NO CCTV

Further to our previous blog entry, we have tracked down the minutes of the various meetings at which Inspector Paul Morgan of South Hams East expressed his views on CCTV.

On 16th June Morgan addressed an informal meeting of Totnes council about the possible introduction of a CCTV system in the town. The minutes note:

Inspector Morgan stated that in his personal opinion, he does not favour CCTV. It is not a deterrent, but a reactive system of policing. CCTV cameras do not affect the behavior in terms of anti-social behaviour or alcohol abuse, and these types of incidents can be targeted specifically by other means.

On 1st September Inspector Morgan handed out copies of Bruce Schneier's article "CCTV Doesn't Keep Us Safe, Yet the Cameras are Everywhere" to a meeting of the full council. As documented by the minutes:

Inspector Morgan stated that there were alternatives to CCTV and this is good investigative police work, which normally obtains the same results at the end of the day.

What a shame more police are not willing to come out and defend good police work over the civil liberty destroying and costly charade that is CCTV.

It seems that the UK government's view of CCTV with regards to privacy/human rights issues the same as that of the government of Iran.

A debate has been taking place in Iran over the use of surveillance cameras. One national security official, Kazem Jalali, warned that the program may violate privacy rights and that any use of the technology must be within existing privacy guidelines. This week, the Iranian Parliament's National Security Commission has declared that CCTV in Iran will not violate privacy rights.

In a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) earlier this year Gordon Brown said: "let us not pretend that CCTV is intrinsically the enemy of liberty. Used correctly, with the right and proper safeguards [..] it actually helps give them back their liberty, the liberty to go about their everyday lives with reassurance".

Meanwhile Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: "The use of advanced and rightful techniques in dealing with offenders should be employed by the (NAJA)[Iran's Law Enforcement Agency] forces". NAJA chief Brigadier General Ismail Ahmadi-Moqaddam is reported to have said that he would use surveillance cameras only to monitor crime and not to spy on citizens.

Last December the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution expressing deep concern at the ongoing systematic violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the same time, last December, Privacy International categorised the UK as an "endemic surveillance society" in their 2007 International Privacy Ranking.

The UK as a supposed liberal Western democracy with a system of Common Law should be setting an example to other countries not vying with them for the top position in human rights abuses league tables.

A senior police officer in Devon has called for a debate into the use of CCTV in the UK. Inspector Paul Morgan of South Hams East expressed concerns about the way that CCTV is introduced unquestioningly:

We're probably the most monitored country in the world per head of population. As a citizen I think there are questions about whether it is the most appropriate use of funds to reducing crime levels.

A large amount of the UK public believes that CCTV is an effective way of fighting crime and so politicians at both a local and national level promote CCTV schemes to boost their popularity. But the public is not well informed and it should be the job of politicians to make evidence based decisions rather than waste public money on ineffective and illiberal measures like surveillance cameras.

Inspector Morgan recently warned Totnes town councillors:

Systems cost a hell of a lot of money to maintain. In a time of reducing crime, is it something that you want to invest a lot of money in?

We agree that a full debate into CCTV is urgently needed, one that looks at all of the facts and considers whether the £500 million of public money could have been spent far more effectively to strengthen our communities and reduce crime. If we do not then yet more cameras will be installed, including a new generation of cameras with technologies such as facial and behavioral recognition that will further erode the freedoms of law abiding citizens and irretrievably change our society into an Orwellian nightmare.

Sir Ken Macdonald QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions has spoken out about the growing surveillance state during a CPS lecture. The lecture entitled 'Coming out of the Shadows' was Macdonald's last before stepping down as head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

In his speech Macdonald pointed out the dangers inherent in state powers blindly following technological solutions:

Over the last thirty years technology has given each of us, as individual citizens, enormous gifts of access to information and knowledge. Sometimes it seems as if everything in the world is at our fingertips and this doubtless has made our lives immeasurably richer.
 
But technology also gives the State enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each one of us. And the ability to collect and store it at will. Every second of every day, in everything we do.

He went on to warn of the consequences of letting the surveillance state expand unchecked:

[...] we need to understand that it is in the nature of State power that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the State may use these powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible. They will be with us forever. And they in turn will be built upon. So 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.

We at No CCTV have consistently stressed that better community reduces crime, technology does not.

Police around the country are increasingly starting to wear CCTV cameras on their bodies. Police in Banbury recently began trialling the so-called "body cams".

Surveillance cameras erode trust and so reduce a sense of community. Body cams take the erosion of trust to a new level - now the state doesn't even trust police officers. And it seems that the state doesn't want us to trust them either - body cams are yet another piece of paraphernalia that serves to further distance citizens from the human being that is the police officer. Police look more and more like the military.

