NO CCTV - Anti CCTV Articles (Anti-CCTV general)
Open letter to UK Surveillance Regulators - 3/1/2012
[ The open letter may be downloaded as a PDF here ]
See our accompanying press release at http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/press
Sent 30th December 2011
OPEN LETTER
To the Information Commissioner, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, the Interim CCTV Regulator
CALL FOR A JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE USE OF BLANKET SURVEILLANCE ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT
We are writing in light of recent developments in surveillance on public transport throughout the UK and the concerns of members of the public who have contacted us.
You may be aware that many councils around the country are requiring the installation of surveillance cameras into private hire vehicles as a condition of license. Many of these surveillance systems are required to operate at all times that the engine of the vehicle is running (and in some cases a period of time after the ignition has been switched off). Some of the systems are also required to record sound as well as images.
Meantime several bus companies equip their buses with more surveillance cameras than would once have been found in a city centre and many of these cameras also record sound as well as images [1].
We are deeply concerned about the blanket use of surveillance and feel that its use to constantly record both images and sound is creating a "just in case" mentality that treats everyone as suspects. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is an important cornerstone of our society and privacy is a value long cherished throughout the UK despite claims to the contrary from technology companies. A healthy society depends on the law-abiding majority being respected and trusted as they go about their daily lives.
This issue of taxi CCTV has been around for some time. In the UK CCTV cameras in taxis were first trialled in Bolton in 2001 [2] – cameras, recording images and sound, were fitted to ten taxis for six weeks. In 2002 the then MP for Bolton South East, Dr Brian Iddon raised the trial in the House of Commons [3], calling it a "brave experiment" and asking Home Office Minister John Denham whether he agreed it should be spread throughout the country.
In the House of Commons in July 2007 [4] it was reported that the Southampton Safe City Partnership was sponsoring CCTV in taxi cabs. They became a condition of license in 2009 [5].
In November 2010 a driver, Kevin May, who runs taxi firm K & K Hire, began legal action in the Southampton Magistrates’ Court against the City Council’s imposition of a condition requiring the installation of a taxi camera in one of his licensed hackney carriages. In April 2011 the court found in May's favour [6]. In December 2011 it was announced that Southampton City Council had won its appeal against that decision on the basis that the court had no jurisdiction to overturn the licensing condition [7]. However the appeal court agreed with the April 2011 judgment that the cameras were unlawful and Mr May now intends to judicially review the council.
The December 2011 ruling states:
"The condition does not correspond to a pressing social need, is not proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and is not necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."
(Southampton City Council v Kevin May, paragraph 71 as quoted by Big Brother Watch [8])
In light of this ruling the need for clear guidance on this issue is even more paramount. We feel the ruling does not go far enough as it does not even consider the paucity of evidence that cameras are the solution to the problems that Southampton City Council claims they address.
Much evidence exists to show alternatives to taxi CCTV that have much less impact on the freedoms of passengers and drivers, and are more effective. A 1999 report 'The Effectiveness of Taxi Partitions: The Baltimore Case' [9], prepared for The Southeastern Transportation Center University of Tennessee Knoxville found that partitions (as found in hackney carriages) or shields (which can be fitted to other vehicle types) significantly reduce assaults.
Surely the use of intrusive surveillance should only be considered when all other options have been tried, there is a proven case that such a measure would be effective, and if it will not impact significantly the freedoms of drivers and passengers.
An insight into why local authorities choose cameras over other measures is spelt out in a 2009 report of the Canadian 'Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN)' [10], which looked at the introduction of cameras in taxis in Ottawa, Canada. The report states:
"Cab camera companies are entrepreneurial and in addition to cameras must sell the very idea of surveillance. This may require making claims regarding the deterrent effect of cab cameras, as well as the value of the footage in prosecuting crimes."
(p7 'Camera Surveillance in Ottawa Taxicab', 'A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two', 2009)
There have been challenges to the use of CCTV in taxis in other countries, most notably the United States. In October 2005 the Attorney General of Nevada issued an opinion on the constitutional implications of recording images and sound using taxi cameras [11]. The twelve page opinion concludes that taxi cameras that record sound and images are a breach of United States Fourth Amendment.
The campaign group Justice in their recent report 'Freedom from Suspicion' [12] point out that it was an English Common Law principle, laid out in Lord Camden’s speech in the 1705 judgment in Entick v Carrington, upholding the rights of property owners against unlawful searches by the executive that became the basis for the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
A similar respect of this unwarranted search principle can be seen in the more recent case of McArdle v. Wallace [1964] which found that: "In the absence of a search warrant, a policeman has no right to remain on premises once he has been asked to withdraw by a person who has express or implied authority to make such a request." [13]
You will no doubt currently be involved in discussions regarding the drafting of a new Surveillance Cameras Code of Practice as laid out in the Protection of Freedoms Bill that is still making its way through Parliament. We are concerned that the Home Office consultation document on the Code of Practice, whilst threatening that "modern digital technology is on the cusp of revolutionising the use of CCTV", goes on to blithely suggest that: "New uses for systems, for example in taxis, are a natural part of industry growth" [14]. Furthermore the hysterical political point scoring by many parliamentarians with regard to cameras during the passage of the bill, with no reference to proper evidence or facts, leaves little hope that the legislation will live up to its name.
Ultimately the creation of a total surveillance society goes beyond the Data Protection Act, RIPA or the so-called Protection of Freedoms Bill. There are societal values that are being discarded in what is presented as the following of the letter of the many regulatory statutes, whilst the spirit and the Rule of our Common Law are ignored. A wrong is a wrong.
If the unquestioned blanket installation of CCTV cameras in taxis and other forms of public transport, recording images and now sound, is permitted it signals the creation of a society where the only privacy will be the thoughts in your head. If a line is not drawn here then what is to prevent employers, parents, cinemas and retail outlets from doing the same.
As regulators you have a real opportunity, not to mention a duty, to restrain the surveillance society. We urge you to put the freedoms of the people above the commercial interests of the many security companies who lobby government and have far more access to regulators than the ordinary public (often at the public expense).
We propose that you launch a joint investigation and produce a report into the legal and moral implications of blanket surveillance on public transport. We will of course be happy to assist and give evidence to such an investigation.
In the past regulators have let such moments of opportunity slip, but there can be no excuse now. We urge you all to take action against the spread of blanket surveillance into every facet of modern day life.
Yours sincerely,
Charles Farrier
No CCTV
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Simon Davies
Privacy International
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Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 3/1/2012
Taxi CCTV and the continuing decay of Privacy - 23/11/2011
[ This article may be downloaded as a PDF report here ]
Where to mate? 1984 please.
Image by Buridans Esel
"You lookin' at me?"
- Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), Taxi Driver 1976
The use of surveillance cameras in taxis that record both sound and images hit the headlines last week, when it emerged that the City Council of the historic English city of Oxford was making them compulsory for all local private hire vehicles [1]. Many commentators were shocked by the depths to which the surveillance society had now stooped but few spotted that this phenomenon has been around for over a decade, and not just in the UK.
CCTV in taxis is a worldwide development. The globalised surveillance industrial complex offers one-solution-fits-all products regardless of regional differences or actual need. Wherever taxi cameras have been introduced the measure has courted controversy and time and time again privacy laws around the world have seemingly been unable to restrain this addition to the surveillance panoply. It is through such incremental steps that societal values have and continue to be eroded.
Driving a taxi undoubtedly has risks, particularly at night with an alcohol fuelled clientèle, but is there actual evidence that cameras can significantly improve driver safety? Even if cameras were effective, are they truly acceptable? Are there not other measures that could be introduced which would have less impact on the freedoms of taxi passengers?
Background
Amazingly the first city to introduce compulsory taxi cameras was not in the UK. That dubious accolade goes to Perth in Australia, where a licensing condition was introduced from mid December 1997, after an 18 month decision making, testing and development process. Other countries with cities that have compulsory taxi cameras include Canada, Norway, China, the United States, Holland and New Zealand.
Bolton's brave experiment
In the UK cameras were trialled in Bolton in 2001 [2] - cameras, recording images and sound, were fitted to ten taxis for six weeks. The trial was hailed a success because no incidents occurred. No control group was used. No independent study was produced. It was simply hailed a success by Bolton Council, the taxi drivers and the security industry firms behind the trial [3]. One of the reasons given for driver support was the hope that it would lead to cheaper insurance premiums [4].
In 2002 the then MP for Bolton South East, Dr Brian Iddon raised the trial in the House of Commons [5], calling it a "brave experiment" and asking Home Office Minister John Denham whether he agreed it should be spread throughout the country. And so Bolton became the poster city for taxi CCTV in the UK.
On the back of the Bolton success myth, Chubb, the company whose CabWatch system had been used, touted their wares to Leicester and Cambridge City Councils who ran their own trials. As with Bolton, Chubb's system relayed sound and images to a remote video response centre. Over the next few years a string of UK councils began considering cameras as a condition of license for taxis and private hire vehicles.
It is now commonplace for taxis to be equipped with CCTV cameras throughout the UK.
Southampton Court Challenge
In the UK Parliament in July 2007 [6] it was reported that the Southampton Safe City Partnership were sponsoring CCTV in taxi cabs.
In November 2010 a driver, Kevin May, who runs taxi firm K & K Hire, began legal action in the Southampton Magistrates' Court against the City Council's imposition of a condition requiring the installation of a taxi camera in one of his licensed hackney carriages. In April 2011 the court found in May's favour [7]. Southampton City Council are now appealing that decision [8].
A month after the court decision, taxi drivers held a demo in Southampton [9] to protest against the council's compulsory camera requirement. But before defenders of passengers' freedoms get too excited about the Southampton taxi drivers' stand, it is worth listening to a recent edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme 'You and Yours' [10], on which May clarified his position. May said:
I'm not against CCTV, I'm not against CCTV at all. I'm against the conditions that this council, Southampton Council Licensing Office has imposed on us.
[...]
The problem we've got in Southampton is that the CCTV operates in a way that it is on 24/7, you can never turn it off, the driver's got not control of it whatsoever, so every single passenger that gets in a licensed vehicle in Southampton - their conversation's being recorded no matter whether they've done anything wrong or not.
[...]
What about, the taxi drivers in Southampton, private hires and taxis, majority of those vehicles gets used privately as well. The drivers own those vehicles, [?], what happens when they're taking their children down to the beach with their wife on a weekend. Why should that conversation be getting recorded?
In other words May is saying that in his view surveilling passengers is okay as long as the driver has control over it, but surveilling a taxi driver's family is wrong. And it is worth mentioning that the court case challenged the cameras as a licensing requirement, not the right or wrong of the cameras themselves. At time of writing the judgment is not publicly available.
It's all right we won't look at the footage, honest
The response from Southampton City Council is similar to the response from licensing authorities throughout the UK and across the globe - passengers have nothing to worry about because the sound and images are encrypted and no-one's going to access them unless there's an incident. The kit being used is an example of what is often called privacy by design (PbD) or a privacy enhancing technology (PET). Aside from the fact that encryption is not as secure as many would have us believe, surely there is more at stake here? We shall return to privacy by design below.
To understand how we got to this point let's travel back to the 1990s and look at how the taxi CCTV craze first began.
Perth goes on camera
As stated above it was in Australia that taxi compulsory CCTV was first introduced. In Perth, following a number of attacks on taxi drivers, a safety summit was held in February 1996. According to a report by Dr. Ian Radbone of the University of South Australia [11] a number of solutions were discussed and: "While the installation of a camera was not necessarily considered the most effective option, it was broadly supported because of its immediate feasibility and non-intrusiveness."
In the 1990s the Perth cameras did not record sound.
Radbone's February 1998 report states:
The cameras have been compulsory for two months. What's the evidence of effectiveness so far? The TIB [Taxi Industry Board] data base has recorded a drop in reported incidents but the numbers are too small to be statistically significant at this stage.
A November 2000 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology, entitled 'Preventing Assaults on Taxi Drivers in Australia' [12] states:
Solid state digital technology was chosen for Perth taxis where cameras have been mandatory since December 1997; these resulted in a 60 per cent reduction in attacks on drivers within a year after introduction (Pflaum 1999).
Note that the 60 percent reduction figure is cited as coming from one "Pflaum" in 1999. Upon closer investigation it transpires that Pflaum is a taxi driver in Germany who, in 1999, wrote an article [13] for a German Taxi Journal. In this article he gave no source or background to the 60 percent figure. Pflaum wrote:
In Perth, Australia, where camera surveillance was made mandatory for taxicabs, attacks against cab drivers and other major troubles were reduced by 60% one year after the introduction.
If the cameras in Perth really were such a magic bullet one has to wonder why earlier this year it was announced that the Western Australian government is set to upgrade these cameras.
The Upgrade cycle
In January 2011 it was announced that $8 million (Australian dollars) would be spent to upgrade the cameras in Perth's taxi fleet and for the first time record sound as well as images. In addition four cameras will now be fitted to each taxi, two inside and two outside. The new cameras will record continuously.
The Western Australian Taxi Camera Surveillance Unit (TCSU) standard 2011 [14] states:
The TCSU shall include at least two internally mounted cameras and two externally mounted cameras.
The reason given by the Government of Western Australia Department of Transport [15] for the camera upgrades is that the cameras are "generally technologically outdated" and they state:
As a result, when a crime occurs inside or outside a taxi, these existing models often do not provide the evidence necessary to prosecute the offender. A new standard is urgently needed to help make the taxi industry a safe working environment for taxi drivers and a safe transport service for passengers.
When it is time to upgrade suddenly no mention is made of magical decreases in crime, instead action must be taken, we are told, to make taxis a safe place.
Alternatives to cameras - partitions
One alternative to cameras is the use of a partition between the driver and the passengers. Such partitions have long been a feature of the iconic London black taxi or Hackney Carriage.
One female driver told Taxi Today Monthly in 2009 [16]:
I have always driven a London Taxi because I value the security and safety it provides. The central partition is crucial to the job as it provides both added peace of mind and protection.
('Safety first for female drivers', Taxi Today Monthly, January 2009)
Partitions can also be fitted to other vehicle types and are sometimes known as safety screens or safety shields.
A 1999 report 'The Effectiveness of Taxi Partitions: The Baltimore Case' [17], prepared for The Southeastern Transportation Center University of Tennessee Knoxville found:
Thus far it has been determined that shields in Baltimore taxis significantly reduce assaults on taxi drivers. Furthermore, shields are the primary reason for reduced assaults compared to other explanations such as reduced crime, drug arrests, and population.
The shield study looked at shield implementation in Baltimore from 1991 to 1997 and included a control study. Compare this study protocol to that of the Bolton camera study mentioned above.
Many studies report that in the United States and other countries there is a perception amongst drivers that safety partitions reduce tips by isolating the driver from the passenger and presenting a physical barrier to communication. In the UK however the partition has been viewed as a welcome addition by drivers and passengers alike. A 1970 Home Office report of the 'Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade' [18] found:
A large proportion of fares appreciate the privacy from the driver and the fact that they cannot be inflicted with his unwanted conversation.
(p197, 'Report of the Departmental Committee on the London taxicab trade', Home Office, 1970)
More alternatives to cameras
A January 2007 report of the Taxicab Advisory Group Committee on Driver Safety to the
Mayor of the City of Atlanta, Georgia [19] looked at the various alternatives to cameras. It references the comments of one of the authors of the Baltimore partition study, Dr John R. Stone who gave a speech to a 'Taxi Driver Security' conference in Montreal in 1996 [20].
Stone explained that in 1990 following the murder of a taxi driver, the Montreal Taxi Bureau formed a Round Table group which implemented a number of safety measures including: flashing rear emergency lights and priority for 911 taxi calls, driver training and driver reports of community emergencies, media coverage and rewards for identifying taxi driver assailants, spot police inspections of taxis and passengers, a training video on tips for taxi driver safety.
Stone told the conference that:
Between 1990 and 1995 as a result of Round Table efforts, the number of MUC [Montreal Urban Community] taxi robberies fell dramatically by 60% from 187 annual armed robberies to 76. Furthermore, relations between taxi drivers, the police, and the community improved.
Driving force
So why, despite the alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of passengers and drivers, have so many cities opted for cameras?
A 2009 report of the Canadian 'Surveillance Camera Awareness Network (SCAN)' [21] looked at the introduction of cameras in taxis in Ottawa, Canada. The report states:
Cab camera companies are entrepreneurial and in addition to cameras must sell the very idea of surveillance. This may require making claims regarding the deterrent effect of cab cameras, as well as the value of the footage in prosecuting crimes.
(p7 'Camera Surveillance in Ottawa Taxicab', 'A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two', 2009)
The SCAN report points out that independent studies that support camera companies claims are scarce, and that:
Our two reports for the Surveillance Camera Awareness Network demonstrate that cameras and other new surveillance measures tend to be implemented without appropriate consultation or adequate independent evaluation, which is demonstrated by the case of cab camera implementation in Ottawa.
(p93 'Conclusion', 'A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada Part Two', 2009)
Surely in the face of the shortage of independent studies supporting the camera companies' claims and the multitude of alternatives that have less impact on the freedoms of drivers and passengers this is an easy win for privacy and data protection commissioners around the world? Maybe, but only to a point.
Weakness of privacy laws
In New Zealand earlier this year the Transport Agency (NZTA) sought guidance [22] from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) following the introduction of compulsory camera Rule [23] for all taxis in major population areas. The NZTA published a letter which states:
The OPC says it has serious concerns about the privacy implications of audio recording in taxis and plans to keep a watching brief on any moves by taxi organisations to introduce it. In addition the OPC asks that any taxi organisation planning to introduce audio recordings notify the Office of the plans so that it can monitor its use by the industry.
(Audio recording of passengers in taxis (Letter from the NZTA) - 30/6/2011)
In Canada the 2003/4 Annual Report [24] of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) under "issues the OIPC has provided advice or comments on over the past year" states:
The Motor Carrier Commission's proposal to place digital videocameras in taxi cabs in the Lower Mainland (the Information and Privacy Commissioner stated that he did not support the proposal for privacy reasons)
On 16th November 2011 a statement from the Data Commissioner of Ireland was read on a talk radio show [25] which said they had concerns "about the proportionality and justification for installing CCTV cameras in taxis, taking account of the legitimate privacy expectations of vehicle users".
Perhaps the strongest response to taxi cameras has come from Nevada in the United States, where in 2004 the Nevada Taxi Cab Authority introduced a regulation requiring cameras in taxis. The Taxi Cab Authority were also considering the activation of the recording systems in the event of a G-force event (a G-force event is that which alters the vehicle's inertia to such a degree that a trigger is activated) .
When the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the regulation it was not adopted pending review. In October 2005 the Attorney General of Nevada issued an opinion [26] on the constitutional implications of recording images and sound using taxi cameras. The twelve page opinion explores whether taxi cameras that record sound and images are a breach of United States Fourth Amendment. The Attorney General concludes:
The adoption of revised regulations which limit any video and audio recording of the camera to (1) the entry and exit of the passenger, (2) activation, when the equipment is activated by a panic button, and (3) minimal recording in the event of a G-force event, would be a limited governmental intrusion which would likely be found by a court to not violate the passengers Fourth Amendment privacy rights.
In September 2006 a revised regulation [27] was adopted [28] that took into account the Attorney General's recommendations. The regulation still requires the compulsory introduction of taxi cameras but the camera is only activated as passengers get in or out of the taxi and when a panic button is activated by the driver. When the camera is activated, it can record still images or video and may record sound but not as a compulsory requirement.
In the UK campaign group Big Brother Watch has launched a complaint [29] with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) with regard to the Oxford taxi CCTV scheme. To date the ICO has not taken a strong stand on surveillance issues as the Data Protection Act that supposedly governs camera surveillance in the UK is riddled with exemptions when freedoms are removed for the stated purpose of "crime prevention", regardless of whether any evidence exists to prove the surveillance works.
The campaign group Justice in their recent report 'Freedom from Suspicion' [30] point out that it was an English Common Law principle, laid out in Lord Camden's speech in the 1705 judgment in Entick v Carrington, upholding the rights of property owners against unlawful searches by the executive that became the basis for the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The English Common Law still exists but alas no-one seems to remember it.
One confusion for privacy commissioners has been the fact that recordings from taxi cameras are encrypted and only accessed by law enforcement or council officials when an incident occurs. This is the so-called "principle" of privacy by design which some commissioners have positively encouraged.
Privacy by design
In her book 'Privacy by Design ? take the challenge' [31] the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, Canada, Dr Ann Cavoukian writes:
The use of this type of privacy-enhancing technology would thus allow for video surveillance to be conducted without the usual concerns associated with this type of surveillance. For the great majority of the surveillance footage, there would be absolutely no access or viewing of any personally identifiable information, and no unauthorized activities, such as viewing out of curiosity or "leering," would be possible. Therefore, this privacy-enhancing technology would enable both the use of video surveillance cameras and privacy to co-exist, side by side - without forfeiting one for the other: positive-sum, not zero-sum.
Data Protection expert Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training [32] sums up privacy by design as follows:
Even though the process is protective of privacy one has arrived at a position that can be rewritten in a more familiar guise: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Societal values beyond privacy
Taxi cameras are part of a growing "just in case" mentality that treats everyone as suspects. This issue goes beyond privacy laws or the lack thereof. The principle of innocent until proven guilty is an important cornerstone of our society and a healthy society depends on the law-abiding majority being respected and trusted as they go about their daily lives.
All around us the surveillance state is growing almost invisibly - unchecked by politicians and lawmakers who either want control or believe surveillance is universally loved, and driven by a surveillance industrial complex, ready to turn every social ill into a money making scheme. Almost every part of our society is tainted by an obsessive focus on crime and the security industry is all too willing to encourage the development of a crime-based economy.
Those that still cherish freedom must speak out. Just be careful what you say if you're in the back of a taxi.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 23/11/2011
Beware your public square: Britain is under attack from 'talking' CCTV cameras - 22/10/2011
Guest article by Sarah Boyes, Manifesto Club (http://www.manifestoclub.com)
This article first appeared on the OurKingdom opendemocracy website (http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom)
Middlesbrough's redeveloped town square is reputedly the largest civic space in Europe. Redesigned in 2002 at a reported cost of £5 million, an expansive grassy area with sweeping paths and benches stands behind the old Gothic town hall, surrounding a jagged shallow pool with shooting fountains.
Yet around the borders of this new-fangled public space, three talking cctv cameras now stand like sentinels. These are large metallic pieces of street furniture placed awkwardly in the middle of paths. Underneath their tall necks, two speakers are affixed. This allows council officials who monitor screens from an office to 'talk' to passers-by.
'Talking' cameras were first tested in Wiltshire in 2003, but by 2006 seven had been installed [1] by the local authority at Middlesbrough - one of the poorest towns in Britain. At the time, it was the borough's executive for community safety who defended the measure, claiming the cameras would inspire 'extra confidence' in the locale and 'reinforce the message that Middlesbrough is a place that is constantly thinking about community safety'.
What was not acknowledged is that talking cameras go well beyond the usual remit of cctv. Rather than being a passive surveillance measure, they represent an attempt by local authorities to play a more active role in civic spaces: not just to watch people but to actively intervene in their everyday behaviour. In practice, talking cctv is used to police trivial misdemeanours between ordinary people.
By 2007, then Labour Home Secretary John Reid announced the cameras would be rolled out to 20 boroughs nationwide [2] - most of them less well-off places, such as Barking and Dagenham in London. He claimed [3] that talking cctv was necessary to '..counter things like litter through drunk and disorderly behaviour, gangs congregating?'. Here, we see that the serious category of crime that should concern a Home Secretary is being expanded to include people enjoying a few cans of beer, litter-dropping or young people coming together in public space. Yet these are perfectly normal activities and certainly don't require constant, active council interference.
I was brought up in a town near Middlesbrough, and when visiting recently heard many accounts of the cameras 'telling people off' for petty incidents. One woman described being shouted at when the end of her sausage roll broke off onto the floor, and was quite incredulous. A teenager told me how he was scolded for throwing a snowball. Another young person remembered friends being reprimanded one evening for boisterously paddling in the new fountain. One local employee remembered hearing a disembodied voice late one evening saying 'stop urinating on McDonalds', but when they looked they saw no apparent culprit.
Throwing snowballs, peeing in public - such incidents are entirely normal, even part and parcel of the rhythm of shared social life. Most people have had a crisp wrapper blow away before they could catch it or get a bit carried away from time to time: such things need to be confronted by discriminating adults when they pose a particular problem or are otherwise out of order.
And if there are bigger issues at stake here, then rolling out talking cctv only makes matters worse. Indeed, the imposition of talking cameras robs people of their ability to negotiate with one another to develop and enforce common norms of civility, which can vary from place to place. They undermine free-spirited interaction, which is the ground-spring of the very civic dynamism policy-makers vainly try to create artificially through official interventions.
One lady I talked to in Middlesbrough explained how she isn't 'scared' of teenagers and regularly confronts people who leave litter behind. This is what most locals are like: friendly and reasonable, capable of interacting. Why would we want to replace this lady with the faceless representative of the local authority?
Aside from the dubious intentions of policy-makers, measures like talking cctv are redefining public space in a worrying way. Traditionally, public space was grounded in civil society, and as such lay outside both state and market. Underpinning this conception - first articulated by a progressive liberal tradition in Britain - was a commitment to substantial civic freedom. In this sense, public space is a civilising force in society since it is a place where we bear responsibility for negotiating the terms of relationships and developing shared rules.
Talking cameras, however, reflect how 'public' spaces become defined by the presence of an external authority. It is now cameras and other official signs that mark the boundaries of a 'safe' public space, telling us that this is somewhere we are 'allowed' to be. Nearly every lamppost around Middlesbrough's square carries a sign informing people they are surveilled, will be fined for not picking up litter or dog mess. While I was talking to people around Centre Square, one man hurrying past muttered something about civil liberties groups, telling me that talking cctv helps 'keep the hoi polloi in their place!'. It turns out he was from the council, yet was apparently speaking without irony.
The corrosive trend towards surveillance is particularly poignant when it comes to Middlesbrough. A former industrial centre famed for its iron and steel works during the nineteenth century, the town's expansion during this period gave way to a vibrant, distinctive northern civic tradition. The main town hall was completed in 1899 and its public square - formerly Victoria Gardens - hosted local fetes. Sadly, the extent and pace of decline in the north-east has gnawed away at its sense of independence, despite the friendliness of locals. Much of the local economy is run down. Rather than addressing the town's real problems, though, policy-makers seem to see it as a testing ground for policies meant to manage decline by forcing a superficial civility from on high, making matters worse.
That what is arguably the biggest civic space in Europe is surveilled by official cameras that regularly bark out instructions shows the woeful state of civic freedom in the UK. Such measures are ineffectual in dealing with the problems of a town such as Middlesbrough - and instead, serve to stifle the very civic spirit they seek to create.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 22/10/2011
Internet Eyes, the Information Commissioners Office and media politics - 28/9/2011
"Let's bury our bad news on a busy news day" - disturbing ICO revelations on 'International Right To Know Day' - A Privacy International Report
Freedom of Information ICO style
Privacy International has frequently criticised the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for shortcomings ranging from timidity to technical ignorance. However material just received from a Freedom of Information request to the Office reveals that the regulator has crossed a line from incompetence to possible malpractice that is serious enough to warrant a Parliamentary investigation.
The ICO has responsibility for the operation of both the UK Data Protection Act and the UK Freedom of Information Act. This dual responsibility is not unusual in the regulatory world, though the combination can lead to a conflict of interest when it comes to FOI requests about the Commissioner's Office itself.
Background
In June 2011 the ICO threw out a complaint [1] by PI and No-CCTV against a company called "Internet Eyes", which is a subscription site offering a cash bounty to anyone who scans online CCTV images and reports alleged shoplifters. We asserted that the enterprise was in breach of data protection but the ICO disagreed, deciding instead to allow the company to proceed subject to signing an undertaking of good behaviour [2].
At the time Privacy International described the decision to mandate bad information practices through an undertaking of good conduct as being the equivalent of "requiring the doctor for a prison execution chamber to sign a Health and Safety undertaking". In our view Undertakings have become an easy way out for the regulator and for transgressors. In many circumstances they are a licence to conditionally continue bad privacy practices.
The decision alarmed many rights advocates but did not come as a surprise to PI, which in almost twenty years has almost never secured a successful complaint with the ICO even when colleague commissioners across Europe had supported our position. This was the case particularly with fingerprinting of school children, Google Street View, wireless network harvesting, privacy settings on Social Networking sites, online advertising, financial privacy, data sharing, electronic visual surveillance, road & traffic surveillance and regulation of offshore Internet companies.
The decision to require an undertaking, although constituting ninety percent of all regulatory action by the ICO, is subject to no formal guidance. Senior officials at the ICO clearly recognized that the decision to issue an Undertaking was an error of judgment, but by the time they had learned of the decision the course of action could not be reversed. They instead decided to engineer aggressive media management to bury a potentially critical news story.
The ICO, which is in effect a quasi-judicial body, had in our view always exhibited a bizarre internal culture that was far removed from the consistent advocacy demonstrated by some other regulators. It has traditionally taken a pragmatic rather than a principled position on privacy issues, hence the almost complete absence of judgments in favour of stronger privacy.
Freedom of Information request
PI and No-CCTV decided to lodge a Freedom of Information (FOI) request with the ICO to discover the rationale behind its decision to refuse our complaint against Internet Eyes, requesting all memos, emails and correspondence relating to the matter. This was submitted in mid June. The ICO responded by stalling the application:
I can confirm that we do hold the information you have requested. However we consider that the exemption at section 36(2) (b) (ii) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 applies to this information. This allows information to be withheld from a response to a request for information under that Act if the disclosure of the information "would, or would be likely to, inhibit ? the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation ?"
Thus the regulator responsible for FOI used a contentious and controversial exemption to stall a request for information about its own activities. While arguing publicly that FOI could not be exempted to save embarrassment the Commissioner's Office had used it to disguise its own embarrassment.
However on 11th August we received some material relating to our request [3]. Almost thirty percent of the correspondence was blacked out, something we'll be asking questions about in due course, but the exposed content provides a devastating insight into the attitude and modus operandi of the ICO.
In short, the ICO was deeply concerned about possible adverse press coverage from its decision and conspired to bury the story on a busy news day. This effort together with associated aspects raises a number of crucial questions about the ICO's competence and integrity.
It's understandable at some levels that on 6th June Senior Press Officer Kirsty McCaskill sent an email to Deputy Commissioner David Smith asking
Can we time the letter arriving with Privacy International with our news release going out? Want to minimise risk they'll go out and do their own statement without our side of the story being ready.
The effect of this strategy is that the complainant receives the judgment on the same day that a crafted media release is distributed by the regulator. Thus there is no opportunity for the complainant to carefully analyse responses to complex judgments in advance of media interview requests.
There's a view that any organisation - even a quasi-judicial organisation - has the right to ensure that its genuinely held beliefs receive a fair hearing. We accept that there's some basis for this view but we believe that it is poor practice for a regulator to play media politics.
Spinning the story
However the next day David Smith was again approached in the following terms:
it has occurred to us that the ICO may not wish this release to stand out from the crowd - maybe it world (sic) be better to send the letter today and publish Wednesday or Thursday this week to 'bury' it amongst others?
Some readers may recall a memorable firestorm just after 11th September 2001 concerning Jo Moore, disgraced former Special Adviser to Stephen Byers, then Minister for Transport and Local Government. A leak revealed that on the day of the terrorist attacks Moore had circulated an email suggesting:
It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses?
Kirsty McCaskill again wrote to Diane Slater and David Smith:
Yes, we would ideally not want this to attract much publicity but as Privacy International is the complainant this is no easy task. No doubt they will issue their own response proactively as soon as they receive our letter. We will do our best to draft a news release asap this week and will co-ordinate timings so that the letter hits Privacy International at the same time as sending out our news release. Will do our best to try to pick a day when it looks like a busy news day out there but - as you'll appreciate - this is difficult to predict.
Again, the clear message is "let's bury the story".
We might have expected that such behaviour would spark the ire of senior management, along with some form of disciplinary action. However the ICO's Head of Strategic Liaison, Jonathan Bamford responded to ICO staff with the following advice:
On a general point of caution I think it is possible that we will get FOIA requests for our deliberations on this issue? I think we should all bear that in mind when deciding on the language we use in our email traffic?
We would have very much liked to see the correspondence that directly relates to the ICO's "investigation" of Internet Eyes, but that correspondence has been withheld.
Cultural dysfunction
PI has condemned the ICO on countless occasions such as:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/blog/uk-information-commissioners-office-case-justifiable-assisted-suicide
http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/1482/privacy-international-slams-ico-ruling-on-google-street-view/
http://www.itpro.co.uk/630649/privacy-groups-lambast-ico-after-bt-decision
https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/civil-liberties-groups-say-uk-information-commissioner's-office-not-fit-purpose
and https://www.privacyinternational.org/article/pi-calls-review-uk-privacy-regulator-following-series-failed-judgements
What these statements demonstrate is a fundamental tension between the regulator and advocates and a belief that the ICO has failed to advocate for rights and is therefore not fit for purpose.
However the latest disclosures take this tension to a new level. Until now we had understood the ICO to be a fundamentally misguided organisation with a dysfunctional culture. What we now realise is that at least part of the culture is malicious and behaves no better than what you might find in a combative corporate press office. Again, it is crucial to recall that the ICO is a quasi judicial body.
One of the key issues identified by the disclosure is a claimed chaotic and misguided culture within the ICO's organisation. We do not argue that the entire office is hostile to privacy rights, but the prevalence of a culture of negotiation has paralysed an institution and created a culture that is not only in confusion, but also which is in conflict. The ICO enjoys a reputation as "guardian" of rights, and never seeks correction when media describes it in those terms. However when deliberating on issues the Office reverts to a pragmatic framework with an overriding imperative of protecting economic interests.
We are conscious of the complexity of these issues and that in the regulatory context the malaise extends far beyond the ICO. In April 2009 PI issued a statement [4] condemning the ICO's failure of process.
Privacy International believes that alongside the problem of rampant pragmatism within the ICO, the Office lacks appropriate technological awareness. We believe the Office urgently needs to establish a Technical Advisory Board to help it understand the true scale of threats from new technologies? Of equal urgency is the matter of process. If the ICO is to determine public interest and pragmatic reasoning it should publish guidelines to these determinations. It must also demonstrate a greater regard to openness in its dealings with government and commercial organisations.
