo senza volto, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2007. [5] C. Fonio, Surveillance and identity. Towards a new anthropology of the person, http://www.itstime.it/Approfondimenti/ Surveillance%20and%20identity.pdf. [6] C. Fonio, Surveillance under Mussolini’s Regime, paper presented at the Surveillance and Society Conference, City University, London, 13–15 April 2010; Forthcoming in Surveillance & Society. [7] Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, Video sorveglianza – il decalogo delle regole per non violare la privacy, 2000, http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=31019. [8] Garante per la Protezione dei dati Personali, Relazione, Pubblicazione della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Roma, 2002. [9] Garante per la Protezione dei dati Personali, Video surveillance. The general provision adopted by the Garante, 2004, http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=1116810. [10] Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali, Videosorveglianza – Provvedimento generale, 2010, http://www.garante privacy.it/garante/doc.jsp?ID=31019. [11] S. Germain and C. Poletti, Local security policies in Italy: new key institutional players, transformation of policing and professionalization of municipal forces, 2007, http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/37/40/04/PDF/Communi cation.Germain.Poletti.pdf. [12] M.L. Gras, The Legal Regulation of CCTV in Europe, Surveillance and Society 2 (2/3) (2004), 216–229; http://www. surveillance-and-society.org/articles2(2)/regulation.pdf. [13] L. Hempel and E. T¨opfer, CCTV in Europe. Final Report, Urbaneye Working Paper No. 15, (2004), http://www. urbaneye.net/results/ue wp15.pdf. [14] Ipermedia, La videosorveglianza esterna visibile: una panoramica su quattro citt`a, Roma, 2000, http://www.garantepri vacy.it/garante/document?ID=1490974. [15] F.R. Klauser, Lost Surveillance Studies: A Critical Review of French work on CCTV, Surveillance & Society 6(1), (2009), 23–31; http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/ojs/index.php/journal/article/view/lost/lost. [16] H. Koskela, The gaze without eyes: video surveillance and the changing nature of urban space, Progress in Human Geography 24 (2000), 243–265. [17] H.M Lomell, Targeting the Unwanted: Video Surveillance and Categorical Exclusion in Oslo, Norway, Surveillance & Society 2(2/3) (2004), 347–361; http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles2(2)/unwanted.pdf. [18] M. McCahill and C. Norris, CCTV in Britain, UrbanEye, Working Paper No. 3, (2002), http://www.urbaneye.net/ results/results.htm. [19] Minstero dell’Interno, Fondo per la sicurezza urbana e tutela dell’ordine pubblico, http://www.interno.it/mininterno/ export/sites/default/it/assets/les/17/00056 Fondo sicur urbana-graduatoria.pdf. [20] C. Norris and G. Armstrong, The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV, Berg, Oxford, 1999. [21] C. Norris, M. McCahill and D. Wood, Editorial. The Growth of CCTV: a global perspective on the international diffusion of video surveillance in publicly accessible space, Surveillance & Society 2(2/3) (2004), 110–135; http://www.surveillanceand-society.org/articles2(2)/editorial.pdf. [22] Personal data protection code, http://www.garanteprivacy.it/garante/document?ID=1219452.

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Primo Rapporto sulla Sicurezza Integrata nella Regione Piemonte, http://www.regione.piemonte.it/sicurezza/. Protection of individuals and other subjects with regard to the processing of personal data, http://www.privacy.it/ legge675encoord.html. Surveillance Cameras Awareness Network (SCAN), A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada, Part one and two (2009), http://www.sscqueens.org/projects/scan. M. Samatas, From thought control to trafc control: CCTV politics of expansion and resistance in Greece, Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, M. Deem, ed., 10 (2008), 345–369. G.J.D. Smith, Behind the Screens: Examining Constructions of Deviance and Informal Practices Among CCTV Control Room Operators in the UK, Surveillance & Society 2(2/3) (2004), 377–396; http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles2(2)/screens.pdf.

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C. Fonio / The silent growth of video surveillance in Italy

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The Stockholm Security Project: Plural policing, security and surveillance Ola Svenonius∗ Department of Political Science, S¨odert¨orn University, Huddinge, Sweden Abstract. This article reports on the results of a study on surveillance and plural policing in the Stockholm public transport system. More specically, it analyses a SEK 500 million (EUR 55 million) investment called The Security Project, through which the Stockholm public transport authority seeks to address a perceived security decit among its passengers. At its core, the Security Project was an investment in Sweden’s largest CCTV system, and many other surveillance measures. The article describes how surveillance became central to addressing security concerns in the Stockholm public transport system. It applies a diachronic case study methodology and uses a framework that highlights centralisation of governance networks and normative cohesion as means to study plural policing and surveillance. The article addresses current debates on these topics, primarily Coaffee’s and Duijnhoven’s recent work on urban security. It aims to show how the roles of the police, private security and surveillance practices in general have been altered by the Security Project, and how the project produced contradictory effects through centralisation on the one hand, and a maintained (chaotic) diversity of policing on the other. Keywords: Policing, surveillance, CCTV, security governance, Stockholm, public transport

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1. Introduction Since the terrorist attacks in the USA in 2001, in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005 passengers of the Stockholm local transport system, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), have been said to feel insecure. They fear not only terrorism, but also juvenile delinquency, drug users, and a perceived general increase of violence in society [15,20,30]. This fear might not be solely centred on the use of the public transport system, but it has nevertheless brought about an intensive debate and SL’s multi-million Euro investments in security, under the name The Security Project (Trygghetsprojektet). The proprietor of Stockholm’s local transport is the regional government, but the project is part of a larger network of activities, which involves local, regional and national public agencies. In addition, several private organisations are involved, many of which are part of the global security industry. The project includes major investments, not only in intelligence-gathering surveillance technology and improved access restrictions, but also novel strategies for the day-to-day tasking of policing activities for the many private actors and the regular police. This article presents the results of an exploratory study on security governance, plural policing and surveillance, using the experience of the Security Project in Stockholm as its main focus. The article also adheres to the request by Helms, Atkinson, and Macleod [11] who, in their discussion of Paskell’s [17] and Raco’s [18] work on government through community, note the British specicity of the cases and ∗

Corresponding author: Ola Svenonius, Department of Political Science, S¨odert¨orn University, Alfred Nobels all´e 7, SE14189 Huddinge, Sweden. Tel.: +46 8 608 45 17; Fax: +46 8 608 40 71; E-mail: [email protected]. Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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requested more work from other European contexts (see also [10]). Answering this call, it is argued in this article that the Stockholm case is a rewarding site for analysis. The aim of the study is to analyse the changes in the Stockholm public transport security governance that occurred through the Security Project in terms of plural policing and surveillance. The Stockholm case contains many interesting aspects that may be insightful for surveillance studies and social science more generally, as well as contributing to existing theory. The design of the study is formulated in terms of interpretive policy analysis [36]. The general design is an exploratory case study, which seems intuitively reasonable, considering the lack of prior research on this case. The study was inspired by Gerring’s discussion on case studies, and on Blaikie’s ‘retroductive research strategy’ [1,9]. The data was collected between 2008 and 2010 in the context of PhD research, and consists of ofcial evaluations, instruction documents, project descriptions, media material and legislation texts (cf. [19]). In addition, six qualitative, semi-structured interviews with nine interviewees (each between 60–90 minutes in length) were conducted with the managerial elite of the Stockholm security governance network, including; SL, the regional authority (county administrative board), and the police. The article starts out with a brief review of earlier research of relevance to the study, which helps to outline two general dimensions of analysis. Subsequently the Swedish example is discussed through an analysis of the Security Project.

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2. Policing, surveillance and security governance To explore the issues of policing and surveillance, the analysis below focuses on two dimensions of security governance: centralisation and normative coherence. During the last 10–20 years, policing and surveillance display an increasing diversity both in application and organisational forms, as governance networks of multiple actors assume responsibilities formerly located with state or municipal police [4]. This diversity of policing functions, discussed in criminology as plural policing [2,5,16], is the result of processes of decentralisation and privatisation of competences in the security eld. Plural policing means both several forms of security staff, as well as multiple agencies responsible for policing, and can thus be seen as the effect of decentralisation of security governance. In the eld of public administration, this development has often been studied in general terms under the headline of New Public Management (NPM), and here the issue of centralisation has been of particular importance [12,14]. The degree to which responsibility for security provision is spread to include several actors, or whether one actor centralises deployment is therefore a relevant category of analysis. In the Stockholm case, reducing plurality in policing was one of the policy goals with the Security Project, as we shall see below. In the transport sector in general, research on policing and surveillance has been scarce. Wigan and Clarke [35] have discussed how large surveillance systems have been introduced in public transport systems without proper evaluations of immediate and long-term effects. Duijnhoven [7] has studied how the NPM discourse and customer-oriented security policy results in new modes of policing and surveillance in the Dutch and Spanish rail sector. Coaffee [3] studied the security governance in the London road network in the 1990s during the creation of the ‘Ring of Steel’, and emphasised the degree of normative coherence between policy-makers in the same governance network. A common denominator is that they show how the notion of security itself has developed in parallel with increasing diversity of policing and surveillance. Additionally, they highlight the role of normative coherence in the governance network for delivering successful security. Thus the second dimension of analysis concerns this aspect of security policy, as well as its relation to policing and surveillance. In the context of the Stockholm study it is evident that a key characheristic shaping the Security Project was inter-institutional relationships.

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These two dimensions provide a framework for exploring changes in surveillance and policing. They are applied in the analysis below, which is structured according to a before-and-after schema in order to highlight the changes that the Security Project brought about. Each section includes one sub-section on plural policing and surveillance. The article concludes with a discussion of the results. 3. The Stockholm public transport ‘Security Project’ The Stockholm public transport authority, SL, is owned by the regional authority and has a board of directors consisting of elected politicians. It transports ca. 700,000 passengers every day and operates a subway system, buses, commuter trains, tramlines and some ferries [21,22]. SL has been in transition for the last 15–20 years, changing from a public company to a procurement organisation. Almost every activity is carried out by private contractors: currently eight companies operate different parts of the public transport system, only one of which is partly owned by SL itself [23]. During this time, a large number of operators, security companies, and various other organisations have been contracted by SL, directly or indirectly. Following the terrorist attacks of 2001, passengers have, according to SL statistics, grown increasingly fearful and consequently the regional government gave the SL board of directors the task of enhancing security and safety [15]. The following two sections will consist of a diachronic analysis of the situation before and after the introduction of the Security Project. It will be shown that the Security Project consisted of two main changes: in the governance network, and in surveillance technology (mainly video surveillance).

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3.1. The situation before the Security Project 3.1.1. Plural policing and the absence of policy The situation before the Security Project was characterised by a high degree of plurality in terms of security provision. SL had a number of contractors operating buses, trains and stations, and each contractor was bound by their procurement contract to provide its own security [27]. The situation was disorderly and described as chaotic by the regional Parliament’s Account’s Ofce in a report in 2006 [15]. The present SL security manager concurred with this, describing the beginning of the Security Project thus: “Wasn’t anything there when I took over these things there was systematic disorder, almost, it was a damn disorder. Eh. . . was like no complete picture and I drew one. . . a gure when I went through the proposal, I put the passenger at the centre then and there was a freaking cloud of satellites and all the different trafc companies, security companies and the police, it was Lugna Gatan1 and there were all kinds of things, all just oating around. And that resulted in a very unclear roles [otydlig ansvarsbild/ed.], there was a disparate approach towards the passenger, there was a disparate approach towards the authorities, the police, and that resulted in us having no inuence!” [31] The frustration evident here is because of the lack of inuence over the emergent process. This clearly signies a situation where there was no institutional cohesion. The interviewee continued to explain how the disorder affected the police’s willingness to co-operate with the transport operators, which 1 Literally translates to ‘easy Street’. Lugna gatan is an organisation that employs young people to provide security services for the SL. See, URL: www.fryshuset.se/lugnagatan/.