So who claims body cams do any good? And is the dehumanisation of police officers offset by some huge reduction in crime? PC Froggat of Banbury police spoke to the Banbury Guardian:

Mr Froggat said the cameras had cut back on bad behaviour. "It's been a huge deterrant at close quarters during night patrols," he said.
('Police, Camera, Action', Banbury Guardian print edition, 26 June 2008, emphasis added)

An amazing claim, as this interview was published just 5 days after police began using body cams! Amazing because previous assessment of new policing tools has taken rigorous analysis by independent assessors measuring substantial data collected before and after implementation, and with specially set up control areas. Then again, not so surprising really considering that when rigorous analysis of CCTV technology is conducted by independent assessors measuring substantial data collected before and after implementation and with specially set up control areas, the results always show that CCTV is ineffective and a waste of money...

On Saturday, groups all over Europe will be taking part in events to protest against the growing Surveillance Society. NO2ID has teamed up with the Open Rights Group to show Parliament the 'Big Picture' by constructing a giant image made out of thousands of pictures taken by UK citizens of surveillance state ephemera. You can join this protest from anywhere in the UK by simply sending them a photo of the surveillance state in your life. Images of the signs of mass surveillance, and any form of intrusive ID or state control - cameras, cards, scanners, forms, whatever you like.

Already hundreds of photos of surveillance cameras and other database state ephemera from all over the country have been emailed or uploaded to Flickr but there's still time to send more. Take a photograph with your (digital) camera or mobile phone and send a copy to FreedomNotFear@no2id.net

As reported in the media last month the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) has raised concern about CCTV in schools. ATL has conducted a preliminary survey of teachers throughout the UK and found that 85% of those questioned said CCTV was operating in their schools, often used to monitor the behaviour of the pupils within school hours. 10% of those surveyed said CCTV was operating in the toilets. And over 50% admitted to concerns about the use of CCTV around their schools. There are huge civil liberty issues regarding the use of CCTV in schools - children have no means to express any opposition despite there being very strict rules regarding juvenile privacy. We share the concerns raised by Action on Rights for Children (ARCH) that surveillance cameras in schools act simply to normalise state surveillance - if you grow up surrounded by surveillance you are less likely to question the ever growing police state as an adult.

So what of the perceived trade off of giving away freedoms for this ever elusive security? Does CCTV in schools actually do anything positive? According to a report in Security Management written by John J. Strauchs, Senior Principal of Strauchs LLC:

"Schools are not the largest market by any means, but they are the most troubling. There is a virtual pandemic of schools installing video cameras willy-nilly [...] The lay public, unfortunately, doesn't understand the technology and ignorantly believes that the simple act of installing cameras stops crime. Cash-starved high schools, in particular, may be choosing video surveillance over higher teacher pay, text books, or afterschool programs for students. ... With very few exceptions, it is almost a useless tool to prevent serious crimes in most schools because they rarely, if ever, have the staff to effectively monitor the cameras."

So, teachers are not keen on CCTV in schools. Neither is the CCTV industry. What about the kids? Well according to the BBC kids just love being surveilled. In a bizarre propaganda stunt, BBC's Newsround interviewed a group of school children about surveillance cameras, whilst they were at school, presumably under the gaze of their teachers. Sure enough the kids rolled off a litany of pro-surveillance hyperbole, reminiscent of when Saddam Hussein appeared on television in 1990 to ask British hostages how they were enjoying their stay.

It is deeply inappropriate to put children in this situation and ask them to comment on a topic of which they cannot possibly understand the full ramifications. CCTV in schools is wrong. And no amount of children saying they like being filmed will make it right. We need to ask serious questions about what our society has become that we need to film children at school as though they were criminals.

Last week Norfolk police used CCTV to alert the East Anglian public to three wiley bag snatchers - oh no sorry, just three normal people, that is three innocent people. It seems that their trusted friend, Mr CCTV camera, had the wrong date and time attached to the images it was recording, resulting in the police giving pictures of wholly innocent people walking through a car park to the local press. Quite ironic really, considering that car parks are just about the only places where CCTV has been found in the past to have any crimefighting value.

NO CCTV were recently interviewed for an article about CCTV in the UK for French magazine L'Express. The article can now be read online (in french) on the L'Express website. We will post in a translation of the article in due course.

NO-CCTV finds the CCTV plot

Earlier this year senior Police admitted to the House of Lords Constitution Committee that CCTV is not effective at deterring crime. Instead they claimed that: "The principal measure of effectiveness as far as the Police Service is concerned is in relation to the support of the investigative proces". The only problem they said was that there is little research with regard to CCTV as an investigative tool. Of course there is a mountain of evidence that shows what they had to admit, namely that CCTV doew not reduce crime.

