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Surveillance Cameras: The Newest Feature of City Life

If you're making your way around any metropolitan area in America these days there's a good chance your movements are being recorded by a surveillance camera.

Once limited mostly to banks and convenience stores, the beady eye of the surveillance camera has appeared nearly everywhere over the past decade. Cheaper surveillance systems and heightened fears of terrorist attacks have created a world that is increasingly captured on surveillance cameras.

Perched on rooftops and under eaves, surveillance cameras discreetly cover shopping centers, stadiums, office buildings and parking lots.

Police say surveillance cameras, whether installed by businesses, homeowners or local governments, act as a powerful law-enforcement tool and crime deterrent.

Although law-enforcement agencies hail surveillance cameras as labor-saving devices that allow them to patrol much larger areas with fewer sets of eyes, many civil libertarians view the proliferation of surveillance cameras as an erosion of privacy rights.

The mostly unregulated surveillance camera recording takes place with a tacit nod from the U.S. Supreme Court, which has indicated again and again that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places.

Government agencies across the United States are installing surveillance cameras in as many public areas as possible, but they tend to be behind the curve compared with European cities.

Once clunky and obtrusive, some surveillance cameras are now so small they're nearly undetectable. And the days of scratchy, black-and-white images recorded on videotape are long gone. Advances in surveillance camera technology mean crystal-clear digital pictures that can be reviewed in real time as they occur.

Although surveillance cameras raise the ire of privacy advocates, most people don't mind being recorded everywhere they go. Students polled about privacy issues routinely rank surveillance cameras nearly at the bottom of a long list of concerns.

Still, constant surveillance can cause the shadow of suspicion to fall on the innocent when innocuous activities are misinterpreted. The dark side of the surveillance revolution is rarely seriously considered or discussed. Nonetheless, most people feel that t he benefits of surveillance cameras, such as capturing criminals on film, far outweigh privacy concerns, many of which may be overblown...for now at least.

Surveillance cameras in public spaces are perceived as largely innocuous becuase there aren't enough people to watch all the surveillance footage that is gathered. However, experts are now developing advanced intelligent surveillance software that can alert authorities when certain types of behavior are detected.

For this reason, privacy activists are concerned that the practice of recording people in nearly every public place could escalate out of control. Given the rapid development and growth of intelligent surveillance technologies, and unless we want to live in a pervasive surveillance society where all of your moves are tracked and recorded, citizens and government officials would be well advised to start putting strict rules in place.

Surveillance Cameras in Cities: An International Perspective

It's been said that Shanghai will install more than 200,000 video surveillance cameras by 2010 to help fight crime. Shanghai already uses surveillance cameras to monitor traffic.In this new development, the city would install the surveillance cameras in all public places, as well as along the streets. Entertainment venues and hotels would also install surveillance cameras on their premises.

Estimates show Shanghai will have five video surveillance cameras per square km. City authorities will finish installing them by 2010, when tens of millions of visitors are expected to flock to the city for the World Expo.

At least four Shanghai city districts have already installed surveillance cameras, which send real-time images to a central location, where they are monitored by police.

The local media has argued that the surveillance cameras will help maintain public order and help people in distress. In one case, officials rushed to the aid of an old man who fell down.

In this, Shanghai has joined the many cities around the world that have installed surveillance cameras to help fight crime. Some estimates show there are about 30 million closed-circuit television cameras around the world. Britain has the highest concentration, with 4 million surveillance cameras.

Despite their use in fighting crime, some Shanghai residents are wary of the installation of so many surveillance cameras. Others support the plan.

Also, there are legal issues over whether the government had the right to install the surveillance cameras without first holding public hearings. And some citizens have reportedly said that it would be innappropriate for the government to just install the surveillance cameras without the consent of citizens.

Government authorities have pledged to maintain a certain distance between the surveillance cameras and residential housing to protect privacy, and only to use the information gathered internally.

As in most cities around the world, when confronted with privacy concerns officials inevitably raise the argument that crime is on the rise, and tout the benefits of surveillance cameras for prevention.

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