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gives us a glimpse of the political economy or human resources involved in everyday policing. The disorganised security provision manifests in unclear institutional relationships where responsibility is dispersed between agencies and subcontractors. While the police used to staff the subway with over 250 ofcers, the 1990s saw budget cuts and by the turn of the millennium, the subway police division was cancelled completely [33]. Even though it was soon reinstated, only about 25 ofcers were now available and due to the disorganisation mentioned in the quote above, the co-operation between the SL, the subcontractors, and the police was minimal [28]. Thus plural policing was a reality before the Security Project, but mainly because of a lack of active policy making, where actors surveived by ’muddling through’. Safety issues, i.e., prevention of accidents and re safety protocols, had previously been the responsibility of a procurement department within SL, but co-operation in the security area (at the time involving mainly counteracting grafti) between the contractors had not been included in the procurement contracts. Therefore different contractors had different security strategies [15]. This plurality was a result of the institutional environment that ensued when the role of the authority changed from provider to procurement organisation in the 1990s. Working within a completely new governance structure, neither the main procurement organisation nor the subcontractors had well-established working routines in the security area, which was manifested in vague responsibility structures. For example, the geographical limitation of private security ofcers’ patrolling area meant that they could not enforce the law one step beyond it, and so offenders could safely move between different districts without getting arrested [29]. Further, the institutions governing security practices in the Stockholm public transport were laid down in a vast array of agreements, contracts, policy documents, and regulations. Politically, the situation was difcult to control or even comprehend, and more difcult still to direct. As the regional parliament’s accountant ofce was assigned to perform a follow-up evaluation of rst measures of the Security Project in 2008, the evaluators stated that it was impossible to access the wide array of contracts and regulations that governed the relationship between the private companies and the transport authority [28]. Plural policing and decentralised security governance was therefore not only a sign of disorganisation, but also actively prevented existing structures from functioning. 3.1.2. Surveillance Surveillance technology did not play a major role in the Stockholm public transport system before the Security Project, although video surveillance had been around since the early 1970’s on small scale [8]. The surveillance was, by and large, carried out by means of direct monitoring of the subway system, where some 50 analogue cameras were installed. The cameras were not interconnected and the quality of the material was often too poor to serve as evidence in legal proceedings [15,30]. The Stockholm public transport system was run by seven operators, and each had its own security unit, with its own control room–if they had cameras at all. It is questionable whether the cameras were actually used for policing purposes at all because the system’s coverage was very low and human resources for monitoring scarce. More credibly, the early CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) probably had an after-the-fact functionality, where police ofcers checked if cameras could yield leads or even evidence. As prevention tools, however, they were most likely purely symbolic. In sum, the situation in the local transport system prior to the Security Project relied on social control by human presence, some low-tech CCTV surveillance, and plural policing governed by a multitude of institutional arrangements. As will be explained in the following section, SL changed this through the Security Project, taking a much more active stance, both in terms of coordinating and centralising policing, and in relation to legislation and the state.

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3.2. The Security Project

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The Security Project was a strategic investment in security that changed the Stockholm public transport signicantly. The core of the Security Project was the introduction of a large CCTV system and to centralise security staff deployment. With the project, the CCTV scheme became the material backbone of the new security architecture. Beginning in 2005, ca. 20,000 cameras have been installed by SL, and the system is today the largest in Sweden. The CCTV system comprises circa 4500 active cameras in the SL facilities that can be accessed live at the newly installed ‘Security Centre’ (Trygghetscentralen). The Security Centre also has a direct video feed to the police. Most other cameras are ‘passive’, i.e., tted in buses with a hard drive that records in cycles. The recordings can legally be kept for up to 30 days, but are normally stored for only three days for practical reasons. It is the active component of the CCTV scheme that is key to understanding the impact of the Security Project for the SL and its partners in Stockholm. While the active system is used for deployment, verication, evidence, and ‘virtual patrols’, the passive cameras seem to be largely symbolic and only accessed sporadically.2 Footage from the passive cameras is only used retrospecively. Initially, SL claimed that CCTV surveillance prevented crime ‘by itself’, but recently this rhetoric has been replaced with the view that the cameras are ‘coordination and verication tools’ [34]. However, the CCTV scheme was parallelled by changes in security policy goals, deployment of security staff, and the introduction of other discreet surveillance systems (see Section 3.2.3 below). The SL CCTV scheme is impressive in its ambition. In the Stockholm public transport, the CCTV coverage is now almost total: every escalator is lmed at the top and bottom, there are cameras in many elevators, every ve to ten metres on train platforms, and at every ticket booth. There is maximum coverage in buses, with between four to six cameras per bus, and in almost all trains, with usually six cameras per carriage. Monitors on train platforms allow passengers and transport employees to see the areas under surveillance. They serve both as an aid to drivers, but also to inform passengers about the surveillance and to show the high resolution of the images captured. Most recently, monitors have been separated from their traditionally task, to aid train dispatch, and today they are used with the sole purpose of displaying surveillance to passengers. The Security Project, although it included a host of measures, was in essence a CCTV project because of the centrality of the Security Centre CCTV access for the new SL security work as a whole. The analysis below highlights these factors and is structured in three subsections: security policy, policing, and surveillance. 3.2.1. Shifting the nature of security The period before the Security Project was one of two main themes discussed in the interviews with SL managers. The other, was the earlier focus of the organisation on ‘objective security’, i.e., freedom from bodily harm, which was a reactive security policy. It was when the regional government started to focus on the security aspect, as a subjective feeling of security, and that earlier solutions were discarded as ineffective. The paradigm of subjective security has been discussed extensively in British criminology [4, 6,13,37], and at the beginning of the twenty rst century these ideas had, more or less, become a panEuropean discourse, which was available to security policy makers as the previously dominant paradigm became unstable. This development happened relatively quickly in 2004–2005. In late 2003, SL released an internal memo about a security policy that concentrated almost exclusively on safety issues, ways to prevent 2 An example of this is that in 2010 it turned out that about 10,000 passive bus cameras were defunct and had to be replaced. This had remained unnoticed by the SL for some time.

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accidents were mentioned, such as drug testing, safer vehicles, speed limits, etc. [32]. It would seem that perceived security was not an issue at this time. In 2005, however, SL published a new policy document, the Strategic Platform 2005–2015 [24] in which subjective security was one of four interim goals seen as instrumental to the overall success of the SL, which was the creation of more, and happier, customers. A specic index – the ‘customer satisfaction index’3 – which relied on customer surveys was created in order to measure policy success or failure. In order to achieve the main goal, SL proposed improvements in information, environment, and perceived security. Within only two years, perceived security had gone from being relatively insignicant, to being a main strategic goal [24]. It goes without saying that this had implications for the way that security was (and still is) dened and achieved in the Stockholm public transport system. Most notably, the satisfaction index was instrumental for the most decisive move made by the SL organisation during the Security Project: it meant that security, surveillance and policing became completely separated from their actual effects and tied only to the output from the customer surveys. If customers stated that they felt secure, this now means that the security policy is successful. This relocation of ‘truth’ from statistics to opinion polls leads to the conclusion that the Security Project made the SL become somewhat of a ‘post-structuralist’ organisation: Truth is completely contingent and not accessible via ‘facts’, but through the passengers’ self-interpretations. In 2010, the SL launched a major security campaign, informing about the successes of the Security Project. On campaign posters, the SL proudly declared that passengers felt “10% more secure!”, which may seem little after such a large effort, but which was nevertheless marketed as a huge policy success. This would not have been such a problem had the project actually been successful. However, even SL’s own measurements indicate that the level of women’s fear (a main target group) remained almost unchanged during the rst four years of the Security Project, despite the massive campaigns that have been launched every year since 2005 – on average, the perceived security has increased 4 per cent and lies at around 60 +/− 10 per cent, depending on time of day and transport modality [25]. Available data thus suggests that the SL not only exaggerates the results of their own data, it also conrms that the evaluation of security governance occurs through passengers’ opinions about security rather than the actual reduction of crime. 3.2.2. Plural policing under new management After the Security project, not only did the notion of security change, but so did the organisation of policing in the transport system. Governance through security was instrumental for SL to achieve a more advantageous institutional role vis-`a-vis the operators and the police, and so create space for autonomy on behalf of the transport authority. Thus, even though SL has assumed a responsibility – including substantial economic costs – that one can argue now exceeds its role as a transport provider, the Security Project generated a common, ‘internal’ discourse in which the SL is depicted as an inuential actor in urban security governance at large [3]. Proper contact on a personal level between the SL and the police was crucial for the governance of security in the city, and it provided the SL with a larger degree of legitimacy and credibility [31,33]. This was particularly evident during the interviews as SL and police managers related a very similar narrative about the Security Project, that the joint institutional capacity yields surplus value for the SL: “I think that the police views SL as a stronger, a stronger partner than before. It’s like ok, we coordinate this part and then they are more willing to add their share. Even if it’s true as you say 3 In Swedish “N¨ojd-Kind-Index”, or NKI. Most frequently the abbreviation is used, resulting in a whole genre of statements in the data that refer to “raising the NKI”.

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[referring to the PR manager also at the table], it is the police that should uphold law and order, but, everything is co-operation. If they see that we do this they will also strengthen themselves. So that we’ll get a clearer role” [29] This narrative was repeated almost identically by the former Chief of the Transport Police Division: “The SL is a major actor in the Stockholm county [after the Security Project/ed.]” [33]. The police thus became more involved, not only in the design of the institutional relationship, but also in a mutual process of strengthening positions vis-`a-vis the political actors, mainly with the Stockholm regional government. The price was that, organisationally, SL brought the entire human and technical resources under their own roof, and institutionally, gathered all stakeholders in a ‘Security Council’ that meets regularly. This institutionalisation of the SL’s key position in the Stockholm transport security governance, advanced through a logic of revenue generation, did thus not only inuence the SL and its subcontractors, but attracted the Stockholm police to adhere to the same logic. As described earlier, the incoherence of the different security departments was a problem for SL. The situation of plural policing was not an efcient or effective system, but merely a result of poor institutional cohesion. The Security Project introduced a number of new micro-institutions under its auspices, in order to gather all the actors in one place, and develop common standards in the security governance network [25].4 This centralisation was one of the main ways for SL security management to create a high degree of cohesion. The plan was not fully comprehensive, but it meant that all the private security ofcers became agents of the same organisation. One would think that the Security Project had reduced the complexity and plurality of policing of the Stockholm public transport system, but this assumption oversimplies reality. When managed by the main SL organisation, the private security ofcers were given county-wide permits. Whereas previously they were only allowed to police within a certain locale, they can now police the entire Stockholm area. Thus the Security Project centralised resources in order to make efcient policing possible. The operators, today governed by procurement contracts with bonus and malus points for security measures, paradoxically still tend to hire their own security staff in addition to the SL private security ofcers. These do not have any formal police competences, but mainly function to prevent fare-dodging and to pass on information to the passengers [31]. In addition to regular staff categories, which have no explicit security function, the result is thus an increasing diversity in policing, despite the centralisation of resources through the Security Project. The transport system is therefore still characterised by heterogeneous policing. The main difference is that today, staff are co-ordinated by means of cameras in addition to walkie-talkies, which is recently also marketed as one of the main policy goals of the camera surveillance system (before, crime prevention was the main source of legitimacy for the system). There is still incoherence as to which security staff actually patrol the transport system, but today this does not generate the same organisational problems as before. In sum, under the new security policy, policing is as dispersed as before the Security Project. 3.2.3. Discrete surveillance The Security Project did not only include building one of Sweden’s most comprehensive and extensive video surveillance schemes, but it also involved the integration of a range of other, less visible ICT systems. One such innovation is the new warning system for human presence on the railway tracks. 4 Such as the Security Council (Trygghetsråd), the Cooperation Council (Samverkansråd), the Managers’ Council (Chefssamråd), and local cooperation councils (lokala samverkansråd). Also increased interaction with the Crime Prevention Council (Brottsf¨orebyggande Rådet).