The statement continued:
While it is true that Privacy International often brings difficult and complex cases to the ICO, it is equally true that the tone of the responses is increasingly defensive and political in nature. We fear that the Commissioner is content to uphold fringe cases of occasional security abuses while allowing new technologies and technologies to cut a vast swathe through privacy.
Some key questions
The information reviewed here raises a number of troubling questions that we feel must be resolved openly and speedily. Among these are:
- To what extent are the processes within the regulator's office driven by a preoccupation with perception management and is this priority appropriate for a quasi-judicial body?
- To what extent is specific enforcement action on complaints pre-determined and what is the basis for this pre-determination?
- What is the precise role and mandate of the regulator's press office and is it appropriate for press management to be conducted by an external party outside the culture of the regulator?
- Precisely how does the regulator determine the efficacy, appropriateness and outcome of measures such as Undertakings and Enforcement Notices?
- Who - if anyone - within the regulator's office is responsible for monitoring the overall ethical conduct and procedure of a complaint?
- Should a regulator conduct investigations in the "public interest" in secret?
- How sustainable is it for a regulator to decide issues outside a clearly stated framework of reasoning?
- To what extent should a regulator consider its own media management as being more important than deliberating the virtue and relevance of the information itself?
- Is it appropriate for the regulator responsible for Freedom of Information to use contentious exemptions in the law to obfuscate its own processes?
- To what extent does the regulator rely on technical expertise in its deliberations and does it have appropriate technical resources at its disposal?
Getting it right for the future
Successive Commissioners have told us that civil society has the "luxury" of freedom to act and speak however we choose without legislative restriction. They argue that they must retain an impartiality and detachment that prevents them for taking an advocacy position on issues. This is not our reading of the Data Protection Act, nor is it an interpretation made by many regulators.
However if we are to accept that the ICO must maintain judicial standards of behaviour then the machinations underlined by the latest disclosure are completely unacceptable.
Endnotes:
For more background on the Internet Eyes game see:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 28/9/2011
Back to the Future - UK CCTV debate stuck in time loop - 11/7/2011
Imagine if you had a time machine and you could travel back to the UK in the 1990s. Back then there was a banking crisis [1], a Conservative government and CCTV cameras were being put up all over the UK. So what's changed over the last 20 years?
With regards to political debate and public awareness of the issues surrounding surveillance cameras it seems very little. Come with us now on a journey of discovery as we leap backwards and forwards in time to present the Then and the Now of CCTV in the UK.
A Code of Practice for CCTV - NOW
One of the "new" ideas touted by the government in 2011 is a Code of Practice for surveillance cameras. On 27th June a Written Answer from the Home Office was published in response to a question about the government’s policy on CCTV [2]:
Julie Hilling: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what her policy is on the use of CCTV cameras.
James Brokenshire (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Home Office): The Government recognises the importance of CCTV in preventing and detecting crime and supports its use by communities. The Government also acknowledges that continued use of CCTV requires the support of the public and public confidence that systems are being used appropriately.
Accordingly, we intend to introduce a Code of Practice for Surveillance Cameras and appoint a Surveillance Camera Commissioner.
[CCTV Cameras, Home Department, Written answers and statements, 27 June 2011 - Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 27 June 2011, c576W)]
A Code of Practice for CCTV - THEN
Meanwhile back in July 1994 during a debate on 'Crime Prevention (New Technology)' [3], Home Secretary Michael Howard was asked whether the government of the day agreed with the need for a CCTV Code of Practice:
Mr. Bennett: Although video cameras in shopping areas and housing estates can be a useful way to deter crime and catching criminals, will the Minister accept that there is now a need for a code of practice governing who should have access to the cameras and the purposes to which they can put the information gained from them?
Mr. Howard: That matter is currently under consideration by the Association of Chief Police Officers, and I want to await the results of its deliberations before deciding whether any action needs to be taken. I am in no doubt at all of the contribution that CCTV can make to the fight against crime.
['Crime Prevention (New Technology)' - HC Deb 07 July 1994 vol 246 cc440-1]
Did Mr Bennet and Mr Howard travel from 1994 back to the future and steal the idea from 2011? Or did the government of 2011 just rehash an old idea? It is worth noting that the 1994 guidance document 'CCTV Closed Circuit Television: Looking out for you' [4] was put together after deliberations from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and in the 2011 Protection of Freedoms Bill the first organisation that the Secretary of State must consult in preparing a CCTV Code is ACPO. It is also worth noting that MPs past and present seem to have no doubt in CCTV's crime-fighting credentials despite all evidence being to the contrary (see 'CCTV Research Then/Now' below).
"We need more CCTV" - NOW
Also on the 27th June during Home Department questions [5] Philip Davies MP asked Home Office Minister Brokenshire if it was time for more cameras not less:
Philip Davies: Does the Minister accept that CCTV evidence was crucial in eventually bringing Levi Bellfield to justice for the murder of Milly Dowler, and is that not a timely reminder that we should be making it easier, not harder, for the police to use CCTV, and that we need more CCTV, not less?
James Brokenshire (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Home Office): I certainly recognise the value of CCTV, but we must be careful to ensure that there is no loss of trust and confidence in its use among communities throughout the country. We have learned what can happen in such circumstances from the experience in Birmingham, and in light of that, Sara Thornton, chief constable of Thames Valley Police, produced a report that underlined that accountability, consultation and transparency must be core considerations. That is precisely what we are reflecting in our approach.
[CCTV Cameras, Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department, House of Commons debate, 27 June 2011 - Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 27 June 2011, c594)]
"We need more CCTV" / Down with Civil Liberties - THEN
Back in April 1994 during a debate on 'Closed Circuit Television' [6] it was Malcolm Moss MP who asked the Home Secretary if it was not the case that people want more cameras not less:
Mr. Moss: Can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that he will not be distracted by civil liberties objections to the installation of closed-circuit television, such as that proposed in the towns of Wisbech and March in my constituency? Is it not the case that people want more cameras and less crime, not the other way around?
Mr. Howard: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and I can give him the confirmation for which he asks. I believe that closed-circuit television has an important part to play in both crime prevention and crime detection.
[Closed Circuit Television - HC Deb 21 April 1994 vol 241 c1033]
"We need more CCTV" / Down with Civil Liberties - THEN AGAIN
Clearly Mr Moss was very much on script when he raised the above question - a script apparently stolen from 2011 using a parliamentary time-machine no doubt at the tax-payers expense! At least they got to recycle the script again - in July 1994 during the 'Crime Prevention (New Technology)' debate when Simon Coombs MP fired almost exactly the same question to the Home Secretary:
Mr. Coombs: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that closed circuit television surveillance schemes, many of which have been funded by the urban fund and by the safer cities campaign, have significantly helped to reduce crime in the precincts and car parks of our inner cities and towns? Does he agree that people want more cameras and less crime—not the other way round, as suggested by some civil liberties groups?
Mr. Howard: I entirely agree. My hon. Friend the Minister of State launched a new CCTV scheme in the centre of Liverpool just a couple of days ago. I think that CCTV can make a significant contribution to the fight against crime. We certainly want to encourage its spread.
[Crime Prevention (New Technology) - HC Deb 07 July 1994 vol 246 cc440-1]
"We need more CCTV" / Down with Civil Liberties variants - NOW
Not to be outdone, the calls for more CCTV and less whingeing about civil liberties is a common theme used by MPs in the twenty first century. In a September 2010 debate on 'Crime and Policing' [7], former Home Secretary Alan Johnson ripped apart civil liberties concerns with regards CCTV by quoting another MP in a local paper saying that CCTV might have prevented an attack:
Alan Johnson: I support CCTV and reject the argument that it offends civil liberties. Indeed, it protects the civil liberties of our citizens-and, as we have seen recently, those of the occasional cat dropped in a wheelie bin. I agree with the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, Nick Herbert, who, in 2007, wrote this-it is excellent-in his local newspaper:
"I had been shown a community centre on a council estate that had been burned
down in an arson attack... If only there had been CCTV, the attack might have been
prevented or the perpetrator caught.... to those who claim that this all heralds a Big
Brother society, I say, why should innocent people worry that someone is watching
out for their safety?"
The right hon. Gentleman spoke for Britain then. The vast majority of the population would support what he said, although sadly it is not the view of the pseudo-libertarian Government of whom he is now a member.
[Crime and Policing, House of Commons debate, 8 September 2010]
In the same September 2010 debate Siobhain McDonagh MP claimed that all 65,390 [8] of her constituents in Mitcham/Morden, South London want more CCTV:
Siobhain McDonagh:
[...]
I have never met a constituent who has told me that the police have reduced our civil rights; my constituents want to see more effective ways of dealing with antisocial behaviour. I have never met a constituent who wanted to get rid of CCTV; all my constituents want more, because it makes them feel safe and confident.
[Crime and Policing, House of Commons debate, 8 September 2010]
It seems highly unlikely that Ms McDonagh actually spoke to all 65,390 of her constituents individually and far more likely that she has simply used the implied consent model to magically convert silence into consent.
Call for less CCTV red tape - NOW
Another recurring theme in the 27th June Home Department questions debate was the amount of red tape allegedly slowing down (!) the installation of CCTV cameras. John Woodcock MP, Wayne David MP and Peter Bone MP all called on the Home Office to make it easier to install cameras:
John Woodcock: May I respectfully suggest that the Minister should [...] inform the House why 11 pieces of red tape have to be gone through before anyone can even consider installing fresh ones?
James Brokenshire (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Home Office): As I have said, I welcome the use of CCTV. It can be important in preventing and detecting crime, and I am certainly willing to discuss the issue further outside the Chamber and to talk about the impact CCTV is clearly making in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I would also say to him, however, that when his party was in government it published a CCTV strategy that included 44 separate recommendations—including that a body with responsibility for the governance of the use of CCTV in this country should be established—so quite a lot of regulation was put in place by his own Government.
Wayne David: I hear what the Minister says about CCTV, but why does he not put his rhetoric into practice by making it simpler for communities and councils to have CCTV?
[…]
Peter Bone: I thought it was a core principle of this Government that we were going to do away with unnecessary red tape, but it appears that we are creating more. What regulations are we doing away with in bringing this one in?
[CCTV Cameras, Oral Answers to Questions — Home Department, House of Commons debate, 27 June 2011 - Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 27 June 2011, c594)]
Calls for less CCTV red tape - THEN
Back in April 1994 during a 'Closed Circuit Television' debate it was David Trimble MP who complained about delays to the roll-out of surveillance cameras – then blamed on red tape in the name of research:
Mr. Trimble: Surely it has been established clearly that the installation of closed-circuit televisions in town centres and commercial areas can contribute powerfully to deterring crime and to apprehending criminals. We do not need further studies and experiments. Should the Government not now prepare to help businesses and local authorities nationwide to use closed-circuit televisions?
Mr. Howard: There is no question of any research being intended to hold up the installation of closed-circuit television—quite the contrary. We are doing everything we can to encourage local authorities, businesses and others to help with the installation of closed circuit television. We shall shortly publish a code of practice that will ensure that such television is sited as effectively as possible. I entirely agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman's question.
[Closed Circuit Television - HC Deb 21 April 1994 vol 241 c1033]
Here Michael Howard manages to throw in a mention of the CCTV Code of Practice that he stole from 2011 at the same time as agreeing with Mr Trimble's dislike of CCTV evaluations.
Back in the 1990s as the massive expansion of CCTV in the UK began there was little independent research into the effectiveness of cameras.
CCTV Research - THEN
In October 1994 Alun Michael MP received a Written Answer from the Home Office with regard to research into the use of CCTV [9]:
Mr. Michael: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list the research being undertaken by or on behalf of his Department into the use of closed-circuit television, including the subject matter of such research; who is undertaking the work; and when a report on each study is due to be provided to his Department.
Mr. Maclean: The Home Office police research group is currently carrying out a study of closed-circuit television systems in town centres with the aim of identifying the characteristics of schemes which make an effective contribution to the control of crime and operational policing generally. A report will be available by Easter 1995.
[Closed-circuit Television - Written Answers — October 25, 1994 - HC Deb 25 October 1994 vol 248 c516W]
The research referred to above was 'CCTV in Town Centres: Three Case Studies' [10] by Ben Brown which was finally published in December 1995. This study was singled out by Clive Norris & Gary Armstrong in their 1999 book 'The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV' [11], in which they point out: "This was not, it should be noted, a full-scale, independent or thorough evaluation". They go on to say:
Significantly, it was also to draw on the findings of research commissioned by the Home Office's Police Research Group, at a cost of £20,536 from Honess and Charman of Michael and Associates, into the effectiveness of CCTV in Birmingham City Centre. The findings of this study were not good news to those who believed CCTV to be the silver bullet of crime control. It found CCTV had little impact on the crimes that most concern the public. Robbery and theft from the person continued to rise and there was no significant change in the rates for wounding and assault (Brown 1995: 34–6). Moreover, there was evidence of ‘some displacement of offending into thefts from vehicles since the installation of the cameras’, and this was even more marked for robbery
[The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV, Chapter 4]
Sexing up CCTV research – THEN
Norris and Armstrong explain how the 1995 Home Office press release [12] launching the study made no mention of any negative findings. Instead it trumpeted:
Closed circuit television is cracking crime up and down the country, a Home Office report shows today. The report examines how the police are using CCTV to beat crime and disorder in Newcastle, Birmingham and King's Lynn town centres. It reveals:
- Burglaries down by 56% and vandalism down by 34 percent in Central Newcastle
[…]
- 94 percent public support for CCTV systems
- and little displacement of crime and in Newcastle positive effects of areas neighbouring CCTV zones.
[CCTV proves a winner in cracking crime – Home Office Press Release 1995]
Sexing up CCTV research – NOW
In June 2008 then Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) on 'Security and Liberty' [13] in which he recycled the 1995 press release to promote CCTV:
In central Newcastle, after CCTV was installed, burglaries fell by 56 per cent, criminal damage by 34 per cent, and theft by 11 per cent.
[Security and Liberty – Gordon Brown speech IPPR 2008]
What both Gordon Brown in 2008 and Ben Brown in 1995 failed to mention was that overall CCTV had an "undesirable effect" in Newcastle, as described in Home Office Study 252 [14] in 2002, which showed that total crime fell by 21.6% in the area with cameras but by 29.7% in the area where there were no cameras.
Sexing up CCTV research – THEN
Back in 1995 the press release for the 'CCTV in Town Centres: Three Case Studies' report included a gushing pro CCTV quote from Home Office Minister David McLean:
CCTV is now one of the best crime-cracking tools the police have. They are using it to catch thieves, thugs and muggers, to prevent crime and focus police resources more effectively. That is why we launched a competition for £15 million of funding in November. The latest figures show the largest ever fall in recorded crime over a two-year period. I am convinced that CCTV has a role in helping police turn the tables against the criminals. This report should encourage everyone thinking of putting forward private funding or proposal to us.
[CCTV proves a winner in cracking crime – Home Office Press Release 1995]
Norris and Armstrong suggest why it is that the study was not published until 28th December 1995 despite it being dated November 1995 and originally due to be published much earlier in the year, they wrote:
It seems probable that, despite the Minister's gloss, publication was timed so that it was distanced from the Home Secretary's announcement in November of the decision to commit another £15 million of public money on expanding CCTV. And, of course, launching a report in the week between Christmas and New Year is certainly one way of ensuring little public or political reaction.
[The Maximum Surveillance Society: The Rise of CCTV, Chapter 4]
Sexing up CCTV research – NOW
A similar delay in publication seems to have occurred with the most recent and comprehensive evaluation of CCTV – the Campbell Collaboration Study [15] of 2008 which was commissioned by the Home Office. In 2008 there were two parliamentary inquiries into surveillance in the UK: the Home Affairs Committee's 'A Surveillance Society?' [16] which reported its findings in May 2008 and the Constitution Committee's 'Surveillance: Citizens and the State' [17] which reported in February 2009. It was not until March 2009, after both inquiries were fully concluded, that then Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker announced that the Campbell Collaboration Study had been published.
Coaker told MPs in a Westminster Hall debate on 'A Surveillance Society' [18] that:
[...] the Campbell Collaboration has produced a report on research conducted by the National Police Improvement Agency on the effect of closed circuit television on crime. It was published on 2 December 2008, and it may be of interest to the House. I shall read the text of the review:
"Results of this review indicate that CCTV"—
this shows that I am not being biased; I could have missed out this word, but I shall not—
"has a modest but significant desirable effect on crime, is most effective in reducing crime in car parks, is most effective when targeted at vehicle crimes (largely a function of the successful car park schemes), and is more effective in reducing crime in the United Kingdom than in other countries."
[A Surveillance Society? - Westminster Hall debate, 19 March 2009]
Coaker here quoted from the synopsis of the report which by including results from car parks states that CCTV has a modest effect on crime. Perhaps more relevant to most people's expectations of CCTV is the following in the 'Reviewers’ conclusions' section:
[...] the evaluations of CCTV schemes in city and town centers and public housing [...] as well as those focused on public transport, did not have a significant effect on crime.
[Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime, Campbell Collaboration, 2008, p19]
Reluctance to collect crime data – THEN
Not only have politicians shied away from inconvenient evidence relating to CCTV, often they have just decided not to collect the data at all - as the answer to a question from Bob Dunn MP in December 1993 [19] demonstrates:
Mr. Dunn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will publish crime figures for those local authorities which have taken steps to install security cameras for the 12 months prior to and after installation;
(2) which local authorities have, or are considering the installation of, security cameras in their town centres, in association with the police.
Mr. Charles Wardle: This information is not available.
[Security Cameras - HC Deb 06 December 1993 vol 234 c7W 7W]
Reluctance to collect crime data – NOW
This same reluctance is still evident in 2011. In East Oxford in 2009 three wireless CCTV cameras were installed along the Cowley Road. After a campaign against the cameras the council / police agreed to a two year trial to evaluate their effectiveness. The trial was due to complete in January 2011, but when Oxford City Council was contacted for results [20] they first denied that there ever was a trial and then admitted that the trial had been cancelled at a closed and unminuted meeting of the Oxford Safer Communities Partnership in June 2009.
When a local paper in Oxford contacted the police for crime figures in May [21] they were told that the crime figures were too expensive to find, the paper reported that:
Police who battled for years to get CCTV in Oxford’s Cowley Road have refused to say whether the cameras have helped cut crime in the street.
[CCTV crime figure ‘too expensive to find’ - Oxford Mail 5th May 2011]
A subsequent Oxford Mail article last week [22] reported that a senior police office had told the newspaper that the cameras were causing displacement of drug dealing into side streets rather than preventing or solving crime, the article states:
East Oxford Insp Marc Tarbit said the three CCTV cameras had not had a noticeable impact on the level of drug-dealing in the area but said officers were tackling the issue.
[CCTV 'pushing drug dealing off Cowley Road but into side streets' – Oxford Mail 4th July 2011]
Public awareness – NOW
Is it any wonder that given all of the double dealing and repetitive nature of political discourse with regard to surveillance cameras that much of the public look elsewhere for proof of CCTV's effectiveness? Following the cancellation of the Oxford trial and the police refusal to release crime data a letter appeared in the Oxford Mail on 17th May entitled 'CCTV is a deterrent' [23], the letter stated:
If proof is needed of the value of cameras the evidence is before your very eyes – just watch TV.
[CCTV is a deterrent - Oxford Mail letters 17th May 2011]
Conclusions
So what can be learnt from the above comparison of THEN and NOW with relation to surveillance cameras? Firstly it shows that despite 20 years of shenanigans politicians have not yet won the debate over CCTV – their constant need to claim that everyone loves CCTV reveals their ongoing insecurity and that there is still a battle to be won. It also shows that only a well informed public can actually fight the spread of the surveillance state - it is up to those of us that can see beyond the political spin to keep the state at bay. If we do nothing now we can't guarantee that a DeLorian time machine [24] will be invented any time soon that let's us travel back to the future to remove the surveillance state that the politicians are busily creating around us.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 11/7/2011
Royston's ANPR ''Ring of Steel'' - the shape of things to come? - 13/6/2011
Plate image by antwelm
No CCTV [1] has teamed up with Privacy International [2] and Big Brother Watch [3] to challenge the legality of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera network in the UK. A complaint [4] has been sent to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) against a so-called ANPR "Ring of Steel" that is being constructed around the town of Royston in Hertfordshire - but for Royston read any town in the UK.
Background
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has constructed a network of cameras across the country without any public or parliamentary debate. These cameras record the number plate of each and every vehicle that passes, sometimes taking a photograph of the car and its occupants. The number plate is then compared to a "hotlist" of vehicles of interest, and whether or not the plate is on that list (ie a "hit"), all information gathered is stored for between two and five years. A Hertfordshire Police Authority report [5] reveals the details of the data retention periods:
Currently number plate pictures are held for 2 years. Car pictures are held for 90 days. "Hits" information on text and number pictures are held for 5 years and car pictures are held for 2 years.
['Final report of the Topic Group on Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Technology use within Hertfordshire Constabulary' , p9]
The data collected from number plate cameras can be linked to multiple databases such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) database and the Motor Insurance Database Application System (MIDAS) which in turn can be used to identify the owner of the vehicle. The resulting database of vehicle movements can then be data-mined by the police to look for patterns or track individuals. The police are at great pains to state that they do not target law abiding motorists, but the system has the potential to be a mass surveillance tool and if the police are not interested in motorists who are not on hotlists then it begs the question why do they gather this information.
The National Policing Improvement Agency(NPIA)'s ANPR web page [6] states that:
At the end of March 2011, the NADC was receiving approximately 15 million reads per day, with over 11 billion vehicle sightings stored. This body of information on vehicle movements is key to the value of ANPR.
[NPIA's Automatic Number Plate Recognition web page]
Data Mining
The data collected from ANPR cameras is stored in databases at the local police force level, known as Back Office Facility (BOF), and also in a national database called the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC) [6]. Up until now many campaign groups have focused their criticisms largely on the national database but the complaint by No CCTV and co also highlights issues with the local databases. It is the local BOF databases that can be used alongside data mining tools such as those developed by Northgate Public Services [7].
Our complaint quotes Northgate Public Services' brochure 'The ANPR Intelligence Dividend' [8], which states:
Northgate’s Advanced Data Miner enhancement for BOF 2.3 allows users (not just analysts) to access the 2% of reads that result in hits, but more importantly, to access the 98% that offer intelligent leads. A senior investigating officer on a major crime will be very interested in that 98% because they will be able to say "don’t tell me what I now, tell me what I don’t know".
['The ANPR Intelligence Dividend - Northgate BOF 2.3 Advanced Data Miner', p1]
The original rhetoric used to sell number plate cameras was that they could "deny criminals the use of the road", but the involvement of Northgate Public Services shows that the ANPR network is potentially about much more than spotting uninsured drivers and could easily be used as a mass surveillance tool.
More data-mining and data-sharing
The latest ACPO ANPR Strategy document [9] points out that the police have aspirations to move beyond the current National ANPR Infrastructure (NAI), signaling that perhaps data sharing between force Back Office Facility systems may make the national data centre superfluous. The Strategy states:
- The capabilities of the analytical tools provided by the current BOF product have been overtaken by the "out-of-the-box" functionality of other software products. For example, 37 forces have purchased i2 which offers considerably better tools and which could be used much more effectively than the BOF Data Miner;
- Some forces are looking to be able to process more "reads" than the current BOF system can handle;
- The thinking about the potential use and benefits of NADC has moved on and it is now clear that many of the original objectives of the NADC can be achieved more cheaply and effectively by other means (eg BOF to BOF exchange).
- [ACPO 'ANPR Strategy for the Police Service – 2010-2013', Appendix A - 'Re-evaluation of the scope of the NAI', page 15]
Key Complaint Issues
The ICO complaint looks at several issues relating to Royston's "ring of steel" including the lawfulness of the cameras, the vague and unproven specified purposes of the scheme, the retention of the information collected and whether such a mass surveillance system is acceptable or necessary in a democratic society. The ICO [10] is the UK body responsible for administering the Data Protection Act [11].
The complaint points out that number plate cameras do not meet the lawfulness requirement that underpins the Data Protection Act on the grounds that:
- ANPR has no statutory framework
- if a statutory framework were introduced now this could not have the effect of legalising previous use of ANPR as legislation cannot be applied retrospectively
- the specified purposes for the Royston ANPR cameras do not meet the "lawful justification or excuse" requirement of lawfulness
- even with a statutory framework and/or a "lawful justification or excuse" the use of ANPR would still be unlawful as it constitutes a major assault on our common law foundations and the Rule of Law
- ['Royston ANPR "ring of steel"' Complaint, page 4]
No place in a democracy
The national ANPR network is the biggest surveillance network that the public has never heard of. The complaint recounts some of the reasons given for a "ring of steel" around the small town of Royston. For instance Inspector Andy Piper of Hertfordshire Constabulary told a March 2010 North Hertfordshire District Council meeting [12] that:
The cameras were needed for Royston as it was in a location of importance on the borders of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, with people from those counties and from Bedfordshire also travelling through the area.
[Minutes of Wednesday 17th March 2010 Royston and District Committee]
The complaint points out that:
It is hard to see how the fact that people from neighbouring counties might travel through an area would mean that it is necessary in a democratic society to record and store details of all such movements and retain personal data in the form of the car photo for between 90 days and five years and the license plate photo in a centralised database for between two and five years.
In the past totalitarian regimes instituted road blocks to check citizens' papers at a series of internal borders. The police use of ANPR as a mass surveillance tool to record the movements of all cars and the justification given by Hertfordshire Constabulary for a ring of cameras around Royston such that "no vehicle could enter or leave Royston without being recorded by a camera" because the town is in "a location of importance on the borders of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire" is surely equivalent to an automated checkpoint system that cannot be necessary in a democratic society to meet any of the purposes set out by Hertfordshire Constabulary.
['Royston ANPR "ring of steel"' Complaint, page 12]
Royston is a town with a warning
The idea of a surveillance "ring of steel" is not new – such systems have appeared in towns and cities from London to Bradford in the last decade. But what is new is the acceptability of the use of a phrase first coined to describe an extreme anti-terrorism measure which now simply constitutes standard police operations.
A casual internet search reveals that these schemes are popping up around the country, with no public debate about the use of such an indiscriminate and unwarranted mass surveillance system.
Last year a network of 169 ANPR cameras was created to encircle the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook areas of Birmingham as part of "Project Champion, which was funded by the Association of Chief Police Officers Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO – TAM). Thankfully a campaign run by Steve Jolly [13] succeeded in getting the cameras removed. And active dissent is growing - in Northern Ireland a campaign 'Big Brother is Watching' [14] has been set up to fight the expanding network of ANPR cameras there, and there are plans to organise a public meeting and form a campaign in Royston.
We must not be complacent – only a well-informed, vigilant and active public can guard against the excesses of state power. The Royston complaint is only the first step - all those concerned by the national ANPR network must take part in the struggle ahead.
The full complaint can be downloaded from:
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/materials/docs/Royston_Ring_of_Steel_ANPR_Complaint.pdf
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 13/6/2011
No CCTV's formal response to Surveillance Camera Code Con - 2/6/2011
[ No CCTV's response may be downloaded in pdf format here ]
The following was submitted in response to the Home Office's Consultation on a Code of Practice relating to Surveillance Cameras (see http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/consultations/cons-2011-cctv/)
Summary
We submit that within the context of the protection of freedoms the proposed Surveillance Cameras Code of Practice is deeply flawed in both content and concept. We submit that the aims of such a Code are to entrench and expand the use of surveillance, and that this is the only role this proposed Code will serve.
Full Response
Having given substantive consideration to the consultation document for the proposed Surveillance Cameras Code of Practice as a whole, it appears that the Code is intended to be little more than a re-branding of the National CCTV Strategy [1] produced by the Home Office/Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2007. The Home Office might claim that this is not necessarily a bad thing but it is clearly disingenuous to re-write the CCTV Strategy as a code of practice enacted by a piece of legislation entitled the Protection of Freedoms.
The similarity between the consultation document and the National CCTV Strategy was highlighted to the Protection of Freedoms Public Bill Committee by our colleague Steve Jolly in his written [2] evidence to them. The table below illustrates a few of the similarities between the proposed Code consultation document and the National CCTV Strategy.
| 2007 Strategy | 2011 Code Consultation |
|---|
Recommendation 2:
"Agree on digital CCTV standards and digital video formats for public space CCTV, police, and CJS use"
|
Page 14:
"The Government has no intention of requiring that all users must upgrade their systems, but the adoption of industry standards would not only provide assurance for customers that their systems would operate as claimed;"
|
Recommendation 3:
"Seek to influence national and international CCTV standards".
|
Page 14:
"The Government would therefore wish to engage with manufacturers businesses and users on the merits and feasibility of developing a range of technical standards for equipment, at national or international level"
|
Recommendation 27:
"Develop CCTV image retention and disclosure guidance."
|
Page 15:
"One area in which it may be particularly helpful for the new Code to provide further or refined guidance is in relation to recommended data retention periods"
|
Recommendation 24:
"Protocols should be developed allowing the use of Airwave radio in town centre CCTV control rooms and the sharing of intelligence between the Police and Town Centre CCTV monitoring staff."
|
Page 15:
"Guidance on data sharing provisions and restrictions in the context of surveillance camera systems is likely also to be of value."
|
Recommendation 17:
"Develop minimum training requirements and ultimately an accredited training programme for all those engaged in CCTV."
|
Page 14:
"As well as the technical aspects the concept of standards could also be extended to the operation of CCTV systems (e.g. the standards expected of staff, training etc.)."
|
It is our view that the regulation of surveillance cameras via voluntary codes does not address the core issues of removal of personal freedom, anonymity and other rights. All such regulation does is to endorse acceptance of CCTV by formalising its "proper use", leaving no room for the rejection of such technology. Indeed the consultation document states that this is the aim of the proposed Code: "The initial focus is the development of a new, comprehensive, Code of Practice designed to promote clarity and consistency in the future use of such technology."
The Ministerial Forward to the consultation document states: "We are committed to restoring and preserving our historic and valued traditions of freedom and fairness." This is a laudable aim, but unfortunately the rest of the document pays no heed to this commitment. The proposed Code outlined in the consultation document is concerned with how to administrate and manage the surveillance state, not how to restrict or control it.
If the government wishes to restore and preserve freedoms then the starting point for any Surveillance Cameras Code should be to demand evidence based decision making and to stress that surveillance cameras should only be used as a last resort in circumstances where evidence shows that cameras will be an effective tool.
To understand how such a Code might look, the government need only look to Canada, where the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) has published the 'OPC Guidelines for the Use of Video Surveillance of Public Places by Police and Law Enforcement Authorities' [3]. The OPC guidelines contain fifteen key points to be considered before using surveillance cameras. The first guideline states that:
"Video surveillance should only be deployed to address a real, pressing and substantial problem."
The first OPC guideline goes on to place stringent requirements that should be met, it states:
"Accordingly, concrete evidence of the problem to be addressed is needed. This should include real evidence of risks, dangers, crime rates, etc. Specific and verifiable reports of incidents of crime, public safety concerns or other compelling circumstances are needed, not just anecdotal evidence or speculation."
The second OPC guideline states: "Video surveillance should be viewed as an exceptional step, only to be taken in the absence of a less privacy-invasive alternative."
In addition, in each of the Canadian provinces the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) has produced guidelines for the use of cameras which also take a strong stance with regard to protection of freedoms. For example the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia has produced a set of 'Public Surveillance System Privacy Guidelines' [4]. In the preamble to the British Columbian guidelines it states:
"It is not sufficient to say that citizens need not fear surveillance if they have nothing to hide. This misses the point. […] The right to privacy must not be eroded simply because there is supposedly nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide."
By contrast the existing UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) CCTV Code of Practice [5] only contains a passing mention of the impact of cameras on personal freedoms 11 and a weak plea in section 4 'Deciding whether to use CCTV or continue using CCTV' to consider whether camera surveillance is appropriate, when it states:
"You should carefully consider whether to use it; the fact that it is possible, affordable or has public support should not be the primary motivating factor. You should take into account what benefits can be gained, whether better solutions exist, and what effect it may have on individuals."
The 'Pre-planning' section of the Surveillance Cameras Code consultation document does little to strengthen the existing guidance in section 4 of the ICO Code.
The Foreword to the ICO Code points out that the objective of the Code is "helping ensure that good practice standards are adopted by those who operate CCTV. If they follow its provisions this not only helps them remain within the law but fosters public confidence by demonstrating that they take their responsibilities seriously." This very much echoes the objectives laid out in the consultation document for the proposed Surveillance Cameras Code.
Clearly the powers of the ICO are insufficient to protect people from state (or indeed non-state) surveillance, which then begs the rhetorical question as to whether the Data Protection Act itself is fit for purpose.
Despite the strong rhetoric that features in the various Canadian video surveillance guidelines, there are still concerns in Canada that cameras are being installed without proven need or proper consultation. Referring to the Canadian guidelines in his book 'Panoptic Dreams - Streetscape Video Surveillance in Canada', Sean P. Hier writes: "the principles informing the guidelines are neither as clear nor as comprehensive as they could be, leaving them open to multiple interpretations and adaptations."
If the government is serious about protecting freedoms then they should improve upon the Canadian guidelines, seeking to strengthen the principles upon which they are based.
The Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera network that has been constructed across the country by ACPO is of great concern. The system has been introduced without proper, if any, debate and the implications of such mass surveillance have not been considered. Simply adding ANPR cameras to the definition of surveillance cameras that will be covered by the proposed Code does not begin to address the impact on freedoms that this network represents.
We are concerned that there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to consult with civil liberties groups or concerned members of the public in preparing a Surveillance Cameras Code, but there is a requirement to consult with the Association of Chief Police Officers. It seems strange that a Code claiming to protect freedoms will need to be checked by one of the very bodies that many consider seeks to curtail those freedoms.
We would hope that a Surveillance Cameras Code of Practice would not be about giving law enforcement agencies unhampered use of cameras just so long as they play the prevention or detection of crime card. However, the Ministerial Foreword in the Code consultation document states:
"We do not intend therefore, that anything in our proposals should hamper the ability of the law enforcement agencies or any other organisation, to use such technology [surveillance cameras] as necessary to prevent or detect crime, or otherwise help to ensure the safety and security of individuals. What is important is that such use is reasonable, justifiable and transparent so that citizens in turn, feel properly informed about, and able to support, the security measures that are in place."