The Police are effectively saying "Okay we said it would reduce crime, but the figures show it doesn't, so instead we are now saying it helps in solving crime - and as there are no figures on that you'll have to trust us, after all we're the police. We need more CCTV, lots more."

Except there are figures. Last year the London Assembly obtained figures for number of cameras vs crime clear up rates accross the 32 London Boroughs. These figures show that increasing the number of cameras does not increase the crime clear up rate. Basically, there is NO linear dependence between the number of cameras and percentage of crime clear-up in London, where there are over 10,000 state run cameras.

No CCTV has produced a graph showing the non-relationship between cameras and crime clear up rate. See here.

Today's edition of You and Yours on BBC Radio 4 featured an item on CCTV and compliance with the Information Commissioners code of practise. On the programme was a representative of CameraWatch - a CCTV users' group that: "Support the CCTV industry to ensure systems are operated in accordance with data protection and other legal requirements".

CameraWatch say that nine out of ten CCTV systems may not comply with the code and therefore the Data Protection Act. Whilst it is important that cameras are operated according to guidelines, there are wider issues that the programme did not touch upon, such as privacy, civil liberties and the worrying trend towards "upgrades" that further reduce the freedoms of law abiding citizens. In fact CameraWatch explicitly supported the industry, Police and Home Office line as laid out in the National CCTV Strategy. Their representative told the programme that the poor quality of images of current camera systems means that efforts should be made to install new cameras with high quality images - thus keeping public confidence in CCTV and increasing compliance with the code of practise!

The public has been told that CCTV is an effective tool in the fight against crime when it is not. Now the industry says CCTV does not work and they have the answer - upgrade the systems! Where is the public debate about the implications of installing high resolution, networked surveillance cameras with facial recognition, behaviour recognition and other technologies as are currently being trialed in China?.

The Blackpool Citizen reports that the future of Blackpool's CCTV is under scrutiny. The newspaper says:

A working group has been formed to review public realm CCTV in Blackpool with the aim of reviewing its purpose and effectiveness and determine whether it achieves its aims.

The topics that will be covered in the scrutiny process are: "whether it meets your needs as a resident, if it makes you feel safe, if it deters crime and if it can be improved across the town". Note that issues such as privacy and removing the cameras to allow law abiding citizens to go about their daily business without being spied upon do not feature. Also shouldn't the council know if the cameras deter crime or not?

Of course the reality is that CCTV cameras do not deter crime - all of the evidence points to their ineffectiveness. It is likely this so called consultation is being used to justify CCTV "upgrades" in Blackpool that will simply further reduce the civil liberties of local residents.

Blackpool Council is asking residents to send their thoughts on CCTV to Georgina Atkinson. Submissions should be made by Friday 22nd August 2008, more details at http://www.blackpool.gov.uk/news/cctvscrutiny.htm

We urge Blackpool residents to read the substantial evidence against surveillance cameras, and to tell the council what they can do with their CCTV.

In a recent Crypto-Gram newsletter, Bruce Schneier includes his Guardian article about the ineffectiveness of CCTV (featured in a previous entry), together with some interesting CCTV links. The links include CCTV research, information on London's cameras and privacy concerns.

This week the Guardian published a response to Bruce Schneier's criticism of CCTV cameras. The response claims that CCTV "has a vital role in the fight against crime". And who is it putting forward this view? None other than the managing director of Atec Security - suppliers of ... yes you guessed it, CCTV technology!

On their website Atec acknowledges the growing sceptisim about the effectiveness of CCTV in the UK, including the recent statistic of only three per cent of London's street robberies being solved using CCTV images - but their solution like everyone else in the surveillance game is more technology and more oppressive cameras. The police and CCTV industry have been admitting the ineffectiveness of CCTV since the release of the National CCTV Strategy last October - but the reason they have done this is to call for the expansion and upgrading of surveillance cameras in the UK, to a level that is no longer adequately described by the phrase "closed-circuit television cameras". Cameras do not do what they have been telling us they do for the last decade - they do NOT reduce crime. Despite this, the solution put forward by the state and the CCTV industry is not to scale back the cameras and save public money.

In the Guardian Atec says:

"If standards are better regulated and combined with the rapidly accelerating development of CCTV technology - such as advanced facial recognition and analytics - CCTV will become more widely acknowledged as a vital part of the criminal justice system".

A surveillance "arms race" is set to break out in the UK and companies like Atec stand to make a lot of money, whilst the citizens of the UK will simply continue to loose yet more freedoms to the ever growing surveillance state.

