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CCTV Lies - Hundreds Of £Millions Wasted
C.C.T.V. Lies
The Guardian' Newpaper March 5th 2011
St Mary's University College, Twickenham Writes In 'The Guardian' Newpaper March 5th 2011:
"In the Policing journal in 1994 I warned that CCTV was
no panacea and needed strategic thinking if value for money was
to be obtained, and in 2007 I concluded many millions had been
wasted by ignoring my advice and that of other criminologists
(Whitehall admits CCTV faults as cameras continue to spread, 2 March)."
Dr Nic Groombridge
St Mary's University College, Twickenham
The Guardian Newpaper March 5th 2011 Whitehall Admits CCTV Faults
"Whitehall officials have said the value of CCTV to the police is often limited when investigating crime or major incidents because of poor camera positioning, poorly-maintained equipment, or lack of recording facilities. The failings are outlined in a Home Office consultation document proposing a voluntary code of practice for public CCTV systems.
"Where images are captured, a particular problem is the variety of and quality of formats in use to record and store them, meaning that it can be extremely time- consuming and costly for the police to retrieve and convert images into a format that can be viewed or used in court proceedings," the report says.
The Home Office also admits that the police face problems in identifying and recovering all relevant images associated with an investigation within tight timescales, and before such information may be routinely deleted from systems. Despite these drawbacks the spread of CCTV networks continues unabated, with one estimate suggesting that there are more than 4m surveillance cameras in operation across Britain.
The Home Office says that there is conflicting evidence on the usefulness of CCTV for preventing or cutting crime with some arguing that the presence
of the cameras themselves act as a deterrent and systems can be
useful in identifying emerging trouble."
CCTV Lies - Hundreds Of £Millions Wasted
Reproduced By Kind Permission Of
Privacy International Web Site:
NATIONAL CCTV STRATEGY - Home Office Report
The Joint Home Office & Association Of Chief Police Officers
(ACPO) team - OCTOBER 2007
This report states that the proliferation of CCTV
cameras was presenting
the police with serious problems - in particular their capacity to recover
evidence and review tapes.[1]
The police are concerned that cameras are increasingly being used to
"monitor crowds, slips, trips and falls" and "patrol"
rather than to detect
crime. [2]
This is
compounded by an increasing tendency for camera schemes to be
used as income generators. (!)
Following the London terrorist attacks in 2005, former UK Home Secretary
Charles Clarke told the BBC's Today program that he could not envision
a situation where surveillance cameras would prevent a terrorist attack.
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Meanwhile, recent studies show that over 90% of CCTV systems in the UK are
actually operating illegally.[3] Another study has shown that of the over
10,000 cameras in London, costing about £200 million to establish, show that
police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of
cameras than in those with hardly any. In fact, four out of five of the
municipalities with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that
is below average.[4] Recently, senior police officials have been calling
for location and national debates on the use of CCTV cameras after
questionable deployment and usage patterns.[5]
With the emergence of digital CCTV, systems which are likely to fully
replace existing analogue
CCTV systems in the next few years and the rapid convergence of IT and
television, the situation has taken a turn for the worse.
The CCTV industry is at the forefront of implementing emerging technologies
and is constantly
developing new digital CCTV systems by using the very latest technology and
adapting it to their needs.
The results have been a myriad of largely incompatible systems that in the
main adhere to no common or open standards. This results in largely
proprietary systems and recordings.
With hundreds of international manufacturers, offering thousands of
different products to the CCTV industry, purchasers, system designers and
police and other CJS users are faced with many issues.
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Some of these include
the fact that purchasers and system designers have identified that digital
cameras from one manufacturer may not be compatible with other manufacturers'
recording systems. This restricts their ability to pick and choose different
system components without being tied in to one manufacturer.
Police and CJS users have difficulty in playing back CCTV footage from the
many proprietary recording formats. The police service is employing specialist
technical staff to recover and process digital CCTV footage, but the CJS often has difficulty
playing back in these formats. Currently, the measures used to overcome this are conversion
to other standard formats (in most cases VHS). This is time consuming, can result in a
reduction of quality, integrity and contravenes the intended practice laid out in the Home Office
Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB) Digital Imaging Procedures.[6]
[1] National CCTV Strategy, ACPO and the Home Office, October 2007, page 12.
[2] Page 13 of Home Office report above.
[3] 'Almost all CCTV systems are illegal, says expert', Out-law.com, September 28, 2007.
[4] 'Tens of thousands of CCTV cameras, yet 80% of crime unsolved', Justin Davenport, Evening Standard, September 19, 2007.
[5] 'Orwellian' CCTV in shires alarms senior police officer', Rachel Williams, the Guardian, May 21, 2007.'
[6] National CCTV Strategy, ACPO and the Home Office, October 2007, page 12.
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CCTV Lies - Hundreds Of £Millions Wasted
C.C.T.V. Lies
Websites:
1. Long-term Trends in Violence against the
Person:
2. Analysis of costs and benefits guidance for evaluators:
3. Measuring inputs guidance for evaluators:
4. www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk
5. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/recordedcrime1.html
"Is God willing to
prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not Omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"
- Epicurus
(341 – 270 BC)
"Civillisation will not attain perfection
until the last stone,
from the last church,
falls on the last priest."
- Émile Zola (1840 – 1902)
Illustrations by Yehrin Tong