It is our view that the proposed Surveillance Cameras Code will do nothing to protect the freedoms of the people of this country, rather by adding another voluntary code to the already existing codes it will simply serve to increase confusion and allow the erosion of freedoms to continue.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 2/6/2011
No CCTV's submission to the Protection of Freedoms Bill Committee - 19/5/2011
[ No CCTV's submission may be downloaded in pdf format here ]
The following was submitted as evidence to the Public Bill Committee on the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The Committee website is at:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/protectionoffreedoms/committees/houseofcommonspublicbillcommitteeontheprotectionoffreedomsbill201011.html
Summary
The Protection of Freedoms Bill does not address core issues of lost personal freedoms or the wider impact that surveillance cameras have on society. The Bill should have been an opportunity for a detailed and informed debate on such issues and how they will affect people's lives – but so far no such debate has emerged. The Bill contains no new thinking – the voluntary code model of camera regulation has been the favoured approach since the 1990s. The Bill purports to protect freedoms and upon closer scrutiny the freedom most protected is the freedom of the state to surveill its citizens. The coalition government have missed an opportunity to begin to restore lost freedoms to the people of this country.
Full Submission
This submission is focussed on Chapter 1, Part 2 of the Bill - the 'Regulation of CCTV and other surveillance camera technology' and briefly the amendments to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 in Part 2, Chapter 2 'Authorisations requiring judicial approval'.
The spread of surveillance cameras across the country has taken place since the 1990s with little or no meaningful debate. Successive studies, many prepared for the Home Office, have shown that:
- CCTV cameras do not deliver significant returns in terms of crime prevention or detection
- the public have a limited and inaccurate knowledge of the functions and capabilities of CCTV
The public's lack of knowledge has been exploited by many decision makers and CCTV has been offered as the solution to a plethora of problems allowing decision makers to "appear to be doing something". Security expert Bruce Schneier summed up this model of decision making in his essay 'The Difference Between Feeling and Reality in Security' [1], Schneier wrote:
there are two ways to make people feel more secure. The first is to make people actually more secure and hope they notice. The second is to make people feel more secure without making them actually more secure, and hope they don't notice.
CCTV has become the epitome of the latter. Ken Pease in his 1999 study of street lighting [2] wrote:
"for those exercising stewardship of public money, good evidence about effects should be necessary before money is spent, although one is tempted to ask where rigorous standards went in the headlong rush to CCTV deployment."
The Protection of Freedoms Bill was surely an opportunity to ensure that a meaningful and informed debate took place on the use of surveillance cameras, and that evidence based decision making replaced the emotive knee-jerk introduction of CCTV cameras that currently pervades.
The Impact Assessment [3] for the Bill states that it was introduced: "to progress the Government’s ambition to reduce the burden of the state on its citizens and to restore the balance between the Government’s duty to keep communities safe and protecting individual civil liberties".
In reality the Bill in relation to surveillance cameras has predominantly focussed on the misplaced faith in cameras in delivering community safety and it is hard to see how civil liberties are addressed at all. The Bill merely seeks to further regulate cameras via the introduction of another voluntary code of practice for surveillance cameras to be added to the Information Commissioner's voluntary code, local authorities' voluntary codes and various surveillance industry voluntary codes.
Regulation of CCTV via voluntary codes has been viewed as the favoured approach since the 1990s. In parliamentary debates of the time and in the 1994 Home Office report 'CCTV Closed Circuit Television: Looking out for you' [4] much emphasis was placed on such codes. The 1994 report stated with regard to local authority codes:
In order that CCTV systems are used efficiently, that public confidence is maintained, due attention is paid to issues of privacy and that integrity of systems is preserved, it is crucial that a code of practice is developed.
Little new thinking appears to have emerged in the interim and very little attention, if any, has been given to the wider implications of creating a Surveillance State. Most parliamentarians still appear to believe that the debate can be summed up as a simple choice of "cameras or crime". Leaving aside for a moment the ineffectiveness of CCTV as a crime prevention and detection tool, there are constitutional, philosophical and sociological issues that must be explored.
Regulation does not address the core issues of removal of personal freedom, anonymity and other rights. All regulation does is to endorse acceptance of CCTV by formalising its "proper use", leaving no room for the rejection of such technology. We share the view expressed by Desmond Browne QC, former Chairman of the Bar Council, that in a country with a strong common law tradition it is the common law principles which govern protection of our privacy that we should all be working to uphold [5].
To understand the impact that cameras have on society we can look back to the work of people like the Social Anthropologist Jane Jacobs who wrote 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' [6] in 1961. Jacobs wrote in relation to the way that towns and cities were being designed in America in the 60s, but her writings have resonance with regard to the over use of surveillance cameras today. Jacobs wrote:
The first thing to understand is that the public peace - the sidewalk and street peace - of cities is not kept primarily by the police, necessary as police are. It is kept by an intricate almost unconscious, network of voluntary controls and standards among the people themselves, and enforced by the people themselves.
This idea of a community of people interacting and having a sense of natural vigilance is what cameras destroy. Now people abdicate their responsibility to a machine or a faceless watcher that views the world via monitors rather than actually engaging with real people. When people stop interacting in the way that Jacobs describes, that in itself causes the very problems that the cameras are supposedly there to fix.
Our way of life in this country for hundreds of years has had at its core certain principles of Common Law and Equity such as the principle that you are free to do anything that isn't unlawful and the fundamental legal principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' .
Rejection of the principles that have underpinned this country in favour of the qualified rights model enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights has led to an erosion of civil liberties - as new technology that erodes freedoms is allowed to flourish exempted from the supposed protections by virtue of a claimed but rarely proven value in the "prevention or detection of crime". Civil Liberties are meant to protect the citizen from the excesses of the state - but when the state is constantly exempted from measures that are meant to protect citizens then citizens are dangerously exposed.
Advances in surveillance technology are creating an electronic Panopticon [7] in which citizens will come to feel that their every move is being recorded and analysed. The effect of this will be to create a society of behavioural uniformity. The law abiding citizen clearly stands to lose the most. As New York Times columnist William Safire put it [8]:
To be watched at all times, especially when doing nothing seriously wrong, is to be afflicted with a creepy feeling. That is what is felt by a convict in an always-lighted cell. It is the pervasive, inescapable feeling of being unfree.
We note that the Bill contains provisions to amend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), requiring judicial approval for directed surveillance and covert human intelligence sources. We believe that whilst this might slow down the authorisation procedure and discourage the more ludicrous headline grabbing uses of surveillance by local authorities it will do little else. Many of the problems surrounding RIPA stem from the fact that the general public was shocked to learn of the police-like powers that had already been granted to local authorities, which the publicity around RIPA merely highlighted. It is this quasi-police role of non-police bodies that should have been addressed.
The Bill does not address the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) camera network that has been constructed across the country by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). The ANPR network was built despite there being no public debate, no parliamentary debate, no primary legislation and no secondary legislation. This network of cameras represents one of the most radical changes to policing, freedom of movement and anonymity ever seen in this country.
In 2009 Geoffrey Cox, the MP for Torridge and West Devon was quoted in a Plymouth Herald article about the ANPR network [9]. He is quoted as saying:
It is a Big Brother state which assumes and suspects that everyone, at any time, might commit an offence and so gathers evidence against you in advance. [...] It is an unsettling symptom of something that has grown up without peoples' recognition, understanding and assent.
The police use of ANPR as a mass surveillance tool is equivalent to an automated checkpoint system that is reminiscent of road blocks instituted by totalitarian regimes to check citizens' papers at a series of internal borders.
The Bill merely inserts ANPR cameras along with CCTV into the definition of surveillance cameras in Clause 29(6), such that it will be subject to the proposed voluntary code of practice. This amounts to no more than a confirmation of the current situation.
Much of the discussion of surveillance cameras by parliamentarians refers to the widespread public support for CCTV. For instance in the Bill Committee Vernon Coaker MP referred to a memorandum submitted to the Committee by the European Vehicle Security Association (EVSA) [10], when he said: "The evidence put before us by the ESVA shows that the vast majority of the public are happy with ANPR" [11]. We hope that the Committee have had time to read the underlying surveys upon which the ESVA based this assertion. As you will have seen the surveys suffer from what Jason Ditton of the Scottish Centre for Criminology termed "skewed contextualising" [12] (whereby the question in a survey and the way it is asked influences the answer). In addition the thesis from which the second survey is derived states that: "Findings in the current study indicate that, although the majority of people indicate awareness of ANPR (i.e. 66%), they seem to have inadequate understanding of the aims and consequences of ANPR surveillance to make reasonable judgements about ANPR’s effectiveness in tackling crime." [13] What this example highlights is that it is all to easy to be misled by surveys that fail to capture the deeper issues at stake.
Only an informed public can be vigilant to the dangers of the surveillance state and the introduction of this Bill should have been used an opportunity to inform the public about these issues. Instead much of the discussion has focussed on ensuring "public confidence" so as to facilitate the continued expansion of camera surveillance and this public confidence will then be used to justify such expansion.
The content of the proposed Code of Practice for Surveillance Cameras, is not laid out in the Bill in any detail. The Law Society pointed out to the Bill Committee on Tuesday 22nd March that: "There is a very limited opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of those codes, and it seems to us that there ought to be a proper debate about where the balance should be and what those codes should contain." [14] The Bill allows for a surveillance cameras code to be introduced via secondary legislation. The code will pertain to the collection, retention and sharing of personal data, as defined by the Data Protection Act.
The 2009 Conservative Party report 'Reversing the rise of the surveillance state' [15] states:
Expanding the powers of the surveillance state through secondary legislation vests excessive power with Ministers, and constrains the scope for effective Parliamentary debate and scrutiny. A Conservative government would amend the Data Protection Act 1998 to ensure that any future scheme or proposals extending powers of data collection, sharing or retention must be enacted by primary legislation, to ensure maximum transparency and debate.
As one of the first pieces of legislation from a government that promised to reverse the rise of the surveillance state, along with a coalition partner supposedly committed to restoring freedoms, the Protection of Freedoms Bill does not bode well.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 19/5/2011
The Freedom Committee, CCTV / ANPR and the Manufacture of Consent - 2/5/2011
Minister demonstrates high trouser look to Coaker
On Tuesday 26th April the Protection of Freedoms Bill continued its passage through the House of Commons when a committee of MPs discussed the surveillance cameras portion of the Bill [1]. Back in March No CCTV created a list of dodgy phrases to look out for at the 2nd Reading of the Bill, which could be used to play our 2nd Reading BINGO game [2]. In the Committee, Labour MP and ex-Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker let rip with such a tirade of hackneyed stock phrases and poorly researched statements that one wonders whether Coaker read our BINGO card and thought that it was a parliamentary briefing. We counted 3 out of 5 of the entries on our BINGO card, but as it wasn't the 2nd Reading debate, Coaker was a participant and he didn't credit No CCTV even once - we are sorry but Coaker does not win a set of No CCTV stickers.
Coaker says CCTV solves murders
First up Coaker managed to read into the Committee's deliberations a quote from a submission to the Committee from the Local Government Group {LGG) [3]. This quote was itself a quote of a Daily Telegraph article [4] which was about a Metropolitan Police Study [5]. Coaker quoted the quote of the article about the study thus:
A Scotland Yard study [...] revealed that in 90 murder cases over a one year period CCTV was used in 86 investigations.
[Vernon Coaker, Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c329]
Anyone that has recently attended a No CCTV talk will know that the Daily Telegraph article that Coaker quoted second hand ('Seven of ten murders solved by CCTV', Daily Telegraph 1st January 2009) has been part of the media disinformation section of our talk. The Metropolitan Police internal report upon which the Telegraph article is based was released under the Freedom of Information Act in August 2010. It is just one page in length and far from a thorough evaluation - the study looked at the use of CCTV in homicide in 90 cases and says:
From the 86 cases where CCTV was available the SIO[Senior Investigating Officer] believed it added investigative value in 65 of these. This meant that where CCTV is available it assisted the investigation 76% of the time.
['CCTV in Homicide Investigations', Metropolitan Police Service Report]
Or to put it another way:
In 65 out of the 90 murder cases (about 72%) CCTV was viewed by police and a policeman in each case thinks it helped a bit.
A 2004 Home Office report 'Reviewing murder investigations: an analysis of progress reviews from six police forces' [6] stated that: "The majority of murder investigations are solved relatively soon after the offence and with limited investigative effort." The 2004 report does not place emphasis on the use of surveillance cameras and one of the six police forces featured in the report was – the Metropolitan Police.
It's what the public wants!
Back in March we predicted an MP would say that if there was even a suggestion of a reduction of CCTV their constituents would be furious – it's what the people want! Coaker had a good crack at this one but was clearly so excited at ticking off another BINGO line that he struggled to make any sense. Coaker said to the Committee:
[...] most of the public, as far as I can see, anecdotally — if the Minister chides me, I do not have research — are in favour of CCTV. I do not have people coming to me, saying, “Vernon, can you please make sure that you get rid of all these CCTV systems?” I have not had one. No doubt other Members will turn up and say that they have had one. Fine. I am sure we have all had one. I had someone come to see me about spaceships once. I am sure they exist, by the way. People come to see us about all sorts of things.
I have not had one person come to see me and say that the CCTV systems around Gedling or Nottingham are undermining their personal privacy or things in their neighbourhood. What I get—I have had loads, not only one—is loads of people demanding more CCTV in their areas.
[Vernon Coaker, Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c335]
What a corker from Coaker! He tells the Committee that anecdotally most people like surveillance cameras but he cannot produce any anecdotes to back up the claim and his empty CCTV postbag proves that spaceships are a bigger issue.
Coaker expanded upon the 'public love of CCTV' theme several times in the Committee. On suggesting that the proposed CCTV Code in the Bill "must" contain guidance about the "importance of CCTV to community safety and crime reduction", Coaker told Committee members that: "It is a bad move for those who want to be elected to say that the public are wrong". Here Coaker outlines one of the key axioms of party politics - always do what the public want as long as it's what you want and having previously made sure you've told them what it is they want.
Coaker also tried to show that the public love ANPR [Automatic Number Plate Recognition] cameras too, when he said: "The evidence put before us by the ESVA [European Vehicle Security Association] shows that the vast majority of the public are happy with ANPR". Coaker was here drawing on two polls quoted by the EVSA in a Memorandum they submitted [7] to the Committee.
ANPR poll wars
The first poll quoted by the ESVA was a Populus/AA on-line panel survey of 75,000 AA members in March 2009 [8], which asked the following question:
ANPR cameras are used in a variety of circumstances on the roads (e.g. monitoring traffic flow, managing the London congestion charge, helping authorities spot illegal vehicles, monitoring criminals). To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
"Knowing that ANPR cameras are used on the roads makes me feel safer and I believe is a useful tool."
This is the poll equivalent of "Mr X is giving away free money to people who like him - do you like Mr X?" A perfect example of what Jason Ditton of the Scottish Centre for Criminology calls "skewed contextualising" [9] (for more on this see 'Contextualisation' in No CCTV's report into a CCTV scheme in East Oxford [10] in 2007).
The ESVA is an associate parliamentary group which have declared funding [11] from a number of motor insurance and car security equipment companies; their Memorandum submitted to the Committee waxes lyrical about ANPR cameras, stating:
In ESVA’s view – the United Kingdom is now in the enviable position of having developed the most comprehensive ANPR network in the world – but perversely has perhaps the most ineffective vehicle number plate manufacturing and distribution regime in the world.
(The ESVA has been working with ITS [Intelligent Transport Society] (UK) [12] and the Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science [13] on a review of the vehicle registration mark system [14] which is used by ANPR cameras to identify cars. ITS is a public/private sector association with members who include CCTV and ANPR manufacturers.)
The second poll quoted by the EVSA is from a May 2009 edition of 'Police Review' which reports on the findings of doctoral research undertaken by Alina Haines at the University of Huddersfield in collaboration with West Yorkshire Police [15]. So Coaker is referencing an ESVA Memorandum that references a Police Review article that references a doctoral thesis. Coaker launders the already laundered research so that he can present ANPR as popular. If Coaker had read the doctoral research 'The Role of Automatic Number Plate Recognition Surveillance within Policing and Public Reassurance' he would have found that the results are far from conclusive.
The postal survey at the heart of the Haines/West Yorkshire Police Thesis was completed by 1573 people from Leeds 91.2% of whom were "White or White British", 64.7% of whom "stated they were drivers who owned their motor vehicle" and 41.6% of whom were retired (Haines points out that "this is a common 'feature' of postal surveys, as older or retired people tend to be more responsive"). Accompanying the survey was a covering letter which rather bizarrely offered respondents the opportunity to enter a 'Free Prize Draw'. The letter stated:
ANPR POLICE CAMERAS: HAVE YOUR SAY!
Tell us what you think and you enter a FREE PRIZE DRAW!
1st PRIZE: IPod Nano or £100 M&S vouchers
2nd Prize: IPod Shuffle or £50 M&S vouchers - 3rd Prize: £20 M&S vouchers
The covering letter also contained some introductory remarks that set the frame of reference for the survey:
Did you know ...
... what ANPR is?
* ANPR is a surveillance technology that reads a vehicle’s number plate and then checks it automatically against police information to identify vehicles and people wanted by the police.
... how it works?
* ANPR systems work with cameras which can be placed in police vehicles or could be fixed to existing CCTV cameras
* Unlike usual CCTV, ANPR cameras are placed on roads where vehicles can be monitored through their number plate
* ANPR cameras are not speed cameras
* Pictures of both the number plate and the car are taken
... what do the police use ANPR for?
* The police say that they use ANPR to reduce vehicle thefts, burglary and crime in general, but also to identify drivers without a licence and vehicles that are unregistered, untaxed, uninsured or without a valid MOT
* The police also use ANPR for more serious crimes, such as terrorism, murder, kidnapping and violent offences
... what do the police do with ANPR information?
* Track vehicle movements identifying wanted cars or known offenders
* Collect evidence for criminal investigations
* Store the information from 90 days for images to 2 years for number plates
... anything about ANPR in West Yorkshire?
* West Yorkshire Police have used ANPR since the late 90’s across the whole county
* The biggest systems of fixed ANPR cameras in West Yorkshire are in Leeds (recently installed, 2007) and Bradford City Centre (since 2004)
[Covering letter to 'ANPR POLICE CAMERAS: HAVE YOUR SAY!' opinion survey]
This survey, like the on-line Populus/AA survey referenced above, clearly suffers from skewed contextualising. The respondents are told that ANPR is used to reduce vehicle thefts, fight burglary/crime in general, identify drivers without a licence, identify unregistered/untaxed/uninsured/un-MOT-ed vehicles, as well as to fight terrorism, murder, kidnapping and violent offences. Given this introductory text it is no wonder that the sample from Leeds made up of mostly white people in which the retired were over-represented said they support police use of ANPR! Although the introductory text points out that the police "Store the information from 90 days for images to 2 years for number plates" what it does not make clear is that it is not just the number plates/images of uninsured/unregistered/criminal cars that they store, but the number plates/images of all drivers regardless of innocence or guilt and that this data can be mined and potentially shared in various ways if the police see fit. They also don't mention that the data is stored both locally in a West Yorkshire Police database (Back Office Facility (BOF)) and also in the National ANPR Data Centre Database (NADC) in Hendon.
Even with all of this skewing in the Haines/West Yorkshire Police survey there are still some interesting findings that Coaker's blanket statement of widespread public support for ANPR fails to represent. The Haines/West Yorkshire Police Thesis states:
Previous studies show that public attitudes to crime and the criminal justice system are influenced by the level of knowledge about these issues. More specifically, public acceptance of CCTV is based on limited and partly inaccurate knowledge about its functions and capabilities. Findings in the current study indicate that, although the majority of people indicate awareness of ANPR (i.e. 66%), they seem to have inadequate understanding of the aims and consequences of ANPR surveillance to make reasonable judgements about ANPR’s effectiveness in tackling crime.
['5.9.1. Factors influencing perceptions about ANPR', p218]
In other words an uninformed sample of people in Leeds when offered the chance to enter a prize draw and after being given a brief introduction to what the police claim are the benefits of ANPR - mostly said they support ANPR. But when these finding reached a Committee entrusted with detailed analysis of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, Coaker told the members that: "The evidence put before us by the ESVA shows that the vast majority of the public are happy with ANPR." This is democracy in action. Did anyone question Coaker on this claim? Of course not.
Coaker's selective memory loss
Coaker proposed an amendment to the Protection of Freedoms Bill that would require the government to establish an independent inquiry into the use of surveillance camera systems in England and Wales, this he said would: "establish an evidence base for what the Government are doing." Whilst at first glance this might look like a very reasonable amendment, it becomes clear when looking at it alongside Coaker's other amendments that he has presupposed that any such inquiry would show that CCTV was a jolly good thing. With his other amendments in mind Coaker's proposal sounds rather like Recommendation 11.4 of the 2007 National CCTV Strategy [16]: "Promote CCTV and its expansion by forming evidence based business cases" - i.e. the evidence should be fixed around the policy. To support his amendment Coaker told the Committee that he was just suggesting what the Constitutional Committee had suggested in 2009:
I am not alone in wanting an independent evidence base. In 2008-09, in its report 'Surveillance: Citizens and the State', the House of Lords Select Committee recommended that the Home Office commission an independent appraisal of the existing research evidence on the effectiveness of CCTV in preventing and detecting crime.
[Vernon Coaker, Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c324]
Coaker here has quite rightly quoted the Constitutional Committee [17], but what he seems to have forgotten is the response of the then government that was published in May 2009 [18]. Here is the relevant section of that response:
Recommendations relating to CCTV
Recommendation at paragraph 468
We recommend that the Home Office commission an independent appraisal of the existing research evidence on the effectiveness of CCTV in preventing, detecting and investigating crime. (Paragraph 82)
Government response
The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) is planning to undertake research into the effectiveness of CCTV. In addition a recent review of existing research, which was part funded by the Home Office, was undertaken by the Campbell Collaboration. The main points of that review, which included the observation that CCTV is more effective in reducing crime in the UK than in other countries, will be made available to police forces by the summer.
['The Government Response to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution's Report', p10]
So in 2009, after the Constitutional Committee suggested that there should be an appraisal of the effectiveness of CCTV it emerged that in fact an appraisal was undertaken by the Campbell Collaboration [19]. At that time Vernon Coaker was a Home Office Minister in the government, so how strange that he would have forgotten his party's response or the existence of the Campbell Collaboration evaluation. Coaker did mention the Campbell Collaboration evaluation in a 19th March 2009 Westminster Hall Debate on 'A Surveillance Society?' [20] which was also attended by fellow Committee member and current Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, and Coaker also told MPs in the House of Commons about the Campbell Collaboration Report on 20th April 2009 during a Home Department 'Written answers and Statements' debate [21], when he said:
A recent review of existing research was undertaken by the Campbell Collaboration, which was part funded by the National Policing Improvement Agency. The review found that CCTV has a modest but significant desirable effect on crime, is most effective in reducing crime in car parks, when targeted at vehicle crimes, and is more effective in reducing crime in the United Kingdom than in other countries. The main points of the review will be summarised and made available to police forces by the summer.
[Speech by Vernon Coaker MP, House of Commons, 21st April 2009]
In describing the Campbell Collaboration study Coaker chose to quote a press release [22] rather than the actual report which in its conclusions states:
[...] the evaluations of CCTV schemes in city and town centers and public housing [...] as well as those focused on public transport, did not have a significant effect on crime.
['Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime', p19]
What Coaker demonstrated was that when it comes to CCTV it is standard practice to fix the evidence around the policy. He chose to draw on evidence submitted to the Committee by the EVSA that laundered dodgy surveys into strong public support for ANPR and chose to completely ignore the evidence submitted by Steve Jolly of 'Birmingham Against Spy Cameras' / No CCTV. Steve Jolly pointed out in his submission to the Committee [23] that: "The national ANPR network is the biggest surveillance network that the public has never heard of." But Coaker chose to draw upon the EVSA's submission which stated: "Two recent reports both indicate general public support for the usage of ANPR by the police".
So what's it all about then?
Coaker may have been the member of the Committee most spectacularly versed in trite stock phrases in blind support of surveillance cameras but he was not alone. In line with the general theme of trying to show who loved CCTV the most, Tom Watson was at great pains to get reassurance from Home Office Minister Brokenshire that the Protection of Freedoms Bill is not about reducing the number of cameras in the UK. Here's how the exchange went:
Mr Watson: I am grateful to the Minister for letting me come back at him, in what will be my last contribution on this clause. To allay people’s fears, those who think that the Bill is just about ripping down CCTV cameras can be reassured that that is not the case. With the regulations, we might conceivably see an increase in the number of properly regulated CCTV cameras. Is that a fair assessment?
James Brokenshire: Certainly, we are not looking at the issue as a numbers game; it is about trust and confidence in how CCTV systems are applied. [...]
[Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c331]
So rest assured - Brokenshire, the Home Office Minister has made it clear this Bill is not about rolling back the surveillance state. Which begs the question what is it all about? Brokenshire made it clear that the real intention of the Bill is to ensure that the public love CCTV as much as the politicians, he told Coaker:
At the heart of the Government’s proposals is a desire to ensure that CCTV commands the confidence of the community it serves. The hon. Gentleman and I are on exactly the same page about that; [...] I therefore do not think that there is a disagreement in principle or a fundamental difference between us on the issue. The difference is that we believe that the form of regulation we propose will help to instil the necessary trust and confidence in CCTV and automatic number plate recognition systems, so that they can continue to do precisely the things that we want them to do on the issues that the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, using CCTV in a manner that ensures that crime is reduced and offenders are brought to justice. It is therefore about ensuring that there is trust and confidence in the systems to do what we want them to.
[Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c331]
In other words despite the studies into CCTV that show that it is not an effective crime fighting tool and despite the concerns of members of the public in relation to the impact of surveillance cameras on their freedoms, we intend to work hard to sell surveillance cameras to the public.
When last year's campaign against the Project Champion cameras in Birmingham was raised and the public outcry that followed [24] Brokenshire explained to Tom Watson (the MP for West Bromwich East) that such cases are a challenge as they can undermine the confidence that the government want to generate for surveillance cameras, Brokenshire said:
The hon. Gentleman will appreciate the concerns about Project Champion. As a west midlands MP who saw the local coverage, he will feel more acutely than other members of the Committee the impact of that challenge. It takes only a few such cases to start to erode overall confidence in the use of CCTV systems as a whole, which would be damaging and harmful from a crime prevention and criminal justice approach.
It is important to state that we believe in the significance of CCTV systems and of the benefits of their utilisation. We want to ensure that by virtue of appropriate regulation, they continue to inspire trust and confidence and to deliver on that intent.
[Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, Hansard, Public Bill Committees, 26th April 2011, c331]
So the CCTV proposals in the Protection of Freedoms Bill are really about manufacturing consent. As we have warned repeatedly, we cannot leave it to MPs to roll back the surveillance state. We need a well informed public to attend local council meetings, police authority meetings, local licensing committees and the like and to demand that police and politicians stop giving away our freedoms for a technology that is not only ineffective as a crime fighting tool but is seriously damaging the society in which we live - and is being sustained on a bed of lies and half-truths.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 2/5/2011
Why you should conceal your face at protests and demonstrations - 3/4/2011
Guest article by Anonymous
The use of balaclavas and scarves has been branded in the mainstream press as anything from a signal of thuggish criminality, to a pathetic aspirational-revolutionary fashion statement. This kind of 'analysis' exposes the distance between so-called journalists and demonstrators. They really have no idea about the social movement taking place before their eyes.
Concealments such as balaclavas, scarves, and notably 'V for Vendetta' masks, are being used as political constructions – wearing them at demonstrations indicates a concerted meaning, not simply a by-product of criminality. We are intentionally striving to remain anonymous, and we have very good reasons why.
'Journalists' such as Janice Turner of The Times spout the typically arrogant and myopic view of face covering.
Turner confidently declares that:
... the increased use of masks by (UK) Uncut members is symptomatic of its drift from the mainstream. Covering the face manifests your social separation, your rejection of the rule of law for your own value system [...] A mask makes you an outlaw, bandit, fugitive, a rebel waging war against the State.
['We must look each other in the eyes as equals' – Janice Turner, The Times, p.27: Saturday 2nd April, 2011]
Right on, Janice - one mustn't possibly drift from the mainstream! That would be 'symptomatic' of some strain of politically progressive disease, threatening your poor psychological immune system. The disenchanted mainstream, characterised by acquiescence, apathy, arrogance and ignorance is doing such a great job right now – well, at funding perpetual war, poverty, and destruction worldwide.
Although I contest the bias of Turner's mask decoding, many of the mask wearers are indeed 'rebel(s) waging war against the State', and do indeed have their 'own value system(s)'. And too right. Is this not something to be congratulated, in a 'democracy'? If more people in the world took a similar interest in politics and values, the world would be a more beautiful and progressive place to live in.
Rather than masks being purely an indicator of identity or criminality, as writers such as Turner suggest, it is in fact an entirely practical decision, as well as a pre-meditated political statement, to wear one. Not an accident of thuggery.
For practical reasons, I advocate that all protestors/demonstrators conceal their faces and wear fairly unidentifiable clothing. This is a response to the encroaching police state that we find ourselves in. The highly controversial (yet lacking adequate public discussion) 'FIT team' (Forward Intelligence Team) is watching you unnervingly closely when you protest. Even if you manage to evade their shadowy surveillance, approximately 300 CCTV cameras will capture you on any given day.
Here are some excerpts from 'Fitwatch'[1] (fitwatch.org.uk) describing the roles of FIT teams.
- 'Spotting' or identifying people they know from previous events. These people are sometimes then targeted for increased police surveillance, a stop and search or are 'accompanied'
- Gaining intelligence on people they decide they have an interest in. FIT officers have testified in court they gain intelligence on people who have committed no offences and have done nothing wrong. They will focus on people who may frequently attend political protest, or who associate with someone already 'known'. (...)
- Directing photographers or evidence gatherers to take photographs and footage of individuals or groups. (...) they have been known to follow a group of people for half an hour or more to obtain front, back, side and close up shots of each subject. They do NOT need to have suspicion that any offence has occurred, or will occur.
- Obtaining personal details of people they are interested in. This is frequently done by carrying out a stop and search to obtain people's details, but other methods have also been used. They frequently misuse S60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gives them a blanket power to stop and search everyone, without need for suspicion.
- Writing intelligence reports including descriptions, names and any other intelligence obtained for inclusion onto a police database. In London these are entered onto the CRIMINT (criminal intelligence) database
- 'Accompanying' activists they are interested in. This is supposedly carried out to prevent crimes taking place, although it often resembles harassment. They have been known to 'accompany' protesters for many hours, and this has included following them to their places of work, their homes, into pubs and shops, on trains and buses, even tailing their cars as they drive home.
- Gaining pre-event intelligence. This usually involves surveillance of meetings, and the identification of individuals thought to be organisers.
- [FIT – The Role[2], http://www.fitwatch.org.uk/forward-intelligence-teams/fit-the-role/, accessed 2nd April 2011. Omissions and emphases added.]
I can testify that the FIT teams do indeed fulfil this role as Big Brother's slavishly mobile employees. I have been at gatherings when a van full of 'FIT' (clearly working on pre-event intelligence) has sidled up, silently captured all of 'our' faces (as if public groups are that easily discernable), and then crept off again. These kinds of gatherings are political, often hobbyist as much as activist. There is no suggestion of criminality or mal intent attached, and therefore they can have no intelligence suggesting anything of the like – these are just free political assemblies which, er, are supposed to be a pillar of any democracy. But it seems in modern Britain, political assembly is a dangerous act to be documented, harassed, and infiltrated.
Unfortunately, FIT's photos and videos are not destined for the dustbin. They go onto databases and spotter cards, so that perfectly innocent people – or 'dissenters' – like you and I, can be 'kept an eye on': i.e., spied on, harassed, and targeted next time. FIT teams cast a worrying shadow over habeas corpus, treating the political public as guilty until proven innocent and with a total lack of respect, in the hope of catching a tiny minority of protesters who commit violent acts. My experience from protests is that whilst acts of political destruction are often well organised, violence, a totally different ball game, is primarily by the Police, and secondarily by drunk, rogue, or occasionally provoked/kettled protesters. Not something particularly preventable or curable with FIT teams, and certainly not warranting such a sacrifice of our civil liberties.
'Nothing to hide, nothing to fear', is the shrill retort of the naïve. This statement overlooks philosophies of privacy, anonymity, and liberty. In the same way that people wearing Burkas are wearing a construction of meaning, many people wearing balaclavas also a wearing a construction of meaning very important to them, and there is no reason that a religious philosophy should be regarded higher than a political philosophy in the system of law. But nevertheless, let's address the terms. I am not ashamed to say today, that yes, I am 'hiding' something, but that is not a crime (unless Theresa May has her way). I hide my face from CCTV cameras and FIT teams because I do not agree with the unlawful, persecutory way that they will use my identity, and I refuse to enable it. The Love Police[3] is all about lowering fear and raising love – I do not wish to increase fear, but the reality of our situation is that we are being targeted. As The Love Police walked away from 10 Downing Street on March 26th 2011, people in and around the group were ambushed by a van-full of police officers: one thrown to the floor, many with balaclavas forcibly ripped off, many subjected to a search. Those who are really in fear are the employees of the State. They see that elements are rebelling, and they are scared. The State is not built by us, it is built over us, and our right to make it crumble when it becomes diseased is being, and will be, vehemently opposed by its system justifying employees.
The Forward Intelligence Team is a particularly grotesque tentacle of the State, mutating the colourful environment of protest and demonstration into an intimidating, intelligence gathering operation that treats democratic processes with utmost suspicion. So I advise you all to cover your faces, unless you feel it is acceptable to risk your innocent and unknowing mug-shot being kept on a police database, and potentially being targeted in the future. If you disagree with this level of surveillance, take the simple step of concealing your face and disable their tactic. If Theresa May is successful and the police are granted increased rights to use force to remove our concealment[4], then we shall outwit them. If it means I have to demonstrate in a full morph suit that would require me to be totally stripped in order to identify me, I'll do it, and I'll have a really great time.
By Anonymous
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 3/4/2011
Mr Jolly gives pro-CCTV committee something to think about - 28/3/2011
On Thursday (24th March) Birmingham Against Spy Cameras and No CCTV campaigner Steve Jolly appeared before the Public Bill Committee [1] on the 'Protection of Freedoms Bill' [2]. Steve pulled no punches, making it clear that those of us who care about the erosion of freedoms caused by expansion of the surveillance cameras network see little to celebrate in this Bill.
Steve was called alongside Andrew Rennison, the Forensic Science Regulator and Interim CCTV Regulator.
