- In my personal experience in life, I’ve known how to figure out if I’m on camera since I was a young girl. My father has worked in security my whole life and it’s just a trick of the trade he taught me fairly young. Walking around campus I’m familiar most times on Camera, in Cougar Mall I know the cameras sit outside Maybank, the webcams that sit around campus I try to be familiar with as well as they can be accessed by anyone. The first thing I’ve noticed, since moving in is there aren’t any security cameras in my apartment building except right by the elevator that leads to the lobby. In theory we could say every day that’s where my CCTV footprint starts like it did here. It continues when I walk into the Starbucks connected to the Francis Marion, like I do almost every morning. I know when I entered the library I was on camera in the main intersections but the further back I went I no longer was, and that when I walked out of the library and walked to my friends place I was on camera a few times as well.
- Like I’ve stated, my CCTV footprint is the same everyday in some situations until I walked out of the Francis Marion Starbucks, this day I walked along past the barnes and noble which has cameras outside it and into Maybank Hall. It’s always surprised me how completely blank Maybank is with CCTV footage for one of the busiest buildings on campus. It’s never truly made sense to me but I wasn’t really on CCTV until I walked into Forever 21 with a friend. It might have just been the path I took but there weren’t any clear cameras in the area that I saw. In fact after leaving Forever 21 I don’t think I appeared on a camera until I got back to my building.
- I was very boring today and didn’t leave my apartment at all except to get ice cream, so it wasn’t until I took a step into the ice cream shop in West Ashley I think I showed up on a CCTV as I took the way down without a camera at home and the same way back up.
- I started how I typically do, with my CCTV footprint being the same until I exited the Francis Marion, this time I’m sure I was caught on more than one as I walked down King Street, however it was very cold and I was carrying an iced coffee and my only goal was getting to my destination, Jack’s Cafe where I met my friend for breakfast, obviously I was on CCTV in a restaurant and passed at least one on the walk to Maybank to study, but once again it wasn’t until I returned to my apartment building that I was on CCTV again.
- Again, my CCTV footprint followed the same pattern and even stayed similar to Monday as I walked into Maybank Hall. Leaving Maybank after a final, I was however on the camera outside Maybank and on a few more as I walked to Cafe Framboise on Market street and took the same walk back towards Bellsouth. Leaving Bellsouth I was on CCTV as I went to Juanita Greenberg’s on Upper King. I was on CCTV the most this day as I walked down to where I work, a hotel, where I know where each camera is located as a part of my job, from there I went to Caviar and Bananas and back again picking up food for a coworker before I repeated the same process of getting home and being on CCTV for the last time of the night.
- I once again began my day the same and when I exited Francis Marion I began walking down to work of course being on CCTV all the while. While at work I of course was on CCTV footage for about 9 hours and then I got home as I have many times before.
- Very predictably I went to the Francis Marion Starbucks before I got food and went Christmas shopping with a friend, the only time I wasn’t on CCTV was a few ways I walked along from store to store.I went to work and again was on CCTV the whole time before I got home and my footprint ended once I turned a corner off the elevator.
Surveillance Through the Lens of CCTV
When choosing how to go about recording my data, I chose to just write and focus on recording times when I knew I was on CCTV. Most of my time is spent in Maybank Hall, a building with little to no security, I have never gone there and a door be locked in all the three years I’ve lived in Charleston. As I stated in the diary,I naturally look for a camera, I like to know who’s watching and when, I do it along with search for my closest exit at times and see if something is cover or concealment around me. It’s a habit I picked up from having a parent in security who would quiz me in public spaces. The Cambridge University Dictionary defines CCTV as closed-circuit-television “a system that sends television signals to a limited number of screens, and is often used in shops and public places to prevent crime” ( Cambridge Dictionary). In the US, CCTV is a blimp on the spectrum compared to some of the power house cities of Europe; living in Brighton, England I often joked that the only time I wasn’t on CCTV was once I closed the door of my flat. It’s so much more prevalent in the UK for example that I would give up on trying to know if I was on camera, I would assume I was. In the United States, with individual state constitutions and laws controlling CCTV surveillance. For example in the state of Ohio red light cameras have had an ongoing fight with legislatures in the state claiming that they’re unconstitutional for the Ohio constitution. For the national level, in his book Surveillance in America: Critical Analysis of the FBI, 1920 to the Present, Ivan Greenberg writes that “No one knows for certain the number of government/police security cameras embedded across the nation” (Greenberg 279). It’s an interesting concept that Greenberg points out, with CCTV cameras in such public places legal warrants aren’t necessary. This idea of public CCTV is normal but not at the same time. In 2018 individuals are used to being on surveilled to a point that jokes are made about it but in the United States the huge mainstream known CCTV of Europe is such a different concept of surveillance from the American point of view.