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Another is olfactory sensitivity, designed to detect gas from spray cans [31]. Further to this, a new re alarm system, a geographical information system (GIS), and a state-of-the-art smart card ticketing system, SL Access, have been introduced (SL Access data quickly became a source of intelligence for the police, due to its retrospective tracking capabilities). Finally, several databases were created focusing, for example, on grafti and threat situations [20,21,25,26]. Together, the new ICT infrastructure makes intelligence support from many different sources possible, all of which feed into the Security Centre. The Security Centre also has a direct link to the police so that the police can gain instant real-time access to all cameras in the SL security architecture. It has become the nexus in a large assembly of technological and human components, including all the technical novelties mentioned above. Without these technological improvements, the institutionalisation of SL as a ‘power player’ in Stockholm urban security could not have been possible. As such, it enables cross-organisational connections that were lacking in the older constellation. In addition to its immediate functionality, the surveillance thus acts as a powerful legitimation device vis-`a-vis, for example, the police as it signies the SL’s investment in security.

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4. Discussion This article has explored the changes in security governance that the Security Project in the Stockholm public transport brought about. These changes can be summarised as a shift in the nature of security from recorded crimes to passenger perceptions, the introduction of a large CCTV surveillance system, centralised deployment, and the development of a more coherent normative frame in the governance network. In the end, it can be seen that the Security Project was not only a surveillance scheme: it meant a whole new direction for working with security in Stockholm. Without surveillance, however, the Security Project would only have been talk, and the signicant investment made in surveillance technology also gave SL leverage to promote its interests vis-`a-vis the police and the contracted operators. Thus surveillance provided a condition of possibility for the new relationship with the police, as well as the establishment of the security-as-perception paradigm. The Security Project signalled a commitment to security that provided the necessary input for, among others, the police to accept and participate in the SL’s policy package. This new commitment was also shared within the SL organisation and its contractors, thus making the security governance more stable and,despite the plural policing environment, more coherent. This exploratory study shows that the changes described here have not necessarily been coherent. Processes aimed at the reduction in the plurality of policing actually managed at the same time to stabilise plural forms of control, though within a changed distribution of competences. This result is interesting from a theoretical point of view, because of its ambiguity: how can this strong process of centralisation co-exist with a perpetuation of the heterogeneity? Clearly, there are implications for security governance theory, but there is also a need for a more thorough analysis of this aspect. Duijnhoven’s and Coaffee’s work on transport and urban security present a far less complicated view of security governance, where these contradictions do not emerge as prominently as in the Stockholm case. These results tell us that centralisation processes may not be as coherent as they are presented in research and that often policy changes seem to produce less the results that were expected and instead stabilise old constellations under a new heading. Paradoxically, however, this centralisation did not result in less plural policing. Perhaps it is a truism, but reality is always messier than we expect.

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N. Blaikie, Designing Social Research, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2000. M. Button, Private Security and the Policing of Quasi-Public Space, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 31 (2003) 227–237. J. Coaffee, Terrorism, Risk and the Global City: Towards Urban Resilience, Ashgate Pub., Farnham England, Burlington VT, 2009. A. Crawford, Networked governance and the post-regulatory state? Steering, rowing and anchoring the provision of policing and security, Theoretical Criminology 10 (2006), 449–479. A. Crawford, Plural Policing: The Mixed Economy of Visible Patrols in England and Wales, Policy Press, Bristol, 2005. A. Crawford, Situating crime prevention policies in comparative perspective: policy travels, transfer and translation, in: Crime Prevention Policies in Comparative Perspective, A. Crawford, ed., Willan Publishing, Devon, Portland (OR), 2009, pp. 1–37. H. Duijnhoven, For Security Reasons: Narratives About Security Practices and Organizational Change in the Dutch and Spanish Railway Sector, VU University Press, Amsterdam, 2010. J. Freese, Individ, Samh¨alle, Integritet: [ADB, avlyssning, mediteknik, optik], Almqvist and Wiksell, Stockholm, 1973. J. Gerring, Case Study Research – Principles and Practices, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. B.J. Goold, Editorial: Making Sense of Surveillance in Europe, European Journal of Criminology 6 (2009), 115–117. G. Helms, R. Atkinson and G. MacLeod, Securing the city: Urban renaissance, policing and social regulation, European Urban and Regional Studies 14 (2007), 267–276. P. Hoggett, A new management in the public sector? Policy and Politics 19 (1991), 243–256. M. Innes, The reassurance function, Policing 1 (2007), 132–141. A.M. Kjær, Governance, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2004. L. Larsson, Granskning av SL:s arbete f¨or o¨ kad trygghet inom kollektivtraken, Stockholms l¨ans landsting, Ernst and Young, Landstingsrevisorerna, 2006. I. Loader, Plural policing and democratic governance, Social Legal Studies 9 (2000), 323–345. C. Paskell, ‘Plastic Police’ Or “Community Support”?, European Urban and Regional Studies 14 (2007), 349–361. M. Raco, Securing sustainable communities, European Urban and Regional Studies 14 (2007), 305–320. D. Silverman, A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Qualitative Research, Sage, Los Angeles, 2007. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Trygghetsprojektet: F¨or o¨ kad s¨akerhet och upplevd trygghet i SL-traken, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2006. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Tryggboken, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, i samarbete med: Busslink, Roslagståg, Stockholmståg, Swebus, Tågia, Veolia Transport, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2007. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Verksamhet – AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2010. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Entrepren¨orer i SL-traken – AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2010. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Strategisk plattform – Inriktning 2005–2015, 3rd ed., AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2005. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), SLs trygghetsarbete – la¨ gesrapport, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2009. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL), Trygghetskameror – trygghet f¨or dig som k¨or våra bussar, AB Storstockholms Lokaltrak, Stockholm, 2007. Storstockholms Lokaltrak (SL) Communication, Interview with SL communications division manager, 5 May 2010. SLL, SL:s arbete f¨or o¨ kad s¨akerhet och trygga, rena och attraktiva milj¨oer i kollektivtraken (Projektrapport nr 7/2008), Landstingsrevisorerna, Stockholm, 2008. SL PR, Interview with SL public relations manager and SL security manager 2009–11, 22 February 2010. SL Security 2004–2009 (1st), Interview with SL security manager 2004–2009 (rst interview), 12 August 2008. SL Security 2004–2009 (2nd), Interview with SL security manager 2004–2009 (second interview), 26 February 2009. ¨ E. Stenb¨ack, Traks¨akerhet i SL:s busstrak – Overgripande policy och mål, 2003. Stockholm Transport Police, Former Chief Inspector of the Stockholm Police public transport unit, 2010. O. Svenonius, Sensitising Urban Transport Security: Surveillance and Policing in Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2011, p. 160. M. Wigan and R. Clarke, Social impacts of transport surveillance, Prometheus 24 (2006), 389–403. D. Yanow, Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, London, New Dehli, 2000. L. Zedner, Security, Routledge, London, 2009.

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From crime prevention to urban development Politics and resistance concerning CCTV cameras in a plaza in central Hamburg

Nils Zurawski∗ Abstract. This case study examines how CCTV is used in local politics as a vehicle for different actors with different agendas. In discussing an actual case from Hamburg, in which ve cameras have been installed and removed within two years, the article will give an account of local politics, in which CCTV is used for various purposes and part of many different agendas. Most interestingly, the arguments’ focus is usually on crime prevention, but here they are modied towards the issue of urban regeneration over the course of the cameras’ lives. The analysis explains of how CCTV is used in politics, ultimately proving that the technology is more an instrument of politics than of actual crime prevention. And lastly the article will show how the changes of the arguments develop in the process of negotiating CCTV within local politics by local actors, thus making surveillance cameras less given and untouchable than they often seem. Keywords: CCTV, politics, research, space, Hamburg, police, crime prevention, urban renewal

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1. Introduction CCTV camera are put up all across Europe. Much less are they taken down again. In Hamburg ve cameras have been installed in 2007 on a small plaza in a central quarter of the city and again been taken down a little over two years later. This is not a very spectacular incident that would warrant a great deal of analysis. Thus it is less the fact of removing a set of cameras that is interesting here, but to take a closer look at the surrounding discourses and arguments. As it ultimately remains unclear why the cameras have been dismantled and if the plaza will continue to be a camera free zone in the future, this case study wants to give an account of Hamburg politics over CCTV that stands behind the rather minor incident of ve short lived surveillance cameras. There seems to be no easy answer as to why they only stayed for two years. Before installation, during operation and since dismantling the cameras, there has been a multitude of voices arguing for or against cameras These blur the arguments and thus make it difcult to dene the aims and agendas of different actors involved. Therefore, in this case study I want to analyse the discourses and processes that were surrounding the planning and operation of these cameras. Such an analysis will highlight the different agendas of the various actors involved – from police to local politicians to resident initiatives and also to academic researchers – and how the cameras became a vehicle for political negotiation and discourse, eventually moving beyond the usual rhetorics of crime, social control or civil liberties. Most interestingly I will show how the discourses moved from a crime prevention focus to arguments around urban regeneration and renewal. The relatively small case is of interest because between the installation of the cameras and their removal the local government has changed, and with it some of the central actors involved originally. In addition ∗

Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].

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the results of an academic study on CCTV – not on these particular cameras however – have had an inuence on the argumentation of resistance against the cameras and are part of the ongoing actions to this date. And nally this particular case is intriguing, as there are various explanations for the removal of the cameras, which leaves some room for speculation. Indeed, different actors do claim different things and argue along rather dissimilar lines. In line with many cases of CCTV this particular one is not entirely different, however it offers an apt example of how CCTV becomes a vehicle for arguments and competing interests for two reasons: rstly the cameras were actually taken down a short period after their installation, which happens rather rarely, and secondly the vividly and openly lead debate shows how cameras change the frame of discourses – from crime prevention to urban development. Eventually this questions any future arguments in favour of CCTV and the severity and delity of any claims made. Furthermore the presented case can also be seen in the light of the concept of interpretative exibility [12,20] in that the analysis of the debate discloses many arguments and highlights the social constructions of the seemingly objective facts surrounding CCTV. The role of CCTV as a screen for the projection of ideas and a vehicle for politics becomes obvious and ultimately renders many arguments about its effectiveness in crime prevention obsolete, as the example shows how alterable the concept and the use of the technology is, once being the subject of a wider social and political debate. This is most clear, when the various actors involved assess and evaluate CCTV measures using very different sets of frameworks, into which particular interests and politics are already built. Unfortunately analysing such an ongoing debate, has certain limits that are grounded in the often incomplete information or the politics of individual actors not to fully disclose strategies and information to me. Although I had access to many publicly available documents and had been following the case for many years, some decisions remain unclear to me and certain facts can only be analysed juxtaposing opposing views rather than absolute or established facts. Ultimately the case remains an ongoing issue that has not been resolved at the time of writing with many actors still being involved and pursuing their individual strategies. To analyse the case, I will rst give a short chronological summary of the facts that will situate these ve cameras in the general history of open street CCTV in Hamburg which started around 2004. I then will introduce the involved actors and their role and lines of argumentation against the background of the political developments in the city since the installation of the rst open street CCTV system. From analysis I will show how political and civil discourses and those decisions are negotiated in which CCTV has mutated from a mere police instrument to ght crime to a (negative) signier for aspects of urban life – e.g. crime, incivilities, public disorder – for which it is no longer seen as a viable means of deterrence [4,24]. 2. The chronology of events 2.1. CCTV in Hamburg Hamburg’s history of open street CCTV is rather young. Before its introduction in March 2006 Hamburg had only a trafc management system that employed cameras openly, which could be termed ‘open street’. CCTV was a common feature at major railway stations and had been introduced in subways by the local transport authorities. Open street CCTV was non-existing up to that point, because of the lack of legislation that allowed for it. In 2005 the police and public order law of Hamburg was amended accordingly, which made it possible to install CCTV at what the law called “criminal hot spots”. The issue of terrorism was raised at some point, but it is fair to say that this elsewhere widely used argument was rarely exploited in the debate in Hamburg.

