ESSAY ABOUT THE CCTV - gartagani

ESSAY ABOUT THE CCTV
in doubt. In which point we are talking about a technological paranoia and total
surveillance society? It is very difficult to draw the line.
In my opinion CCTV is necessary to detect criminal and terrorist activities between
the crowds in the big city centers, but a ethical use of those devices must be done,
otherwise we can live in a sort of enforced order, absolutely giving the back any social
trust which indicates an advanced society. That happens because this policy (CCTV)
works as a deterrent for criminals in the short term, for specifical offences (property
robberies for example) and can not act in the social and human roots of the problem.
On the other hand, offences are the result of the modern way of life, our system and
our cities as another social interaction and not exactly a social pathology. (9)
It makes no sense to use those devices in small villages or cities. The use of those
devices must be justified by the security of thousands of people or historical buildings.
Only in a few cases is justified (in some private spaces and in the center of big cities if
we are talking about public areas). Unluckily, in UK we have seen a spectacular growth
of CCTV systems, more than any other country of Europe.
Has the electronic industry marketing interests in this case? For example, the Home
Office has spent last year close to £50 million on CCTV installation in town centres.
Also the council’s budget for these purposes has been increased (example, Bradford,
England) (10)
An automatic recognition done by special software and the capability of the
hardware to store millions of data in small folders and report exactly about our
movements at least is a scarring question. It is exactly the end of the privacy. The
availability of the technology for the private’s enterprises with low costs breaks also
the right of privacy, because the data can be used for non-security purposes
(marketing research, etc). The use of software for facial recognition should not be
allowed for private purposes (to be used with CCTV systems).
The technology can not be bad, we must bear in mind that only the ethics and the
way in which they are used those devices in our lives and in our society is the main
matter to be discussed. For example: the Autoscopics is a useful technical achieving
improvements in Psychosocial and Educational Sciences. Also the OCR technology is
essential in the industry chains mainly for the packaging and control of quality: release
humans from a hard work: in this case it is a contribution to the public health.(11)
February 2002
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