Video of Steve Jolly's evidence can be viewed at:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=8042
(Fast forward to to 02.24.00 for start of session)
A transcript of the session is at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmpublic/protection/110324/pm/110324s01.pdf
Steve's written evidence is online at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmpublic/protection/memo/pf20.htm
Steve also submitted written evidence [3] to the Committee in which he points out that: "Much of what is contained in the Bill or the Code of Practice consultation can be found in previous Home Office guidance or the 2007 National CCTV Strategy." The National CCTV Strategy was introduced by the previous government and contained 44 recommendations; the appointment of Andrew Rennison as head of the National CCTV Strategy Board [4] (notionally named Interim CCTV Regulator) was the first of these recommendations.
When Rennison was appointed, the then Minister of State for Crime and Policing (David Hanson) stated that one of Rennison's six key areas of work would be to "develop national standards for the installation and use of CCTV in public space" [5]. By coincidence, this is one of the key areas on which the code proposed by the Bill focuses.
When the Committee asked Steve whether the proposed CCTV code of practice would be a welcome step forward he told them:
The code of practice is really an enabling Act which facilitates the proliferation and expansion of the use of surveillance cameras. It is concerned mainly with technical standards to do with compatibility and networking of systems. As described in the code, it is designed to be an A to Z manual of how to get the most out of your camera systems. It does not appear to have anything to do with protecting the rights of the individual. There is nothing in there about protection from surveillance.
When the MP for South Swindon, Robert Buckland tried several times to suggest that certain clauses of the Bill might contain provisions that cover "at least some of the concerns" that Steve had raised, Steve pointed that a 1994 Home Office guidance document called "CCTV: Looking Out For You" [6] took a more measured view of the use of surveillance cameras, he told the Committee:
There is more cautionary information in this document from 1994, which warns about the potential negative impacts on society that CCTV may have. It points out the drawbacks and the extent to which it can often fail to live up to expectations. So this document from 17 years ago is much more measured than the Bill we see before us today.
[...]
We seem to have gone backwards in our thinking since then. The technology has advanced dramatically and incredibly rapidly, but the thinking on how to govern the issues of personal privacy and personal freedoms has not moved with it. In fact, if anything, it has gone backwards.
For instance on page 15 of the 1994 guidance under the heading 'Will CCTV create any problems?' it states:
- Be aware of the need to avoid the risk of CCTV simply moving crime to another part of your
area.[...]
- Take care that the installation of CCTV will not reduce the vigilance of otherwise active
citizens.[...]
- Be careful that the installation of CCTV will not produce an exaggerated sense of security
amongst vulnerable members of the community.[...]
The Protection of Freedoms Bill calls for a CCTV code of practice which the Association Of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) indicated that they support when they appeared before the Committee last Tuesday (22nd March) [7]. An October 1994 Independent newspaper article [8] about the 1994 guidance document shows how little has changed:
The new report will push for the introduction of local codes of practice to ensure new systems are used effectively and that due concern is paid to issues of public confidence, civil liberties and security matters. The Association of Chief Police Officers also supports the introduction of local codes of practice.
There has been little evidence since 1994 that the voluntary codes of practice in use by local authorities or the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) voluntary CCTV code of practice have been effective in protecting civil liberties, and it is hard to see how another voluntary CCTV code of practice 17 years later will protect freedoms.
Public opinion
In his written evidence Steve points out that parliamentary discussion of surveillance cameras rarely gets beyond the hackneyed cry of parliamentarians that "it's what the public wants!", he wrote:
The constant cries of MPs that their constituents want more CCTV not less means that no meaningful debate ever takes place. Most MPs seem to see surveillance cameras as an easy win to gain support. This only fuels the support of CCTV that is so often proclaimed, but when the public is asked whether they support CCTV why are they never asked whether they would still support it if it did not do what was claimed? With surveillance technology advancing fast it is surely the duty of parliamentarians to get informed and in turn to inform the public of the facts and dangers of camera surveillance.
Steve goes on to reference the failings of the most recent Select Committee inquiry that looked at surveillance, the 2008-9 Constitution Committee's 'Surveillance: Citizens and the State' [9] which did not consider the Campbell Collaboration's 'Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime' [10] evaluation. In his evidence before the Committee Steve expanded upon this:
It is a great shame that that report, which was highly significant in illustrating the ineffectiveness of CCTV, was missed by the Lords Constitution Committee and its report into citizens and surveillance. The Campbell Collaboration report came out just after the Lords debate and report but it would have had a huge impact on the Lords report because its key finding was that: "CCTV schemes in city and town centres and public housing [...] as well as those focused on public transport, did not have a significant effect on crime". That was not just a one-off in the research; it echoed and reinforced much of the research that preceded it.
He went on to point out that:
There is a huge gulf of disparity between the public perception of CCTV and its actual capabilities. CCTV has been promoted by successive Governments because, for whatever reason, it has been seen as either a generally good thing for society or a popular thing for MPs, councillors and Ministers. I do not think it has been driven by factual reality. If we are going to consult the public, we need to ensure that the public are properly informed, not misinformed.
Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras
Steve successfully fought a campaign last year against hundreds of cameras installed in Birmingham as part of 'Project Champion' [11] - many of the cameras were Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras. In his written evidence Steve highlights the worrying way in which the ever expanding ANPR camera network has been constructed - without any primary legislation, statutory instruments and with no public or parliamentary debate. There have been many calls from many quarters to address concerns raised by this network including from the Chief Surveillance Commissioner in several of his annual reports [12], Steve points out that the Bill fails to address these issues:
Section 29(6) of the Bill inserts ANPR cameras along with CCTV into the definition of surveillance cameras - as if this powerful nationwide surveillance network has always been an accepted part of our national infrastructure. Can this really be seen as a measure that addresses the many concerns about ANPR and the lack of proper debate in its expansion throughout the UK?
The national ANPR network is the biggest surveillance network that the public has never heard of. ACPO has also rejected transparency regarding the location and positioning of these cameras.
The government has failed to address the concerns about ANPR cameras – concerns
raised by the Surveillance Commissioner, and the wider public including those that fought
the Project Champion cameras in Birmingham.
Royston's "ring of steel"...
Steve was asked by the Committee whether there are any other large-scale systems like Champion that have been implemented anywhere with interesting parallels, Steve told them:
Recently, Royston in Cambridgeshire installed a ring of steel of ANPR cameras. I do not know exactly how many cameras it installed, but it has encircled the town with them. This seems to be a worrying trend. As I said, one of my fears was that that would become the norm. There is also the village of East Stoke in Nottinghamshire, which has been awarded an ACPO "Secured by Design" award. Despite the village having only 50 houses and almost no crime, it has been surrounded and saturated with ANPR and, I believe, CCTV cameras in an effort to completely eliminate crime. The assistant chief constable there said, "This is not about reducing crime, but about providing confidence and reassurance to the residents." We have even lost sight of the purpose of surveillance. We just seem to have come to believe that it is a wonderful thing and that if we only had more of it, we would have a better society, and I think we have it the wrong way round.
For more information about the Royston "ring of Steel" and the Business Improvement District (BID) behind the scheme see the following links:
For more information about the village of East Stoke that has been awarded Secured By Design status by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) see:
Conclusions
The so-called Protection of Freedoms Bill is not really about protecting us from the expanding surveillance camera network - it appears to be about protecting the state's freedom to surveill. Below are a few suggestions of things you can do to express your disappointment in the Bill. Ultimately though we need to remember that most decisions are still made at a local level and so we must continue to campaign against blanket surveillance locally by attending council meetings, lobbying councillors and starting an informed debate. Do not wait for MPs to roll-back the surveillance state - we must do it ourselves.
Write to the Committee
The Protection of Freedoms Bill Public Bill Committee is open to receive written evidence up until the end of the Committee stage on Thursday 17th May. Submissions should be emailed to scrutiny@parliament.uk, guidance on the format of evidence can be found on the parliament website.
Take part in the CCTV Code consultation
The Home Office has launched a consultation on a 'Code of Practice relating to Surveillance Cameras' [13] as proposed in the 'Protection of Freedoms' Bill. The consultation closes on 25th May.
See http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/consultations/cons-2011-cctv/ for more details. The code currently focuses on "standards and efficiency" of CCTV rather than protection of freedoms. No CCTV will publish more information on the consultation shortly.
Write to your MP
You may wish to write to your MP [14] about the CCTV provisions in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, here are a few things you might want to include:
- that the Bill in relation to CCTV is not about protection of freedoms it is about standards and efficiency!
- that the Bill contains little detail of the proposed CCTV Code of practice which will be developed without proper scrutiny - as the Law Society told the Committee on Tuesday 22nd March [15]: "There is a very limited opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of those codes, and it seems to us that there ought to be a proper debate about where the balance should be and what those codes should contain."
- that a Royal Commission into surveillance cameras is urgently needed that takes into account the failings of CCTV as well as the harm that cameras have done to society and the sort of world that we will create if we simply continue to increase the levels of surveillance. (The call for a Royal Commission was contained in the Liberal Democrat's original 'Freedom Bill' [16].)
- that rather than a Surveillance Camera Commissioner as proposed in the Bill who will simply manage "standards and efficiency", we need a Privacy Commissioner with a far wider remit
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 28/3/2011
Protection of whose Freedoms Bill? - CCTV and 2nd Reading Bingo! - 1/3/2011
[ This article may be downloaded as a 2nd Reading Briefing here (without the Bingo!) ]
Today (1st March) the 'Protection of Freedoms Bill' [1] will receive its 2nd Reading in the House of Commons. Below is an analysis of the Bill in relation to surveillance cameras, that can be used to enhance your viewing pleasure as you sit down to watch the riveting debate. We've even included a 2nd Reading Bingo game, with a prize to the first Full House sent in to No CCTV. Excited? You won't be.
A Noting of the Explanatories
Beyond the hype, what does the Government really hope to achieve with The Protection of Freedoms Bill in relation to CCTV and overt camera surveillance? The Explanatory Notes [2] that accompany the Bill answer this question with utmost certainty:
Chapter 1 of Part 2 makes provision for the further regulation of Closed Circuit Television ("CCTV"), Automatic Number Plate Recognition ("ANPR") and other surveillance camera technology operated by the police and local authorities.
[Explanatory Notes page 2]
But the form this "further regulation" is to take comes across somewhat less confidently:
The provisions will require the Secretary of State to publish a code of practice in respect of the development and use of surveillance camera systems and provide for the appointment of a Surveillance Camera Commissioner to monitor the operation of the code.
[Explanatory Notes page 2]
Meanwhile the Home Office Press release that accompanied the publishing of the Bill [3] simply resorted to EU speak to say nothing:
the introduction of a code of practice for CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems (overseen by a new Surveillance Camera Commissioner) to make them more proportionate and effective
Perhaps we should look at the Bill itself to get a real sense of the great protection to our freedoms this piece of legislation represents in relation to the use of overt camera surveillance.
"Regulation of CCTV"?
The main provisions are contained in Part 2 (Regulation of Surveillance) Chapter 1 (Regulation of CCTV and other surveillance camera technology), and can be summarised as follows:
The Secretary of State MUST prepare a code of practice for surveillance camera systems (section 29(1)) which MUST contain guidance about "one or more" of, um, two choices:
(a) "the development or use of surveillance camera systems", and/or
(b) "the use or processing of images or other information obtained by virtue of such systems" (section 29(2)).
"Processing" here has the same meaning as Section 1(1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 [4] (section 29(7)), namely:
obtaining, recording or holding the information or data or carrying out any operation or set of operations on the information or data, including—
(a) organisation, adaptation or alteration of the information or data,
(b) retrieval, consultation or use of the information or data,
(c) disclosure of the information or data by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, or
(d) alignment, combination, blocking, erasure or destruction of the information or data;
[Data Protection Act Section 1(1)]
"Surveillance camera systems" by the way are defined as follows (we'll comment briefly on subsection (a) of this definition below...):
(a) closed circuit television or automatic number plate recognition systems,
(b) any other systems for recording or viewing visual images of objects or events for surveillance purposes,
(c) any systems for storing, receiving, transmitting, processing or checking images or information obtained by systems falling within paragraph (a) or (b), or
(d) any other systems associated with, or otherwise connected with, systems falling within paragraph (a), (b) or (c).
[Protection of Freedoms Bill Section 29(6)]
For all the extremely detailed definitions the Bill contains, there is no definition of "freedoms" and what exactly the Bill is supposed to be protecting. Whether this is because the Bill's authors prefer to maintain an air of mystery in this regard, or simply don't understand the word themselves is a matter for conjecture.
There then follows a list of what the code MAY also include, several of which should surely be fundamental MUSTs if our protection is the aim:
(a) considerations as to whether to use surveillance camera systems,
(b) types of systems or apparatus,
(c) technical standards for systems or apparatus,
(d) locations for systems or apparatus,
(e) the publication of information about systems or apparatus,
(f) standards applicable to persons using or maintaining systems or apparatus,
(g) standards applicable to persons using or processing information obtained by virtue of systems,
(h) access to, or disclosure of, information so obtained,
(i) procedures for complaints or consultation.
[Protection of Freedoms Bill Section 29(3)]
The "Explanatory Notes" clarify section 29(4)’s apparent vagueness about what the code will cover (that it "need not contain provision about every type of surveillance camera system" and it "may make different provision for different purposes") and in turn states the intention that the code will be ambiguous and inconsistent in how it is to be applied to protect our freedoms in the face of unfettered technological advancement:
136. Subsection (4) provides that the code need not provide guidance in relation to every type of surveillance camera system. This is intended primarily to avoid a requirement to provide comprehensive guidance in relation to niche or emerging technologies not yet likely to have widespread application. It further provides that the extent of any guidance provided need not be identical in respect of each type of system, or may be suitably tailored to the type and usage of the system in question.
[Explanatory Notes page 31]
The Code Consultees
But anyway it's ok because the Secretary of State MUST consult a broad spectrum of people in the preparation of the code, in particular surely those whose freedoms are under threat, namely:
(a) such persons appearing to the Secretary of State to be representative of the views of persons who are, or are likely to be, subject to the duty under section 33(1) (duty to have regard to the code) as the Secretary of State considers appropriate,
(b) the Association of Chief Police Officers,
(c) the Information Commissioner,
(d) the Chief Surveillance Commissioner,
(e) the Surveillance Camera Commissioner,
(f) the Welsh Ministers, and
(g) such other persons as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
[Protection of Freedoms Bill Section 29(5)]
The Code Procedure
Having consulted with this array of bodies keen to get their mits on our personal data and three government appointed Commissioners part of whose remit is to assist those bodies to do just that with legal endorsement, for the code to come into force (Section 30) the Secretary of State MUST then:
(1)(a) prepare it as per section 29
(1)(b) draft an order
(2&3) if and only if the draft order is approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament, make the order and issue the code
(4) if the draft is not, or not likely to be, approved the Secretary of State MUST prepare another one...
For Order read Statutory Instrument (section 30(6)) which "may contain transitional, transitory or saving provision" - and for Statutory Instrument read legislation enacted without proper parliamentary debate. Section 30(7) suggests that the relevant order might find itself in a "hybrid instrument", that is an instrument that affects some members of a group (whether individuals or bodies) more than others in the same group. The www.parliament.uk website [5] tells us what usually happens with such instruments:
Hybrid instruments are subject to a special procedure which gives those who are especially affected by them the opportunity to present their arguments against the SI to the Hybrid Instruments Committee and then, possibly, to a Select Committee charged with reporting on its merits.
[Parliament website]
Why the order for the coming into force of the code would be in such an instrument is another matter but suffice to say that in this situation such a "hybrid instrument" would proceed as if it were not one. Clear?
Once the code is in force, it MAY be altered or replaced by the Secretary of State in light of his ongoing requirement to keep it under review under section 31. The Secretary of State MUST first consult his mates (as listed above) then MUST put his altered or replacement code before Parliament, then full steam ahead and issue away if he hears nothing from either House within 40 days - regardless of whether or not Parliament is open for business.
The Code - does it bark let alone bite?
So what will the code do (section 33)? Well "a relevant authority" MUST have regard to it (section 33(1)) but a failure of "any person" to act in accordance with it will not in itself be prosecutable (2), though it is admissible in evidence (3) and a failure by a "relevant authority" to have regard to it MAY be taken into account in determining a question during judicial proceedings.
A "relevant authority" is a peculiarly detailed list given that, if this is about protecting the freedoms of the citizens, it should effectively mean any public body or arm of the state:
(a) a local authority within the meaning of the Local Government Act 1972,
(b) the Greater London Authority,
(c) the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority,
(d) the Sub-Treasurer of the Inner Temple or the Under-Treasurer of the Middle Temple, in their capacity as a local authority,
(e) the Council of the Isles of Scilly,
(f) a parish meeting constituted under section 13 of the Local Government Act 1972,
(g) a police and crime commissioner,
(h) the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime,
(i) the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a police authority,
(j) any chief officer of a police force in England and Wales,
(k) any person specified or described by the Secretary of State in an order made by statutory instrument.
[Protection of Freedoms Bill Section 33(5)]
No specific mention of private companies or contractors conducting surveillance in the public arena. There is however provision for the Secretary of State to put more names on the list but fear not, before anyone extra is added they themselves MUST have been asked if they are indeed happy to go on the list and the Secretary of State’s mates MUST be consulted again. And no order can be made adding to the list without a resolution from both Houses (again if that order is in a hybrid instrument, it isn't one...)
How many Commissioners does it take to change a record?
Under section 34, a Surveillance Camera Commissioner MUST be appointed by the Secretary of State. The Commissioner’s role is to encourage compliance with, review the operation of and provide advice about the code – no doubt he will do all this with a rod of iron. It is completely up to the Secretary of State who gets this job and how much he is paid. The two of them together will decide what resources the Commissioner needs – and the Secretary of State will make sure he gets them. The 'Explanatory Notes' estimate the cost of all this as £250,000 per annum for the first three years – with the support of Home Office staff.
The Commissioner MUST report annually on the exercise of his functions "as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of each reporting period", publish the report, copy the report to the Secretary of State who MUST then lay a copy before Parliament. The reporting period starts from whichever is later of the coming into force of the code or the appointment of the Commissioner, and ends with the following 31st March unless this is less than 6 months away in which case its the 31st March after that. So the first report may not be due for 18 months (s.35).
In his article "Protection of Freedoms Bill promotes efficient CCTV surveillance not effective privacy" [6] Chris Pounder points out one major issue created by the Bill in the guise of Commissioner/code of practice Top Trumps:
So, if a Surveillance Camera Commissioner regulates the CCTV Statutory Code of Practice and the Information Commissioner presumably maintains his own voluntary CCTV Code of Practice, then Local Authorities and Police have the pleasure of dealing with two Codes. If these Codes diverge, there will be confusion as to what set of rules take precedent. The Bill does not set out a mechanism to resolve any conflict between these Codes.
There is also a possibility of at least two regulators with apparently overlapping responsibilities; this does not seem to be a useful proposal if privacy protection is an objective. The Surveillance Commissioner could be a third regulator if CCTV is used in combination with covert directional microphones.
The Bill’s current text ensures that conflict between the two Codes is a distinct possibility.
Tut tut, who's been servicing your boiler?
In the "Background" section of the "Explanatory Notes" we learn that all this is further to "The Programme for Government (section 3: civil liberties)" which announces this government’s plan to "further regulate CCTV" in light of the regulatory situation they inherited:
CCTV systems (including ANPR systems) are not currently subject to any bespoke regulatory arrangements. However, the processing of personal data captured by CCTV systems (including images identifying individuals) is governed by the Data Protection Act 1998 ("DPA") and the Information Commissioner’s Office ("ICO") has issued guidance to CCTV operators on compliance with their legal obligations under the DPA. In addition, the covert use of CCTV systems is subject to the provisions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act ("RIPA") and the Code of Practice on 'Covert Surveillance and Property Interference' issued under section 71 of that Act [...] . On 15 December 2009, the previous Government announced the appointment of an interim CCTV Regulator [...] .
[Explanatory Notes page 6]
The situation they inherited from New Labour included several suggestions that ANPR cameras would require their own legislation. In 2004, following an ANPR trial, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett wrote that experience gained in the pilot: "is likely to lead to the introduction of ANPR enabling legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows" [7]. The Chief Surveillance Commissioner's 2005-2006 Annual Report [8] said: "The unanimous view of the Commissioners is that the existing legislation is not apt to deal with the fundamental problems to which the deployment of ANPR cameras gives rise. This is probably because the current technology, or at least its very extensive use, had not been envisaged when the legislation was framed". But in response to FOI requests both ACPO [9] and NPIA [10] said that no legislation is required for ANPR cameras, whilst a 2009 National Policing Improvement Agency Practice Improvement document on ANPR [11] states:
The question of whether the use of ANPR equipment is lawful can be determined by identifying the legislation being relied on during the deployment. For example, section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (as amended) enables a police officer in uniform to stop a motor vehicle, or other mechanically propelled vehicle, on the road, and section 4 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (as amended) (PACE) enables a road check to take place in certain circumstances.
Is the government suggesting that merely explicitly including ANPR in the definition of surveillance camera systems for a legally unenforceable code (see definition above as per section 29(6)) is equivalent to the creation of a new legislative framework for ANPR cameras – it is difficult to see how this can be so.
Tough decisions – two options
It is interesting to note that according to the Protection of Freedoms Bill Impact Assessment [12] the government considered two options to meet their policy objectives following their statement of intent in the Coalition Programme for Government [13]:
We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.
These two options were:
* Option 1: Retain the current position. Do nothing
* Option 2: Introduce the Protection of Freedoms Bill that will take a significant step toward reducing state interference and restoring freedoms. Implement the Bill in full
[Impact Assesment page 1]
Or to translate this into plain English – the two options the government gave itself to choose from were:
* Option 1: Do nothing.
* Option 2: Look like you might be doing something but do nothing.
Their considered decision was:
Option 2 is preferred option to progress the Government’s ambition to reduce the burden of the state on its citizens and to restore the balance between the Government’s duty to keep communities safe and protecting individual civil liberties.
To enter into the spirit of the whole sorry business, all you therefore need to do is nothing – avoid reading the Bill or any of the accompanying documents, and for goodness sake do not read any analysis of the Bill unless it has been written by the Home Office.
Summing it all up
What therefore is this spanking new regime that is going to protect our freedoms in the face of the uninhibited expansion of camera surveillance? An additional or is it alternative code of practice that only applies to certain public bodies (in fact the very public bodies that created it), the breach of which has no consequences other than the potential to be mentioned in judicial proceedings, and a government selected Commissioner (the Surveillance Camera Commissioner) whose job is to advise those bodies how to comply with the unenforceable code and to encourage them to do so. And what is this an improvement on? A single code of practice that applies to public and private bodies, the breach of which has no consequences other than the potential to be mentioned in judicial proceedings and a government selected Commissioner (the Information Commissioner) whose job is to advise those bodies how to comply with the unenforceable code and encourage them to do so.
Basically if this Bill in any way constitutes one of the "sweeping reforms to restore British liberties" [3] then the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary for "sweeping", "reforms", "restore" and "liberties" all need a serious rewrite.
An informed debate?
So can we expect a vibrant and informed debate on civil liberties, the erosions of personal freedom and damage to society caused by CCTV? If coalition MP Phillip Davies is anything to go by then the answer is a resounding no. In the run up to today's debate Davies posted an article on the Conservative Home website entitled 'Increased use of CCTV and DNA profiling would actually enhance our freedom' [14]. In it he says:
A Scotland Yard study into the effectiveness of surveillance cameras revealed that 86 out of 90 murder cases over a one year period used CCTV during the investigation. Scotland Yard’s head of homicide, Simon Foy, stated that: "CCTV plays a huge role in helping us investigate serious crime. I hope people can understand how important it is to our success in catching people who commit murder."
Davies is basing this claim on a sensational 2009 Daily Telegraph entitled 'Seven of ten murders solved by CCTV' [15]. The actual Metropolitan Police report [16] reveals that in 65 out of the 90 murder cases (about 72%) CCTV was viewed by police and a policeman in each case thinks it helped a bit.
A 2004 Home Office report 'Reviewing murder investigations: an analysis of progress reviews from six police forces' [17] stated that: "The majority of murder investigations are solved relatively soon after the offence and with limited investigative effort." The 2004 report does not place emphasis on the use of surveillance cameras and one of the six police forces featured in the report was – the Metropolitan Police.
Second Reading Bingo
To spice up the 2nd Reading debate, No CCTV is offering a prize for first person to send us a Full House of the five stock answers on our 2nd Reading BINGO card spotted during the 2nd Reading debate.
Eyes down for a full house! Here are your five bingo phrases/debate points:
- Phillip Davies MP saying that CCTV is an invaluable tool for solving murders
- Any MP saying that if there was even a suggestion of reduction of CCTV constituents would be furious – it's what the people want!
- Any MP using a "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" variant
- Any MP claiming that CCTV helped solve the 7/7 bombings! (with no mention of Jean Charles de Menezes and the role of CCTV in his murder as outlined in the IPCC's 'Stockwell One' report)
- Any MP ignoring freedoms entirely and saying CCTV doesn't work because of the low quality images/nobody watching it
Send us the name of the MP and the approximate time in the debate to bingo@no-cctv.org.uk before Friday 4th March and you could win a fabulous anti-cctv sticker pack!
STOP PRESS - Home Office Consultation into CCTV Code launched
The Home Office has today launched a consultation: 'Code of practice relating to surveillance cameras' [18]. The Home Office states that the consultation is aimed at: "Owners and operators of CCTV and automatic number plate recognition systems and cameras". Quite right too, they wouldn't want the people being surveilled intruding on measures in a bill allegedly about protecting their freedoms!
Of course members of the public can take part in the consultation, which closes on 25th May. (We'll have more to say on the consultation soon).
See http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/consultations/cons-2011-cctv/ for more details.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 1/3/2011
Exposing Naked Scanners in the EU and beyond - again - 2/2/2011
One year on from the fast tracking of digital strip searches and the hysteria over the "pants incident" [1], the push for the use of naked scanners continues. Whilst naked scanners have not been front page news for some time, the issue, like many others the mainstream media choose to ignore, forges ahead unexposed.
The delayed EU Commission green paper
Image from FlyWithDignity.org
In June 2010, the European Commission finally published a green paper on the use of naked scanners at EU airports [2] - a paper that was originally promised back in 2008! The Commission's green paper refers to naked scanners as "Security Scanners" in an attempt to play down the intrusive nature of the technology and highlight the supposed security benefits. The Commission presents the all too common argument at the EU level - that it is inevitable that scanners will be introduced, so what we need is European Regulation to create a uniform system for obedient citizens to have their private parts scanned.
World wide scanning
The green paper states that naked scanners are being used at airports worldwide: that the US (as of June 2010) deploys approximately 200 naked scanners in 41 airports as "secondary means for screening", and that by 2014 the US plans to have 1800 naked scanners "in order to be able to gradually introduce them as a primary screening method rather than as a secondary screening method"; that Canada deploys 15 naked scanners as of June 2010, with a total of 44 naked scanners planned for deployment in 2011; and that Russia has been using naked scanners at airports since 2008, whilst countries such as Japan, Nigeria, India, South Africa, Kenya, China and South Korea are apparently considering using them.
Over at the FlyerTalk website (a passenger-focused forum for discussion of air travel related issues) they have compiled a handy list of US and major international airports that use naked scanners [3] (or as FlyerTalk calls them "Nude-O-Scopes"). FlyerTalk has also put together a list of airport alternatives in the US without naked scanners [4]. FlyerTalk has been criticised for doing this by the US Transport Security Agency (TSA).
EU legal framework
The EU Commission green paper lays out the current legislative framework for the use of scanners in Europe, whereby EU Member States and/or airports "are given a list of screening and controlling methods and technologies from which they must choose the necessary elements in order to perform effectively and efficiently their aviation security tasks". The paper further clarifies who is calling the shots:
The current legislation does not permit airports to replace systematically any of the recognised screening methods and technologies by Security Scanners. Only a decision of the Commission supported by Member States and the European Parliament can be the basis for allowing Security Scanners as a further eligible method for aviation security. However Member States are entitled to introduce Security Scanners for airport trials or as a more stringent security measure than those provided for by EU legislation.
It is worth remembering that in 2008 the EU Commission proposed a draft regulation [5] that would have added naked scanners to the list of screening and controlling methods and technologies from which Member States must choose "in order to perform effectively and efficiently their aviation security tasks". So in effect what the Commission seems to be saying is: everyone is doing it even though they are not supposed to, but it's what we want them to do really so we will regulate what they are doing to make it official, then they can just carry on.
People in the European countries that are already introducing naked scanners may be tempted to think that the EU will save them, because their own government looks so bad - surely the EU has to be better? In reality the EU adds a thick layer of de-democratising complexity and allows governments to "policy launder" [6] - a process whereby controversial policies are pushed at the supra-national level to avoid debate in national parliaments, and then hiding behind EU or international obligations "that must be followed" when that controversial policy becomes a "national requirement".
Trial or error?
The Commission raises its concern about what it calls "Fragmentation in the Member States", whereby States can introduce naked scanners either "i) by exercising their right to apply security measures that are more stringent than existing EU requirements" or "ii) temporarily, by exercising their right to conduct trials of new technical process or methods for a maximum period of 30 months". The UK's roll-out of naked scanners at Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick airports has been part of such a so-called "equipment trial".
Apparently this fragmentation could spread to the "fundamental rights of EU citizens", or so says the "Own-initiative report procedure file" on "Aviation security with a special focus on security scanners", or to give its snappier name "INI/2010/2154" [7], which states:
Different standards of scanners currently deployed in Europe bring a serious risk of fragmenting fundamental rights of EU citizens, impeding their rights of free movement and escalating their health concerns related to new security technologies. While security scanners are still exceptional at European airports, there is a growing need to address these concerns and find a common solution. The Communication examines arguments that only the common European standards for aviation security can provide the framework ensuring a harmonised approach to the use of Security Scanners at airports. It looks at how such a harmonised approach should incorporate EU fundamental rights standards and a common level of health protection to allow adding this technology to the existing list of equipment for screening persons at airports.
As usual wading through EU legislation is extremely time consuming as it is couched in impenetrable procedures and legalese. According to INI/2010/2154 the European Parliament will next consider the views of various committees, as well as the views of Member States, with a "report scheduled for adoption in committee" in April and a provisional date for a debate on 9th May.
Hardly surprisingly, the Commission green paper states Member States such as the UK, Finland and the Netherlands who have been "enrolled in trials" have reported that naked scanners "are a valid alternative to existing screening methods in terms of effectiveness of detecting items of different materials, improvement of the level of passenger throughput; general acceptability by passengers and increase of staff convenience", with "positive outcomes of the trials regarding health, safety and privacy"! The detail of the peer reviewed scientific studies upon which these Member States have undoubtedly based such conclusions would make interesting reading one imagines.
Safety
Both the UK and US authorities have opted for X-ray Backscatter scanners which have raised serious concerns about safety. The use of X-ray equipment is subject to the Euratom radiation protection legislation, and in the case of Backscatter naked scanners, the provisions on the non-medical use of ionising radiation. This legislation states that the maximum exposure to ionising radiation must not be more than 1 millisievert (mSv) or 1000 microsievert (µSv). The Commission paper state:
Typically a single backscatter X-ray scan of an individual will result in the person receiving a radiation dose between 0.02 and 0.1 µSv [microsievert]. Radiation doses are cumulative, so an individual’s total dose will depend on the number of scans. It would take around 40 screenings per day to reach the dose limit, not taking into account further exposure.
The Commission calculates the 40 screenings quota as follows: 1000 µSv = 1mSv, so 40 screenings in one day is 40 x 0.1 µSv = 4 µSv x 250 (presumably the number of days in the year when the theoretical person is naked scanned) = 1000 µSv, or 1mSV (maximum exposure according to the Euratom radiation protection legislation).
Meanwhile the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) "recommends a dose constraint of 300 micro Sv/year to a member of the public from practices involving the deliberate use of ionising radiation sources". On the HPA's 'Spotlight on airport x-ray scanners' [8] web page it states that the dose from a backscatter x-ray naked scanner "can be about 0.02 - 0.03 microsieverts per scan".
Whilst in December, in a parliamentary Written Answer Minister of State for Transport Theresa Villiers told MPs that the HPA had concluded that "the effective dose from one scan is 0.02 micro Sv or less". This, she explained, is about the same as the "effective dose received for 1.4 minutes flying at airline cruising height". However, what she meant to copy from the February 2010 Department of Transport (DfT) report 'Assessment of comparative ionising radiation doses from the use of rapiscan secure 1000 x-ray backscatter body scanner' [9] was that 6 Rapiscan Secure 1000 x-ray backscatter naked scans "(return flight with one set of scans at each embarkation)" has an effective radiation dose = 0.12 micro Sv which is the same as 1.4 minutes flying at airline cruising height according to the HPA.
Whatever the correct figures may be, the numbers involved are clearly small and the DfT report is at great pains to tell us that there are greater risks, such as the "Risk of accidental death in a school pupil while at school" which we are told is 70 times the backscatter scan risk. The "Fatal lifetime cancer risk induced by the scan" we are told is "1 in 166,000,000". Also listed as carrying "much higher fatality risks than backscatter body scanning" is, interestingly, the "average annual background radiation in the UK" - so presumably adding a further dose of radiation won't matter then! The DfT does acknowledge that "because of the uncertainties at these low levels of exposure the risks to children, people with any type of illness or people undergoing any type of medical treatment are considered to be comparable to the risks to adults" - which would imply that these figures are no more than guesstimates.
In December the Heads of the European Radiological protection Competent Authorities (HERCA) published a statement on the use of naked scanners for security purposes [10]. HERCA has also published a report entitled 'Facts and figures concerning the use of Full body scanners using X-Rays for security reason' [11] which pulls together much of the research on naked scanner safety.
The point to make is that radiation exposure is cumulative - each individual dose increases the exposure level incrementally and each person's capacity to tolerate any size of dose will be dependant on the amount of exposure they have already experienced together with their own personal tolerance level. There is no safe dose of radiation.
US Pilots revolt
In November Captain Dave Bates, president of the Allied Pilots Association (APA), which represents 11,000 American Airlines pilots, wrote a letter to his members [12]. Bates wrote:
It is important to note that there are "backscatter" AIT [Advanced Imaging Technology] devices now being deployed that produce ionizing radiation, which could be harmful to your health. Airline pilots in the United States already receive higher doses of radiation in their on-the-job environment than nearly every other category of worker in the United States, including nuclear power plant employees.