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In early 2004 Hamburg’s then new senator for police and the interior Udo Nagel announced his political strategy regarding policing and public safety, which involved among other things CCTV. These ideas were not new, as he had already formulated them in his previous post as chief commissioner of the Hamburg police. CCTV as a measure for crime prevention within the legal framework of federal and local police laws has been widely discussed since 2000 [6]. At its core Nagel’s strategy was a law-and-order approach in which he relied on technology as a measurement for social control in a very classical sense [10]. According to a document of the city’s parliament [7] the prevention of crime was one of the foremost aspects for the subsequent adjustments of the legal basis for the use of CCTV. It was argued that CCTV could enhance feelings of safety among citizens – however it was never stated by the politicians nor the police on what basis such an argument was justied (e.g. studies or other research). In the fall of 2004 the discussion around CCTV was constantly reported in the local press. Ideas about which localities would classify as so called “crime hot spots” were publicly discussed. Between fall 2004 and fall 2005 the most widely discussed strategy was to install cameras on the plazas and entrance areas of subway and railway stations. It was planned to identify up to six such locations – however, no names were ever stated and the “where” of the possible cameras remained anybody’s guess. Quite surprisingly in the fall of 2005 senator Nagel announced that the Reeperbahn, the main street in Hamburg’s (in) famous amusement district of St. Pauli, would be equipped with twelve cameras. This announcement followed a weekend of knife stabbing in and outside a bar in a side street of the Reeperbahn. All plans that were discussed prior to these incidents were abandoned and the focus was aimed at the Reeperbahn and two other locations, i.e. Hansaplatz in the district of St. Georg and the entrance plaza of the local railway station in the suburban district of Bergedorf. In 2006 these three locations were identied as having the highest rates of violent crimes in Hamburg. In 2006, shortly before the launch of the camera system on the Reeperbahn, the location came rst with 750 violent crimes in 2005, followed by Hansaplatz with 250 and Bergedorf with a slightly smaller number. On this basis these locations were chosen for the implementation of open street CCTV with the Reeperbahn being the rst starting in March 2006. It should be noted here that each year approximately 25 million visitors come to enjoy the amusement offered on and around the Reeperbahn – be it theatres, clubs, discos, various forms of sexual entertainment or else. However, the district of St. Pauli has a resident population of around 27.000 [1]. And although 750 incidents of violent crimes is a signicant number, it must be viewed and judged against the background of the 25 million visitors that pass through the quarter each year. Consequently 15 months later CCTV had also been introduced on the Hansaplatz in St. Georg (the focus location of this article). Five cameras had been mounted on lampposts to observe Hamburgs second most affected location regarding violent crimes – according to the responsible authorities. Two years after its launch these ve cameras have been removed at the end of 2009. A clear reasons for this measure can not be found, as there are various interpretations of the action. Fact is that the plaza itself undergoes renovation since spring 2010 and that the cameras have been removed for the time being. Whether they will resurface, remains so far unanswered as no decision has been made as of January 2011. An early ofcial statement by the then senator of police and interior Christoph Ahlhaus (meanwhile having become the 1st major of Hamburg in August 2010) says, that the re-installation will be depending on an evaluation of the effectiveness of the cameras, which shall be conducted through his own ofce. An evaluation of the Hansaplatz remains unpublished to this date (August 2011), while an evaluation of the camera scheme on the Reeperbahn has been published in July 2010 [9, 20, see also below]. For the sake of completeness it should also be mentioned that in the third of the earlier identied locations (i.e. Bergedorf) no cameras have been installed to date.

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2.2. Hansaplatz In addition to the issue of the cameras the Hansaplatz has been the subject of political discussions for decades. As the central plaza of St. Georg, a quarter with a history of social problems, especially concerning drug use and trafcking, it was the focus of various policies that were attempting to get tough on these issues. With its proximity to the main railway station the plaza was one of the main locations of the local drug scene in the 1980s and 90s up to 2001. In 2001 it became the centre of an election campaign in which the Social Democrats (SPD) where trying to show the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) that they too can be tough on crime – the latter won the elections however and replaced the SPD after 40 years in local government. During the election campaign the SPD and their leading candidate Olaf Scholz initiated measures to disperse the drug scene on the plaza and around the main station, which included dismantling all benches, erecting fences on walls, thus making it impossible to sit (or sleep) anywhere in the vicinity of the plaza. They also introduced the broadcasting of easy listening music on the entrance plaza to the railway station, which aimed to dislodge loitering individuals, such as drug addicts and alcoholics, beggars and a scene of marginalised youth and street kids. The measures hae been mostly successful to this date. The drug scene was forced to move. Help facilities were also relocated a bit further south of the quarter and have been centralised. All these measures are not unique to Hamburg, but follow a general trend of urban regeneration in which CCTV was used as a central element [2,9, 10,17,21]. Once these measures had been implemented, the Hansaplatz was a different space, that did not have the same problems as before. Thus it was rather surprising when in 2005 then senator Nagel proclaimed that the plaza was crime ridden and subject to the installation of CCTV. As part of the quarter adjacent to the main rail station, the Hansaplatz is frequented by many people often just crossing, which may be one explanation of the high number of crimes. Another would be the – according to Nagel, still existing drug culture around and in the quarter itself, a view that has been opposed by local resident activists and also through informal statements by police ofcers from the local police station. Whether the cameras would change the crime rates, nobody could say at the time. The Hansaplatz itself was left empty and un-welcoming. The introduction of CCTV did not change this, as all previous measures remained in place and the un-welcoming atmosphere was sustained. With the introduction of CCTV however a new discussion re-surfaced concerning the architecture of the plaza and the possibilities to convert it into a vivid centre of the quarter for the residents, which has not been the case for long. A discussion about urban planning issues regarding the plaza had not been lead openly after the initial measurements in 2001. CCTV re-introduced such a debate, which is well documented in the protocols of the sub-committee of local urban development (Stadtteilbeirat St. Georg-Mitte, see also below). This happened not least because the results from a study on CCTV and spatial perceptions where used in the argumentation between resident initiatives and local politicians as I will explain below. I was conducting this study and hence became part of this debate as I was consulted by different actors involved. In a way CCTV was no longer about preventing crime, but about inhibiting the communal life in the centre of St. Georg itself. This argumentative change did not happen overnight, but was dependent of the actors involved at the time and the dynamics of politics in Hamburg. 3. The actors and their politics To analyse the different actors’ roles in this debate and process it should be noted that only few of them actually had the power to decide whether cameras would be installed in the rst place and subsequently also whether they would be removed at all. This power lie with the senate, i.e. the government of Hamburg

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N. Zurawski / From crime prevention to urban development Table 1 Actors and their views on CCTV

Actors Local residents − B¨urgerverein − Einwohnerverein − various social initiatives − sub-committee on development Local assembly/senate 2001–2004

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2004–2008 2008–2010

View on CCTV against categorical against diverse, but rather against

against

2011–?? Police

for for: CDU/against: Greens, had to nd a compromise not openly stated, hence unclear for

Researcher

objective, non-biased

Parties SPD

as in their general views and programmes for

CDU GAL (Greens) FDP Die Linke

for against against categorical against

Remarks

left, opposing a gentrication of the plaza, increasing by housing prices, chic cafes etc. against exclusion of marginal groups. shelters for women, prostitutes or drug addicts decided against and for a re-development of the plaza coalition: CDU, FDP, Schill (populist right wing politician) CDU coalition: CDU – Greens since March 2011: SPD Police unions: Scepticism in the early 2000s and when it comes to replacing jobs within the forces. Providing research results from which conclusions against cameras could be drawn. in municipal boards and the local development committee have inactivated cameras partially on the Reeperbahn in June 2011, reasons are (said to be) economic, but ultimately unclear. usually against, but exible usually against, but exible

and the assembly itself. Neither the seven districts administrations, nor the local quarter councils have any nal say in these matters. But they are important actors for the political debate and hold some powers when it comes to mobilising resistance among potential voters within a given constituency. Unlike in other cities in Germany the city state character of Hamburg reduces the powers of the municipalities (“districts”) and moves decisions such as public order measures or policing issues to the senate. The actors fall into three major groups: 1. the local residents and their various initiatives, local politicians and the sub-committee of local development in St. Georg; 2. the local assembly and the (alternating) senate of Hamburg between 2001 and 2010; and 3. the political parties, the police and myself as a researcher from the University of Hamburg. It is important to separate the political parties from the council and the senate, because they are following different agendas depending on the context of their involvement and their role within the council or senate, i.e. whether they are part of the senate or in opposition, whether they speak for the local chapter or the parliamentary group. The police has to be seen as separated from the government, as they often pursue their own politics, especially regarding public safety issues or CCTV. The fact that most of it is dependent on the governing bodies, i.e. the senate, must not distract from the fact, that there may be different or even contradicting agendas on their behalf. For the purpose of analysing the dynamics surrounding the cameras I treat each group separately. This however, does not account for the fact that a multitude of connections (open and sometimes covert and unofcial) exist between all of those groups. To get a better overview I assembled the actors and their general views in a table.

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3.1. Local assembly and senate of Hamburg These two bodies of the government of Hamburg are central to this study, because they decided on the cameras, both on the Reeperbahn in 2006 and the Hansaplatz in 2007. They also decided about the funds with which the Hansaplatz will be recasted (for which reason the cameras where ofcially dismantled in 2009). Between 2001 and 2010 the constitution of the local assembly and with it the senate changed considerably. After the elections in 2001 the conservative CDU gained power over townhall with the help of a smaller, but radical party of a local judge which stood for hard law and order politics, and the FDP (liberals). During their election period, CCTV was introduced into the debate and then police chief commissioner Udo Nagel laid out his ideas about where to mount cameras and for what reasons. This government ended prematurely and in 2005 the CDU won the election on their own. CCTV was introduced in both places. The oppositional parties in the city council were questioning the decision with different arguments and from different perspectives. While the SPD was not really opposed to having cameras in public places, their intention was to show that the government was not doing enough to prevent crime and that technology could not compensate for insufcient police ofcers in the city – an obscure line of argumentation, as the critique was not really against cameras nor were they openly saying that they wanted more. The Greens (GAL) were opposing law and order politics and its CCTV measures on the basis of a privacy protection perspective. Between 2001 and 2008 they were very active in raising awareness for CCTV related issues. During this time they were also looking for a more democratic and participatory way regarding the introduction of cameras, which included a proposal to the assembly that contained rules and regulations for a more transparent handling of open street CCTV [8]. The proposal fell through in the assembly, but gained some attention among the wider public in Hamburg and added to the overall debate on the issue of cameras. Their principal stand on CCTV was basically a pragmatic one, in that they were willing to accept cameras, if the need was proven before installation and all other means had already been utilised. The Greens are probably the most interesting actor in this group, as they became part of the senate after the election in 2008, when the CDU lost so much that they again had to form a coalition – the rst such coalition on federal state level in Germany. And CCTV indeed was an issue in the negotiations leading to this coalition. In the subsequent contract that represents the basis for their cooperation a rather small paragraph is dedicated to CCTV, saying that the existing measures will remain in place and an evaluation will take place [11]. Until results are presented there would no new open street CCTV in the city. In July 2010 a rst evaluation was published – covering the older CCTV scheme on the Reeperbahn. This however was not a result of the coalition’s deal, but was due in accordance with the law that asks for an evaluation after three years of installing the cameras, in march 2006. One and a half year after erecting the cameras on the Hansaplatz ve cameras have been dismantled. There is no ofcial linkage to this act other than the reference of an evaluation in the contract, which is planned to be conducted entirely by the administration itself, leading scientic neutrality and independence ad absurdum. While earlier policies and ideas of proposals by the Greens have found their way into the contract for the coalition, Up to November 2010 it was not very likely that the cameras where going up again, as party ofcials from the Greens where indicating to me in private, off the record conversations, as this was part of a unofcial agreement between the parties that did not see the light of day through an ofcial and publicly available document. That way both parties could save their face concerning their constituency. In November 2010 the coalition broke apart, and new elections are coming up in February 2011 – which also means that the future of the cameras and the issue regarding the Hansaplatz will again be open to discussion – depending on any future government and the set up of the Hamburg assembly.