Security expert Bruce Schneier has issued a warning about CCTV in the Guardian this week. As a crime fighting tool Schneier points out that surveillance cameras are not very effective: "This fact has been demonstrated again and again: by a comprehensive study for the Home Office in 2005, by several studies in the US, and again with new data announced last month by New Scotland Yard. They actually solve very few crimes, and their deterrent effect is minimal."

Schneier concludes that cameras are not worth the £500 million or so of public money that has been invested but also issues a stark warning about where surveillance cameras are headed:

We live in a unique time in our society: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. And in 10 years, they'll be so small you won't even notice them. Already, companies like L-1 Security Solutions are developing police-state CCTV surveillance technologies like facial recognition for China, technology that will find their way into countries like the UK. The time to address appropriate limits on this technology is before the cameras fade from notice.

Last week the Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a speech to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) about 'Security and Liberty'.

Brown hailed technology as the saviour of society, and said we must listen to those who say "that for too long we have used nineteenth century means to solve twenty first century problems". Of course surveillance cameras were part of his gushing praise for modernity: "CCTV cuts crime, and makes people feel safer - in some cases, it actually helps give them back their liberty, the liberty to go about their everyday lives with reassurance". What an incredible piece of doublespeak - how can liberty be increased by decreasing it?

And how did Brown come to the conclusion that CCTV cuts crime? Well he told his IPPR fan club that in Newcastle "after CCTV was installed, burglaries fell by 56 per cent, criminal damage by 34 per cent, and theft by 11 per cent". All seems done and dusted then doesn't it.

Except that 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' (Welsh and Farrington, 2003) the effect of CCTV on crime in Newcastle was described as "undesirable". The headline figures that Brown used to prove CCTV's worth need to be looked at alongside underlying trends in crime and figures from areas in Newcastle without CCTV. 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! The fall in burglary that Brown uses is a fall from 17 a month to 9 in the area with CCTV compared to a fall from 75 a month to 46 where no cameras were installed.

So Brown's CCTV defence doesn't stand up at all. Neither does his unquestioning love of technology. Better community reduces crime, tecnology does not.

The BBC reports that the shadow home secretary David Davis MP has resigned over the "slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government" in light of the controversial vote to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days. In his resignation statement, Mr Davis said:

But in truth, 42 days is just one if perhaps the most salient example of the insidious surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms. We will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it. We've witnessed an assault on jury trials, that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state; shortcuts with our justice system that make our justice system neither firm nor fair; and a creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

The freedoms we enjoy were fought for by our political ancestors. Our current politicians, it seems, are happy to squander them. We salute David Davis - such a stand is long overdue.

Watch David Davis' resignation speech at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7450728.stm

Naomi Klein reports in Rolling Stone Magazine on the growing number of surveillance cameras in China. American companies such as IBM, Honeywell and General Electric are trying out the latest technology in a country where there are less human rights and civil liberties issues to deal with.

Many of the technology trends that we warned of in our Report are being installed in China, such as a network of surveillance cameras - both public and private cameras - patched into the police system. The UK government has expressed its desire for such a system in their National CCTV Strategy, and the recent acknowledgement by the police that CCTV is not an effective crime fighting tool is being used to push forward a new upgraded network of surveillance cameras.

The hi-tech surveillance agenda in China is part of a program called "Golden Shield", Naomi Klein writes:

This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.

Here in the UK it is time for us to stand up and say enough is enough, we must not allow the government to roll out a Golden Shield type program here.

You can also hear Naomi Klein talk about Golden Shield on the Guardian podcast at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/audio/2008/jun/03/dennis.klein

The Home Affairs committee today published it’s ‘A Surveillance Society?’ report. Campaign group No CCTV calls on decision makers to halt the proliferation of surveillance cameras in the UK in light of the overwhelming evidence that they do not work and are an unnecessary intrusion into the lives of law abiding citizens.