Bates went on to call on pilots to refuse backscatter screening and instead request "the enhanced pat-down" alternative to screening, and recommending that all pilots insist that such screening is performed in an out-of-view area to protect their privacy and dignity.
Compulsion
The EU Commission green paper also looks at the thorny issue of compulsion with regards to naked scanners. The UK government has made naked scanning compulsory at those airports that have scanners with passengers who decline not being permitted to fly. The EU Commission paper states:
As regards the question whether or not Security Scanners should be compulsory it has to be taken into account that under the existing rules and regarding the screening methods recognised today (hand search, walk through metal detector, etc.), passengers are not offered any possibility to refuse the screening method or procedure chosen by the airport and/or the screener in charge. In order not to jeopardize high levels of aviation security, unpredictability of security processes at airports is an important consideration. This being so, individuals should only be able to influence these processes for fundamental rights or health reasons where alternative methods would offer equivalent security guarantees.
In addition, under certain circumstances, several airports would not dispose of the needed capacity and staff resources to provide a regular alternative to security scanners.
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that the effectiveness of naked scanners is questionable, what the Commission seems to be driving at when they talk of alternative methods that would "offer equivalent security guarantees" is something akin to the extreme physical searches that the US Transport Security Administration (TSA) has introduced for passengers who opt-out of naked scans [13]. These "pat-downs" have horrified many travellers in the US and sparked sites such as 'Fly With Dignity' [14] and 'The TSA Abuse Blog' [15]. In November, author Graham Hancock was a guest on the Disinfo podcast [16], when he described his experience of opting out of a naked scan at a US airport:
As soon as I said that I was going to opt-out, security guards started shouting at the tops of their voices "Opt-out! Opt out!", and I was taken over to a place on full public view and other security guards gathered round me and then one of them subjected me to the most aggressive, rape-like, violent physical search, it was really extremely abusive, and alarming in fact. Really very unpleasant, a deeply unpleasant experience which went on for about 15 minutes. It was a full scale physical humiliation.
And now that I've learnt that many others have [been] subjected to the same experience it's obvious that what's going on here is that that opt-out element is really just window dressing and that what they're trying to do is to make the experience of opting-out so unpleasant for us that all of us will just automatically opt-in to the naked body scanner, and what I find really disturbing about that - it's not so much the issue of nakedness, I really don't care that much about it - it is the issue of obedience - that we are being taught a habit of automatic obedience to authority here, and I believe that automatic obedience to authority is a really bad thing.
What sort of society?
Here Hancock starts to address the deeper issues of why naked scanners are so bad, issues beyond nudity and radiation exposure (important though those issues are). In an euobserver.com YouTube channel programme 'Let's talk about EU, Body Scanners' [17] Dutch MEP Judith Sargentini took part in a debate with other MEPs about naked scanners in which she pointed out that the issues of safety and privacy can quite possibly be overcome, so the core issue becomes whether this is the sort of world in which we want to live. Sargentini said:
There's demand that we have, and I've heard you phrase it - it's privacy, the body integrity, making sure that data are not collected, and health issues, very important. But I think that these can be overcome and that shouldn't be the end of our debate, because that's what worries me. We can spend another three weeks waiting, or three months waiting - I visited myself, I wanted to see I didn't want to wait until the commission comes up with information, and I see that all the technical demands that I had can be met. Which leads me to the bigger question - if it is all so perfect and if its actually client friendly because it goes quicker than frisking, [...] - it saves you time on your flight to the US - so if there's all kinds of benefits then it leaves us with the very dangerous question - what happens if they put this in front of the local library and if they put this here at the national parliament? Is that the society that we want? And that's the point I think we should focus on and not lose ourselves in a technical debate because before we know it someone has put them in front of the library.
Is it worth it?
Much of the discussion at the EU level is about the so-called balance between privacy and security, or health risks and security - but this metaphor of balance is false.
In January the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) held a conference 'The Stripping of Freedom: A Careful Scan of TSA Security Procedures' [18] in Washington DC. Security Expert Bruce Schneier spoke at the conference about naked scanners and the wider issues of airline safety and security (a video of his speech is available on line [19]). It is worth quoting Schneier's speech here at length, he said:
In the past decade we've had 469 passengers, this includes crew and terrorists, that are killed as a result of violent passenger incidents - this is on planes. 265 of them, that's more than half, were 9/11. There have been no fatal incidents on the planet since those two russian aircraft in 2004. This is actually the longest streak without fatal incidents since World War II.
2000's death toll was about the same as 1960's, substantially less than 1970's, 1980's. 2001 was the fourth most violent year for violent passenger incidents, that's after 1985, 1988, 1989 - the '80s were ugly. Of course a lot more people are travelling in the past decade than they were in the '80s, so we've seen - again I pulled the numbers - 22 passengers killed per one billion enplanements and that's in the 2000s and the 1990s, which is about six times safer than previous decades. The 1960s was 191 deaths per billion enplanements. In the United States past decade, we've had incidents on six airplanes, four on September 11th [2001], the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. That's one incident per sixteen and a half million departures. Our odds right now of being on a terrorist plane is about 1 in 10.5 million [in the US], and that's about twenty times greater than being struck by lightning. That's the mathematics.
And I'd like to see more of us accept the mathematics of terrorism - the risk is rare, it's very rare. But the risk isn't zero. I don't think, basic screening aside, we can ever stop a crazed loner like the Fort Hood shooter. All more airport security would do is make him start shooting outside the security gates. And sometimes you can do everything right and still have it come out wrong. The thing about rare events is when they occur it's not always evidence of systemic failure. [...] So there's a counter story that I think we should all adopt and the counter story is one of indomitability. We should simply refuse to be terrorised. We should not over-react, we should not become defensive. There is an inherent risk of living in a free society and that is a risk our country's founders embraced and that's a risk I think we should. I think we should roll back the fear-based 9/11 security measures. I mean it's simple things - stop telling people to report suspicious activity - they already do that when it's truly suspicious, they don't need to be told. When you're told to watch your neighbour you report things like "they dress funny" and "their food doesn't smell good" and "they talk in a funny language". When you prime people to report 'suspicious' they end up reporting 'different'. Different is not inherently suspicious. Living in a society where we're suspicious of each other doesn't make us safer - by increasing our feelings of fear, of helplessness, that the government will solve all our problems if we just kept quiet and did what they told us to do.
[...]
The most dangerous part of your airplane flight is still the taxi ride to the airport. That hasn't changed and it probably will never change. Automobiles kill more people every month in the US than 9/11 did. Last January's earthquake in Haiti killed more people than terrorism did since the beginning of time. You watch enough movies and TV and you start thinking that terrorism is easy. Turns out it's not. I get asked all the time - where are all the terrorist attacks? It's hard, this is hard to do. It seems easy but it's hard. Terrorism is hard and it's easy to make mistakes.
[...]
Terrorism is not a transcendent threat, it cannot destroy our country, it cannot destroy our way of life, it's only our reaction to terrorism that can do that. If we reduce the freedoms inherent in our society, we're doing the terrorists' work for them. If we engage in fearmongering we're doing the terrorists' work for them. The more scared we are the more effective the terrorist attacks are. In fact if we get scared the terrorists succeed even if their plot fails. If we're indomitable then the terrorists fail even if/when their attacks succeed.
(Other interesting videos from the EPIC conference are available on the C-SPAN website [20]).
Where will it end?
Jacques Ellul warned in his 1964 book 'The Technological Society' of the dangers inherent in a society driven by technology and the security-industrial complex, he wrote:
The techniques of the police, which are developing at an extremely rapid tempo, have as their necessary end the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp. This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or government. To be sure of apprehending criminals, it is necessary that everyone be supervised. It is necessary to know exactly what every citizen is up to, to know his relations, his amusements, etc. And the state is increasingly in a position to know these things.
This is the world that is being built around us. Is this really what we want to leave as our legacy to the next generation?
Endnotes:
For more information on naked scanners see the following additional links:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 2/2/2011
Bad Boy of the Week: Brum councillor Martin Mullaney - 23/12/2010
Guest article by Steve Jolly
courtesy of Big Brother Watch (who first hosted the article [1] and awarded Mullaney the bad boy of the week award).
Authorities in Birmingham have barely been out of the papers this year; such is their enthusiasm for public surveillance. This month is no exception. No sooner had it been confirmed [2] that the city’s disastrous spy camera scheme would finally be scrapped after months of public outcry, it was announced [3] that Audio sensors had been installed to monitor the city’s mean streets and a Big Brother Watch Report last month [4] into council spending on CCTV named and shamed Birmingham City Council. The city spent a whopping £10.5m of public money on cameras in the last three years alone: more than any other local authority in Europe.
With barely a pause, yet another CCTV scheme was proposed, this one in Moseley Village, a leafy suburb in south Birmingham. The man behind the scheme was local councillor Martin Mullaney, a longstanding vociferous advocate of CCTV cameras, and also the council’s Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport and Culture. Armed with the support of several local traders and having "persuaded" the Safer Birmingham Partnership to part with £100,000 to finance his scheme, it was nearly a done deal. Indeed the Birmingham Mail proudly announced that [5], "several cameras will be installed along the High Street."
Just one small thing: a public consultation of some sort would be needed. After all, the council’s failure to consult communities over the ill-fated spycam scheme [6] earlier this year was universally condemned: angry residents felt that the surveillance had been done to them rather than for them. So, keen to avoid a repeat of the fiasco, councillors astutely agreed to ask people before installing the cameras: a novel idea that had by and large, not been deemed necessary in the past.
Things got off to an inauspicious start at a council ward committee meeting when, as the Birmingham Mail reports [7], "a stream of people attacked the Moseley plan". So a 'Question Time' public meeting [8] was called to discuss the scheme further. It was very clear that a lot of people did not want the cameras, questioning their effectiveness and necessity. Faced with such opposition, Cllr Mullaney leaped into action, putting aside his role as an elected representative of local people and becoming a de facto pressure group. But rather than debate and promote the issue of CCTV, he set about attacking those who rejected the scheme, branding them "the anti-cctv lobby", and dismissing their views as unrepresentative of what he imagined to be the majority of residents:
"The public consultation on whether the residents of Moseley wanted cctv or not, was an opportunity to find out what the general Moseley community thought on this issue. At the steering group meeting it was made clear that we wanted residents to make there [sic] own minds up and participate in this consultation freely. I want to understand what the residents really think about cctv in Moseley Village. The anti-cctv lobby have made their views very loud and clear, but I now want to listen to what everyone else thinks and not have that view distorted by dishonest campaigning by the anti-cctv lobby."
What he seems to be suggesting is that some views are more valid than others. Clearly those in favour of CCTV are the voices he wants to hear, while those against constitute an unwelcome irritation and should be ignored. Some people had been lobbying and campaigning (i.e. going around talking to people), which is somehow 'dishonest', he complains. After all, it’s not something a politician would do. What he is really objecting to is informed debate on an important issue that he would prefer to see rubber-stamped by council officials like himself.
Mr Mullaney then made a radical suggestion: surveys deposited in the box provided at a local pub, a known hangout of "the anti-cctv lobby," should be disregarded or 'adjusted' in favour of a pro-cctv outcome!
"It was suggested that those doing the count might discard some of the ballots in the POW [Prince of Wales] box and attach additional weightings to some ballot responses, based on levels of impact of the CCTV cameras on people responding. It was suggested that the ballot in the POW had been ‘stuffed,’" (minutes of the Moseley Forum meeting reveal).
Yes, that's right: not content with accusing some locals of cheating (despite the forms containing verifiable contact details of the people filling them in) Mr Mullaney appeared perfectly willing to fix the results of his own survey if it didn't go his way – which, in anybody's book, is cheating. Those "anti-cctv" views should be removed, so that only 'typical' responses remained (it's well known that when asked if they support cctv to reduce crime and improve safety most people will say yes).
Fortunately, and to their credit, other individuals involved in the democratic process seemed alarmed at this suggestion and made their objections clear:
"Moseley forum strongly objected to discarding any properly completed ballot forms and to any new condition being applied such as the weighting of certain ballot responses. It was very strongly expressed that BCC [Birmingham City Council] and the consultation steering group must act with complete transparency and without bias. To do otherwise would jeopardise the whole consultation process and risk another fiasco like the ANPR [Project Champion]. BCC should be taking greater care than ever before not to alienate its residents, but rather to embrace their views as part of the Big Society - even if residents disagreed with the local authority."
Undeterred, Mr Mullaney’s fervent pro-cctv stance continued, descending into a farcical series of ludicrous claims. A cctv scheme should not necessarily be viewed as an attempted solution to an identified problem, he argued, but more a general enhancement to any area, which may attract businesses to the area – including some Michelin starred restaurants! The extent of Mr Mullaney’s blind faith is evidenced in an article from BBW pals No CCTV: 'BrumiLeaks, CCTV and the attempted murder of democracy' [9].
Nothing, it seems, will dampen the enthusiasm of council officials hell bent on pushing their surveillance agenda. Neither is Cllr Mullaney put off by the practically non-existent support of the local police inspector, who said that [10] "the police are not behind the proposal for the cameras… it’s Colin over there.” (at 3 min 35 secs).
When I rang 'Colin', the Safer Birmingham Partnership’s "Public Reassurance Officer (CCTV)" [note the Orwellian job title] for a copy of the Business Case, he informed me that this consisted of no more than a personal request from a local councillor: one Mr Mullaney!
It is interesting to note that neither the police nor the Safer Birmingham Partnership could offer any evidence of CCTV’s impact on crime and confirmed that the effectiveness of existing schemes is not evaluated, citing 'reassurance' as the main reason that cameras are installed, as many people say they feel safer under CCTV’s gaze.
So despite lukewarm (if any) support from local police, outright opposition from within the community, no business case, very low crime in the area, no evidence of its effectiveness and no apparent justification for installing the cameras, Mr Mullaney pushed on, convinced he was right. His enthusiasm for public surveillance and contempt for democracy is quite disturbing. It may be worth noting at this point that Cllr Mullaney was elected as a ‘Liberal Democrat’ candidate.
Unfortunately Cllr Mullaney’s dream was shattered when the results of the survey [11] came in. More than half of respondents said they didn’t want the cameras. Over 90% said they felt perfectly safe in Moseley village during the day and 70% felt safe at night too. 58% said they would not feel safer in the village if cctv were installed and 56% said they did not believe cctv would help reduce crime. The assumed 'public support' had evaporated.
You would think at this point that he would graciously admit defeat, but not a bit of it. The furious councillor maintains that the consultation had been 'skewed' by people with 'anti-cctv views' and was not an accurate reflection of the cctv-loving general public. The outcome, he asserts, is a travesty and the whole exercise should be done again – in order to get the 'right' result.
"If we had enough time, we would have run the consultation again and try to ensure the consultation was not hijacked by the anti-cctv lobby."
Still dwelling on his accusations that cheating had occurred, and showing his utter disdain for the local democratic process, he added that, "Politicians can either re-run the consultation or completely ignore the outcome of the consultation."
Despite the clear lack of public support, local councillors are now pressing ahead with what they are calling a 'compromise' [12], by installing half the original number of proposed cameras in Moseley Village car park, which being council-owned, does not need community support, they point out. Whether this is a face-saving exercise or part of a phased introduction of their unpopular plan is open to speculation, but communities saying 'no, thanks' to CCTV will still get it if councillors have their way. After all, they know best. By hook or by crook, they’ll put those cameras up somewhere, somehow – whether you like it or not.
You might be interested to know that Cllr Mullaney, who complained about a video [13] of the public cctv meeting being filmed and posted on YouTube (the age of transparency, eh!?), was suspended in February last year for snooping around with a camera on someone's private property without their permission and then posting his footage on YouTube. In a High Court ruling [14], the judge commented that Cllr Mullaney had behaved in a "high-handed and one-sided manner." Rejecting the judge's verdict, Cllr Mullaney responded: "My only regret is stating on the video that I was a councillor. In future, if I do anything contentious, I will make it clear I am a private citizen, so that I am not inhibited by the members code of conduct." So this is his attitude towards privacy, writ large.
Whether Cllr Mullaney's behaviour over this cctv consultation was inhibited by any code of conduct at all is debateable, but it shows this: the surveillance infrastructure being constructed all around us owes less, perhaps, to central government strategy than to the single-minded intervention of council zealots like Mr Mullaney. Keen to get their hands on some of the millions of pounds of funding sloshing around for CCTV (it's always ringfenced, so can never be used for any other more useful purpose) vote-hungry councillors all over the country are falling over themselves to offer these 'improvements' and won't let the fact that they are unwanted stand in their way.
So if you’ve ever wondered how Britain came to be watched by more CCTV cameras than any other nation on the planet, you need perhaps look no further than my home city of Birmingham for explanation.
By Steve Jolly
Alex Deane [Big Brother Watch] says... "we've got to tell you - thisis a pretty good candidate for Bad Boy of the Year..."
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 23/12/2010
BrumiLeaks, CCTV and the attempted murder of democracy - 16/12/2010
Brummie - a native of the British city of Birmingham.
- Oxford English Dictionary
Whilst the WikiLeaks founder was languishing in a prison cell in London, a storm was brewing in England's second largest city Birmingham, where leaked emails reveal the lengths that advocates of surveillance cameras will go to further their agenda. The BrumiLeaks may appear less controversial than the WikiLeaks that have dominated mainstream headlines in recent weeks, but they do more to lift the lid on just how the surveillance state continues its steady creep forward and why eternal vigilance is required by freedom loving citizens. A perfect example of what is happening the world over - for Birmingham read a town near you.
The Birmingham story so far ...
Last month Birmingham City Council was named and shamed as the UK local authority that had spent the most on surveillance cameras between 2007 and 2010 [1]. The council and police in Birmingham also found themselves embroiled in a public relations disaster after they failed to properly consult residents about the installation of hundreds of CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras in leafy Birmingham suburbs - part of a project named 'Project Champion'.
One of the suburbs at the heart of the 'Project Champion' debacle was Moseley, where the successful campaign against the Project, 'Birmingham Spy Cameras - No thanks!' [2], was led by local resident Steve Jolly. Following the furore over the sneaky 'Champion' scheme, rather than hide in a corner to lick their wounds, Birmingham City Council made an extraordinary next move. They decided to have another go and push for a new public space surveillance scheme in Moseley Village.
Mindful of criticism for failing to consult the local people for whom they work and who they are meant to represent, the council launched a consultation into the proposed Moseley Village CCTV scheme. The consultation however became a new focus of controversy. Firstly the consultation only ran for two weeks, despite the Government's Code of Practice on Public Consultation [3] stating that: "Consultations should normally last for at least 12 weeks with consideration given to longer timescales where feasible and sensible." And now that the curtailed consultation is closed, the BrumiLeaks emails show that some of those in favour of the CCTV scheme were concerned that it may have been contaminated by some anti-CCTV views!
Let the consultation begin!
One email from a council official contains a number of concerns about how the consultation was conducted, the official writes that they have observed:
one member of the anti-cctv lobby stuffing the ballot box in the Prince of Wales public house with filled in consultation forms. How these consultation forms were filled in, is up for speculation. However, it is quite clear that an attempt has been made to skew the result towards an anti-cctv outcome.
The council official has made the astounding claim that a member of the "anti-cctv lobby" has been stuffing a ballot box. It seems they are alluding to a form of electoral fraud known as "ballot stuffing" [4], which is "the illegal act of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted". This is a strange allusion given that this was a consultation, not a ballot, and each completed consultation questionnaire required contact details of each respondent. A better comparison would surely be posting a letter for, say, an old lady who asks for your help. This act is allegedly carried out by a "member of the anti-cctv lobby" - the Oxford English Dictionary defines lobby as "a group of people seeking to influence legislators on a particular issue", but the council are not legislators so "lobby" would not appear the most appropriate description of individuals concerned about personal liberty. So let's call the person "a resident of Moseley", because that is what they are. The council official also calls into question the validity of the Prince of Wales questionnaires when they write: "How these consultation forms were filled in, is up for speculation". Indeed it is up for speculation but it seems likely, based on previous experience with questionnaires, that they were filled in with a pen. So, in summary, the council official is accusing a resident of Moseley of posting a letter, written using a pen, on behalf of an old lady, more or less - a most heinous crime I'm sure the council official can all agree.
At this point some people might be thinking that it is unfair to deconstruct emails to this minute detail in this way, and they may well have a point. But let's look at a few more.
Let's have an uninformed debate!
In the same BrumiLeaks email the same council official pointed out what in their view the consultation should have been all about, they write:
The public consultation on whether the residents of Moseley wanted cctv or not, was an opportunity to find out what the general Moseley community thought on this issue. At the steering group meeting it was made clear that we wanted residents to make there [sic] own minds up and participate in this consultation freely.
Very laudable aims, so what can have gone wrong? The official goes on:
I want to understand what the residents really think about cctv in Moseley Village. The anti-cctv lobby have made their views very loud and clear, but I now want to listen to what everyone else thinks and not have that view distorted by dishonest campaigning by the anti-cctv lobby.
Once again concerned residents are branded with the label "anti-cctv lobby", a phrase which is starting to look like it is being used as some type of insult. But leaving that aside (grounds for a separate article of its own methinks), the official states that they want to understand "what the residents really think about cctv in Moseley Village" and "not have that view distorted by dishonest campaigning by the anti-cctv lobby". Presumably a pro-CCTV lobby would not distort the view of the residents. What the official seems to be driving at here is that only an uninformed debate will get the result that they want, as it is commonly held that most people are in favour of CCTV cameras in the UK.
Cop shows and propaganda
Since the 1990s cameras have been touted as a major crime fighting tool. The reality that cameras are not effective has unfortunately not filtered through to the general public who still believe that cameras work. This belief is encouraged by the media who constantly use CCTV images to illustrate news stories. In addition television crime programmes constantly portray CCTV cameras as case breakers and capable of amazing feats - "Zoom in on that man's spectacles, enhance the reflection, zoom and rotate the image 90 degrees - aha, we've got him!".
Policy makers also claim that cameras make people feel safer. However studies have shown that this is not true (people often say they think CCTV would make them feel safer, but when installed say they have not actually made them feel safer), but like the studies that show CCTV is not effective at fighting crime, this rarely makes it through to the mainstream. The reports are seldom an easy read and not one has been even shortlisted for a literary award.
It is all too common for public opinion with regards to CCTV to be based on the one simple question: "Are you in favour of CCTV?" Most people it seems will answer yes to this question (see 'Cop shows and propaganda' above for reason why). But what if a second question were added: "Would you still be in favour if the cameras were not effective in deterring, detecting or reducing crime?" What if, after revealing the studies that show how ineffective CCTV cameras have been and an explanation of the Common Law principles upon which the English legal system was built, another question were asked: "Are you concerned about the freedoms that are discarded when CCTV cameras are installed to monitor all people in public spaces?"
This level of debate is almost never allowed to take place and many of these thoughts are dismissed by policy makers as the "dishonest campaigning of the pro-cctv lobby", despite their fundamental importance and that they can all be backed up with solid facts. This is a huge indictment of our supposed western democracy, a democracy that is being eroded by politicians and petty council officials hell bent on pushing their own agendas.
Skewed contextualising
Back to BrumiLeaks, where it seems that the council official at the centre of the emails is determined that a so-called anti-cctv lobby is somehow skewing the consultation process. But let us take a closer look at the consultation questionnaire put out by Birmingham City council. Jason Ditton of the Scottish Centre for Criminology looked at the question of context in questionnaires about CCTV and used the term 'skewed contextualising' to describe the situation where the question and the way it is asked can influence the answer [5]. The Birmingham Council questionnaire [6] begins:
Moseley & Kings Heath Ward has been offered funding of up to £100,000 by Safer Birmingham
Partnership to help provide a CCTV scheme in Moseley Village to improve the security for traders and visitors to the area.
The clear implication here is that CCTV will improve security. This is hardly the introduction to a neutral questionnaire that seeks to "understand what the residents really think". When Ditton asked the public about their views on CCTV using a crime control frame of reference for one group, a civil liberties frame of reference for another group and a final group with no contextualising at all, he found a 20% skew of the results caused by contextualising. In the case of the Brimingham questionnaire, it was rigged from the outset to skew the results in favour of CCTV.
Not all views created equal
Despite the skewed questionnaire there are those in Moseley that are so in favour of cameras that they still did not want to risk including all of the questionnaires in the consultation. Another email contains an excerpt from draft minutes of the December meeting of the Moseley forum, the draft minute reads:
Ballot boxes had been placed in three venues in Moseley - The Prince of Wales Public House, Domestica, and the Moseley Community Development Trust. They had also been place in venues in Kings Heath and Balsall Heath
It was suggested that those doing the count might discard of some ballots in the POW [Prince of Wales] box and attach additional weightings to some ballot responses based on levels of impact on people responding of the CCTV cameras. It was suggested that the ballot in the POW had been 'stuffed'.
Once again we have claims of ballot boxes being "stuffed", even though this was not an election or even a referendum but a consultation where questionnaires are named and posted. It will be no surprise that our old friend the council official who wants to "understand what the residents really think" was the one suggesting discounting questionnaires and adding extra weight to the views of certain people. To their credit, other members of the Moseley forum were not impressed, the email reveals:
Moseley forum strongly objected to discarding any properly completed ballot forms and to any new condition being applied such as the weighting of certain ballot responses. It was very strongly expressed that BCC [Birmingham City Council] and the consultation steering group must act with complete transparency and without bias. To do otherwise would jeopardise the whole consultation process and risk another fiasco like the ANPR [Project Champion]. BCC should be taking greater care than ever before not to alienate its residents, but rather to embrace their views as part of the Big Society - even if residents disagreed with the local authority.
Clearly the council official's view of the best way to handle the lack of public trust post Project Champion is to champion the proposed Moseley CCTV project - a view at odds with other members of the forum.
When all else fails play the fear card
Emails between one forum member and the council official demonstrate a common tactic used by supporters of surveillance cameras, that of exaggerating the level of crime in the area in which they want to install cameras at the same time as over-stating the benefits of video surveillance. The official tries to play on a recent attack that took place in Moseley to bolster the case for CCTV, despite the fact that police had made an arrest without the need for CCTV and that as the attack happened in broad daylight it was witnessed by many people. The Moseley forum member tries to point out that CCTV can have a negative effect, by causing people to no longer take personal responsibility in their community. The forum member writes:
Too often I have heard the statement. 'You don’t need me to make a statement, you’ve got it on CCTV' from the star witness as they walk away (usually without even bothering to even find out if it was on CCTV).
Cameras give you stars
Undeterred the council official plays a masterful trump card - the claim that the installation of surveillance cameras can increase the renown of restaurants in an area. The council official writes:
compared to 2004, Moseley is alot safer (and cleaner and interesting), but there is still alot more to do. For example, there is no reason why Moseley couldn't attract a Michelin Star restaurant. Harborne has Turners, and it is Council strategy to make Birmingham a gastro city.....and Marketing Birmingham are in charge of implementing it. . This is why chefs like Jamie Oliver and and Antonio Carluccio have invested in Birmingham recently.
[...]
If we ever want attract anything as upmarket as a Michelin Star restaurant, we need to convince the investor that their customers (who will most likely come to Moseley from miles around) and their cars will be safe and they won't be harressed by drunken yobs. As someone who uses the pubs of Moseley, we are nowhere near this stage where we can make that guarantee.
The businesses, especially the pubs,cafes and restaurants of Moseley would benefit enormously if, say, the Jug of Ale or Village pub became a Michelin Star restaurant, since they would have the knock-on effects of the positive profile of this restarant, plus have customers from this restaurant visiting their businesses.
Whilst no comprehensive study of the number of cameras in relation to Michelin Star restaurants has yet been published, it would no doubt be fairly simple, armed with the number of cameras in, say, each London borough (where the most cameras in the UK are located) and a telephone directory, to prove that more CCTV cameras means more Michelin Stars.
Shouldn't the imposition of any surveillance measure be seen only as a last resort, after a full informed debate that includes actual evidence of any claimed benefits and a thorough assessment of the costs both financially and to the freedoms of citizens? The BrumiLeaks emails show that there are decision makers who see surveillance as the first and only option.
And the result is...
On Wednesday 15th December the views expressed in the Moseley Village consultation were announced [7] - 53% of respondents voted against the installation of CCTV cameras. Democracy was given CPR. The council has agreed not to install street cameras in Moseley Village - but, by way of what was termed a compromise, the council has nonetheless announced that three cameras will be installed in Moseley Village car park. Democracy's condition remains critical.
Well done to Steve Jolly and everyone involved in the campaign against the Moseley cameras. Only through the hard work of people like Steve will we ever have the hope of a proper debate on issues such as these.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 16/12/2010
What is the true cost of CCTV? - 30/11/2010
The release today (30th November) of Big Brother Watch's latest report, 'The Price is Wrong - The cost of CCTV surveillance in the United Kingdom' [1] reiterates that CCTV cameras are a massive waste of money. The report shows that local authorities in the UK spent nearly £315 million of taxpayers money on CCTV in just the last three years. Top of the surveillance spending chart is Birmingham Council who managed to pour £10,476,874 into spy cameras between 2007 and 2010!
CCTV top spenders 2007-2010 ('The Price is Wrong' report, Big Brother Watch)
| Rank | Council | Total Spend |
|---|
| 1 | Birmingham | £10,476,874.00 |
| 2 | Sandwell | £5,355,744.00 |
| 3 | Leeds | £3,839,675.00 |
| 4 | City of Edinburgh | £3,600,560.00 |
| 5 | Hounslow | £3,573,186.45 |
| 6 | Lambeth | £3,431,301.00 |
| 7 | Manchester | £3,347,310.00 |
| 8 | Enfield | £3,141,295.00 |
| 9 | Barnet | £3,119,020.00 |
| 10 | Barking and Dagenham | £3,090,000.00 |
Birmingham - hey big spender!
Birmingham City Council has been the subject of much CCTV controversy this year as it tried to sneak hundreds of CCTV and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras into leafy Birmingham suburbs as part of a project named 'Project Champion'. Following a successful local campaign against the cameras [2] the council and the police have been back pedalling for months and it is expected that the decision to remove all of the cameras will be ratified at a 2nd December West Midlands Police Authority Meeting [3].
Birmingham Council is no stranger to wasting tax payers money - in 2009 it emerged that they had spent £2.8 million on a new website supplied by outsourcing firm Capita [4].
London - still the surveillance capital
At first glance it appears that Edinburgh is the surveillance spending capital of the UK but in reality it cannot compete with London which is made up of 32 boroughs and the City of London. Five of the top ten spenders are London Boroughs (with a combined total spend of £16,354,802.45) and it is no surprise that Hounslow, with its infamous 'Promise Ten' ("Introduce CCTV to more parts of the Borough") [5] is at the top of the London Borough league. The City of London as well as the London Boroughs of Hackney, Havering, Kingston upon Thames, Newham, Southwark and Wandsworth all failed to respond to requests for information, violating their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.
Yearly CCTV cost has doubled?
The headline figure of £315 million suggests that the yearly cost of CCTV has more than doubled to £105 million since the Surveillance Studies Network revealed that £500 million of public money was spent on cameras in the decade from 1995 to 2005 [6]. The Surveillance Studies Network also reported that during the 1990s approximately 78 per cent of the Home Office crime prevention budget was spent on installing CCTV.
The Surveillance Studies Network got their £500 million figure from a 2006 report 'Closed-Circuit Television: A Review of Its Development and Its Implications for Privacy', by Professor Clive Norris of Sheffield University [7]. Norris wrote:
Given that there was also substantial government investment in CCTV surveillance of schools, hospitals, and transportation facilities, it is not unreasonable to estimate that in the last 10 years, over £500 million of central and local government funds have been allocated to CCTV. However, this represents only a small fraction of total spending. The industry statistics for CCTV sales during the early part of the 1990s estimate the total value of the UK CCTV market at around £100 million annually, and this had risen to £361 million in 1998. By 2002, market analysts were reporting year-on-year growth of 14–18% and estimating that the market would be in the region of £600 million per annum between 2004 and 2008. On the basis of these figures, it can be estimated that during the decade 1995–2005, around £5 billion was spent on the installation of CCTV and maintenance of CCTV systems in the United Kingdom, and this excludes the monitoring costs associated with these systems.
What Norris highlights here is the enormous amount of money sloshing around the CCTV industry. The £500 million figure for 1995-2005 included central government funding and took into account cameras in schools, hospitals and transportation facilities which would also be funded with public money. In other words the £315 million is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg and it seems likely that the yearly cost of cameras has increased by more than a factor of two.
Tip of the iceberg
A glance at recent CCTV market reports also shows that the CCTV industry is still rubbing its hands with glee in the surveillance mad United Kingdom. Market research company RNCOS in their report 'UK CCTV Market An Outlook (2005-2009)'[8] wrote:
Replacement systems, extensions and upgradation play key roles in the UK CCTV market that is poised for a 7% compound rate growth by 2009 to the tune of £700million, as opposed to £568million in 2004. CCTV market growth from 2006 to 2009 is expected to witness a significantly high demand for digital recording equipment.
Another market research company Market and Business Development (MBD), in a March press release [9] to accompany their 2010 'UK CCTV Market Research Report', wrote:
In 2009, the value of the CCTV market increased by an estimated 1% to £1181 million, consolidating growth of 2% recorded in the previous year. Prior to that slightly stronger growth of 5% and 4% was recorded in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
MBD went on to predict that the 2012 Olympics will be a bumper pay day for the surveillance camera industry in the UK:
In the short-term, the CCTV market is expected to benefit from increased demand for public security generated by the London 2012 Olympics. The need to tighten security in public areas is also likely to boost demand from the Government and transport sectors.
One cannot but question whose "need" it is that security be tightened... But whoever's "need" it may be, how much state and local government funding allocated to the Olympics will find its way into CCTV expansion?
The remarkable anomaly and choosing the right statistics
The Surveillance Studies Network, in a recent report [10] for the Information Commissioner's Office, referred to the support for CCTV despite its ineffectiveness as "a remarkable anomaly". The scale of this remarkable anomaly was illustrated by the 2008 Campbell Collaboration review of the effects of CCTV on crime [11] which found that, despite all of the millions spent, CCTV schemes in city and town centres, public housing and on public transport: "did not have a significant effect on crime" (emphasis added).
Supporters of CCTV, when faced with findings such as the Campbell Collaboration report are quick to say that statistics lie, but would they still be saying that if the statistics fitted their agenda? For a good example of this view we need look no further than a piece in today's Herald, Scotland [12] in response to the Big Brother Watch report, by Pauline Nostrom, chairman of the CCTV section of the British Security Industry Association(BSIA). Nostrom writes:
When looking at its costs it is important to remember that you cannot put a price on life, and that quoted statistics can be misleading and do not represent the true value of employing CCTV systems.