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What is interesting however is, that during the coalitions negotiations the political debate around CCTV has shifted from a rather antagonistic character – either for or against it – to a more rational debate of evaluation and testing the effectiveness of the measure itself, as becomes clear in the coalition’s contract treatment of thus issue. It has become less politically and more scientically orientated. Arguments are now being based on rational thought rather than on believes and the rhetorics of criminal justice and crime prevention. The position of the SPD has not much changed. As an oppositional party they are trying to show that not enough is done regarding crime prevention and that the senate is not hard enough on crime. The are presenting themselves as the only and true party following a route of law and order in the city. Dismantling the cameras on the Hansaplatz is seen as a major mistake and evidence for the weak approach that the Greens are standing for – so says the SPD spokesperson for police and interior Andreas Dressel [13]. In the case of the SPD it will be interesting to see how this issue will be treated, if they can secure a win at the upcoming elections. The Left (Die Linke) is generally opposed to cameras and repeatedly stating so. Their reaction to the removal was very positive. Their input into the general debate however is not that signicant in this particular case.

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3.2. Police Law and order in its true sense and the criminal justice approach still remain the realm of the police. Their practical and statistical work and engagement has lead to the introduction of open street CCTV in Hamburg on both locations. Their aim is straight forward and oriented towards crime reduction and the prosecution of crimes. Although the ofcial line concerning CCTV is rather positive, the issue can at times be contentious, for instance when the senate wants to reduce the number of police ofcers for budget reasons. The various unions of police ofcers (three in total) have always been strictly opposed to CCTV as a measure to reduce the police force as such. Every policy that is suspect to such thought will raise opposition from within the police force. Interviews that I conducted in 2004 and 2005 with police ofcers in St. Georg also show that at the time many of them did not have sufcient experience with open street CCTV or video surveillance and were rather reserved towards the technology. In the interviews they were accentuating their professional pride and experience which could not be overtaken by CCTV. Off the record information given to me by a leading police chief in another quarter of Hamburg indicates, that CCTV is indeed well equipped to prosecute crime, but not necessarily to prevent it. Reacting to the depletion of the cameras on Hansaplatz the local chairman of one union (Deutsche Polizeigewerkschaft) has stated that he deems such an act inconceivable in the light of the latest success of identifying a perpetrator through cameras. The original idea to prevent crime and enhance the subjective feeling of security in urban environments has been lost in this statement and indeed more and more so in the argumentation by police forces. Although cameras are believed to enhance the feeling of safety and security, the argument seems only valid if new cameras are planned to be installed. Once they are in place, the argumentation shifts towards prosecutional powers of the technology. Cameras become an enhancement of the police’s reach and their punitive powers. The removal is not welcomed, but without much choice for them as they only execute orders coming from the senate in this case. In St. Georg the local police is working closely with the residents groups and initiatives, hence the assessments of such measures may differ from ofcial lines of the police authorities, as the former have been adapted to local contexts and circumstances. 3.3. Residents The residents are a very heterogenous group. They are organised in a variety of initiatives and residents groups with often diverging interests and ideas. Local shop owner and business people are also organised

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within some initiatives, as well as the police, church representatives (christian as well as muslim – St. Georg hosts over 10 mosques) and communal politicians, whose constituency also covers the quarter. Their common forum is a sub-committee of local urban development (Stadtteilbeirat St. Georg-Mitte) which has powers to comment on decisions and rights to be heard in planning issues. Furthermore this committee administers small funds with which local initiatives can be supported in their work. Three groups in particular are of interest here: the “B¨urgerverein” a traditional conservative-liberal residents association established in 1880; the “Einwohnerverein”, established in 1987, a rather left leaning, very active group that works on social issues in the quarter, and an initiative named “Kultur statt Kameras” (culture for cameras, www.hansaplatz.de) that emerged during the debates around the introduction of CCTV on Hansaplatz. Their membership is made up of new residents that bought property – i.e. apartments – in the old houses around the Hansaplatz, which has formerly been space to let. This group also represents the overall tendency of privatisation in the quarter and, as some critics would argue, a subtle form of gentrication. Their main argument was that the money spend on cameras on the plaza (estimated 400,000 Euros) could have been spent better for the improvement and recast of the plaza itself. Their aim is to renovate the plaza and render it into a vivid and accepted centre of the quarter, which it must have been years ago, before crime prevention measures have turned it into a rather empty and somewhat hostile space. Plans for festivals, weekly open street markets, permanent caf´es and other activities have been laid out and discussed. However, part of their plan also is to displace the still existing, albeit small, scene of alcoholics, drug users and prostitutes, a fact that according to their website “continues to stigmatise the plaza”. Such an initiative could well be seen in line with Newman’s concept of defensible space [14] and it would be worth to explore this in future research. A recast of the plaza, which has time and time again been discussed over the past 30 years, should also solve this problem and rid the plaza of its stigmatisation. A member of the left “Einwohnerverein” criticises this as a gentrication without cameras, wherein certain groups are excluded while openly standing against cameras and for civil liberties. It is of no surprise that the initiative was associating with the more conservative of the two residents groups. And also this accounts for the fact that very few people want cameras in their own residential area – while excluding unwanted groups is not precluded in such a statement [24]. Within the committee a working group “Hansaplatz” is responsible for taking the efforts forward and sees to the realisation of the project [15]. Discussions about the cameras in the committee started as early as 2005, a formal process was initiated in 2007 and lead to the planning process that resulted in the renovation of the plaza in 2010. It involved agencies of urban planning, the local administration and the committee with its residents and initiatives. Part of the concept was to remove the cameras and introduce a lightning concept that will enhance any positive atmosphere, which may be generated by the renovation in the rst place. Although the local committee has no direct powers to make any decision regarding the cameras, their opinions and also the various forms of resistance, which were expressed in various proposals to the committee had some impact. This is because delegates from the political parties are also part of this committee and will exert inuence with the parties in general – thus the issue will also be considered on a higher political level. Eventually any decision met with resistance may at some point result in a loss of votes at elections. From the above statements and actions, it seems that CCTV has become a planning issue, an aspect of urban renovation and development, i.e. an obstacle to a more open and inclusive atmosphere and vitalisation of communal life on the plaza itself. Issues of crime prevention and criminal justice have been shifted into the background. This is not to say that the residents are unaware of social problems such as crime, drugs or prostitution within their quarter or even oblivious to them – quite to the contrary.

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A wider discussion about the drug related prostitution in the area has taken place in the committee. Residents were concerned about the open street prostitution and its side effects such as noise by the suitors’ cars, left-over needles and other. Prostitution in the quarter is drug related and has been a problem for decades – police estimate that between 300 to 400 women are working as prostitutes in the quarter, help organisation claim twice as much. Around the Hansaplatz a couple of organisations exist that help these women. Residents felt bothered and disturbed by what they felt was a growing problem which was not under control. The help organisation were also seen as part of the problem by some, as they were attracting the women. CCTV however was not an issue regarding this subject – but other measures, such as social work, enforcing police interventions and displacement of the women were discussed and demanded. A conclusive solution has yet to be found, but attempts to tackle the problem and to raise awareness for the situation of these women have been made, mainly through communal work and efforts that were using other ways than police and crime related mechanisms – such as CCTV or displacements. The displacement of the help agencies is deemed likely by some resident groups, as it would fall within the politics of recasting the plaza without integrating the existing groups using this space, which would include socially marginal groups such as alcoholics and prostitutes. It has to be noted that the current plans for the plaza do not include the re-introduction of public benches [16], but favour privately owned caf´es. The former are optional, but not planned for in the initial phase of the construction work. This however leaves much room for interpretation as to why the possibility of resting in a public space shall be prohibited and who may be the subjects of such a strategy.

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3.4. Researcher I myself as a researcher have various links with the quarter and the issue of CCTV, one of which is directly related to the initiative Culture for Cameras. In 2004/2005 I interviewed residents and local business owners as part of a study on CCTV and spatial perception [3–5,20,21]. In October 2005 my research assistant and I were invited by the development committee of St. Georg to speak about CCTV to its members. We gave a brief overview of some results, especially those that were concerning spatial perceptions and the possible use of CCTV. We did not research the Hansaplatz in particular, but drew our conclusions from interviews in St. Georg and another more suburban quarter, at a time when open street CCTV was not yet existent in Hamburg. During the meeting we suggested that CCTV does not create a positive spatial atmosphere, i.e. cameras are not making any location a more friendly place, but rather signify that such a place is dangerous or hostile. The reaction to our suggestion was very positive and welcoming. Not surprising our nal report along with our suggestion can be found on the initiative’s website (www.hansaplatz.de). My involvement with the Hansaplatz-project stopped there, but it seems as if the results and the suggestions have made an impact that was consequential in that it turned the debate and perception away from crime prevention towards urban development and spatial management. It was less my success and more the effort of the initiative using suggestions made from publicly funded research. However I must say that our ndings were also asking for more inclusion of all groups and not excluding some by putting CCTV in place. An interpretation that sees urban development as a way to displace certain groups was denitely neither our aim nor our suggestion. 4. Conclusion Discussions around CCTV often follow a rather simple pattern of pros (crime prevention, security) and cons (civil liberties, surveillance regimes). This case discussed here has shown that the details

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can be much more complicated and confusing, if not unclear and fuzzy. Looking at the multitude of arguments and actors some things become clearer, others must remain open as to why the cameras have been taken down. Although there are a few ofcial reasons why the cameras have been removed from the Hansaplatz, the actual deal behind all this remains hidden to the public. But however complicated the whole issue seems, a few aspects within the whole process and its dynamics are quite obvious and not hidden at all. And these move the discussion beyond the discussed case and space as I would dare to argue that similar processes take place elsewhere, too. I hope that this account will provide some ideas for further research into similar cases in which CCTV cameras only appear to be the central issue, but are in fact covering other interests, hopes and wishes. Firstly, although CCTV cameras are mainly seen as an instrument of crime prevention and are thus introduced into the debate, they become screens for projection by different actors. The installation of cameras is part of a political and civil process wherein negotiations take place that can also change the role of the instrument therein. The conclusion from this must be that cameras are much more an instrument of political action than of actual crime prevention measures [23]. Secondly, urban space is a complex matter regarding its planning, construction and negotiating its conditions of existence or development. CCTV cameras may be an aspect of such development plans, but they can also be an obstacle to development. The different actors used CCTV in different ways at various stages of the process – e.g. to express concern about other aspects of urban development or crime prevention, such as the situation of decreasing employment in the police force. Lastly it becomes clear that CCTV represents a very strong aspect in many political debates. Depending on the perspective and the political agenda towards this measure, waiving this option may become a problem, which in this case has been solved in quite a complicated way. Although there is no mention of removing cameras anywhere in Hamburg as part of the coalition deal, it seems likely to assume that this is exactly what had happened. The renovation of the plaza was used to remove the cameras, the evaluation was put in place as a formal measure, while the cameras had been made an element in the discussion of urban development, in which the obvious link to crime prevention was diluted to some extent. The concerns of the residents and their use of academic research was helping this process, if not initiating it in the rst place. This however must remain unanswered. The issue of CCTV does not need to be a case of “either-or”, but can involve many actors, and temporal, spatial as well as political dynamics, which can change the course of action considerably. This rather small case case seems a good example of what happens if competing interests with different information and different agendas circulate around the same issue over time. It very aptly shows how political processes can reorganise reality and its interpretation – in this case from CCTV as crime prevention measure to being an obstacle of urban development, which also seems to be another strategy to reinterpret the use and quality of the plaza and to ultimately exclude the very same groups that also were presumably targeted by the cameras in the rst place. 4.1. Postscript At the time of writing this article, the coalition between the Greens and the CDU had ended prematurely and new elections were held on the 5th of February 2011. The SPD won with a solid majority. The Hansaplatz has been “re-opened” with a new look and no cameras have been installed again thus far. However there are no statements as to whether this will be permanent. There are neither any statements by the current senate on CCTV in general. I am convinced that the nal outcome remains open and the whole issue of CCTV will undoubtedly be resurfacing. It remains to be seen which of the many discourses will then be central and how this will affect the future of the cameras on the Hansaplatz or elsewhere in the city.