The very first sentence, even before the copyright information, of Opening the Black Box by Gavin J.D. Smith puts CCTV cameras in the most accurate description possible “ a prominent, if increasingly familiar feature of urbanism” (Smith). He continues to call them inanimate, something that’s often not thought of. It’s like in You Are Wanted, being aware a camera is there a person makes conscious decisions knowing their being recorded. It’s a false security blanket, while the numbers aren’t there CCTV footage is only constantly being monitored at high stakes areas. It’s seen in countless crime investigations, where the CCTV is already lost by the time it’s looked for. It’s rare to find a location in everyday life, that isn’t a large institution where CCTV is kept more than 30 days just because of the sheer amount of data that it takes up. As time goes on the United States only increases its amount of CCTV cameras in spaces especially as it becomes easier to store and transmit data via digital clouds instead of television circuit waves. With an constantly rising high security risk, it’s not an if there will be more CCTV cameras in the country it’s a when. The only question is the hightech route they’ll take, will it be the facial recognition type that is now fairly active in China and being discussed in the House of Lords and House of Commons in the UK. And if those are suddenly all over the country, in public spaces how does it fit into legality of each state’s constitution.
With urban as a key word in the CCTV narrative it’s no surprise that certain issues with urban areas and gentrification with CCTV are around. As John Michael Roberts writes in his book New Media and Public Activism about the lack of correlation from crime rates and CCTV plus the effect it’s having on certain urban areas. In theory some of it could be used to target certain areas instead of aide them. For example, Roberts writes about the consequences that come with circulating CCTV images of sex workers which would push the narrative of a space being dangerous. It’s the threat of CCTV helping provide a negative agenda that could become an issue. If certain locations were looked at more than others when they had the same amount of crimes. It’s all relative but the issue is there and an important question to put into perspective.
In a post 9/11 society, we live in a world that knows nothing but surveillance. There are certain aspects of 2018 in the United States that echo the statement from Gary T. Marx about public and private being obliterated. We bring certain surveillance to us, we have a daily footprint just by getting up in the morning. After 9/11, according to Ivan Greenberg’s other book The Dangers of Dissent, CCTV became a new way to control the masses and 5200 cameras were installed by 2008 in Washington D.C. alone. Likewise, before 9/11 in Manhattan there were under 2500 CCTV cameras, by 2005 there were more than 5 times that just in the city government and Wall Street area. No longer is public space public, even here at the College of Charleston, if I were to walk the 20 feet out of the library from where I sit typing this paper I would be on camera until I passed the Bell Tower, and those are just the camera’s we’re aware of. Everything about life in 2018 is monitored, my phone tells you without asking how long it will take you to get to home, work or school without prompting it, webcams are often hacked into, and CCTV follows us more than we want to even admit. In a poll by IPVM from 2016, 54% of Americans thought they were on CCTV only 4 times a day when reality is it’s closer to 50 or more. It’s almost like there’s a sense of oblivion just because it’s not a precendently known as it is in the United Kingdom for example, that we aren’t as watched. We are though, far more likely, I walk around in Charleston knowing there are spots that are blind but that it could be watched and recorded. It’s a fine line though. As I’ve said before I grew up with a parent who worked in security and when I called my dad just to brainstorm on what I could talk about with CCTV he mentioned how rare it is to actually have someone actively watching the ‘live’ stream from the CCTV. Everything mentioned above are thoughts that went through my head as I looked more into this theoretically. Using London, because the UK has such a big CCTV demographic. There are two boroughs with very similar crime rate and population Greenwich and Lewisham, now the data is a bit off because there isn’t a more modern map of ethnic groups by London boroughs but 2011 is fairly close. Theoretically say that because Lewisham has more of a minority population than Greenwich that it would be monitored more closes using CCTV, there’s where the issue could come into play. Ultimately, it’s a very thin line that the United States teeters on with CCTV footage and the rise of it’s surveillance uses. Especially as the private and public merge more and more.
Works Consulted
Borchardt, Jackie. “Bill to Punish Cities with Red Light Cameras Clears Ohio House.” Cleveland.Com, cleveland.com, 21 Mar. 2018, https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/03/bill_to_punish_cities_with_red.html. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
“CCTV | Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary.” Cambridge.Org, 1 Jan. 2018, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/cctv. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
Cadman, Josh. “How Dangerous Is Your Borough? 20+ London Crime Statistics June 2018.” Finder UK, finder, 5 Nov. 2018, https://www.finder.com/uk/london-crime-statistics. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
Farkas, Karen. “Restrictions on Red-Light, Speed Cameras Unconstitutional, Ohio Supreme Court Rules.” Cleveland.Com, cleveland.com, 26 July 2017, https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/07/ohios_restrictions_on_red-ligh.html#incart_m-rpt-1. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
Greenberg, Ivan. The Dangers of Dissent: the FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965. Lexington Books, 2013.
Greenberg, Ivan. Surveillance in America: Critical Analysis of the FBI, 1920 to the Present. Lexington Books, 2014.
ipvideomarket. “Americans Vastly Underestimate Being Recorded on CCTV.” IPVM, 24 May 2016, https://ipvm.com/reports/america-cctv-recording. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
“Mapping London’s Population by Ethnic Group.” Opinion, 10 Dec. 2013, http://blogs.lshtm.ac.uk/news/2013/12/10/mapping-londons-population-by-ethnic-group/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
“‘One Nation Under CCTV’: The U.K. Tackles Facial Recognition Technology.” Lawfare, 8 May 2018, https://www.lawfareblog.com/one-nation-under-cctv-uk-tackles-facial-recognition-technology. Accessed 10 Dec. 2018.
Roberts, John M. New Media and Public Activism: Neoliberalism, the State and Radical Protest in the Public Sphere. Policy Press, 2014.
Smith, Gavin J. D. Opening the Black Box: the Work of Watching. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.