A paragraph later and Nostrom throws off her aversion to statistics as she proclaims:
The Metropolitan Police say more than 70% of murder investigations have been solved with the help of CCTV retrievals and most serious crime investigations have a CCTV investigation strategy.
And another paragraph on Nostrom seems to have fully embraced the joy of statistics, as she says:
An operation by Safer Swansea, which saw a mobile CCTV vehicle rotated around five different parts of one village over one weekend, witnessed a 75% fall in calls from residents regarding anti-social behaviour.
So it's all a matter of choosing the right statistics it seems. The 70% of murders solved figure can be found in a Metropolitan Police internal report entitled 'CCTV in Homicide Investigations' [13] that was released under the Freedom of Information Act. The study is just one page in length and far from a thorough evaluation of CCTV and murder, and it consists mostly of ... er ... statistics - with no reference to the research from whence they supposedly came.
CCTV's impact on society
The Campbell Collaboration review was commissioned by the Home Office and the police, yet despite its findings policy-makers still seem to have an insatiable desire to introduce surveillance and curtail our freedoms.
Things are set to get worse unless something is done to halt this expansion – technologies such as behaviour recognition and face recognition will be added to the already appalling number plate recognition cameras that act as automated checkpoints around the country. All of this will be a massive pay day for the surveillance industrial complex and a further assault on the freedoms of honest, decent people.
The real cost of CCTV cannot be measured in millions of pounds or dollars or euros. The real cost is the cost to society of the erosion of trust that is engendered by the constant gaze of cameras, the loss of freedom that goes hand in hand with tracking of movements, the destruction of common law rights, anonymity and respect. Even if CCTV had no financial cost and did reduce crime, the costs to society would still be incurred and it is these costs that must drive our resistance to the spread of surveillance.
In 2007 a Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Law, Jesper Ryberg started a debate in the journal 'Res Publica' comparing being watched by a CCTV camera with being watched by a lonely old lady. In 2008, Benjamin Goold wrote 'The difference between lonely old ladies and CCTV cameras: a response to Jesper Ryberg' [14] in which he pointed out that the impact of being watched by a lonely old lady cannot be compared with the dangers of the state's use of surveillance cameras. Goold wrote:
the state has a monopoly on the use of legitimate force and can, under certain circumstances, deprive me of both my liberty and my property. As a consequence, we seek to limit the things that may be done by the state in an effort to protect individuals from the dangers that are attendant with the existence of such power.
It is time to limit the state's surveillance powers - before the cost to society can no longer be borne.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 30/11/2010
ICO's Surveillance Society follow up report - read it and sleep - 17/11/2010
On Thursday (11th November) the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) published a report to parliament on the state of surveillance in the UK [1]. The report contains an update from the Surveillance Stuides Network [2] to their 2006 'Report on the Surveillance Society' [3] (also written for the ICO).
The report should have been a dire warning about the growing levels of surveillance and at times it does try to highlight worrying trends, but the language is so couched in parliamentary deference that at best it lacks any bite. At worst, it acts as an apologist for the continued spread of surveillance. The previous Information Commissiomer, Richard Thomas warned that the country risked sleepwalking into a surveillance society - this report by the new commissioner risks putting the country to sleep.
Fog on the Tyne
The report contains an "Information Commissioner's perspective" section that reveals why the language is so tempered. Referring to the Surveillance Studies Network report the commissioner tells us:
The report observes that the quality of debate surrounding developments is hampering proper consideration. Anticipating and controlling new developments is a constant challenge. This has become more difficult as issues become enveloped in what is described as a 'hyperbolic fog' of claims and counterclaims about benefits and dangers concluding that Parliamentary and regulatory scrutiny would be improved with less exaggeration of the benefits and the dangers of surveillance.
An example of such fog came from former Prime Minister Gordon Brown when he gave a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) about 'Security and Liberty' in 2008 [4]. Brown claimed that CCTV had been a success in cutting crime in Newcastle Upon Tyne but he forgot to mention a few minor details. Like the fact that in a detailed report on CCTV in the UK - 'Effects of Closed-Circuit Television on Crime' (Home Office Study 252) the effect of CCTV on crime in Newcastle was described as "undesirable". In Newcastle, total crime fell by 21.6% in the area with cameras but by 29.7% in the area where there were no cameras!
Fog can also come from scaremongers too, such as when the Daily Express newspaper last year claimed that there were: "plans to put 20,000 problem families under 24-hour CCTV super-vision in their own homes" [5]. However such fog can easily be lifted through careful fact checking, which in this case revealed that the Express had confused an announcement of 'Family Intervention Projects' with CCTV in families homes. If groups like No CCTV are capable of and interested in fog clearing [6], then surely parliamentarians and regulators, not to mention the media, should be too.
Clearly there is a need for accurate information and a proper debate on the issues surrounding the Surveillance Society and this is highlighted:
The Commissioner recognises that the parliamentary process is designed to provide thorough scrutiny of new measures but that this can be hampered when the assertions of those either for or against surveillance related developments are presented with little concrete evidence established on which to base decisions.
But if people are sleepwalking then they need waking up. Increasing state and private sector surveillance has very serious implications for the freedoms of us all. The ICO's report does not take a stand and in doing so it takes a stand. Earlier this year the British journalist Robert Fisk spoke at AUT University, Auckland about the state of journalism [7] and he referred to the problem of "50-50 journalism", whereby both sides are represented in a story as though it were a football match. Fisk asserted that journalists ought to be "objective and unbiased - on the side of those who suffer". Surely the ICO and the Surveillance Studies Network should similarly be "objective and unbiased - on the side of those who suffer", in this case those who would be surveilled.
Surveillance Studies Network Update
The bulk of the report is made up of the Surveillance Studies Network (SSN) update on surveillance since their 2006 report. The SSN is at great pains to state that "There was no suggestion, then or now, that the United Kingdom was or is becoming a 'police state', or a society under total and malevolent control, as some commentators may assert." Yet no definition is given of what constitutes a police state. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a police state as "a country in which the government uses the police to severely limit people's freedom". Whilst the Oxford English dictionary opts for: "a totalitarian state controlled by a political police force that secretly supervises the citizens' activities". Surely either of these definitions has resonance in the UK where the proliferation of CCTV cameras continues, where a network of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras can be used to track the movement of citizens and where surveillance drones are being developed by police and government agencies, and where those that make the decisions to roll-out such technologies are neither elected by, nor accountable to the people. Or is that just yet more hyperbolic fog?
In reviewing their 2006 report the SSN reminds us that trust is a major casualty of the surveillance society, when they point out: "One of the biggest effects of surveillance processes and practices is to create a world where we are not really trusted." This fundamental issue of trust is one that is often left to one side in discussions of CCTV cameras, but it is crucial to understanding why cameras increase distrust between people and promote fear of crime.
CCTV and the remarkable anomaly
On CCTV the SSN points out that: "Visual surveillance through CCTV is perhaps the image most people have in mind as denoting what 'surveillance' means." They point out that the use of CCTV has become even more widespread, before making the following understatement:
Yet its relative ineffectiveness in achieving its objectives, despite its public and political support, has remained a remarkable anomaly.
Indeed it is a "remarkable anomaly" and in a footnote to this anomaly they draw attention to the Campbell Collaboration report [8], which found that CCTV schemes in city and town centres and public housing as well as those focused on public transport "did not have a significant effect on crime". But the report goes on to discuss CCTV as though the anomaly does not exist.
CCTV in schools
The SSN highlights the growing use of CCTV in schools and references the excellent work done by Emmeline Taylor whose research paper 'I spy with my little eye: the use of CCTV in schools and the impact on privacy' [9] was published earlier this year. The report states:
In particular, the use of CCTV in schools has migrated from perimeter security and access control to monitoring pupil behaviour in public areas such as in corridors and playgrounds, and to more private realms such as changing rooms and toilets.
Here the report does at least go on to warn that the issues surrounding surveillance in schools are likely to intensify "if private sector management of state schools spreads, as the Government intends".
ANPR cameras and function creep
On Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras the SSN report states (with quotes from the Association of Chief Police Officer's (ACPO) ANPR Strategy 2007-2010 [10]):
ANPR illustrates the progress of data-enhanced policing, using new technological tools to move from being an 'add-on' project 'to becoming a mainstream policing tool, integrated into police force strategies and policy, tactics, systems, processes, training and baseline funding’.
Without questionning the appropriateness of this "progress", the SSN goes on to highlight the function creep that has occured since ANPR systems were allegedly being introduced to help identify vehicles that are incorrectly registered, untaxed or uninsured. The report says:
The main aims of ANPR systems extend from the apprehension of owners of untaxed and uninsured vehicles, and car thieves, to the wider one of 'targeting criminals through their use of the roads’. In so doing, the movements of all vehicles, not only those involve in criminal activity, are tracked.
So despite acknowledging that all vehicles are tracked, the SSN report does not explore the implications of an ANPR network of 10,000+ cameras that are now, according to ACPO's ANPR Strategy, embedded "into core police business" throughout the UK. No CCTV has pointed out elsewhere that this network acts as an automated checkpoint system [11] that has no place in a democratic society. No mention is made of the agenda to expand the ANPR network under 'Project Columbus' [12] or the innacuracy of the databases behind the cameras.
Vehicle-borne jokes?
It is not clear whether the SSN report is making a sarcastic comment, cracking a joke, or has forgotten how long ago the car was invented when, with regard to the police use of data gathered by Transport for London's (TfL) congestion charge ANPR cameras, they write:
With the advent of vehicle-borne terrorist activity, the Home Secretary in 2007 ordered an exemption of TfL from parts of the Data Protection Act.
The ridiculous mantra "vehicle-borne" terrorist/terrorism was repeatedly used by Home Office ministers in 2007 [13] to ramp up fear and justify the removal of freedom in the bulk transfer of ANPR data from TfL to the Metropolitan Police Service. What even is "vehicle-borne terrorist activity"? By not putting this Home Office/Police catchphrase in quotes the SSN might lead one to believe that they have bought into the hype that because some criminals can drive, if we deny drivers use of the roads we will deny criminals use of the roads - and that that's okay. In fact the SSN report goes on to state that the function creep with regards to TfL's congestion charge ANPR cameras is "arguably legitimate and beneficial", it states:
Clearly in the case of TfL, the ANPR cameras were installed for the purpose of enabling and enforcing the central London Congestion Charge scheme, but the data are now shared with the police for national intelligence purposes. This is arguably legitimate and beneficial, and has independent oversight because the ICO will receive an annual report from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police on the operation of this data-sharing agreement.
This was, and is, a highly controversial expansion of surveillance which they treat like the "50-50 journalism" highligted above. In 2003 Privacy International awarded Big Brother Awards to Ken Livingston, the mayor of London who introduced the congestion charge, and Capita the company that ran the congestion charge at that time [14].
In a 1998 report 'Data Protection Law and on-line Service' [15] US privacy law professors Joel R. Reidenber and Paul M. Schwartz reveal the position of the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (CNIL) in France, which is the supposed equivalent of the UK's ICO. It is interesting to compare the views of the CNIL with the weak views in this ICO report, Schwartz and Reidenber state:
The CNIL rejected, for example, a proposed intelligent transport system in part because of the reliance on collecting and tracking data matched by license plate number. The CNIL’s position emphasized the right of citizens to travel anonymously on public roads.
ANPR and surveilling protestors
The SSN report highlights the use of ANPR cameras to monitor protestors, but in highlighting the obvious problem with surveilling the movements of people exercising their democractic right to protest the report suggests that using ANPR to identify those without insurance or road tax is not contentious, simply brushing aside the issues of the accuracy of the databases used and the erosion of anonimity and the principle of innocent until proved guilty. The report states:
While the use of ANPR cameras to identify those who are driving without insurance or road tax, or to monitor those suspected of being involved in serious crime and disorder, may not be seen as contentious, the extent to which it is used to track, monitor, and profile 'legitimate' protesters is. For instance, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) is responsible for providing intelligence on 'domestic extremists' and maintains a database of individuals identified as a potential threat.
The SSN report also highlights the use of ANPR along with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) authority to place an "electronic moat" around a town centre as described in a 2009 National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) document [16]. The SSN report says:
The extension of ANPR systems has provided a major spur to dataveillance. In July, 2009 the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and ACPO issued advice to police forces entitled 'Practice Advice on the Management and Use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition', which detailed the extensive data mining potential of the new database. One example given in this Practice Advice concerned the collection, under RIPA, of images of potentially violent protesters, and loading them onto the central database.
But when the SSN report tells us that the sharing of TfL's congestion charge ANPR data with the police "is arguably legitimate and beneficial", they go on to say: "So, too, would be the use of ANPR in the case of violent protest." Here they appear to be saying that the aims justify the means. ANPR was introduced without debate, public consultion or legislation. Surely the whole system is legally questionable to say the least. But don't bother looking in this report to find a discussion of these issues.
Project Champion - can ANPR be racist?
The SSN report does mention the Project Champion cameras in Birmingham (now scheduled for removal) but chooses to focus, as has much of the mainstream coverage, on the racist nature of the scheme. The report says:
In Birmingham, for example, ANPR systems are used disproportionately – 3 times more – in areas where there is a concentrated Muslim population.
Can cameras really be racist? Focussing purely on the discrimination element of Project Champion is dangerous. In 2004 when detention without trial of foreign nationals was challenged in terms of discrimination, rather than the fundamental issue of administrative detention, the detention of foreign nationals was replaced with Control Orders, which allow indefinite house arrest for British and foreign national suspects alike. Shouldn't we challenge the placement of ANPR cameras in a residential area, regardless of how many were placed and which group of people they target?
The SSN report goes on to declare that following the furore over Project Champion "the Home Secretary declared that ANPR as a whole should be placed under statutory control". But there have been calls for ANPR to be placed under statutory control for many years - in 2004, following an ANPR trial, the then Home Secretary David Blunkett wrote that experience gained in the pilot: "is likely to lead to the introduction of ANPR enabling legislation as soon as Parliamentary time allows" [17]. Now that the ANPR network has been constructed shouldn't we be a little more critical of the government's desire to restrospectively make the system legal?
The challenge of drones
The SSN report does view the moves towards using surveillance drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) as a worrying development though it fails to draw enough distinction between Micro-UAVs and the large BAE system HERTI UAVS that are being tested in conjuction with the South Coast Partnership. The report states:
Recent developments in national security technologies – unmanned drones and body scanners – provide further examples of novel forms of information collection. These are not yet significantly deployed in the UK, but if they were more fully implemented in future, they would mount important challenges for regulation and surveillance control.
At least here they do use the phrase "surveillance control", as though such technologies should be limited. The report goes on to highlight the function creep that the use of UAVs by police represents, it states:
the use of UAVs for policing demonstrates another form of function creep: the migration to domestic policing of a technology developed to track the location and movements of the enemy in war. In the context of war, consent, privacy, and data protection may be little considered, but in the context of the mundane policing of citizens, such considerations should not be so easily abandoned.
The report expands on this by looking at privacy problems associated with drones, it states:
The privacy problems associated with drones are worth mentioning here: specifically, they relate to the extent to which those present 'in public' can claim any kind of right to privacy. Drones also present a more pervasive form of surveillance than CCTV because of their mobility. They raise significant problems in terms of consent and notice, as they are barely visible from the ground, and yet have the potential to track and film people in real time. Issues around proportionality arise when they are following a 'target'.
The "there is no such thing as privacy, get over it" argument is what we have come to expect from social networking/datamining companies and a certain search engine company that shall remain nameless. It is particularly disturbing that the very people who are meant to be independently safeguarding our privacy do not understand that your right to privacy/anonymity does not depend on where you are.
On the use of drones for the 2012 Olympics the report suggests:
It is quite probable that the use of drones will become more commonplace in covert surveillance, and will feature in the policing of the 2012 Olympic Games.
Closer investigation would have shown that the police are to opt for the BAE system GA-22 airship for the 2012 Olympics because Civil Aviation Authority(CAA) clearance for larger UAVs is proving difficult to obtain. In fact even the GA-22 airship has not yet been given CAA clearance [18]. Research conducted by No CCTV suggests that there is a large UAV industry driven agenda to introduce widespread use of UAVs (unless stopped before then) between 2012 and 2015 (No CCTV will be releasing a UAV report soon).
Regulation, regulation, regulation
The final part of the SSN report looks at 'Regulatory Developments and Problems'. This should come as no surprise as the report was commissioned by the ICO, however it is still disappointing that the SSN places so much faith in regulation. Regulation does not address the core issues of removal of personal freedom, anonymity and other rights. It simply endorses acceptance of surveillance technologies by formalising their "proper use" and leaves no room for the rejection of such technology.
On the regulation of CCTV the SSN report states:
A new Code of Practice for CCTV was adopted in 2008. It, too, will assist in the assessment of impact not only on privacy but on other values that people cherish, in reinforcing purpose-specificity, and in promoting transparency and accountability for CCTV systems. The Government has promised further regulation in this area, but without detail at the time of writing.
When No CCTV and Privacy International complained to the ICO about the citizen spy CCTV game Internet Eyes [19] and made reference to the above mentioned Code of Practice we were told that the code is guidance rather than express legal requirements. When we drilled down further into the detail of the Data Protection Act the ICO dismissed our concerns. In other words the Code of Practice is worthless and the regulators enforcement of the feeble Data Protection Act is practically non-existant. Interestingly the ICO report was released just over a week after several civil liberties groups declared that the ICO is 'not fit for purpose' [20].
On the forthcoming regulation expected from the government it is interesting to note what the SSN report suggests with regard to "a more rigorous regime of law, supervision and enforcement" of surveillance in general:
Regulation would be assisted by reform of the legal framework – perhaps tightening the link with human rights including the right to privacy – and of the powers available to regulators, whether generally or with respect to specific or sectoral surveillance activities.
Data Protection expert Chris Pounder pointed out on the Amberhawk Training blog earlier this year [21] that a link already exists between the Data Protection Act and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (the right to privacy) but that the ICO has been reluctant to enforce the link. Furthermore the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) "was designed to ensure public authorities would comply with the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly the right to privacy in Article 8, when they used covert investigatory techniques” [22].
Article 8 rights can be removed "in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others" [23]. A pretty large space in which the state can conduct privacy busting surveillance.
In September Francis Hoar, a barrister specialising in criminal law wrote an article for the Big Brother Watch website entitled 'Does the Human Rights Act really protect our freedoms?' [24] in which he pointed out that:
we must remember that the ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights] was designed not for nations with a long tradition of judicial independence but for a continent ravished by war, most of whose nations were emerging from decades of dictatorship – a role repeated after 1989 as former Warsaw Pact and USSR Republics joined the Council of Europe. Thus, the ECHR is no more than a minimum standard for countries with diverse judicial systems and a hugely divergent history of fairness in criminal and civil proceedings.
Is it actually the case that the HRA has allowed the last government to plead its respect for human rights knowing that the ECHR was ill equipped to protect common law standards unique to Europe in the British Isles? If that is so, should we think again about the fundamental standards to which all governments should be tied?
It looks likely that the government's promise to further regulate CCTV will simply be yet another restating of Article 8 of the ECHR – a meaningless gesture to silence mainstream
critics. Surely it is the common law principles which govern protection of our privacy
that we should all be working to uphold.
This report was written for a toothless regulator, in an age when much of the discussion surrounding rights and freedoms takes as its starting point the presumption that rights never existed in the UK before the ECHR and the Human Rights Act. This presumption is both false and absurd. The problem then as now is not whether rights exist, it is whether the state respects them.
If there is one lesson to be learnt from the ICO/SSN report it is that we cannot leave the responsibility of protecting our freedoms to parliamentarians or their regulators. Now, as in the past, we must all fight to uphold and protect our freedoms.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 17/11/2010
The launch of CCTV citizen spy game Internet Eyes - 4/10/2010
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it...
- Judge Learned Hand, 'The Spirit of Liberty' speech (1944)
The announcement that Internet Eyes is to launch on 4th October (as part of a three month trial) marks another disturbing chapter in Britain's surveillance society.
The Information Commissioner has put private profit above personal privacy in allowing a private company to launch its Stasi style citizen spy game rather than defending the rights of British citizens. This is the privatisation of the surveillance society - a private company asking private individuals to spy on each other using private cameras connected to the internet. Internet Eyes must be challenged.
In the autumn of 2009 Internet Eyes Limited hit the headlines when they announced their desire to launch a CCTV game that they were keen to claim was not a game. Private individuals would subscribe to private camera feeds connected to the internet and spy on people going about their business, with a cash prize each month for the person who reports the most infringements. The game is now being launched as part of a three month trial at 12 shops (including Costcutter and Spar franchises) in towns including Reading, Wokingham and Newton Abbott.
In the United States in 2008 a similar hair-brained project, called the 'Texas Virtual Border Watch Program' [1] was launched which allows anyone in the world to log on via the internet and watch a live feed of the Texas border to supposedly report suspicious activity (which in reality consists mainly of birds or deer lurking with intent).
A July 2009 Homeland Security Newswire article 'Virtual border system ineffective, out of cash' [2] details a few of the reports made by Texas Virtual Border Patrol viewers:
Some, such as Phyllis Waller of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, reported precisely what they saw. "Cow or deer walked by; now out of screen," she wrote. Another activity report simply read, "armadillo by the water."
One border watcher offered some advice: "Just a word of warning: A moment ago I saw a spider crawl across the top of the camera. You might want to try and prevent any webs from being spun across the lens area by treating with repellent or take other measures."
Much like the failed US citizen spy system Internet Eyes viewers will be watching nothing much going on, in this case in shops - just people going about their daily business: buying a pint of milk, standing in a queue or choosing a chocolate bar.
There have been other citizen spy pilots such as the cable TV channel in East London that showed live feeds of CCTV cameras in the area. All of these seek to outsource surveillance monitoring to members of the public, making members of the public the watchers and consequently part of the surveillance state. In doing so they hope to normalise people to surveillance and aim to make people ignore the uses to which constant monitoring can be put by the state or corporations. Not to mention the appalling impact this disconnect has on society.
Last year a BBC television programme, 'Inside Out' [3] described Internet Eyes as a "revolution" in CCTV despite the fact that it had not yet launched and that the Texas virtual border patrol to which they compared it was an enormously expensive failure ($2 million dollars spent in the first year for just 12 arrests).
Numerous studies (including those commissioned by the Home Office) have shown that CCTV does not have a significant effect on crime, so such "revolutions" are ways of ensuring that the public does not focus on the lie that they have been sold. Creating systems that encourage people to watch the world through a monitor and report those they see on the screen actually discourages them from interacting with real people and participating in the community in which they live.
One of the claims made by Internet Eyes is that the reason CCTV doesn't work is because there is hardly anyone watching them in real time. This just isn't true. The vast majority of council/police cameras in the UK are watched 24 hours a day by trained staff. It is these cameras that have been subject to the most studies and have been shown to be ineffective.
No CCTV along with Privacy International issued a joint complaint [4] to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) last year as we believe that as well as being a ludicrous gimmick the game breaches the Data Protection Act. We laid out in detail the ways in which Internet Eyes breaches the Act but the ICO refused to block the launch of Internet Eyes and in fact bent over backwards to help the private company squeeze it's game into the existing legal framework.
Section 8.2 of the ICO CCTV guidelines [5] states: "[...] it would not be appropriate to disclose images of identifiable individuals to the media for entertainment purposes or place them on the internet". Despite claims of technical safeguards Internet Eyes Ltd have no way of knowing who is viewing their images and they have no way of controlling where such images are stored or distributed. For instance an internet viewer could simply use a video camera to record images from a CCTV feed and then keep those images permanently or distribute them as they see fit.
The thinking behind the Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham's failure to block the launch of Internet Eyes was revealed when he appeared before the House of Commons Justice Committee session on 'Justice issues in Europe' in January of this year [6], Graham told MPs:
I think there are differences of view within the European Union and some of my colleagues, some of the data protection authorities take not just a purist view but see it as their role to stop things happening whereas I think in the UK we take a more practical approach where we say here are tremendous opportunities provided by modern technology and the question is finding the balance between getting the best out of the opportunities that the technology provides and the necessary protection of privacy. If you simply begin by saying privacy is an absolute and we must stop things in the name of privacy, you do not get anything done. It is much more of a challenge to come up with that balance between getting the utility from technology while protecting privacy.
Graham's claim of balance between privacy and technology is not viable. In reality every new technology erodes privacy - if as each new technology comes along a new "balance" is sought then a bit more privacy is given away and privacy never gets to regain lost ground.
Much of the media coverage around the launch has suggested that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has in some way approved Internet Eyes. This is not quite true. The ICO was not willing to prevent Internet Eyes from launching. They have advised the company about data protection compliance and the company has made some changes to its service. Once the service has launched the ICO will have to respond to complaints and should it be found that the service breaches the Data Protection Act then they will have to take action.
Internet Eyes is a very grave concern and we call on those affected by the citizen spy game to contact us with a view to legal action.
As Sir Ken MacDonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions warned at a CPS lecture in 2008 [7]: "... we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can't bear."
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 4/10/2010
Freedom not Fear demo in Germany - 21/9/2010
No-CCTV attended the third annual 'Freedom not Fear' protest in Berlin on Saturday 11 September 2010 which attracted an astonishing estimated 10,000 people. The protest was titled 'Freedom not Fear 2010 – stop surveillance mania!'[1] and similar protests were held in eight other capital cities across Europe to protest against the ongoing spread of excessive surveillance measures on the part of businesses and governments that is leading to the erosion of civil liberties in so many supposedly liberal states, both in Europe and worldwide. Our main argument is that the respect for our professional and personal privacy is an essential part of our human dignity, as a free and open society cannot exist without implicit private spaces and free communication.
It was an astonishing event because a protest of this magnitude against state surveillance is presently inconceivable in the UK. Indeed it is lamentable that no such protest took place in the UK, as we are by far the world's number one surveillance state. The majority of the protesters in the Berlin protest were German civil liberties groups, who remain a formidable force in a country whose population still has firmly lodged memories of the Stasi. Put simply, this country has a healthy hatred of any kind of state surveillance. It also benefits from a strong constitutional court, described to me by one German campaigner as their “saviour”. During my stay in Berlin I certainly noticed, and enjoyed the fact, that there are hardly any public space cameras and none on the open street. Needless to say, the contrast to the UK is stark.
The many different German groups, of all colours, shapes and sizes, were calling for the European directive on data retention to be revoked and for the Internet blocking law to be abolished. They also demand that several large German government IT projects and a proposed electronic health card be rejected, such as the employee wages database ELENA, and that the census planned for 2011 be aborted.
The official protest press[2] release says:
Martin Grauduszus of the Free Physicians' Association (Freie Ärzteschaft) spoke on the project for an electronic health card (eCard). The declared intention of the state, said Grauduszus, was to "unhinge the indespensible protection of professional discretion and thus destroy the bastion of trust between patients and practitioners". Grauduszus sees the eCard as a bigger threat than Google's data leeching, making the patient a fully surveilled commodity. "What a scenario: the employer, seeing that his employee is seeking psychiatric help, throws him out with one mouse click." And insurances could select their customers on-screen as well.
It is with this German surveillance scene in mind that No-CCTV has also recently received German paliamentary delegations who have been seeking our advice on how to fight against mass surveillance CCTV. This is to counter other German parliamentarians who are keen to try and introduce more public CCTV surveillance and who have also been making recent visits to the UK. It would seem that foreign countries like Germany still have a rose tinted view which harps back to a time when we were regarded as a model 'liberal democracy' with respect to civil liberties. Due to this now outdated and inaccurate perception surveillance measures introduced in the UK have implications for the rest of the world. As our group has previously explained on many occasions, each advance in surveillance in the UK has the potential to filter around the globe – the companies producing such technology rub their hands with glee but ordinary citizens do not.
A video of the demo can be found online at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awWQCYbV-wM
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 21/9/2010
Speed Cameras, ANPR and Project Columbus - 2/9/2010
- The expansion of automated checkpoints around the UK
Data Protection expert Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training[1] has warned that moves by UK local authorities to remove speed cameras could lead to an increase in Automatic Number Plate Recognition or ANPR cameras. In a recent blog post 'Data Protection and surveillance: swapping the speed camera for ANPR?'[2] Pounder suggests that as speed cameras are removed, more accidents could occur so that over time, there will be increased public pressure to do something to counter the rising accident rate, and he says: "ANPR installations (which only need a few cameras) will be the technological fix of choice". Pounder goes on:
In this way, specific surveillance of an accident black spot by a speed camera (which only captures the image of speeding cars breaking the law) is replaced by general surveillance of all vehicles passing the cameras (where records of date, time, driver details, location are all retained for possibly up to 5 years). Perhaps privacy advocates who are against ANPR should start having public love-ins with privacy-friendly speed cameras near their home?
Pounder warns that the CCTV industry views ANPR cameras as an expanding market, he says:
ANPR technology like CCTV will become ubiquitous and already CCTV installers are making quotes such as: “ANPR is probably the next growth product to take off in the UK, and the world; in fact, it is already beginning to be the biggest potential earner for installation companies”
The expansion of the ANPR network has been part of an agenda called Project Columbus for some time and now it seems cost-savings in speed cameras is another way to further the project. How has this come about, and where could it be going?
Spending cuts
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government announced reductions to road safety funding for 2010/11[3] and in June the Department for Transport wrote to all local authorities in England and Wales[4] informing them that after this financial year central government will no longer fund new fixed speed cameras. The letter states:
It is clear from the evidence that speed cameras, in the right place, can be an effective way of helping manage safety risks. But my view is that to date local partners have been over-reliant on cameras to achieve road safety outcomes. The number of cameras has increased greatly over the last decade and many motorists feel they are being unfairly and indiscriminantly targeted to generate income from fines.
The letter goes on to point out that local councils should find ways to use speed cameras more efficiently:
for camera operations, I would encourage you to examine with the police the scope for efficiency savings in back office functions, including through sharing them across several police force areas.
The over-reliance on speed cameras referred to in the Department of Transport letter is supported by a study published in 2005 that looked at the impact of cameras. However, whenever police and/or government criticise camera technology it is always worth looking a little closer to see whether there are other factors at play and what the consequences could be.
GATSO benefits overstated
The current generation of speed cameras on UK roads consists predominantly of Gatsometer BV (GATSO)[5] brand cameras that take two still photographs of a speeding car as it passes over white lines painted on the road. In December 2005 the Department for Transport published 'The national safety camera programme Four-year evaluation report' prepared by UCL and PA Consulting Group[6]. The report looked at the number of personal injury collisions (PICs) and fatal or serious collisions (FSC) in 38 road safety partnerships in the UK to assess the impact of speed cameras. The headline figure used in the Executive Summary of the report was that 42% less people were killed or injured due to the installation of speed cameras:
Overall 42% fewer people were killed or seriously injured. At camera sites, there was also a reduction of over 100 fatalities per annum (32% fewer).
[The national safety camera programme Four-year evaluation, Executive Summary]
However, Appendix H contains an analysis of 216 camera sites that takes into account a statistical phenomenon (regression to mean effect) that can skew figures and found that the effect of speed cameras listed in the Executive Summary was overstated:
the average effect of these 216 cameras was a reduction of 19% in both PICs and FSCs relative to what would have been expected in the after period had the cameras not been installed.
[The national safety camera programme Four-year evaluation, page 157]
Even with the corrected statistic, the implication is that GATSO cameras reduce accidents by reducing speed - however many motorist groups stress that it is not speed that kills but dangerous driving. What speed cameras do is reinforce the ever decreasing application of discretion in modern policing in favour of no questions asked/no room for explanation strict liability.
Support for speed cameras
Last week the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents joined forces with the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), the AA, the Association of Industrial Road Safety Officers (AIRSO), the UK’s National Cyclists’ Organisation CTC, the Institute of Road Safety Officers, Road Safety GB and others to voice concern about the switching-off of speed cameras. In a joint statement[7] the groups said:
Cameras should continue to be used where casualty statistics show they are needed.
Switching off cameras systematically would be close to creating a void in law enforcement on the road. Cameras currently account for 84 per cent of fixed penalty notices for speeding.
Cuts might also threaten many speed awareness courses that give motorists an opportunity to learn about the dangers of driving too fast.
While public spending needs to be cut, cuts must be justified by evidence. Cameras pay for themselves and currently make an important contribution to achieving compliance with the speed limit.
(See the Association of British Driver's recent press release for a rebuttal of the statements[8]).
So both within government and amongst some road safety groups there is strong support for speed cameras but also an acceptance that costs must be cut. How can both of these apparently conflicting desires be met whilst also meeting the Department of Transport suggestion of sharing back office functions across several police force areas?
Time over distance cameras
In 2009 a new generation of average speed, or time over distance cameras SPECS3[9] was given full Home Office Type Approval. SPECS are ANPR cameras, manufactured by the Speed Check Services Limited (from which they get their name SPECS - SPEed Check Services). SPECS3 is an upgrade to the existing SPECS1 cameras (given approval in 1999) that have been used to monitor speed along motorways in the UK, particularly when roadworks are taking place. SPECS3 cameras are cheaper to install because they can communicate wirelessly rather than requiring expensive fibre optic cables between cameras as required for SPECS1. Because SPECS cameras use ANPR they can be linked to a variety of databases such as the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) or the Police National Computer.
Because SPECS3 cameras are designed to work as "network nodes", where each camera is an entry and an exit camera, and able to calculate journeys between any active cameras they can be used to create speed check areas and could also be used to enforce urban 20mph zones[10]. One of the above mentioned groups in favour of cameras is the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (PACTS), who in 2007 produced a '20 MPH Default Speed Limit Briefing'[11] in which they suggested time over distance cameras as an alternative to traffic calming measures such as road humps, the briefing states:
Time over distance cameras offer an alternative enforcement tool. They operate by monitoring time of entry into and exit from a zone and comparing the expected travel time if all speed limits are adhered to. This allows longer stretches of road to have limits enforced than would be possible with a fixed site camera. They are also considered to be fairer, as they monitor speed over a longer distance and so avoid the complaints of ‘penalising drivers for momentary errors’, which are frequently made about fixed site cameras. Transport for London gave evidence to the Transport Select Committee’s road policing and technology inquiry that time over distance cameras would enable it to implement and enforce 20mph zones on 10,000km of residential road within 10 years – rather than the 35 years it would take to traffic calm them.
