IT Infrastructure Management
Introduction
The vision of cameras recording people’s moves is slowly being realized, with technologist forecasting a tenfold rise in Closed Circuit Televisions all over the world in years to come. The surveillance field is going through transitions as digital cameras gain fame. Public places like shopping stalls, bus terminals and airports have CCTVs as the full time watch. Statistics reveal that a single average citizen is captured 300 times a day on CCTV cameras. It is estimated that over 25 million CCTV cameras have been installed all over the world.
One major benefit of CCTV surveillance is peace of mind for government’s citizens. It’s been witnessed that people in places where CCTVs have been used for surveillance tend to appreciate the risen sense of security. Naturally this is the most common security component that most government’s security agencies use in response to highly publicized occurrences of violence in major towns. The fact that CCTVs are passive, information about their existence will penetrate through the communities. Individuals feel quite safer when they know that potential criminals will be scared away by the CCTVs existence prior to committing crimes (McCahill, & Norris, 2002).
Organizations also integrating CCTVs for surveillance witness improved behaviors due to tracking. Sometimes the idea in people’s minds that there exists some CCTV material keeping record of them prevents them from causing trouble. Some organizations perceive CCTVs as having multiple purposes. Most public places have been installed with cameras to randomly track person’s character big hotels and restraints too also have CCTVs mainly to track any abnormal behaviors with les regard to individual’s privacy for the purpose of national security. Images and videos captured are stored in databases hence providing tangible evidence, security agencies may find criminals performances evaluations more easy by use of video surveillance instead of face to face. The integration of CCTV records as means of evidence for identification might be a viable reason to make citizens less inclined to committing crimes (Hoffman, 2001).
Sometimes CCTV clips are posted on the internet or on security agencies databases. These clips might not be intended for everyone hence precautions might be undertaken to ensure their safety. This safety measures might not be that sufficient to prevent hackers of ill motive persons from accessing the clips. There is no assurance that the clips will be kept sacred some people might even go to extremes of selling the clips around hence the spread of the clips to wider scopes (Ditton, 2000).
CCTV is social control
CCTV cameras affect the social lives of persons an example is that people behave differently when they feel someone is tracking or watching over them. Maybe one might not enter a club or stop to talk to someone, by this, doubts a lot before going against the social norms. It thus a chilling effect on freedom of speech and actions hence democracy suffers from it. People’s morale is also affected when we turn to technology for solutions. There is a possibility of CCTVs instilling fear and distrust bringing down the social ecologies of communities instead of actually impacting positively on the security problems. Some questions may include what is wrong in the community? Has the government or body installing CCTV cameras lost trust in them that they have to spy on their personal lives? Especially if there is little or no indication for CCTV prison style security the message sent is clear that the community is not trustworthy and each individual in it is a suspect. The cameras are an indication that governments can invade person’s private space (Wood, & David, 2006).
Instead of concentrating our arguments for doing away with privacy, we actually require greater intimacy a less Grubby organ and not the purity of the immune mall washed in aseptic environment and captured on a CCTV. This may need high levels of openness. The typicality of present public figures gives us all hints of how this might be put into practice. Today’s public figures all always centers of interest and often call for their privacy intrusion but on the other hand normal persons seek privacy. Hence while majority of us would never wish to live lives full of CCTV surveillance the best option would be maybe to spend a lot of time observing our own self’s and less time on the public figures. That way CCTV surveillance would only be feasible since it is closed and our objections should be targeted at cameras or other non-democratic surveillance systems. To explore this further one may try to do more on the correlation between crime control or culture preservation.
Conclusion
In the previous decades, most cities in the world have been under cute CCTV surveillance. CCTV cameras have brought immense contributions to the fight against crime and aided in solving many more. CCTV cameras definitely aids in crime detection, prevention and reduction. It seems to move fraudsters elsewhere away from towns under proper surveillance. There is also a major benefit of CCTV cameras such that costs are reduced. An example is a court hearing with a one being found guilty saves around £3,000 to £5,000,.
References
Ditton, J. (2000).Crime and the City: Public Attitudes towards Open-Street CCTV in Glasgow,British Journal of Criminology (2000) Vol. 40, p. 692-709.
Hoffman, J. (2001).Guidelines for Using Video Surveillance Cameras in Public Places, Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario.
McCahill, M., & Norris. (2002).Urbaneye: CCTV in Britain-Working Paper No.3, Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice School of Comparative and Applied Social Sciences University of Hull.
Jana, L., & Rachel, P. (2007). A Study of CCTV at Harvard. Harvard Printing Press
Wood, David, M. (2006). A Report of the Surveillance Society. Surveillance Studies Network.
Painter, K. (2001). Paper presented at ensuring the effectiveness of CCTV. Conference, London, December 2001.
Sharp, D. &Wilson, S. (2000). Household Security: Private Policing and Vigilantism in Doncaster, The Howard Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2, May 2000, p. 113-131.