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[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

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[15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24]

City of Hamburg statistical survey 2007, Statistisches Amt f¨ur Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein. STATISTIKAMT NORD: Bev¨olkerung in Hamburg am 31.12.2007, published 17.4.2008. R. Coleman, Surveillance in the city: Primary denition and urban spatial order, Crime Media Culture 2 (2005), 131–148, doi: 10.1177/1741659005054018. S. Czerwinski, Video¨uberwachung und Alltagswissen, in: Surveillance Studies. Perspektiven eines Forschungsfeldes, N. Zurawski, ed., Barbara Budrich, Opladen, 2007. S. Czerwinski and N. Zurawski, Sicherheit oder positives Lebensgef¨uhl? – Effekte von Raumwahrnehmung auf Einstellungen zu Video¨uberwachung, Kriminologisches Journal 4 (2006), 259–273. S. Czerwinski and N. Zurawski, Knowledge and Meaning – Views on Safety, Crime and CCTV. Discussing Results from a Survey, Surveillance and Society 1 (2008), 51–72. Drucksache 6/5807 (printed matter of the assembly of Hamburg), Bericht des Innenausschusses u¨ ber die Drucksachen 16/4725: Video¨uberwachung in o¨ ffentlichen R¨aumen zum Zwecke der Gefahrenabwehr und der Kriminalit¨atsbek¨ampfung (CDU-Antrag) 16/4909: Video¨uberwachung in o¨ ffentlichen R¨aumen zum Zwecke der Gefahrenabwehr und der Kriminalit¨atsbek¨ampfung (SPD-Antrag) 29.3.2001. Drucksache 18/1487, Mitteilung des Senats an die B¨urgerschaft Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Erh¨ohung der o¨ ffentlichen Sicherheit in Hamburg 14.12.2004. Drucksache 18/3246, Antrag der Abgeordneten Antje M¨oller, Dr. Till Steffen, Christa Goetsch, Christian Maaß, Dr. Willfried Maier (GAL) und Fraktion Betr.: Verbindliche Standards (Pichtenheft) zur Installation und zum Einsatz von Video¨uberwachung an o¨ ffentlichen Orten in Hamburg 23.11.2005. Drucksache 19/6679, Mitteilung des Senats an die B¨urgerschaft Unterrichtung der B¨urgerschaft u¨ ber die Videou¨ berwachung der Reeperbahn (Wirksamkeitsanalyse), 6.7.2010. F. Klauser, Die Video¨uberwachung o¨ ffentlicher R¨aume. Zur Ambivalenz eines Instruments sozialer Kontrolle, Campus, Frankfurt, 2006. Koalitionsvertrag, Vertrag u¨ ber die Zusammenarbeit in der 19. Wahlperiode der Hamburgischen Bu¨ rgerschaft zwischen der Christlich Demokratischen Union, Landesverband Hamburg und B¨undnis 90/Die Gr¨unen, Landesverband Hamburg, GAL. 17. April 2008. U. Meyer and I. Schulz-Schaeffer, Drei Formen interpretativer Flexibilit¨at. Working Papers TUTS-WP-1-2005, Technische Universit¨at Berlin, PID: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-11815, 2005. NDR Online, Hansaplatz-Kameras sollen nie mehr lmen, 9.10.2009 (http://www1.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/ ueberwachung116.html). O. Newman, Defensible Space: A New Physical Planning Tool for Urban Revitalization, Journal of the American Planning Association 2 (1995), 149–155. Protocol of subcommittee meeting, 3.6.2010: Proposal 31.5.2010: Gestaltungssatzung Hansaplatz. Protocol of subcommittee meeting, 20.9.2008, including plan of Hansaplatz attached to it. M. Raco, Remaking Place and Securitising Space: Urban Regeneration and the Strategies, Tactics and Practices of Policing in the UK, Urban Studies 9 (2003), 1869–1887, doi: 10.1080/0042098032000106645. I. Schulz-Schaeffer, Sozialtheorie der Technik, Campus, Frankfurt/Main, 2000. E. T¨opfer, V. Eick and J. Sambale, Business Improvement Districts – neues Instrument f¨ur Containment und Ausgrenzung? Erfahrungen aus Nordamerika und Großbritannien, Prokla 4 (2007). K. von Appen, Kai, Video¨uberwachung taugt nicht, tageszeitung, 5.7.2010, http://www.taz.de/1/nord/artikel/1/videoueber wachung-taugt-nicht/. J. Wehrheim, Die u¨ berwachte Stadt – Sicherheit, Segregation und Ausgrenzung, Barbara Budrich, Opladen. 2006. N. Zurawski, Video Surveillance and everyday life. Assessments of CCTV and the cartography of socio-spatial imaginations, International Criminal Justice Review 4 (2007), 269–288. ¨ N. Zurawski, Video¨uberwachung. Praktische Uberlegungen zu einer allgegenw¨artigen Technologie, in: Medien, Macht und Demokratie Neue Perspektiven, Scheele, J¨urgen, ed., Berlin, 2009. N. Zurawski, it is all about perceptions: CCTV, feelings of safety and perceptions of space – what the people say, Security Journal, Security Journal 4 (2010), 259–275.

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CCTV in Spain: An empirical account of the deployment of video-surveillance in a Southern-European country Gemma Galdon Clavella,∗ , Lohitzune Zuloaga Lojob and Armando Romerob a Institut

de Govern i Pol´tiques P´ubliques (IGOP-UAB), Universitat Aut`onoma de Barcelona (Spain), M`odul de Recerca A, Barcelona, Spain b Universidad de Burgos, Spain

Abstract. Over the last two decades the use of video surveillance has grown in scope and numbers. However, research on the national contexts that have driven such developments tends to concentrate on Northern and Western Europe. This article explores the situation of CCTV in Spain, its legal framework, perceived shortcomings, public perceptions and specicity – such as a pre-9/11 concern for terrorism but its minimal impact on the justication for CCTV, a rights-based and a priori control of video surveillance devices and a deployment pattern that differs from those identied in the literature on CCTV at the European and global level. In providing an account on how Spain has joined the ‘surveillance society’, it exposes a picture of unevenness, legal loopholes and resistance, and provides a unique overview of CCTV deployment in a Southern-European, post-authoritarian country. Keywords: CCTV, Spain, video surveillance, terrorism, resistance

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1. Introduction Over the last two decades the use of video surveillance, typically justied by security concerns, has grown in both scope and number. Research on the main drivers of implementing public surveillance remains scarce, and whilst national contextual information on non-Western countries is beginning to emerge [15,21,22,24], most case studies are still concentrated on Northern and Western Europe [12–14, 26] and North America [23,25]. The lack of a signicant body of research exploring other national contexts has arguably weakened the analysis on the deployment of CCTV beyond particular national contexts and has led to assumptions about the use and usefulness of these systems. Consequently, the deployment patterns identied have become a one-size-ts all prescription, demonstrating a lack of more diverse accounts, and downplaying the signicance of different national settings and institutional contexts. Little is known about CCTV in Spain or other Southern-European, post-authoritarian countries, although there are exceptions to this general rule [22]. This can be attributed to a multiplicity of reasons ∗

Corresponding author: Gemma Galdon Clavell, PhD candidate, Institut de Govern i Pol´tiques P´ubliques (IGOP-UAB), Universitat Aut`onoma de Barcelona (Spain), M`odul de Recerca A, 08193 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Video Surveillance : Practices and Policies in Europe, edited by C. W. R. Webster, et al., IOS Press, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,

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including linguistic, cultural, political and academic which are beyond the scope of this research. However, a glimpse of Spain’s recent history provides a picture that is signicantly different from that of the counties most represented in surveillance studies. This includes; a dictatorship during which the day-to-day surveillance of people’s political activity and afliation continued until 1975 [4], a consequent generalized concern over the excesses of State intervention in private and political activities in the years after the dictator’s death, and the continued activities over the last 50 years of several armed terrorist movements (ETA being the most well-known). In addition, a greater use of public space, typical of Southern-European societies, and a legal recognition of the right to ‘intimacy’ in public space only add to the list of noteworthy specicities with a potential impact on the deployment and public perception of surveillance mechanisms in public space. These characteristics contribute not only to explain national departures from mainstream international discourses on CCTV, including the role of terrorism in the deployment of CCTV before and after 9/11, but also the similarities with some neighboring countries, such as the strong inuence of the French legal system on the regulation of CCTV in Spain, and the potential similarities with other post-authoritarian societies. The purpose of this article is to contribute a general empirical account of the Spanish context to the literature regarding the increase of video surveillance at a time when the boom in research on surveillance [20] coincides with the exponential growth1 of CCTV in Spain. The article describes the historical determining factors linked to the use of CCTV and the debates around its regulation and current legal framework. The article presents public perceptions and the difculties of providing a comprehensive map of CCTV in Spain. We conclude by highlighting where the Spanish case supports or contradicts some of the dominant assumptions in the core literature, and makes the case for increased attention to shifting attitudes towards surveillance and the role of those who actively oppose the ‘surveillance society’.

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2. Methodology In order to present a rst appraisal of the deployment of CCTV in Spain the authors have utilized a range of research methods with the aim of systematizing the available information and providing an account that is both comprehensive and detailed. The methods used include; a review of the relevant academic literature (existing case studies on CCTV deployment at the national level elsewhere), a review of the legal framework at the national and regional level, semi-structured interviews with actors involved in CCTV deployment at the regional level, a review of the archives of one of the regional bodies responsible for authorizing CCTV,2 and media analysis through online search engines and newspaper libraries in order to follow the cues obtained during the interviews and the review of the archives. Several obstacles have had to be overcome in this process. The absence of earlier studies on the subject meant a dearth of published material being available. Also, the decentralized nature of the administrative and judicial state apparatus in Spain, with 17 autonomous regions having different degrees of autonomy and levels of regulation for video surveillance, meant the task of interviewing the actors involved in CCTV deployment was more difcult than initially expected. In a number of instances our requests for an interview were not successful and on a few occasions when interviews with those directly involved in the approval of 1

In 2009 the number of CCTV footage les notied to the Spanish Data Protection Agency increased by 60% [2]. A detailed analysis of this data can be found in the article ‘Local Surveillance in a Global World: Zooming in on the Proliferation of CCTV in Catalonia’ in this special edition. 2

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requests to install CCTV were possible, we found that the interviewees could not provide us with a broad overview of the situation in their respective areas. Consequently, these interviews, which were initially intended to form the basis of our study, became supporting material, and legal texts at national and regional level, local ordinances and legal texts at the local level, and media coverage of CCTV between 1990 and 2010 took central stage. In order to develop a general picture, 17 analytical reports on the deployment of CCTV, one for each autonomous region, were constructed. They concentrated on the uptake of CCTV in key cities (capitals of province) with an aim to draw conclusions on the process in every region and to allow comparisons to be made. A review of the international literature on the deployment of CCTV was conducted and compared to the Spanish case in order to go beyond the basic description of video surveillance in Spain and to provide more depth – both on the challenges of presenting a map of CCTV in Spain and the possibility of contributing to the comparative aspect of surveillance studies – with the purpose of building a greater understanding of the increase in CCTV outside Western and Northern Europe.

