Walk around any city in Britain and the chances are your movements will be captured by closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras [Ref: Wikipedia]. Surveillance has become a fact of life in modern societies, but in Britain, which has 20 per cent of the world’s CCTV cameras, it is particularly prevalent. The government and police see CCTV as playing a role in freeing people from the fear of antisocial behaviour and terrorist attacks, a vision apparently borne out by various crime surveys taken over recent years. But more recently a number of high profile reports, including “Surveillance: Citizens and the State” from the House of Lords [Ref: Parliament], have supported assertions that we have now ‘woken up’ to a surveillance society and that the growth of CCTV is a worrying development [Ref: politics.co.uk]. Throughout the twentieth century philosophers and novelists have taken the rise of surveillance very seriously. French philosopher Michel Foucault presented Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth century design for a Panopticon prison [Ref: Cartome] – enabling prisoners to be constantly observed – as a metaphor for the increasing power of institutions to control our lives in today’s society. Most famously, George Orwell depicted a world without privacy where life was lived under the intrusive gaze of the telescreen and the constant awareness that ‘Big Brother is watching you’ [Ref: Wikipedia]. But against this wave of concern some say that talk of a surveillance society has more to do with conspiracy theories than fact. Journalist David Aaronovitch even goes so far as to suggest that depictions of ‘creeping totalitarianism’ are the work of ’paranoid fantasists’, distracting us from the real problems of democracy in the here and now.

Is CCTV effective in fighting crime?
One new aspect of the debate relates to public safety. Following the release of an internal report for the Metropolitan Police in August 2009 revealing that just one in 1,000 crimes are solved using CCTV evidence, few would suggest that the technology is a panacea. The question is how to proceed [Ref: London Paper]. Whilst some argue that the time has come for CCTV to be scrapped, senior police officers suggest that the problem lies with how CCTV is used, rather than the technology itself, and remain convinced of its potential in helping to tackle crime. Launching a scheme to improve the use of images from cameras, they say that there is no reason why the investigation of CCTV evidence can’t become as effective as fingerprinting and DNA. Beyond detection and deterrence, they also argue that CCTV plays an important role in reassuring communities vulnerable to crime. But others remain unconvinced, and suggest that CCTV might even increase crime. Quoting a number of recent studies on attitudes to crime, they underline the fact that whilst crime figures have fallen in recent years, fear of crime has been mounting. [Ref: Joseph Rowntree Foundation]. Rather than alleviate concern, they argue that the proliferation of CCTV has exacerbated fears and undermines ‘natural surveillance’ and our sense of collective responsibility.

Surely if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear?
Over the last year a number of high profile commentators have hit back at claims that our freedoms are under threat, both from an over powerful state and technologies such as CCTV. Worrying about CCTV, they suggest, is the preserve of the conspiracy-minded, anti-state middle class who ‘fetishise’ individual freedom above all else. In doing so, they forget how CCTV can enhance human liberty, by protecting communities from those who would harm them – be they the Ipswich rapist [Ref: The Times] or the local teenage tearaway. But critics of CCTV and the ‘surveillance society’ remain sceptical, and suggest that the problems of CCTV are more profound and deep rooted than this ‘conspiracy’ caricature suggests.

So is CCTV less like Big Brother and more like a benevolent father?
‘Since Jamie Bulger’s case the public see CCTV not as Big Brother but as a benevolent father’, argues Peter Fry, director of the CCTV User Group [Ref: Christian Science Monitor]. In 1993, haunting CCTV images showed the two-year-old toddler being led away by two young boys who later beat him to death [Ref: BBC News]. Critics of CCTV say we shouldn’t make policy on the basis of horrific but isolated incidents. However, there are differences in emphasis. For some, the threat of a Big Brother state is a very real one. Others agree the ‘benevolent father’ analogy is more accurate, but say it’s just as worrying. CCTV promotes exaggerated fear and mistrust, they believe. It’s the awareness of being watched and the feeling of being reliant on CCTV to make us feel safe, not the danger of actual interference in our lives that is the major threat to freedom. These trends, they suggest, infantilise us all and transform how we relate to ourselves and one another. But given the seriousness of crimes like child abduction that are potentially preventable by CCTV, shouldn’t we do what we can to fight the risks?

Have we sleep-walked our way into a surveillance society?
One of the most worrying aspects of CCTV, critics argue, is the threat it poses to private life. Described by philosopher A C Grayling as a ‘margin of inviobility for our thoughts, feelings and intimacies’ and the place where we might recover from ‘the abrasions of life’, privacy is regarded by many to be a prerequisite of both a free life and a democratic society. Citing the proliferation of CCTV in pubs, classrooms and increasingly workplaces, some, including Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, contend that we are ‘waking up to a surveillance society’ in which privacy is being compromised and citizens are constantly monitored. [Ref: Politics.co.uk]. But others argue that concerns surrounding privacy are being overplayed. CCTV is not being erected in private homes, but in public spaces. Privacy, by this reading,  is important ‘ in our homes and in our heads’, not in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.