A February 2009 Times article 'Average speed cameras mean no escape for drivers'[12] expanded upon this idea of using SPEC3 cameras in residential areas, the article said:
Cameras that detect a motorist’s average speed will be deployed at all entry and exit points to residential areas as an alternative to road humps and chicanes. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has approved a new generation of cameras that are linked wirelessly and operate in clusters, meaning that speeding drivers will be caught whichever route they take across a wide area.
What both the Times article and the PACTS Speed Limit Briefing fail to mention is that the roll-out of SPEC3 would be a massive expansion of the ANPR network in the UK as these cameras would be able to send data to the National ANPR Data Centre (NADC) in Hendon.
Project Columbus
In 2002 the Home Office launched a national ANPR programme "to deny serious and violent criminals the use of the roads". The press release accompanying the launch[13] explained the simple logic used to begin surveilling all car journeys: "Police experience has confirmed strong links between road traffic offences and other criminal conduct". This was later refined into a vision for exploiting ANPR[14]:
The Police Service, working with partner agencies, will fully exploit ANPR technology to: 'Deny Criminals the Use of the Roads'.
Of course to deny criminals use of the roads requires that they deny everyone unchecked use of the roads - as we have discussed elsewhere[15] the ANPR network is effectively a system of automated roadside checkpoints. A September 2009 British Association of Public Communication Officers (BAPCO) Journal article 'Deny the road to the criminal'[16] explains that since 2006 there has been a plan to expand the ANPR network:
To be effective, the national ANPR network has to be comprehensive and a lot of work has gone on over the last couple of years both to extend the primary network but also to work with partners using ANPR for other purposes. Since the launch of Project Columbus in 2006, a concerted effort has been made to extend the national ANPR network to cover private-sector sites including car parks, shopping centres and petrol stations.
The aim is to expand the system to 100 million 'reads' per day, all of which will be stored by the National ANPR Data Centre in Hendon. These reads will provide the time, data and place of each vehicle sighting and will be stored for five years providing a valuable source of intelligence for the future.
The article goes on to explain that many of the congestion monitoring ANPR systems installed by local councils around the country can also feed data back to the ANPR Data Centre:
An additional source of ANPR data has become available over the last couple of years as local authorities all over the country invest in journey-time measurement systems. They are doing this because the Traffic Management Act 2004, which requires local authorities to tackle congestion and disruption on their road network, is now beginning to bite. The starting point is to measure congestion, a somewhat controversial concept in its own right. The method of choice in many areas is to use ANPR on strategic routes.
Furthermore the article reveals that a new ANPR camera protocol known as Urban Traffic Management and Control (UTMC) means that: "Any local authority buying UTMC compatible cameras in future, should they be in partnership with the police, will be able to provide the data required by the National ANPR Data Centre".
Data validity
Meanwhile, the validity of the assertions that ANPR is an effective way of catching criminals has been called into question because of inaccuracies in the databases used to identify cars of interest to the police. The National Audit Office (NAO) found a third of DVLA's records could be wrong[17] and an evaluation of an ANPR pilot published in October 2004 ('Driving crime down - Denying criminals the use of the road')[18] revealed that the accuracy of DVLA data was just 40%, further noting that "Accuracy of DVLA databases declined over the study period" [page 98, Database Issues].
More recently an Independent on Sunday article in January 'The laughing policemen: 'Inaccurate' data boosts arrest rate'[19] reported that Police whistleblowers claim intelligence stored in the database behind the cameras, such as the Motor Insurance Database Application System (MIDAS), is inaccurate. The article states:
Critics claim there is "manipulation" of performance figures to make ANPR look more successful as a crime-fighting tool. The police accept it "may be out of date" and sources in Hertfordshire Police say it is "at best only 70 per cent accurate". One said: "The longest time a vehicle has taken to enter the database is 208 days from the date of the insurance commencement."
One whistleblower told the Independent: "In short, officers do not have a complete understanding of the law, use flawed databases to justify immediate seizures, fail to adequately research and evidence the basis of their belief and almost certainly knowingly seize vehicles just to satisfy service and personal performance targets".
Function creep
But whilst the data behind the systems may be full of errors there are grand visions of how this data may be interpreted that go beyond simply targeting cars flagged as vehicles of interest. Northgate Information Solutions Limited, a private company that provides ANPR systems to all police forces in England and Wales says that they "are taking ANPR beyond Roads Policing"[20]. Northgate also conduct ANPR data mining for Borders and Lothian police in Scotland[21] and their ANPR brochure 'Putting intelligence into action' [22] explains their vision of how all police forces should use the data gathered from cameras, it says:
Most police forces currently use ANPR to target specific vehicles on their hotlist. They are stopping vehicles they know they are looking for.
Our view is that where forces focus only on these hits, they are losing the potential intelligence value that exists in the 98% of reads that don’t match the hotlist.
With further analysis, this large volume of remaining data can reveal important information about the movement of vehicles. This can help identify offenders, witnesses and vehicle convoys that may be of critical importance to operational investigations.
The National CCTV Strategy
A July 2006 BT Redcare CCTV Industry News Digest[23] gave a few more details of Project Columbus, pointing out that it "is a newly revealed element of the joint ACPO/Home Office National ANPR Strategy". However recommendation 10.3 of the 2007 National CCTV Strategy[24], which relates to ANPR, gives no real indication of the scale of expansion envisioned in Project Columbus:
The ANPR partnership structure is a good example of a multi-agency approach dedicated to driving forward the ANPR strategy. The ANPR partnership mission statement declares that it will ‘work with Partner Agencies at National, Regional and Local level to share assets and data, avoid duplication and enhance operational effectiveness’.
[National CCTV Strategy, Recommendation 10.3, page 45]
ANPR and counter terrorism
Before ANPR was sold to the public as a tool for reducing road accidents, alleviating road congestion, detecting uninsured drivers or capturing criminals who drive, it was used in counter-terrorism operations in Northern Ireland. Whilst the counter-terrorism card has been little played in mainstream discussions of ANPR, it has recently reared its head after West Midlands police installed a network of 169 ANPR cameras to create a "ring of steel" encircling the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook areas of Birmingham as part of "Project Champion, which was funded by the Association of Chief Police Officers Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO – TAM). An active campaign 'Birmingham Spy Cameras - NO THANKS!'[25] has succeeded in getting the cameras switched off pending a review and will continue to campaign to have the cameras removed.
A July 2007 article for Australian technology website Smarthouse 'Find A Terrorist Speed Cameras Being Reviewed For Oz'[26] shows that outside the UK ANPR cameras are still seen very much as a counter terrorism tool:
The UK control centre which went live in April of 2006 is capable of processing 50 million number plates a day. ACPO national ANPR co-ordinator John Dean said that fixed ANPR cameras already exist "at strategic points" on every motorway in the UK, and that the intention was to have "good nationwide coverage." According to ACPO roads policing head Meredydd Hughes, ANPR systems are planned every 400 yards and are used to tackle more serious crime such as the arrest of the recent terrorist suspects.
It is though that the UK has the most surveillance cameras per head in the world and it has the dubious accolade of being the global leader in its use of ANPR technology. Surveillance measures introduced in the UK have implications for the rest of the world, as they look to us as a 'liberal democracy'. Each advance in surveillance in the UK has the potential to filter around the globe – the companies producing such technology are rubbing their hands with glee but ordinary citizens are not.
Regulation to tie up loose ends
Back to Chris Pounder's blog post about the swapping of speed cameras for ANPR - Pounder points out that the government's plan to introduce more regulation of CCTV is to also include guidance on the use of ANPR:
the Government has promised forthcoming legislation on CCTV and this legislation will also apply to ANPR. The legislation will determine, by law, the use and retention of CCTV/ANPR images.
With regard to CCTV cameras there is already regulation (albeit of scant use to the protection of the individual) in the form of the Data Protection Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), but ANPR has been an area of contention for some time. The Chief Surveillance Commissioner (who provides oversight of the conduct of covert surveillance under RIPA) has raised the issue in his Annual Reports going back to 2006. The Commissioner's 2005-2006 Annual Report [27] said:
In the normal case, where a camera is sited in an obvious position and obviously is a camera, the deployment will not be covert. The same will normally apply where adequate notice of the presence of a camera has been given. But ANPR is not a normal case, and it is arguable that, even if the presence of an ANPR camera is apparent, surveillance nevertheless remains covert if occupants of vehicles are unaware that the camera may make and record identifiable images of them. Explaining the true purpose of the equipment briefly is not easy. It is not possible to lay down rules as to what will amount to adequate notice of the presence of the camera and of its function.
Alas the commissioner, rather than recommend that such cameras should be removed because they are unlawful or an unacceptable assault on the rights and freedoms of citizens, instead suggests that the government simply makes them "legal" by creating a new law:
The unanimous view of the Commissioners is that the existing legislation is not apt to deal with the fundamental problems to which the deployment of ANPR cameras gives rise. This is probably because the current technology, or at least its very extensive use, had not been envisaged when the legislation was framed. The Commissioners are of the view that legislation is likely to be required to establish a satisfactory framework to allow for the latest technological advances. The position is complicated by the fact that the current technology can be used in a variety of different ways and at different levels of effectiveness. I am accordingly urging upon the Home Secretary the desirability of promoting such enabling legislation as may be needed.
The issue of ANPR was raised once again in the 2006-2007 and 2008-2009 Chief Surveillance Commissioner's Annual Reports but the previous government let the Association of Chief Police Officers expand the ANPR network unchecked, which at last estimate[28] stands at around 10,500 or so cameras. As that network prepares to expand still further to tackle speeding cars, criminality, terrorism, congestion, traffic calming and any number of other applications that can be dreamt up, the government want now to introduce guidelines to legitimate this automated checkpoint system. Unless vigorously challenged this will not be about taking down cameras - far from it. It will be about the abolition of motorised freedom of movement. Hollow phrases such as the ubiquitous and tedious "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" show that many have forgotten what freedom is. ANPR is a serious threat to the freedom of everyone - it represents complete control of the road network and the ability of the state to track or prohibit the movements of whomever they see fit[29]. The police chose the name 'Project Champion' for their 'ring of steel' of ANPR cameras around residential neigbourhoods in Birmingham. As Steve Jolly of the campaign 'Birmingham Spy Cameras - NO THANKS!' points out, in marketing lingo a project champion is someone that leads the way and sets an example to be followed. For all our sakes, we must make sure that their champion fails and that we can begin the task of rolling back the surveillance nightmare.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 2/9/2010
Lively radio debate shows it's not as simple as CCTV cameras or crime - 10/8/2010
On Friday 7th August BBC Radio 5 Live's breakfast show held a phone-in debate about CCTV cameras in the UK [1]. The debate was good despite its rather loaded title 'Cameras or crime - you choose' and the unbalanced choice of studio guests - Robin Simcox of the think-tank the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) (in favour of cameras) and lawyer for Liberty Corinna Ferguson (in favour of cameras if they are "properly regulated" - whatever that means).
The debate was kicked off by host Nicky Campbell who, throwing aside all research that shows how ineffective CCTV actually is, said:
Is this intrusion worth it - if it does reduce crime? Do you object to being filmed or watched? [...] Cameras or crime you choose.
At first it appeared that this was to be the usual mainstream media pro-CCTV stitch up but in fact the result was that the debate centred much more on the issues of personal freedoms, anonymity and the effect of surveillance cameras on society. Many callers expressed principled objections to cameras which would hold true even if they did help in the fight against crime - which of course they don't.
For instance David in Kirkcaldy, Fife -
[David, Kirkcaldy] - Personally I would turn off every single CCTV camera in the country without exception, I don't think we need it, I mean we've got by as a country for millennia without them -
When host Campbell claimed that cameras had played a crucial part in a list of high profile cases (where their value is in fact extremely questionable), David continued:
[David, Kirkcaldy] - The courts functioned, after a fashion of course, before the CCTV was around, it relied on human witnesses and I think the thing is we talk about surveillance society - in my view surveillance actually destroys society, it destroys that sort of sense of social cohesion that we have, people are less reliant on their neighbours, they're more afraid of their neigbours, they're more fearful...
Studio guest Robin Simcox, when asked if he agreed, said:
[Simcox] - I don't think so. If there's a breakdown in social cohesion I don't think we can attribute it to CCTV cameras. I share some of the concerns, I think we have to be wary about the surveillance state taking over but I look at this from the kind of counter terrorism point of view and CCTV has been absolutely crucial in three of the biggest cases we've had in counter terrorism and so I think there is definitely a role for it. I understand why people might be concerned but I don't think it's quite the problem it's sometimes made out to be.
Of course Simcox does not tell us to which three terrorism cases he's referring or in what way surveillance cameras were "crucial". Simcox works for the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) which boasts: "it is the first think-tank in the UK to specialise in studying radicalisation and extremism within Britain" [2]. In July the CSC produced a report 'Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections'. The report number crunched 124 individuals who either committed or were convicted of so-called Islamism-related terrorism offences in the UK between 1999 and 2009 and came up with figures such as that 13% were based in the West Midlands. This neat little statistic is being used by some to justify the installation of surveillance cameras around Birmingham as part of 'Project Champion'. The fact that 21% of those convicted have since successfully appealed their sentences has not had so much air time. Unfortunately we can't give any more detailed analysis of the report as Simcox and his chums have put a £40 price tag on their report - maybe that's to fox the 35% of those convicted who were unemployed!
The issue of the provocative debate title was raised a couple of times and lawyer for Liberty Corinna Ferguson did at least agree that the way the question was phrased wasn't really fair, she said: "who's going to ring up and say 'I choose crime over cameras' - it's not an alternative", but Nicky Campbell suggested: "there are very many people who do say that is a choice because they solve crime and if you've got nothing to hide nothing to fear [...] what is the problem?" David responded to this:
[David, Kirkcaldy] - This is Émile Durkheim's classic point that crime to a certain extent is a sign of a free society and if all these people that say that crime justifies CCTV would like to take a two week trip to that home of zero crime North Korea, I think they might have an idea of just quite how important their own personal freedom and liberty actually is. It's not always a trade-off, it's like all economics points always seem to be boiled down to the bottom line, so do all sort of like public debates like this tend to be boiled down to crime, and we do have to accept a certain amount of crime is going to happen in a free society, that to a certain extent is going to have to be the price that we pay.
More on sociologist Emile Durkheim can be found at the Emile Durkheim archive website [3].
The considered anti CCTV arguments were contrasted with well worn and hackneyed sound bites, one caller suggested: "If you don't want the intrusion, stay in your house".
Another pro CCTV caller was James from Cardiff who had the view that there is no privacy in a public space, this led to the following lively exchange:
[James, Cardiff] - The cods wallop that some of you people are coming out with, I mean the lady's talking about it's an intrusion into privacy, if a camera was in my home yes it is an intrusion into privacy, when you go into a public place like the street if you're doing nothing wrong what have you got to worry about -
[Abdullah, Birmingham] - If you're walking down the street just in your area and a police officer for example is walking right behind you breathing down your neck just walking behind you you'd turn around say excuse me give me my space give me my freedom you wouldn't think anything of that but substitute that police officer with a counter-terrorism officer or an MI5 agent who has access to these cameras then you're talking something worse I mean this is the intrusion that's being felt here everywhere you go they're following you
[James] - I'm sorry I've got no problem with anybody stopping me if I'm not doing anything wrong I've got nothing to worry about ... If you've got nothing to hide then why are you worried about somebody looking at you, it's as simple as that.
[David, Northchurch] - Oh dear
[Campbell] - Who said oh dear?
[David] - I did it's David here in Northchurch
[Campbell] - You're not happy with what James said
[David] - Listen if you have nothing to fear nothing to hide is merely the willing cry of a slave. In this country policemen do not stop people if they are doing nothing wrong, they are not allowed to, they are not supposed to take your name and address. Given that ignorance is no defence in our legal system which used to make a lot of sense when the genius of our common law stood in primacy, there were 4000 new laws created by the last government and you don't know half the time if you are breaking the law and I want to quote what Andy Burnham said "the individual has no right to anonymity" now this is not the mantra of a free society, CCTV cameras are everywhere (a) they do not prevent crime they merely serve as a grizzley reminder and it has got to the point now when you can walk into restaurants and there are cameras trained upon you, now you might be happy with that but I certainly am not and I'm sure there are many other people that aren't.
[James] - But look at the positive side
[David] - What positive side?
[James] - You would be very happy if you had your car stolen and they got it back within an hour because they could pick it up on CCTV.
[Abdullah] - Are we speaking about the same police? They wouldn't take an hour they'd take a year!
[James] - I've listened to you let me finish right. You'd be very happy on the positive side right you'd be very happy if CCTV cameras actually proved you weren't in a place where they've accused you of being so don't go on the negative all the time look at the positive
[David] - Might I come back; you presume (a) infallability of the technology which is very dangerous and also (b) the absolute honesty of the police force and when we see policemen who when they see CCTV evidence shows them committing a blatant crime it's never enough evidence is it, so you know we have people being beaten...
[James] - You have a very very weird view of the world.
[David] - Do I?
When James went on to accuse David of knocking life in the UK Campbell stepped in to defend David who then expanded upon the withering away of the Common Law:
[Campbell] - David's standing up for traditional British liberties aren't you David?
[David, Northchurch] - exactly that date back to 1014 actually, not 1215, right back to King Alfred presumption of innocence. If I'd said Nicky in 1990 that in Great Britain within 15 years we would live in a country where people could be incarcerated without access to legal counsel, where they would be denied the charges against them, where they could be locked up for god knows how long, this is all part of the attempt to destroy habeous corpus.
[Campbell] - Are you a campaigner on this David?
[David] - Yes I am, and also -
[James, Cardiff] - Yeah! There!
[Campbell] - What's your organisation?
[David] - No I'm just someone who supports the campaigns like by Henry Porter last year, I'm just a keen amateur if you like but I also know the history of my country and the legal system which is as close to genius as it is possible to be.
Note James's reaction when David says he's a campaigner - as though this devalues his comments and somehow suggests that campaigners have a fixed or received opinion rather than that people feel so strongly about something that they become a campaigner. Of course ironically it is those people that don't think about things who more often than not trot out opinions that are not their own.
Tom Reeve from CCTV Image [4] (the official magazine and website of the CCTV User Group), called in to play the terrorism card, with obvious allusion to the 'Project Champion' cameras in Birmingham once again, he said:
[Tom, CCTV Image] - I'd just like to point out that in the case of 7/7 and then two weeks later on the 21st, CCTV played a key role in identifying the people who carried out those attacks and tried to carry out those attacks on the 21st. So I think in those cases it proved its value immeasurably. I think the police have got a huge problem that they're searching for a needle in a hay stack, you know when they're trying to combat terrorism and you know any help they can get in the form of CCTV and automatic number plate recognition has got to be a good thing.
Quite why Reeve believes cameras proved their value immeasurably when they did not stop the attacks of 7th July 2005 is not clear. And with regard to the attempted incident at Shepherds Bush Tube station on 21st July 2005, the role of CCTV is always mis-represented. Following the incident, police staked out an address where an innocent man Jean Charles De Menezes lived. Police watching the flat had been supplied with a photograph from a gym membership card and Shepherds Bush CCTV images of a suspect whom they thought lived at the address. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report 'Stockwell One' [5] contains details of Jean Charles leaving his flat - the police checked the images of the suspect supplied to them and said he was a "good possible likeness to the subject". He was subsequently killed by armed police. In other words the Stockwell One report reveals that CCTV images played a part in the murder of an innocent man. Yet when it comes to terrorism we are constantly told that cameras are a vital tool.
Towards the end of the debate the anti-CCTV position was well represented by Seamus in Crouch End who addressed the effects of surveillance cameras on our society:
[Seamus, Crouch End] - What I find particularly invidious about CCTV cameras is that it encourages us to abdicate our responsibilities for each other. We no longer have park keepers, bus conductors, toilet attendants, people whose jobs it was, and also just normal human beings walking the street, we would look out for each other, now we abdicate that responsibility to a machine that doesn't prevent crime it merely records the situation for the police to collect the data at a later date, none of the cases that you've put forward were prevented by the CCTV cameras
[Campbell] - But convictions were secured.
[Seamus] - Well convictions have always been secured, I mean that's what police do, that's what they should do, that's called investigation, what the police have now become is merely clerks who collect information and if that information is wrong, if that data has been put in incorrectly then you are guilty and you have to prove your innocence and that's the change that's happened, we are now guilty until we can prove we're innocent.
A caller described a horrific attack that took place on his wife, where no witnesses would come forward because of the family involved and so CCTV was needed to secure a conviction. When it was put to Seamus that such an incident made the case for cameras unarguable, he pointed out that such situations occur because of the society that surveillance cameras have helped to create:
[Seamus, Crouch End] - Personally I think that the situation the gentleman described, which is awful, I mean that's an awful situation, but I would suggest that that environment is created by the cameras because we are now abdicating our responsibility for each other, we live in a world now where all public space is criminal space and we are abdicating that space to criminals and I would suggest that actually the cameras create the environment in which that situation can happen.
[ - Silence -]
[Campbell] - Interesting silence there.
[Seamus] - I finished my sentence, I was waiting for someone else to come in, there was a full stop.
[Campbell] - I know there was a full stop, I'm not blaming you for the silence, I was absorbing what you'd said and I was trying to sort of process it, so basically we've stopped looking out for each other
[Seamus] - We've created a world in which we're frightened because we've abdicated that role that we had where we looked out for each other, where someone would have stepped up -
[Campbell] - So had there been no CCTV cameras a few years ago [and] Johns's wife had been attacked in a similar way, people would have come forward..
[Seamus] - I would suggest that what would have happened, say that happened in my childhood many years ago - someone was getting beaten up outside, it was actually a wife beating situation, my dad heard it, it was early in the morning, he'd gone down in his underwear, gone outside to find other neigbours were outside in their underwear and the man who was doing the beating up got a good thrashing off his neigbours - that's the situation. Now we all live in fear and we all curtain twitch because someone else will take responsibility.
Such strong and principled arguments against CCTV are reminiscent of the 2001 documentary television series 'White Tribe' [6], in which presenter Darcus Howe visited Grangetown in North Yorkshire, where he was shocked to see a large number of surveillance cameras covering the area. Howe said:
This is a definite assault on the Englishness I grew accustomed to when I first came here. The kind of trust that established Englishness.
[...]
I would prefer to see cars stolen and burning. Anything would be preferable to the deathliness of these streets. I don't care how many cars they steal from me. I would rather pay that price than live under the eye of the camera. If this is the shape of the new England, I don't want it!
There is much more to the CCTV debate than simply "do the cameras work?"
The programme is available online until 13th August at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t9rqt
A podcast of the programme is available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/fivelive/5lnpi/5lnpi_20100806-1113a.mp3
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 10/8/2010
West Midlands Police appoints fox to review CCTV chicken coop - 14/7/2010
The announcement by West Midlands Police of a so-called “independent review” of Project Champion [1] shows a complete lack of understanding of what an independent review is. In what way is the Vice Chair of the body that funded the ill conceived CCTV scheme “independent”?
Project Champion is a controversial network of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and CCTV cameras east of Birmingham city centre. The project was financed by the Association of Chief Police Officers Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO – TAM).
The “independent review” will be carried out by the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police, Sara Thornton, who just happens to be Vice Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO – TAM) [2].
The involvement of ACPO in the roll-out of cameras around Birmingham and throughout Britain is a worrying state of affairs. ACPO has become the political wing of the police and when the police lobby, initiate policy and make decisions without recourse to the people they should serve then we are living in a Police State. ACPO should be abolished and their dodgy cameras taken down now!
There is a campaign against the Project Champion cameras in Birmingham, see http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/campaigns/moseley_anti_anpr.asp
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 14/7/2010
Rubbish CCTV - litter and the surveillance state - 29/6/2010
Braintree and Witham Times front page image
Braintree District Council wants to replace the slogan "Keep Britain Tidy" with "Keep Britain Surveilled", announcing their plans last week to waste local tax payers' money on using CCTV cameras to create "zero tolerance to litter" zones. A 22nd June Braintree council press release [1] reveals that:
As part of the council's new Green Heart of Essex campaign to improve the appearance of the district, the project - which could begin by late summer - will initially involve monitoring of Braintree and Halstead town centres using CCTV as an aid to assist patrols by the council's Street Wardens.
No mention here is made of the impact on appearance of plonking ugly surveillance cameras in town centres.
Essex local newspaper, the Braintree and Witham Times reported that: "Braintree council is thought to be a pioneer for the ground breaking project" [2]. In fact not only is the project itself not ground breaking, even the phrase "zero tolerance" was pinched from Middlesbrough's "robocop" Ray Mallon [3] who introduced zero tolerance policing before going on to become the Mayor of Middlesbrough and installing talking CCTV cameras to bark at people dropping sweet wrappers.
In 2007 it was revealed that as well as Middlesbrough, 19 other areas were also to get "Respect Task Force" funding for Talking CCTV to target litterbugs [4]. The areas announced were Southwark, Barking and Dagenham, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington. In January 2009 Sandwell council in West Bromwich announced their "Zero Tolerance on Litter" campaign, asking school children "to record messages which will be played to people caught on camera as they drop litter" [5].
Middlesbrough council has been using its talking CCTV cameras since 2006 [6] and in 2008 they asked local residents for their views on them. One of the questions they asked related to whether people thought CCTV helped reduce litter and fly tipping. Of the 509 people who answered the question 51% thought that CCTV had little or no impact at all on litter and fly tipping and a further 10.4% answered "Don't know" (see table below). [NB this is not to say surveys of this type give a true representation of people's opinions but merely to point out that even the council's own dodgy poll does not support their claims.]
Click to enlarge
|
| Middlesbrough council's Voicover Questionnaire on CCTV, July 2008 |
In Braintree and Halstead they are using their existing CCTV cameras, which are are the 360 degree, tilt, pan and zoom variety rather than the talking type used in Middlesbrough, so control room staff will have to radio litter wardens to spring into action if they spot a littering violation. Reassurance as to the way the cameras will be operated was supplied by local CCTV poster girl Jackie Pell, chairman of the Halstead crime prevention panel (who lobbied to get CCTV installed [7]), who pointed out that respecting human rights is as simple as rolling out a worn out platitude. She told the Braintree and Whitham Times:
Dropping litter is a crime and someone has to pay to have it cleared up. At the same time, we have to be mindful of people's human rights. If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to fear.
That's Human Rights dealt with then.
Halstead's CCTV cameras were only switched on on 18th June [8] after years of lobbying by local police and the crime prevention panel - for example local councilors were told that the surveillance cameras act as a crime deterrant at a March 2004 meeting of the Mid Essex Area Forum [9]. The minutes note that:
On a question relating to the role of CCTV and its cost-effectiveness, the Forum were advised that CCTV is highly cost-effective, and is a powerful tool, acting as a deterrent and a means of gathering information and intelligence.
This claim was not backed up by any evidence - probably because there is none - all major studies of surveillance cameras have shown that the numbers just don't stack up. The Campbell collaboration evaluation of CCTV in 2008 [10], funded by the Home Office and the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), looked at 41 evaluations of surveillance cameras and found that they "did not have a significant effect on crime". Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money wasted on a technology that has no significant effect! The people of Britain traded their freedoms for nothing, though many still don't understand that this is what has happened. Now supporters of CCTV are looking for new uses for the cameras like tackling so-called anti-social behaviour and littering - in the hope that they can claim that the cameras are a "vital tool".
How can sitting behind a screen watching video surveillance images of people going about their daily life, rather than actually going out on the streets and interacting with people, possibly tackle litter, or any problem for that matter? The rhetoric used to justify such measures depends on creating an atmosphere of "them" (the litter bugs) and "us" (the perfect people) - which serves to erode any sense of neighbourhood or community. Is encouraging people to leave it to the faceless CCTV operator, who can radio a litter enforcement officer to apprehend the litter offender and issue a fine really the best way to tackle littering?
In 2009 the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) teamed up with Policy Exchange to publish a report entitled 'Litterbugs' [11] which looked at the litter problem in Britain and made recommendations on how best to tackle the issue.
The report suggests measures such as "The provision of bins and ashtrays in strategic sites", "Taking account of litter and littering behaviour in the design of our public spaces" and "The development of a permanent educational campaign with a consistent message to target littering".The report demonstrates that the carrot is often better than the stick when it comes to tackling litter. For example it details how a deposit scheme on drink bottles and cans has had an enormous effect in other countries, page nine of the report states:
In the United States, New York State has developed a successful anti-littering strategy based on a deposit scheme that since 1983 has reduced container litter by 80% and roadside litter by 70%. By rewarding people for not dropping litter and encouraging people to pick it up, the scheme has helped to create a virtuous cycle of desirable behaviour.
Introducing the report, writer Bill Bryson says:
bottle deposit schemes are working well in New York State, slashing litter levels and boosting recycling. Another ten or so US states operate similar systems, as do South Australia and European countries such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden. All report significantly increased recycling rates. Surely a no-brainer, then, to introduce a similar system in the UK
However when it comes to CCTV and litter, Braintree council has shown a distinct lack of grey matter.
Braintree council is seeking the views of local people on this initiative - residents can give their views by emailing: greenheart@braintree.gov.uk or calling customer services on: 01376 552525 or via an online poll at: www.braintree.gov.uk.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 29/6/2010
CCTV in tower blocks - the lies reach new heights - 21/6/2010
A new CCTV row has broken out in parliament over who loves CCTV the most. In the red corner Harriet Harman MP, the acting leader of the New (or is it newer?) Labour party, and in the blue corner the Prime Minister David Cameron MP.
Before the general election Labour claimed that the opposition parties were not as in favour of CCTV as they were [1]. This was not true, but it framed the discussion of surveillance cameras - ensuring that no mention was made of the freedoms removed from UK citizens, no mention of the failure of cameras as a crime fighting tool and no mention of the hundreds of millions of pounds of tax payers' money wasted. Instead the debate continues to be about who can shout the loudest about how great it is to surveil the public.
The latest weapon wheeled out in the battle to love cameras is the use of CCTV in tower blocks, an issue raised by Harman during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons on 9th June [2]. Harman suggested that the coalition government had "talked about ending what they called the surveillance society". Presumably Harman was trying to repeat the lie that the September 2009 Conservative party report 'Reversing the rise of the Surveillance State' [3] was somehow about rolling back the proliferation of surveillance cameras across the UK. In fact the report made no mention of cameras!
Cameron, not fazed by Harman's remarks, stepped up to the dispatch box and declared undying love for cameras:
On surveillance, let me be clear that I support CCTV cameras. I have them in my constituency and they are very effective, and when I worked at the Home Office many years ago I championed such schemes
Here Cameron shows that he does indeed adore CCTV. His constituency in Witney has cameras even and apparently "they are very effective". How can anyone argue with that? Though it might be worth pointing out that there has been no evaluation of the cameras in Witney and that all major studies of CCTV have come to the conclusion that they are not very effective actually. Cameron went on to say that he and his chums on the government side of the Commons "think civil liberties are important", but clearly not when it comes to filming people going about their daily business.
At this point Harman played the CCTV in tower blocks card, she said:
Can I tell him what Theresa was saying to me on Friday? Not the Home Secretary, but Theresa from the Poets Corner estate in my constituency. That Theresa is the one who knows about living on an estate that needs CCTV. Let me tell the Prime Minister that such people do not want to be told by this Government that it is going to be made harder to get the CCTV that they need on their estates. I press him on this because it is about people feeling, and being, safe in their communities. Will he guarantee that he will not do anything to make it harder to get or to use CCTV?
Cameron's response was that "this is all about proportionality and making sure that we have a system that helps protect people while respecting civil liberties". Which is an odd response because CCTV neither protects people nor respects civil liberties. What Cameron could have done was to point out that CCTV in tower blocks is a huge waste of money and he could have illustrated this by referencing a scheme in Oxford, not far from his Witney constituency. Before we come to that, let's just see how the local newspaper in Harman's constituency expanded on the CCTV in tower blocks story ('MP raises CCTV concerns in parliament' - Southwark News, 18th June 2010) [4] - the Southwark News reported:
Theresa, who is calling for CCTV to be installed on her estate, said: "We have a lot of people who don't live on the estate who come here to sell drugs. There are also people with dangerous dogs. Two weeks ago some kids were set upon by some dogs and had to run into the nearest flats.
"People will not always testify because they are scared and have been harassed and intimidated. The CCTV cameras will help us and the police get the convictions for these illegal activities."
As usual no effort is made to explain just how CCTV is going to tackle all of the problems on Theresa's estate. It is surely only a matter of time before surveillance cameras are heralded as the solution to the global financial meltdown. But can such claims of the value of cameras in tower blocks be challenged? Is there any data we can reference?
Back in 2009 the Oxford Mail asked No CCTV to comment on proposals to put CCTV in several tower blocks in Oxford following a trial of cameras in one block, 'Foresters Tower' in 2008. No CCTV sent the Oxford Mail a 250 word piece (as requested) for their 'The Issue' column which was published in October 2009. When the article was published somehow the key section of No CCTV's comments had been removed. Below is the piece as it should have appeared, with the removed text in bold:
CCTV in tower blocks is an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayers money.
Study after study has shown that surveillance cameras are not effective in the fight against crime despite the hype that council staff and police constantly use to justify the expansion of CCTV. Privacy is not about hiding bad things from the police or other authorities, it is part of what defines life in a free country.
It has been reported that some residents want cameras in their tower block but in fact what they understandably want is a solution to the problems in their environment and they wrongly believe that CCTV will help. Councillors like CCTV because they think that it shows they are doing something and is therefore a vote winner.
The CCTV pilot in the Foresters Tower block in 2007/8 shows that the council is exaggerating the problem and that in reality CCTV had little impact – it was only a minority of the 28 residents surveyed who said that incidents of antisocial behaviour had gone down after the cameras were installed. The fact is that better community reduces crime, technology does not.
Filming people in and around their own homes is an incredible escalation of surveillance – it makes it possible to record when residents enter or leave their own homes and is tantamount to a council run control order. We were brought up believing “an Englishman's home is his castle” but increasingly it is becoming accepted as fair game in an out of control surveillance state.
When the above article appeared, the local councillor, who was portfolio holder for Oxford City Homes, was given 243 words to speak in favour of CCTV in tower blocks. No CCTV was given just 204 words to speak against. On challenging the Oxford Mail they apologised for the "mistake" and said it wouldn't happen again.