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3. Surveillance and terrorism before 9/11 The term ‘video surveillance’ (videovigilancia) rarely appeared in the Spanish media before the mid90s, even though there had been earlier attempts by local councils to set up CCTV systems, for example in Madrid in the late 80s. Video surveillance became a public debate in Spain when the Ministry of the Interior and the Basque Government presented a plan to implement CCTV surveillance in the Basque country to ‘prevent street violence’, and in particular, ‘kale borroka’, the street ghting linked to youth organizations of the Basque Liberation Movement. The plan required the development of a legal framework so that the images captured could be used in a court of law, and so a few months after the initial draft was presented, the proposal became the Organic Law 4/1997 – in the Spanish legal framework constitutional matters relating to fundamental rights and freedoms are regulated by Organic Laws, which require a parliamentary debate and an absolute majority to be approved. The public debate generated was, in retrospect, surprisingly cautious and rights-based due to the press and other actors highlighting how CCTV had an impact on fundamental rights. Initially all parties in the political spectrum, as well as signicant sections of the Judiciary, openly expressed their concerns, with the exception of the Conservatives, the Partido Popular (PP), and the Basque Conservative Nationalists, the Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) who were leading the proposal. The rights-based discourse at the time managed to introduce signicant changes to the initial proposal, including; the creation of regional Commissions of Guarantees that would review each application to install CCTV monitored by a police force and ensure the fulllment of the legal requirements established in the Organic Law, the protection of the rights to access and to cancel personal data, and the obligation to destroy footage after 30 days. When the media unearthed the previously unaddressed extralegal CCTV surveillance in a handful of Catalan seaside towns, public opposition to CCTV grew. Interestingly, this diffusion pattern is similar to that identied by Hempel and T¨opfer [14], who note that the same trend occurred with the rst schemes installed in the UK, Germany and France, where CCTV did not originate in crime-ridden cities or terrorist hang-outs, but in afuent, middle-sized beachside towns. After the Al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid on 11 March 2004, which killed nearly 200 people, neither public discourse nor media coverage stressed the link between CCTV and terrorism, and there is no evidence of an immediate increase in surveillance in the country capital following the attacks. This contradicts established thinking which suggests that when a terrorist threat is covered by the media, it is often used to reinforce the argument in favor of CCTV [18]. According to the documents reviewed and

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G. Galdon Clavell et al. / CCTV in Spain: An empirical account of the deployment of video-surveillance Table 1 Legal Regulation of CCTV in Spain

Regulation LO 4/1997 RD 596/1999 LO 15/1999 I 1/2006 (DPA)

Purpose/title To regulate the use of video cameras in public spaces by the Spanish Police Forces To give effect to the regulations of the Organic Law For the protection of personal data Concerns the treatment of personal data linked to surveillance through cameras or video surveillance

Scope Public Public Public and private Private

the views gathered through interviews, the case for surveillance in Spain is overwhelmingly built upon the need to prevent acts of ‘incivility’ and petty crime. The one notable exception is La Alhambra, in Granada, which suffered a terrorist attack in 1996 used it to justify the installation of 50 CCTV cameras in 2008. In all other instances, terrorism is hardly ever present as the justication for video surveillance. This sets Spain apart from other countries where national security concerns have gained ground after 9/11, and are key factors inuencing underlying discussions about the public perception of surveillance and in the justication for CCTV [14,27]. The Spanish case, thus, adds complexity to the relaxing of the ‘limitations on previously stricter laws’ which Lyon [18] attributes to the consequences of 9/11. While legal constraints on CCTV use are also becoming less strict in Spain, 9/11 and terrorism are not part of the public debate nor the political justication for CCTV at the local level. This suggests that the proliferation of CCTV might be a case of policy transfer or convergence, whereby governments may adopt similar policies based on anxieties about security, even if the detail of the narratives used to justify them is substantially different. 4. The Legal regulation of CCTV in Spain

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4.1. Public CCTV As mentioned above, in 1997 the Spanish Parliament passed legislation (LO 4/1997) to regulate the use of video cameras in public spaces by the Spanish police forces. This was completed two years later with a Royal Decree (RD 596/1999) which developed the principles and contents of the new law (see Table 1), drawing strongly from the French Loi Pasqua.3 More specically, the law regulates video cameras and any sound-recording device, xed or mobile, operated by a member of a police force and used in a public space (open or closed). Other devices do not fall under this law nor require a priori authorization, including; instruments operated by private security, trafc cameras, cameras protecting police buildings, the surveillance of sports events, and cameras used by the police following instructions from a judge. Therefore, only cameras monitored by the police can monitor public space and are considered ‘public’ in Spain. The law states that ‘increasingly sophisticated technical means’ improve the levels of protection of goods and freedoms of the people, but sees the need to regulate the use of such devices, already being used by the police, in order to guarantee that the defence of public security is in compliance with constitutional rights and freedoms. Therefore, it establishes a system of a priori authorization ‘inspired by the principle of proportionality, in its double meaning of appropriateness (idoneidad in Spanish) and minimum intervention’. The appropriateness is dened as ‘the camera will only be used when deemed 3 For further information about French law relating to CCTV see the article ‘Video Surveillance and Security Policy in France: From Regulation to Widespread Acceptance’ in this special edition.

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Table 2 Legal regulation of CCTV in the autonomous regions

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Regulation D 134/1999 D 168/1998

Purpose/title To regulate video surveillance by the Autonomous and Local Police Forces To regulate the authorisation and use of surveillance cameras by the Basque Police in public areas

Scope Catalonia Basque Country

necessary, in a specic situation, in order to maintain community safety’. Minimum intervention ‘demands that, in each case, the relation between the stated goal and the possible effects by the use of the video camera on the right to one’s honour, image and intimacy is to be assessed’. Moreover, the law states there must be a ‘reasonable risk’ for public safety in the case of xed cameras, and a ‘specic danger’ in the case of mobile ones (LO 4/1997). Before 1997, CCTV cameras were only controlled a posteriori by the Judiciary in order to determine whether a particular system was detrimental to individual rights. However, since 1997, and according to the law, the process of a priori authorization is to be overseen by regional Commissions of Guarantees presided by the President of the High Court of Justice of each autonomous region. The legal framework also establishes; that all images and sound recordings will have to be deleted within 30 days, the right of the public to be informed of the existence of xed cameras, and the right to access and to dispose of personal footage. The Commissions of Guarantees are the bodies responsible for the interpretation and implementation of the regulation. They are advisory entities independent of the competent administrative authority in charge of issuing the authorizations, and have among their main functions the drawing up of a priori ‘favorable’ or ‘unfavorable’ reports within one month of each petition to install cameras in public areas. In the case of mobile cameras, the report is a posteriori and often only consists of a written acknowledgment of their use. In spite of the ‘advisory’ status of the Commissions, when the report issued is ‘unfavorable’ or includes limitations to the CCTV systems proposed, it is binding. Overall, the Spanish legal framework for ’public’ CCTV is based on the assumption that CCTV can hinder the public’s right to privacy, intimacy and one’s image, thus establishing rules to enforce an obligation to justify any attempt to limit such rights on the basis of the need to prevent crime. In Spain, ’public’ CCTV is always locally funded and operated by police forces, and in line with other European countries, with the exception of the UK, Spanish law recognizes the right to ‘intimacy’ in public areas, and some cameras have not been approved by some Commissions due to their perceived impact on this right to one’s intimacy [3]. The establishment of a strict authorization system based on the Commissions of Guarantees, whose members always come from the Judiciary and different levels of public administration, ensures that private parties or anyone who could have a vested interest in the subject have no access to the process. Further, the obligation to destroy the images within 30 days, with very few exceptions, as well as the provisions to inform the public of the existence of surveillance cameras through visible signs and the obligation to renew and justify all existing schemes each year indicates a clear attempt by legislators to halt or impede the generalization of the use of electronic surveillance for crime prevention. Such ‘good intentions’ could be tainted by contradictions found in the development of the articles of the regulations and some vague formulations which could potentially lead to abuse [8]. The weakest link in the Spanish system, however, is found at the regional and local level, as only two Autonomous Regions, Catalonia and the Basque Country, have developed specic legislation for their Commissions, through a Decree creating and stating the legal regulations of a Commission to Control Video-surveillance Devices in Catalonia (D 134/1999) and a Decree to create and regulate a Commission of Video Surveillance and Freedoms of the Basque Autonomous region (D 168/1998) (see Table 2). In the rest of the country, the

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G. Galdon Clavell et al. / CCTV in Spain: An empirical account of the deployment of video-surveillance Table 3 CCTV les (not cameras) registered with AEPD until 31/05/10 Year of registration 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Private CCTV

Public CCTV

CCTV total

8 4 1 0 0 3 13 17 32 90 118 250 433 4,776 9,212 21,973 13,818

2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 14 89 184 285 403

10 4 1 0 0 3 13 17 32 90 121 250 447 4,865 9,396 22,258 14,221

provisions established by the Organic Law and the Royal Decree apply, and the Commissions do not have specic regulations nor rules of accountability. For a system that depends so heavily on the Commissions of Guarantees for its implementation, this regulatory void in most of Spain, together with the loose denition of the functions of the Commissions, the lack of specic personnel and means to implement their control functions, their limited scope of action, and the general lack of awareness of their existence and role – cast doubts on the real effectiveness of the legal framework. Our research highlighted this point, as when trying to contact members of the regional Commissions to arrange interviews, we found that in most cases even the personnel at the High Courts of Justice were unaware that such bodies existed.

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4.2. Private CCTV In Spain, any surveillance camera not monitored by a member of the police force is considered private, and thus not subject to the tighter, a priori obligations of the specic LO 4/1999. This creates a broad scope for grey areas, with CCTV in public transport, in public buildings with private security providers, in the workplace and in commercial, semi-public areas not subject to a review by the Commission and not controlled beyond the need to register the existence of any le with CCTV footage with the Data Protection Agency (Agencia Espa˜nola de Protecci´on de Datos, AEPD). Consequently, the good regulation of public CCTV, notwithstanding the limitations mentioned above, stand in stark contrast to the very weak regulation of private CCTV, governed just by an Instruction (1/2006) of the AEPD that draws from the Law of Personal Data Protection (LO 15/1999), the Law 23/1992 on Private Security, and the Law 1/1982 on the Civil Protection of the Right to Honor, Intimacy and One’s Image, but lacks their status and enforcing authority. The Instruction stresses the need to take into account matters of appropriateness, necessity and proportionality in the installation and operation of private CCTV and to ‘avoid ubiquitous surveillance’. More specically, it states the obligation to notify the public in the form of placards of their access and cancellation rights, as well as the need to communicate to the AEPD the existence of any le with CCTV footage, thereby excluding CCTV systems with no storage capacity. The AEPD states clearly that the instruction does not allow private parties to install CCTV systems in

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public spaces. However, the AEPD’s role is limited to interventions a posteriori and after a complaint has been led, and even if the rapid increase in the number of les registered does show a capacity to inuence developments, the Agency only manages to capture a small fraction of the reality of CCTV in Spain. Table 3 captures the number of CCTV (les) registered with the AEPD. Current developments in the legal framework of private CCTV, stemming from the adaptation of national law to European Directives, might further hinder the possibilities to control or monitor the growth of private CCTV. Specically, the Services Directive 2006/123/CE liberalizes the activities linked to the installation of security systems, and the law regulating the transposition of this particular piece of EU legislation into the Spanish context (25/2009) specically excludes companies that sell, install or maintain security equipment from the scope of the Private Security Law, thus effectively making it possible for private parties to install CCTV systems without a clear legal framework or need to inform any relevant authority.

