If you’ve been out
today, there’s a very good chance that you’ve been caught on camera. As of
2016, there are about 350 million CCTV cameras worldwide. We have become a
planet under surveillance.
In the Beginning
The CCTV camera has
a somewhat inauspicious origin story. The technology was first used by Seimens
AG for the Nazis in 1942. The cameras
were installed at Test Stand VII in Peenemunde, Germany, for observing the launch
of V-2 rockets.
This was a very basic system that could only be used
for live monitoring. They technology did not yet exist for such systems to
record footage.
Rumble in the Jungle
One of the earliest
applications of CCTV came via the world of boxing, where it was used as a form
of pay-per-view theatre TV.
Boxing telecasts
were broadcast live to a select number of venues where viewers paid for tickets
to watch the fight live.
The first fight to
be broadcast via CCTV was Joe Lewis vs. Joe Walcott in 1948. These
telecasts grew in popularity, peaking with the iconic fights of Muhammad Ali in
the 1960s and 1970s. Possibly his most famous tussle, the ‘Rumble
in the Jungle’
against George Foreman in Zaire (modern day Congo) drew 50 million CCTV viewers worldwide in 1974.
Fighting Crime
Although the city
of Hamburg in Germany had used CCTV to monitor traffic coming to its annual
industrial trade fair in the late 1950s, the first use of such systems to
tackle crime, which is what we associate CCTV with today, began in the 1960s.
The UK became an
early pioneer, when the Metropolitan Police used two temporary cameras in
Trafalgar Square to monitor crowds who had come to see to the arrival of the
Thai royal family.
The USA then set
the pace, starting with the city of Olean, New York, which in 1968 became the
first local authority to install video cameras along its main business street
in an effort to fight crime. Olean’s example started a trend which would see
several towns and cities across the USA adopt this new technology.
VCR-
The Game Changer
A significant
development in the history of CCTV occurred when video cassette recordings
(VCRs) became widely available in the 1970s. This technology was quickly
adopted and incorporated into
surveillance systems.
It was now no
longer necessary for people to monitor the screens live. Instead, the systems
could be set up and left to run independently. Users could then review what had
been recorded at a later time. This made CCTV much more popular among
businesses.
CCTV and the UK
CCTV has proven to
be very popular amongst businesses, local authorities and police forces in the
UK. The country’s citizens are amongst the most surveilled in the world.
According to the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) there are between
4-5.9 million CCTV cameras in the
country. There are 500,000 cameras in London alone, with some of most watched
locations being:
Oxford
Circus: 309 cameras
Green
Park: 210 cameras
Bank/Monument:
182 cameras
It’s Not Big Brother!
Although the stereotypical image of the CCTV
camera is that of one owned by the government (Big Brother is Watching You!),
in reality the majority of cameras in the UK are privately owned.
Why has
CCTV Become so Popular?
Technical
developments, such as the ability to record at night, digitisation and
networking have helped broaden the appeal of the technology. But equally
important has been the evidence that illustrates CCTV’s effectiveness in
fighting crime.
For example, a 2009
review by researchers from Northeastern University and the University of Cambridge, which
looked at over 40 different studies that
had researched the impact of CCTV
on crime levels, found that :
●
CCTV caused a significant
reduction of crime by on average 16 per cent
●
The largest effects of CCTV were
found in car parks, where cameras reduced crime by on average 51 per cent
●
In
city and town centres CCTV schemes had 7 per cent reduction in crime and
in public transport settings the reduction was 23 per cent
CCTV for Business
A recent study by the University of Leicester found what
most businesses have realised for some time,
that CCTV is a great deterrent for pre-planned crime. It seems that
criminals actively avoid stealing from premises that appear knowledgeable about
crime and prevention.
Considering that
the average burglary costs a business £1,376 per incident, it’s easy to
understand why CCTV has become so popular and why so many businesses are
willing to invest in it.
But There are
Controversies
The expansion of
CCTV, both in the UK and elsewhere, has not come without controversy. The idea
of being constantly monitored, of the state being able to follow your every
move has made some people wary and led others to suggest that we are heading
towards a ‘surveillance society.’
There have also
been concerns that the large amounts of cash spent on CCTV does not result in
good value for money. Critics point out that the UK’s crime rate is not
dissimilar to other, less surveillanced, countries and that the money invested
in CCTV might be better spent on more police officers, local authority
employees (park keepers, toilet attendants) or bus/train conductors.
The
Future?
With new technology arriving, such as 4K,
which can greatly enhance an image and lessen the number of cameras needed,
it’s unlikely that we will see CCTV disappear from our streets any time soon.
The UK fell in love with being watched and it's a romance that looks in no
danger of fizzling out.