The key section of No CCTV's comments was based on Oxford council reports on the Foresters Tower CCTV trial. The reports included a survey of residents ('Foresters Tower CCTV Pilot Scheme Tenant and resident survey') [5] , completed by just 28 residents. Question five of the survey showed that the trial can hardly be described as a success, with only a minority of respondents thinking CCTV made a difference in all categories of "anti social behaviour":
Another report ('Anti Social Behaviour Incidents 01.10.2007- 31.03.08') [6] detailed the incidents of "anti social behaviour" during the trial that were it was alleged blighting peoples' lives and that the cameras were supposedly meant to tackle (though quite how was not described). It revealed that during the six month trial there were just 13 incidents of anti-social behaviour, three of which were “smelled smoke in the lift”, one was “Note put up on wall” and another "Signs removed from foyer walls", see below:
So following such a trial, that made no difference to incidents that didn't really happen, what were the recommendations of the council? The 'Foresters Tower CCTV Pilot Results' report [7] recommends:
That the Executive Board notes the result of the CCTV pilot in Foresters Tower and approves the proposal to extend the scheme to Plowman, Windrush and Evenlode Towers.
Sure enough Oxford council spent £110,000 of taxpayers money installing cameras in three other tower blocks (and keeping cameras in Foresters Tower). Naturally the Oxford Mail was on hand when the cameras went up in February of this year to report on how happy the tenants were to be under surveillance ('Tenants praise CCTV systems at city tower blocks', Oxford Mail 8th February 2010) [8], the Mail reported:
Residents claim the CCTV system is making a difference to their lives, and the council said it had noted positive feedback from people in the three months since the cameras were turned on.
And the paper even managed to drop in a mention of the Foresters Tower trial, when the report said:
The security boost followed a six-month trial, where six cameras were fitted at Foresters Tower, in Wood Farm, after residents complained of antisocial behaviour.
Though it appears that they forgot to mention the council's reports on the trial, and the survey, and the tiny list of incidents that occurred during the pilot. Maybe that was just a "mistake" and it won't happen again. Again.
When it comes to CCTV cameras politicians and the media alike don't let the truth get in the way of expanding the surveillance state. It is worth remembering that members of parliament and journalists are protected by absolute privilege and qualified privilege respectively [9], which protects them from civil or criminal prosecution for statements made in parliament or the reporting there of. CCTV in tower blocks is no exception - let the lying begin.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 21/6/2010
Have your say on naked scanners - consultation ends 21st June - 11/6/2010
The government's consultation [1] on naked scanners (also known as full body scanners or advanced imaging technology (AIT)) closes on 21st June.
Consultation responses can be sent by email to copconsultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk or by post to:
Mike Alcock
Department for Transport
Aviation Security Transec
Southside,105 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 6DT
The consultation document [2], which contains ten questions that the Department of Transport would like you to answer, and an 'Impact Assessment on the use of security scanners at UK airports' [3] can be downloaded from the Department of Transport website at http://www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/open/2010-23/.
Naked scanners background
Back in February the government announced the roll out of naked scanners in UK airports [4], released an Interim Code of Practice [4] and a pro naked scanners assessment of the associated health risks [6].
Lord Adonis (then Transport Secretary) confirmed that naked scans will be compulsory for all those singled out:
In the immediate future, only a small proportion of airline passengers will be selected for scanning. If a passenger is selected for scanning, and declines, they will not be permitted to fly.
Unlike the UK, in many other countries including the United States passengers are to be offered the alternative of a pat down search if they would rather not have a naked scan.
The excuse being used for the introduction of naked scanners is the "pants incident" (whereby a man on a flight to the United States on Christmas Day 2009 had some ingredients in his underpants that caused a small fire to break out). Many experts doubt whether naked scanners would have helped to detect such ingredients hidden in this way [7].
The following campaigns/articles may be useful:
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 11/6/2010
The Surveillance State will not be beaten at the ballot box - 6/5/2010
Polling day has finally arrived in the UK and like the 2008 US elections the favoured buzz word is "change". But when it comes to the surveillance state is anything really likely to change? The media would have us believe that the three main political parties offer us a choice but upon closer inspection they all look the same.
The BBC website featured a bizarre item last week entitled 'Do CCTV and the DNA database make us safer?' [1]. The article is accompanied by a video of a press conference at which New Labour politicians Alan Johnson (Home Secretary), John Denham (Communities Secretary) and Peter Mandelson (Dark Lord) spoke about their desire to push ahead with CCTV cameras and the retention of DNA of innocent people (contrary even to a European Court of Human Rights ruling).
The press conference demonstrated that New Labour are either convinced that the surveillance state is a vote winner or they are determined to present it as the only option. To do this Johnson attempted to paint a picture of the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties as airy fairy civil libertarians, as though supporting civil liberties was the new "Communism". Johnson said:
If you look at where the Tories are, they're where David Davis left them. David Davis had a very libertarian view to these issues, so they're kind of saddled with the Haltemprice and Howden campaign that David Davis fought, which David Cameron joined him in, talking about the surveillance society. Cameron in a recent speech I saw, once again criticised ID cards, DNA database and CCTV as part of this surveillance society, and there is a real - I mean leave the Lib Dems to one side who have opposed CCTV both locally and in parliament - there's a real sense with the Conservatives, that this issue about 'Big Society', that we all walk into the sea and sing Harni[sic] Krishna is the way to tackle these problems [...]
In 2008 Davis resigned over the issue of the proposed 42 day detention without trial, but in his resignation speech he spoke of the "slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government" and he did raise the issue of CCTV. However when Davis went on to campaign for re-election he backed off on the CCTV issue and merely suggested the mainstream consensus view that more regulation is needed. In September 2009 the Conservative party published a report entitled 'Reversing the rise of the Surveillance State' [3] which made no mention of surveillance cameras despite the fact that they are the cornerstone of the surveillance state. The BBC article points out that:
The Conservative Party has now said that it supports CCTV which is a "valuable tool in the fight against crime". However it also says that 80% of cameras don't provide clear enough evidence for prosecutions because of their poor image quality.
In other words the Conservatives are happy to follow the agenda laid out in the National CCTV Strategy to expand the UK's surveillance network - using the excuse that the cameras simply need upgrading. So, no different to the New Labour policy.
As for the Liberal Democrats, the claim that they "have opposed CCTV both locally and in parliament" is ludicrous. Firstly when has CCTV in the UK ever been debated in parliament? And at a local level the Lib Dems, like New Labour and the Tories, have seen CCTV as a vote winner. During the election campaign we were contacted by a constituent in Watford who had received a leaflet from his local Lib Dem candidate. He told us that the leaflet:
trumpets the local Lib Dems’ achievement in installing CCTV in The Broadway, Watford, a piece of "good news" and an "improvement", as the area had been "identified as a possible anti-social gathering spot".
The unimpressed constituent sent the leaflet back to the Liberal Democrats with a letter saying (amongst other things):
I do not know what is meant by a potential "anti-social gathering spot". The area is a "social gathering spot" and very good it was too. Now with the installation of CCTV it can never again be a social gathering spot.
Last year the Liberal Democratic party published a "Freedom Bill" [4]. One of the proposals in the Bill was for a Royal Commission on the use and regulation of CCTV - as if another inquiry into CCTV were needed, when study after study has shown that it is not an effective crime fighting measure. If such a Commission ever took place it is highly likely that it would conclude that 80% of cameras suffer from poor image quality (and should be upgraded) and that more regulation is needed - in line with the National CCTV Strategy and the same policy as the Labour and Conservative parties.
The fight against cameras as we have consistently pointed out is at the local level, a point not missed by New Labour. Back at the Press Conference the New Labour three stooges once again announced the "new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV" - a policy that they have announced several times in the past few months, and as we have already pointed out elsewhere with relation to this "new power" (the last time it was announced, by Mr Brown himself) [3]:
people already have it - it's called local democracy. People can attend local council meetings or lobby local councillors (as No CCTV and other groups around the UK have done). Council meetings are open to the public and the minutes are publicly available. Brown says that along with the power to request more cameras the local authority will have "a duty to respond". Surely they already do have a duty to respond to the local tax payers, so why is Brown codifying something that already exists?
Surely the journalists in the room would pick New Labour up on the fact this power already exists, and ask why it is that demanding CCTV is being proposed as a right but demanding its removal is not. An 'Evening Standard' journalist showed just how investigative the British media is when he asked:
You say that you're going to give people the right to petition on CCTV but surely that's a meaningless right unless there's money, real funding behind that pledge. Do you have that money allocated?
Oh dear, not exactly Pulitzer Prize winning stuff. Communities Secretary Denham seized the opportunity to lay out the skewed logic that such policies are built upon. He told the reporters:
What we will ensure through this is that people who are concerned about these issues in local communities can make sure it is fully, properly discussed and considered in local authorities and any reasons given for not doing it have to be set out in public.
If only the introduction of surveillance cameras around the country had been "properly discussed and considered in local authorities" and any reasons given for installing cameras had been "set out in public", then perhaps more people would know the truth about surveillance cameras and we would not have needlessly traded our freedoms for nothing.
However the people vote, the surveillance state will continue to expand until enough of us realise that simply putting a cross in a box once every five years is not enough. The formation of a new government, whoever gets to be in it, will just mark the beginning of the next chapter in the fight to defend our freedoms.
[Interestingly, the media analysis group Media Lens have produced an excellent study on the absence of any choice between the three main parties and the media's complicity in covering this up - see Media Lens]
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 6/5/2010
CCTV warning in run up to election - 25/3/2010
Data Protection expert Dr Chris Pounder of Amberhawk Training has issued a warning with regards to possible CCTV and DNA legislation being snuck in before the general election. Pounder's latest article ('Labour positions itself on DNA retention and more CCTV', Hawktalk 25/3/10)[1] warns:
Labour's political strategy is being run in Parliament at the moment. For example, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Claire Ward) told the Conservative front bench: "the Conservatives would do better, given that they want to tie the hands of the police and crime enforcement officers in relation to many of the measures that we are using effectively, such as those involving DNA and CCTV". At a recent Prime Minister’s Questions Gordon Brown said: "If he would support us on CCTV and DNA, we might be more able to catch criminals at the right time and in the right place".
Quite clearly a counter argument on the lines: "Most CCTV doesn’t do the job effectively" or "six year retention of DNA personal data on the innocent is a step too far" [...] is going to need an explanation which is likely to be far too nuanced for tabloid headlines in the run up to an Election.
Bills before parliament cannot be carried forward between parliaments. So when a General Election is called all Bills not passed on the date when parliament is dissolved are lost. To get around this politicians use something called the "wash-up" whereby the major parties horse-trade over legislation that has not yet made it all the way through the parliamentary procedure. A recent House of Commons Library paper on 'The Dissolution of Parliament'[2] states that: "There is generally a few days between the announcement of an election and subsequent dissolution of Parliament", it goes on:
During this interval, usually referred to as the "wash-up" period, which might only be a few days (but possibly longer) the Government will decide what its priorities are and seek the co-operation the Opposition in getting legislation through. In doing so there will invariably be sacrifices to be made. Some Bills might be lost completely, others might be progressed quickly but in a much-shortened form. A lot will depend on where the Bills are in the legislative process and whether or not they are controversial
Over the last few years there have been several moves to treat CCTV evidence as a forensic science. In 2008 the government introduced the Policing and Crime Bill[3] which originally contained proposals to give powers to the Home Secretary to introduce regulations relating to the retention, use and destruction of DNA, fingerprints and CCTV/ANPR images. The proposed powers were criticised by Pounder in his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights[4]. The measures were dropped from the Bill which was passed at the end of the last parliamentary session in November 2009.
In the current parliamentary session the government introduced the Crime and Security Bill[5] which contains reworked but still deeply flawed proposals with regard to retention of DNA samples in the National DNA Database, though it current;y does not contain the explicit CCTV/ANPR retention proposals that were contained in the Policing and Crime Bill.
Pounder warns that proposals on DNA and CCTV could "come into being without too much questioning on the detail. Yet, getting to the correct privacy balance needs analysis of such detail".
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 25/3/2010
Gordon Brown's CCTV expansion election pledge - 5/3/2010
This week the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown made it clear that he sees the expansion of the UK surveillance camera network as a vote winner in the coming general election [1]. Brown was in Reading delivering a speech on 'crime and anti-social behaviour', he said [2]:
CCTV and DNA are crucial.
There are of course some who think CCTV is "excessive", but they probably don’t have to walk home or take the night bus on their own at the end of a night out. For the rest of us, for ordinary hard working, decent people, the evidence is clear: CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour.
That is why this government has funded CCTV in nearly 700 town centre schemes over the last decade - and why in the coming months we are bringing in a new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV, with the authority having a duty to respond.
Now the opposition parties have campaigned against CCTV - our support for CCTV will be on the ballet paper at any coming election.
This section of his speech is so filled with inaccuracies and lies that it is worth breaking down line by line, but first it is worth mentioning that Brown was restating proposals laid out last June as part of the government's 'Building Britain's Future' (BBF) action plan [3] (see our previous article on BBF - 'Proposed bill contains CCTV expansion in disguise' [4]). In fact his speech was an even more authoritarian reworking of the text on page 79 of the Building Britain's Future report [5] which stated:
CCTV will continue to play an important role, deterring and detecting crime and helping secure convictions. Having spent almost £170 million funding nearly 700 CCTV schemes earlier this decade, we are now focused on improving their effectiveness through operator training, and giving local people more of a say on where they want to see additional CCTV coverage, but also giving them clearer ways to complain on the rare occasions where they feel it is excessive.
Let us now look a little closer at Brown's Reading speech.
"CCTV and DNA are crucial" ...
In one simple phrase Brown casts aside research commissioned into the effectiveness of surveillance cameras and DNA, ignores the costs, ignores the civil liberties concerns and claims that these technologies are "crucial". What he also does rather sneakily is link CCTV to DNA - part of the move towards presenting CCTV as a "forensic science". In December the government appointed Andrew Rennison (the Forensic Science Regulator) to the post of 'Interim CCTV Regulator' [6] - tasked with pushing ahead with the National CCTV Strategy [7] which lays out the path to the creation of this new "forensic discipline". CCTV is not a science, it is nothing more than an eye-witness and open to interpretation. Shoehorning CCTV into the field of forensics is likely to lead to longer retention periods for CCTV images and an even greater misplaced faith in the value of surveillance cameras.
Brown is of course, like all politicians, well aware of the misplaced faith in cameras and is quite happy to exploit it to win votes.
"There are of course some who think CCTV is 'excessive'" ...
Brown next turns his attention to those of us opposed to the massive surveillance network that has been created and is ever expanding in the UK. He fends us off not with facts, not with studies that show the value or cameras, not even with reassurances that our privacy will be safeguarded. No, Brown uses an emotive fear based argument to brush aside our concerns, after all those against surveillance cameras "probably don’t have to walk home or take the night bus on their own at the end of a night out". It is unclear how Brown imagines we do get home, perhaps he presumes we don't go out. He certainly seems to think that walking home or taking a night bus are dangerous acts that only the watchful eye of Big Brother can protect us from.
Back in the Building Britain's Future document released last June the government talked of giving people "clearer ways to complain on the rare occasions where they feel it [CCTV] is excessive". This is now replaced with a suggestion that only those who don't go out at night or don't use night buses are against surveillance cameras. A thought that when deconstructed does not make any sense at all but which is designed to press the fear button and encourage dependence on the state.
"the evidence is clear" ...
Having masterfully cast aside the loonie, stay at home, night bus averse, anti-cctv mentalists, Brown now turns his attention to "the rest of us, for ordinary hard working, decent people". So now he is adding to the growing list of attributes that describe people against surveillance cameras - they are also lazy, work shy and immoral. Everyone else is like our glorious leader a decent person and that is why they can see that "the evidence is clear: CCTV reduces the fear of crime and anti-social behaviour".
Note that Brown has backed away from earlier claims in the Building Britain's Future report that CCTV can deter, detect and solve crimes and now focuses on the suggestion that CCTV reduces the fear of crime. Presumably Brown makes this switch because it is once again an emotive claim and one that has not been addressed directly in mainstrean coverage of the surveillance state. In fact research into CCTV suggests that it increases the fear of crime. In 2008 the Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a report entitled 'Why are fear and distrust spiralling in twenty-first century Britain?' [8]. The report states:
mounting evidence shows that private security and CCTV does not reduce fear of crime or actual crime and might in fact increase crime. According to a study funded by the Scottish Office in Glasgow, there was no improvement in feelings of safety after CCTV was introduced, while the area studied actually showed an increase in crime. The author concluded that the "electronic eye on the street" threatens to erode the "natural surveillance" of "mutual policing" by individuals and represents a retreat from "collective and individual responsibility to self interest and a culture of fear".
The author of the Joseph Rowntree report, Anna Minton went on to produce a book 'Ground Countrol - Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City' [9] which expands on the issue of fear in the UK today. In a recent Guardian article [10] ('Expect the drones to swarm on Britain in time for 2012', The Guardian 22nd Febuary 2010) Minton wrote:
There is no evidence that CCTV reduces crime, but there is research, including a study commissioned by the government, which reveals that it increases distrust between people and promotes fear of crime.
An article in the Local Government Studies journal [11] ('Towns on Television: Closed Circuit TV Systems in British Towns and Cities', Vol.22, No.3, pp.1-77, 1996) also points out that CCTV does not in fact reduce the fear of crime.
CCTV may actually undermine the natural surveillance in towns and communities [...] the result may be a further spiral of social fragmentation and atomization, which leads to more alienation and even more crime.
A 2005 Home Office study, 'Assessing the impact of CCTV' [12] (Home Office Research Study 292), which like many many other studies found that CCTV is not an effective crime fighting measure stated:
the majority of the schemes evaluated did not reduce crime and even where there was a reduction this was mostly not due to CCTV; nor did CCTV schemes make people feel safer, much less change their behaviour.
But Brown skillfully ignores all of this, after all only work shy, immoral, stay at home, night bus averse, anti-cctv mentalists believe any of these reports. Honest decent people don't let facts get in the way of emotions.
"this government has funded CCTV in nearly 700 town centre schemes" ...
Having shown that CCTV is the best thing since night buses, Brown is now ready to show just how much money his government has wasted - oops, sorry invested into surveillance cameras. Last June in the Building Britain's Future report it was claimed that the 700 schemes the government has funded over the last 10 years cost "almost £170 million", but this only tells half the story. Data Protection experts at Amberhawk Training have done some back of the envelope calculations on the costs of CCTV in the UK [13]. Starting from the December 2009 Scottish Parliament report 'Public Space CCTV In Scotland' [14] which states that: "Over the period 2008 to 2010, the total cost of operating public space CCTV systems in Scotland can be expected to exceed £40 million". Amberhawk go on:
If we assume that CCTV surveillance in the UK is the same as in Scotland (and scale the Scottish survey results in proportion to the whole UK population using the approximately 12:1 ratio of populations - we are in effect assuming there is an average "CCTV surveillance per unit of population"), then we can gain an estimate of the public space spending on CCTV and the number of public space cameras run by local authorities.
Multiplying by twelve, we find that, in total, there is an estimated £480 million spent by mainly local authorities (every three years), employing 4,200 largely untrained staff who monitor 26,400 CCTV cameras that are not assessed for effectiveness and where any data sharing is haphazard at best.
So in fact many more hundreds of millions of pounds of public money have been sunk into cameras that don't fight crime or even reduce the fear of crime - sorry that smacks of night bus hating again - the government has invested hundreds of millions that would only have been wasted on frivolities were it not for their wisdom to invest in CCTV.
"a new power for people to petition their local authority for more CCTV" ...
So now Brown wants the "ordinary hard working, decent people" (who aren't troubled by the facts about CCTV) to have a mechanism for getting more CCTV. As we pointed out last time Brown announced this "power", people already have it - it's called local democracy. People can attend local council meetings or lobby local councillors (as No CCTV and other groups around the UK have done). Council meetings are open to the public and the minutes are publicly available. Brown says that along with the power to request more cameras the local authority will have "a duty to respond". Surely they already do have a duty to respond to the local tax payers, so why is Brown codifying something that already exists?
Maybe Brown is worried that as budgets get tight local authorities will start to realise that CCTV is a waste of money and may use what money they have to do something that might actually help their local communities. With this "new power", if Brown can get the ill informed "ordinary hard working, decent people" to cry out for more cameras then local authorities will have to obey regardless of whether it's a good idea or not.
This very issue was raised in a House of Lords debate last year [15]. Lord Peston, who as a member of the Constitution Committee considered the evidence presented to the 'Surveillance: Citizens and the State' inquiry [16], pointed out that:
if the public want these CCTV cameras—and my ad hoc experience is that that is true—what is the correct response that those of us in public life, not least the Government, should give? Should we say, "If it is what they want, then it is what they ought to have even though it is not backed by any evidence at all"? Or is it our duty to educate them and tell them that they are wrong? [...] I certainly believe that if all CCTV cameras do is reassure you when you should not regard them as doing so, then someone ought to say to you, "Why don't you think about it a little bit and realise that you are mistaken?".
Brown clearly wants to ensure that decision makers cannot educate the public and tell them they are wrong when it comes to CCTV. If the public has bought the lie then the lie must be followed and no-one must be able to stop the lie.
"opposition parties have campaigned against CCTV" ... !
Next Brown raises the evil spectre that he suggests could stop the lie - the opposition parties! This is quite the most ridiculous statement in Brown's pro CCTV outburst. The suggestion that opposition parties are bent on stopping the CCTV lie is itself a lie.
At a local level where most decisions are made about the installation of CCTV politicians of all parties seem to think that surveillance cameras are a vote winner. By installing cameras they can be seen to appear to be doing something.
At the national level: in September 2009 the Conservative party published a report entitled 'Reversing the rise of the Surveillance State' [17] which made no mention of surveillance cameras despite the fact that they are the cornerstone of the surveillance state; whilst the Liberal Democratic party last year published a 'Freedom Bill' [18] which they say would restore civil liberties lost over the last two decades - one of the proposals in the Bill was for a Royal Commission on the use and regulation of CCTV. But calling for regulation of CCTV is simply the consesus view. Regulation does not address the core issues of removal of personal freedom, anonymity and other rights. All regulation does is to endorse acceptance of CCTV by formalising its "proper use" and leaving no room for the rejection of such technology.
There is effectively no political opposition to surveillance cameras in the UK. But that does not mean that the surveillance state cannot be reversed - as things stand decisions are still made at a local level and so it is up to the people of the UK to get educated and start demanding action from their local councillors. It's all about numbers - if enough people demand the removal of CCTV they will have to get removing it.
Brown is so convinced that CCTV is a vote winner that he is willing to paint the opposition parties as some sort of evil defenders of civil liberties - when in fact they are nothing of the sort. The rabbit hole is deep in Brown's warped world.
Stoking the fear of crime?
Much of the rest of Brown's speech focussed on the fear of crime which he said was out of step with reality: "So these are the facts: crime down; anti-social behaviour down; but fear of crime and anti-social behaviour not down as much". He even warned of: "those who spread fear with fiction". He went on to say:
Because sometimes as damaging as the fear of crime is the crime of fear.
And I will play no part in that.
Yet wasn't it Brown himself that suggested walking home or taking a night bus were dangerous acts? Brown also said:
So even as we halve the deficit I’m protecting frontline policing.
Because I know that the hard working majority will never be able to afford to live in a gated community or hire a private security firm, I am committed to a strong, modern police service for all - more visible in your community and more responsive to your needs and concerns.
Why would the hard working majority need to live in a gated community? Isn't Brown pressing the fear buttons again?
Lost in translation?
So to summarise, Gordon Brown has launched the New Labour party's general election CCTV agenda with the following speech (roughly translated):
We in the Labour party really love CCTV, only lazy night bus haters have a problem with the surveillance state but all obedient citizens know that the non-existant evidence clearly shows that covering the entire country with the paraphernalia of a dystopian lawless state reduces the fear of descending into dystopian lawlessness. That is why this government, like all others, has and will continue to use public money to remove freedoms from the public and we're even going to give you all a new power - the power to demand that the state does what the state wants. Long live democracy! Vote for CCTV!
Rest assured, the battle against the surveillance state will not be fought at this coming election.
End notes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 5/3/2010
CCTV Robo-wardens and the Motorists' Manifesto - 23/2/2010
Today (23rd February) sees the launch of 'The Motorists' Manifesto on the Reform of Parking and Traffic Enforcement' [1] produced by the London Motorists' Action Group and the Drivers' Alliance in association with the Motorists' Legal Challenge Fund. The manifesto looks at the thorny issue of enforcement in the UK since universal civil enforcement powers were given to local authorities in 2008 [2]. Amongst other things the new powers allow councils to use CCTV cameras to enforce parking laws and then send computer generated parking tickets by post.
The manifesto points out that parking enforcement "has become simply the enforcement of trivia in an effort to raise revenue". Modern parking offences fall under the category of "strict liability" offences namely those offences where there is no mental element or intention ("mens rea") - there is no defence and no discretion. To demonstrate the ridiculousness of such offences the manifesto recounts the case of Joan (now Baroness) Walmsley and Transport for London (TfL):
Ms. Walmsley paid the London Congestion Charge on two successive days giving the registration number of her car as W616 JBF when it was in fact W616 OJC; the letters JBF were those of her previous car. TfL insisted that she pay a penalty, so she went to the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (PATAS) who upheld TfL on the grounds that she had technically not paid for W616 OJC and that PATAS had no power to exercise discretion. She went to the High Court where Mr. Justice Burnton concluded that PATAS did have discretion and "It is not a purpose of the Scheme to penalise those who make a genuine error as to their vehicle's registration number". TfL went to the Appeal Court who reversed the judgment – the rules are the rules are the rules.
Punishment without trial
Strict liability offences go hand in hand with punishment without trial (namely fixed penalties) and as pointed out in the Department for Transport's 'Civil Traffic Enforcement Certification of Approved Devices' [3] guidance document: "Civil enforcement reduces the burden of proof for contraventions from 'beyond reasonable doubt' to 'the balance of probability'". Peter Oborne points out in his book 'The Triumph of the Political Class':
This form of causal justice was introduced for a variety of offences, for instance...certain motoring offences. The resultant move to fixed penalty notices means that suspects could buy their way out of the formal process of punishment by paying the fine.
This new approach has started to mean that some kinds of offence...are effectively now subject to taxation rather than criminal punishment.
(See The Triumph of the Political Class, Peter Oborne, Simon & Shuster 2007)
Local authorities were first given powers to take over control of parking enforcement from the police under the Road Traffic Act 1991 [4], which made it mandatory for London boroughs and optional for other local authorities to take responsibility for enforcement of parking under the civil law. By 2005 according to the House of Commons Transport Committee [5] over 150 authorities had adopted these civil enforcement powers, also known as decriminalised parking enforcement (DPE).
A mountain of regulations
The Motorists' Manifesto points out that the current civil enforcement regulations are made up of "six Statutory Instruments (a total of 48 pages), the Secretary of State's Statutory Guidance (30 pages), and the Department for Transport's Operational Guidance (166 pages). The whole system of enforcement has become labyrinthine in its complexity." And the list doesn't end there - Code of Practice for Operation of CCTV Enforcement Cameras, Code of Practice on Civil Parking and Traffic Enforcement, Civil Traffic Enforcement
Certification of Approved Devices, Parking factsheets and more.
The whole concept of collecting parking fines via civil enforcement and fixed penalty notices was called into question in a 2005 submission to the House of Commons Transport Committee by Neil Herron, one of the Motorists' Manifesto's author's [6]. He pointed out that the collection of parking fines is not compatible with the 1689 Bill of Rights, Herron told the committee:
There is a provision in the Bill of Rights Act 1689 which states:
"That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of a particular person before conviction are illegal and void."
This states that a conviction is necessary before a fine or forfeit can be imposed. As you will be aware, the Bill of Rights is a "constitutional statute" and may not be repealed impliedly.
This objection though has been brushed aside by lawmakers who say that under the doctrine of 'implied repeal' the Road Traffic Act 1991 takes precedence because it was introduced after the Bill of Rights - despite the fact that the Bill of Rights is a "constitutional statute" [7]. And despite the fact that regardless of legislation this provision is a fundamental tennet of a system based on justice and the rule of law.
CCTV further exacerbates lack of discretion
The use of CCTV cameras to enforce parking fines was first introduced in London under the London Local Authorities Act 2000 and motorists' groups warned then that there were problems with using surveillance cameras in this way. In December 2005 Paul Watters, Head of Roads and Transport Policy at the AA Motoring Trust told the House of Commons Transport Committee [8]:
It seems to be actually catching people who are stopping to read a map at the moment which is a little bit unfortunate at times because I think that is a very safe thing to do perhaps, and you are legally allowed to stop to pick up and set down of course if there is no loading restriction. CCTV is quite a worry because the first a driver hears of it is the notice to owner through the letterbox, as was mentioned earlier, so you have no chance to recall the event perhaps as easily as going back to the car and having the ticket on the car. CCTV is a worry because it is very remote.
Since the nationwide rollout of CCTV parking fines similar issues have emerged with cameras not spotting blue disabled badges or issuing fines to drivers who are letting passengers out [9]. This is hardly surprising - CCTV cameras are not intelligent or discerning, they do not exercise discretion and have no concept of justice. The Department for Transport's 2007 'Better Parking - Keeping Traffic Moving' consultation stated that: "parking enforcement is about supporting wider transport objectives, in particular road safety and keeping traffic moving, rather than raising revenue" [10], but last year £328 million was raised by local authorities through parking fines [11].
The Basildon Beast
A Basildon Council presentation leaked to the Motorists' Legal Challenge Fund reveals the capabilities and fine issuing rates of a CCTV car dubbed 'The Beast of Basildon' [12]. The document reveals that 1,672 penalty charge notices were issued in the first 70 days after 'The Beast' was launched. The document also reveals that 'The Beast' is equipped with automatic number plate recognition technology to 'capture' car details and issue fines, GPS so it knows where it is, has the ability to film in high quality, and can operate in 'unattended mode'- logging illegally parked cars just by driving past.
With plans laid out in the National CCTV Strategy [13] for multi-purpose camera sharing, how long will it be before these cameras, sold to the public as 'solving parking problems', will be used to further expand the network of ANPR cameras that serve as virtual roadside checkpoints that have no place in a free country [14]. This is the time to roll back our reliance on surveillance technology and reclaim the common law - yet more regulation is not the answer. Regulation simply legitimises the illiberal and the ineffective. Civil parking enforcement is awash with rules and regulations, none of which help the public at large.
The Motorists' Manifesto can be downloaded at http://www.motoristslegalchallenge.co.uk/docs/ManifestoMainWebCopy.pdf
End notes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 23/2/2010
Naked scanners update - EU parliament debate this week - 9/2/2010
Tomorrow (10th February) the European Parliament will once again debate the use of naked scanners in European airports [1]. Statements are also expected from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers. The parliament's Legislative Observatory lists a "Body scanners" Resolution file (RSP/2010/2509) [2] that indicates that the subjects will include "fundamental rights in the Union, Charter" as well as "protection of privacy and data protection".
Back in 2008 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) asked the Commission to clarify issues such as the impact on human rights, the impact on passengers health and under what circumstances an individual would be able to refuse a naked scan. As revealed in a recent press release [3] MEPs are still waiting for such an "impact evaluation" almost a year and a half later!
On 27th January Giovanni Buttarelli, the Assistant Supervisor of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), told the European Parliament civil liberties committee (LIBE) [4] that "it would now seem inappropriate to say that the use of body scanners as such is against EU privacy laws."
Buttarelli also told MEPs that new naked scanners are less intrusive:
It is also interesting to note that whilst some of the more invasive first generation scanners showed for instance the whole skeleton of passengers, there are now models which appear to be more compliant with EU law
[...]
In particular, one recent development ensures that images shown to operators are no longer real pictures of a passenger and instead use a representation showing possible zones where suspected elements should may be located.
The UK government ploughs ahead with the full monty
Meanwhile the UK is pressing ahead [5] with Rapiscan Secure 1000 backscatter naked scanners: "the first backscatter personnel screening solution to be deployed in the civil aviation environment" [6] - so most certainly not part of a new generation of less naked scanners!
Last week the government announced the roll out of scanners, releasing an Interim Code of Practice[7] as well as an assessment of the associated health risks[8] - no prizes for guessing the conclusions in the latter. In a 1st February written ministerial statement[9] the Transport Secretary, Lord Adonis laid out the timetable for the introduction of naked scanners, described as Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) machines. Adonis said:
The requirement to deploy AIT machines at Heathrow and Manchester airports comes into effect today and I expect additional scanners to be deployed at these airports and to be introduced at Birmingham Airport over the course of this month. This will be followed by a nationwide roll-out of scanners in the coming months.
Requirement? Adonis also confirmed that naked scans will be compulsory for those singled out:
In the immediate future, only a small proportion of airline passengers will be selected for scanning. If a passenger is selected for scanning, and declines, they will not be permitted to fly.
The selection process for naked scanning is not made clear in the written statement or the interim code of practice. The code merely says that the scanners must be operated "in accordance with detailed protocols" but that the "details of the protocol are not published due to the security sensitive content".
There has been no parliamentary debate with regard to the introduction of naked scanners, so in a pathetic attempt to look like this is not an authoritarian diktat from on high Adonis laid out plans for a public consultation:
Given the current security threat level, the Government believes it essential to start introducing scanners immediately. However I wish to consult widely on the long-term regime for their use, taking full account of the experience of the initial deployment. The Department will, therefore, shortly be launching a full public consultation on the requirements relating to the use of scanners as set out in the Interim Code of Practice and will consider all representations carefully before preparing a Final Code of Practice later in the year.
Governments around the world clearly see airline passengers as a soft target when it comes to removing civil liberties. An ever increasing amount of security theatre measures have been introduced in the last few years - playing on peoples fears. People are afraid of flying, it is an unnatural act and this fear has existed since the introduction of passenger airliners despite the fact that statistically flying is far safer than driving a car. The security paraphernalia when added to the pre existing fear of flying, a media fueled climate of fear and politicians talking up "threat levels" leads to compliant subjects willing to submit to whatever is demanded of them.
Endnotes:
Posted in Anti-CCTV general - 9/2/2010
CCTV drones: Policing by remote control - 30/1/2010
All we have of freedom, all we use or know -
this our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue
A recent Guardian newspaper article ('CCTV in the sky: police plan to use military-style spy drones', 23rd January 2010[1]) reveals plans to use surveillance drones/Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to spy on UK citizens. The project, called the South Coast Partnership, sees arms manufacturer BAE Systems teaming up with a "consortium of government agencies led by Kent police".
The Guardian report states that:
Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.
The Home Office's 'Science and Innovation Strategy 2009–12' [2], published last year, confirms that the UK government has been exploring the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as a policing "tool", it