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4.3. CCTV in public transport CCTV in public transport represents a good example of the growing ‘grey areas’ existing in the eld of video surveillance in Spain, due to the legal gap that exists between the regulation of public and private CCTV, and the limitations made possible by a narrow denition of ‘public’ video surveillance. While in London CCTV was rst installed as early as the mid-1970s’ and justied as a crime-ghting tool [21], in Spain the earliest schemes, such as Madrid’s Metro in the late 80s, were installed as a way to provide a sense of security after the downsizing of one third of those employed to work in underground ticket ofces. Those rst CCTV systems did not record images and were meant to monitor the now-deserted station halls. Recording functions only began to be installed in the late 90s, when CCTV in public transport started to proliferate, following the example of Italy. Today, cameras in train and metro stations are a generalized and systematic policy (see Fig. 1) and they fall under the regulation established by the AEPD Instruction from 2006, with no control provided by the Commissions of Guarantees. Cameras in moving vehicles, such as taxis and buses, made possible by the technological advances of the last few years, are also a very recent but rapidly increasing trend. Moreover, and contrary to what happens elsewhere, CCTV images emerging from the public transport arena are regularly broadcast on Spanish television. Typically, they are of low-level misdemeanors and violence and not the footage of serious crime and terrorist acts sometimes broadcast in other counties [14,27]. This might explain why support for CCTV in public transport is more common than in the workplace, leisure areas, bars and restaurants, residential buildings and streets [16]. 4.4. CCTV to monitor trafc With the exception of Catalonia, where cameras to monitor trafc must go through the Commission of Guarantees, in the rest of Spain it is the Trafc Authority (Direcci´on General de Tr´aco, DGT) that approves CCTV installation. There is no evidence of rejected applications, which may suggest that the DGT is less careful in reviewing the applications than the Commissions. This has increased the perception among local authorities that trafc cameras are easier to install, thus making it more difcult to map the proliferation of CCTV in Spain. It is not easy to make a distinction between those cameras that monitor trafc for road safety purposes and those that are intended to surveil large public areas or control vehicles entering or leaving specic locations. The Catalan Commission of Guarantees, however, does try to nd out the real purpose of the petitioner, and usually limits the camera scope and zoom when justied as road trafc cameras. In some cases the DGT has received applications after they have been

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Fig. 1. CCTV and public transport in Spanish cities: Numbers of cameras in premises and vehicles.

rejected by a regional Commission of Guarantees, and there is a growing tendency to mix road safety and crime in the justication for CCTV, especially in afuent, gated neighborhoods where there is a stronger demand for control of vehicles entering and exiting premises. 5. Public perception of CCTV Recent opinion polls conducted by the Public Opinion Research Center (Centro de Investigaciones Sociol´ogicas, CIS) [5,6] show strong support for the use of CCTV, with gures in tune with international results [16]. Of the 68.7% of the Spanish population that supported video surveillance, 66.4% reported that it made them feel safer, 18.0% that it allowed for the identication of offenders and 15.2% believed it prevented crime. 10.0% of the Spanish population are against CCTV altogether, mainly (79.4%) due to their perceived loss of privacy. As for the location of CCTV, support is stronger for surveillance cameras

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Table 4 Attitudes towards the location CCTV in Spain (Results for Europe in brackets) Very good or good Banks 95.5 (91.9) Shops 88.3 (82.9) Residential 51.1 (36.1) Workplace 44.7 (n.a.) Nurseries/Schools 77.2 (n.a.) Public Transport 74.5 (86.7) Streets 60.6 (56.1) Hospitals 75.1 (42.7) Bars & Restaurants 46.2 (n.a.) Leisure Areas 50.0 (n.a.) Source: adapted from [4,11].

Neutral 1.9 (3.8) 5.9 (10.2) 14.9 (27.1) 13.6 (n.a.) 8.2 (n.a.) 8.8 (9.3) 12.5 (21.5) 8.5 (28.6) 13.3 (n.a.) 12.9 (n.a.)

Bad or very bad 1.2 (4.3) 3.7 (6.8) 28.7 (36.8) 36.7 (n.a.) 11.2 (n.a.) 13.3 (4.0) 23.5 (22.3) 13.2 (28.6) 36.0 (n.a.) 31.7 (n.a.)

Other 1.3 2.0 5.3 5.0 3.3 3.3 3.4 3.3 4.5 5.3

in banks, shops, nurseries, schools and hospitals, and weaker for workplaces, bars and restaurants, leisure areas and residential buildings. This data is set out in Table 5. Interestingly, public support for video surveillance declined by almost ve points between February 2008 (73.2%) and September 2009 (68.7%). Those who link CCTV to increased security, protection and less fear have also declined (71.1% to 66.4%), whilst those who link it to its deterrence capabilities has increased (11.6% to 15.2%). Other relevant data compiled by the two CIS surveys include; the level of awareness of the need to ask for an authorization to set up CCTV systems, which is 53.1%, and awareness of the need to install signposts indicating that there are cameras in operation, which stands at 62.2%. Finally, on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being minimum surveillance in public places and 10 being maximum surveillance, survey respondents on average position themselves at 6.67. It is worth noting, however, that complaints over CCTV have gone from 382 in 2008 to 768 in 2009, which leads the AEPD to conclude in their Annual Report that ‘the positive perception of video surveillance goes hand in hand with a demand for guarantees in relation to privacy’ [2].

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6. Towards a map of CCTV in Spain The existence of surveillance cameras in public and semi-public spaces has not been a public issue in Spain. For instance, whereas Bournemouth in the UK, Hy`eres in France and Sherbrooke in Quebec have been mentioned in academic literature [14,25] as early examples of the use of CCTV to combat crime, we have not found any reference to Lleida, the Catalan town which in 1991 installed dozens of cameras in its main commercial street under pressure from shop owners and an ‘overwhelmed’ police,4 or the seaside towns that were found to have systems installed prior to the approval of the legal framework in 1997. The lack of academic and public attention to this subject is worsened by the complexity of the Spanish administrative and legal framework, with 17 Autonomous Regions and 50 Provinces with varying degrees of regulation and autonomy. This, together with the absence of aggregated data, even at the regional level, makes it really difcult not only for researchers to come up with a thorough map of CCTV, but also for policy-makers and members of the Commissions of Guarantees to work towards some kind of convergence in terms of procedures, principles and methodologies. Nonetheless, there have been attempts to overcome these difculties, and the recent interest in the subject [2,8] has facilitated progress. 4

Interview with local Head of Community Safety (June 2010).

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G. Galdon Clavell et al. / CCTV in Spain: An empirical account of the deployment of video-surveillance Table 5 Characteristics of CCTV in Spain based on categories mentioned in existing research

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Uneven development linked to decentralization Expansionary logic and exponential growth in all areas, especially public transport Specic, rights-based regulation and a priori authorization of public CCTV Weaker regulation of private, non-police monitored CCTV, but still requiring registration Right to ‘intimacy’ recognized in public space No public debate or extensive media coverage Privacy and liberty as main arguments against the expansion of CCTV Signage as only means of notication Local initiative with no central support No Public-Private Partnerships or private funding for schemes No evaluation of impact

In view of the eld work conducted for this article, several aspects are worth highlighting. The varying character and practices of the Commissions in different places has led to different outcomes, for instance, as some Commissions only started to meet regularly a few years ago, whilst others validate all requests they receive, and a few, notably Andalucia, Catalonia and Extremadura, are systematically applying the law in a restrictive sense. There is generalized confusion around the potential benets of CCTV and where it is most effective – although public transport, municipal buildings, youth facilities, historical centers and commercial areas are the spaces most surveilled, it is unclear why this is so, with only one system being independently evaluated [8]. Also, on occasion a council will announce its intention to install CCTV, but the application is never processed, which seems to conrm the symbolic aspect of CCTV policy stressed by some authors [10]. As for the size of public CCTV networks in open areas, they rarely exceed a few dozen cameras in most cities. It is also evident that the proliferation of CCTV in Spain has not been without its problems. As well as the many accounts of vandalized cameras – Barcelona’s second camera was damaged in 2001 and not repaired until 2006 – there have been demonstrations and organized acts of sabotage, for example in Madrid, Santiago de Compostela and Bilbao. The biggest challenge to CCTV, however, has come from the Galicia and Madrid regions. These have been led by the Movement for the Defence of Civil Rights (Movemento Polos Dereitos Civ´s, MpDC) which has systematically reported all illegal cameras in Galicia, and the activist-artistic Madrid-based ‘A Happy Neighborhood’ initiative (Un Barrio Feliz) which has done the same in Madrid. Since the announcement of a plan to install 48 CCTV cameras in Lavapi´es, a stigmatized neighborhood with high levels of migrant population, Un Barrio Feliz has been implicating CCTV as part of a plan to turn the city into a ‘shop window, to over regulate public space and to turn consumption and control through fear into the guiding limits of our existence’.5 Whilst it is not possible to go into detailed descriptions of CCTV in all regions of Spain here, Table 5 highlights some of the pertinent characteristics relevant to the Spanish case, taking into account some of the categories of analysis identied in the existing research on CCTV. This presents a snapshot of key trends surrounding Spanish CCTV and a possible systematization for comparative research [9,12–14,20, 21,23]. 7. Conclusion While there are common trends to the proliferation of CCTV across the globe, local contingencies, institutional settings, legal contexts and political arrangements are shaping the actual progression of 5

See: http://unbarriofeliz.wordpress.com/about/. Accessed on 26 July 2011.

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CCTV as a security policy alternative. In Spain, the role of these factors at the local level has been exacerbated by the lack of a national CCTV strategy, which heightens the unevenness in the diffusion of video surveillance, even though the legal context is the same for all regions. This indicates that while legal constraints can slow down the process by which CCTV becomes a generalized policy, as some authors have suggested, this should be seen in light of other institutional arrangements and political processes, such as the actual effectiveness of the legal framework, the relationship between different levels of public administration, historical factors that might impact on the public debate and the elements that shape the vernacular built around CCTV deployment. Moreover, when there are major differences in the way public and private CCTV is regulated, as is the case in Span, the grey areas that emerge can end up rendering useless the initial deterrent effect of regulation. The data on Spain presented in this article also suggests that whilst the proliferation and awareness of CCTV are on the rise, this awareness is breeding resistance in the form of privacy complaints, demonstrations and sabotage of CCTV surveillance devices. Opinion polls also show a slight shift in the perception of the usefulness of CCTV, which can be understood as a process of ‘adjustment’ of previous or unrealistic expectations [14]. Changing attitudes towards surveillance cameras should also be taken into account. Justication for CCTV in Spain has gone from terrorism, to efciency, to disorder, to incivility, to crime, and from crime prevention and deterrence to crime solving and police efciency – and back. Assumptions about CCTV are reproduced with little reection on their actual impact, cost-efciency and negative externalities. Norris et al. [21] suggest a four-stage diffusion trend in the worldwide growth of CCTV, where ‘private diffusion’, ‘institutional diffusion in the public realm’ and ‘limited diffusion in public space’ are the prelude to ‘ubiquity’. From the evidence considered here it is apparent that Spain has recently reached ‘stage three’. However, CCTV continues to provoke reluctance and suspicion in signicant parts of the population. The empirical research discussed here thus suggests that any educated guess on the future of ‘surveillance societies’ should not underestimate the potential impact of increased awareness and the incipient public debate, together with a more realistic approach to CCTV by those who have experienced its gaze for several years.

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Video Surveillance C.W.R. Webster et al. (Eds.) IOS Press, 2012 © 2012 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved.

Author Index 52 66 103 80 17, 133 94 v 133 37

Raab, C.D. Romero, A. Svenonius, O. Taylor, E. Töpfer, E. Wagenaar, P. Webster, C.W.R. Zurawski, N.

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Björklund, F. Boersma, K. Fonio, C. Fussey, P. Galdon Clavell, G. Heilmann, E. Klauser, F.R. Lojo, L.Z. Musik, C.

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v 133 113 1 v 66 v 122

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