The report points out that: “Loss of privacy through excessive surveillance erodes trust between the individual and the Government and can change the nature of the relationship between citizen and state.”[Summary p5]

The committee recommends that: “The Home Office should ensure that any extension of the use of camera surveillance is justified by evidence of its effectiveness for its intended purpose, and that its function and operation are understood by the public.” [Ground rules for Government p7]. However the report repeatedly references the lack of evidence of the effectiveness of CCTV:

• The Minister of State for Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing, Rt Hon Tony McNulty MP shared this view. He acknowledged a paucity of evidence on the effectiveness of camera surveillance in the prevention of crime but was convinced of its value:
  • Can I point to a definitive national study that quantifies in any way its success as a deterrent? No, I cannot [...]
  • [Report, paragraph 208]

The report recommends that:

• Under camera surveillance in public spaces, individuals have very little control over whether or not their images and movements are captured and over how they are stored and used. This lack of choice intensifies the obligation on camera operators and regulators to behave responsibly and to deploy surveillance technology only where it is of proven benefit in the fight against crime and where this benefit outweighs any detrimental effect on individual liberty.
• [Report, paragraph 221]

Since the inquiry showed that there is no proven benefit in the fight against crime we believe that local authorities and the police should cease the expansion of CCTV in the UK and begin to remove the existing cameras. This would return some much needed trust into our society, reduce public expenditure and claw back some civil liberties for citizens of the UK.

We contend that better community reduces crime, technology does not.

Read our full press release at http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/press/press_release_3.pdf

The Inquirer reports that:

Under the authorisation signed last July 4 by Jacqui Smith, video feeds and still images captured from roadside TV cameras, along with personal data derived from them, can be transmitted out of the UK to countries such as the US, that are outside the European Economic Area.

No CCTV has consistently warned that local decisions can have huge implications for the civil liberties of UK citizens. This latest revelation is a stark reminder of the repsonsibility that local politicians and decision makers have.

On Wednesday (23rd April) the Oxford East Area Parliament once again discussed proposals for CCTV on the Cowley Road. The committee was presented with a report of the East Area Parliament CCTV subgroup as well as a report prepared by Optimum Security Services Ltd entitled “Cowley Road Report and Budgetary Costings for 4 Cameras”.

No CCTV spoke at the meeting and later issued a press release summarising their response to the latest developments. Points raised include:

• * The proposed four camera scheme put to the meeting had many similarities with the plan prepared by Optimum Security in November 2006 - most notably all cameras being in line of sight of each other. This would allow people to be tracked all the way along the Cowley Road.
• * No mention was made in the progress report of a one year trial of the cameras which was previously agreed as a condition of installation. The councillors therefore delayed their final decision until it was agreed that cameras would only be installed on a trial basis.
• * Since our Interim Report into the proposals for CCTV on the Cowley Road was published in November 2007 even more evidence has come to light that shows that CCTV is not an effective crime-fighting tool. Sources of this new evidence include the two ongoing parliamentary inquiries into surveillance in the UK.
• * The Progress Report states that there are no safety concerns in relation to the wireless camera technology. The report’s authors base this position on a May 2006 document produced by the World Health Organisation. However, in April 2007 the national press reported serious concerns about wi-fi safety and in May 2007 these concerns were echoed by BBC’s Panorama. Clearly more work is needed to assess the health implications of this technology. In reaching its conclusion, the council is at best guilty of shoddy research.

We urge the East Area Parliament to reject all plans to install CCTV on the Cowley Road.

Read our full press release at www.no-cctv.org.uk/press.

Better community reduces crime, technology does not.

The Daily Mail reports that police are demanding access to Britain’s local council CCTV cameras “so they can analyse physical movements that could help identify criminals”. This is all part of the Home Office’s National CCTV Strategy, which includes proposals to create a network of UK surveillance cameras so that the entire country can be accessed by police/security services from a central hub.

This is a nightmare vision - Bentham’s Panopticon - HM Prison UK.

As reported in the Telegraph cctv is now being used in many schools to monitor both teachers and pupils. Where is the research that shows the effects of such surveillance? Where is the public debate? What are our children growing up to perceive as normal?

It is obvious that cctv in classrooms has nothing to do with protecting children or teachers but everything to do with the national obsession to surveille.

The Oxford Mail reports that newly released police figures show crime in the Cowley area is falling, with an almost 20% drop in violent crime. Contrary to scaremongering in the local media by the police, the Cowley Road is not crime ridden and these figures confirm once again that there is no need to install cameras. It’s about time the local council woke up and did the sensible thing - scrap the scheme now!

The Telegraph reports that a council in Devon have opted not to install CCTV. The district council quite rightly decided that to do so would infringe law abiding citizens’ human rights. They should also have worked out that it does not reduce crime and is a huge waste of money, but hey - it’s a start.

The Times reports that local council spending on CCTV and other surveillance technologies is set to push up council tax bills in the UK. The Local Government Minister, John Healey warned that authorities risk being capped if they propose increases of 5% or more. Surely local authorities should be made to justify the public money they spend - the evidence shows that cctv is not an effective tool in the fight against crime.

No cctv will be at the Oxford Radical Forum, Wadham College, Oxford from Friday 29th Feb to Sunday 2nd March. Drop by for a chat. See http://www.oxfordradicalforum.com for more information