Eyes Everywhere: The Global Growth of Camera Surveillance

by Aaron Doyle (Editor), Randy Lippert (Editor), David Lyon (Editor)

Overview

In many countries camera surveillance has become commonplace, and ordinary citizens and consumers are increasingly aware that they are under surveillance in everyday life. Camera surveillance is typically perceived as the archetype of contemporary surveillance technologies and processes.

While there is sometimes fierce debate about their introduction, many others take the cameras for granted or even applaud their deployment. Yet what the presence of surveillance cameras actually achieves is still very much in question. International evidence shows that they have very little effect in deterring crime and in 'making people feel safer’, but they do serve to place certain groups under greater official scrutiny and to extend the reach of today’s ‘surveillance society’.

Eyes Everywhere provides the first international perspective on the development of camera surveillance. It scrutinizes the quiet but massive expansion of camera surveillance around the world in recent years, focusing especially on Canada, the UK and the USA but also including less-debated but important contexts such as Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey. Containing both broad overviews and illuminating case-studies, including cameras in taxi-cabs and at mega-events such as the Olympics, the book offers a valuable oversight on the status of camera surveillance in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

The book will be fascinating reading for students and scholars of camera surveillance as well as policy makers and practitioners from the police, chambers of commerce, private security firms and privacy- and data-protection agencies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415668644
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/14/2011
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Aaron Doyle is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. His research focuses on how institutions like the mass media, the criminal justice system and insurance organizations deal with risk through surveillance and other means, and the security and insecurity that results.

Randy Lippert is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Windsor, Canada. His research interests include security, governance, and surveillance. He has published one book and many articles, most recently, ‘Advancing governmentality studies: Lessons from social constructionism’, Theoretical Criminology 14(4): 473-494 (with Kevin Stenson).

David Lyon is Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre and Professor of Sociology at Queen's University. His most recent books include Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance (Polity 2009), Playing the Identity Card (co-edited with Colin J. Bennett, Routledge, 2008) and Surveillance Studies: An Overview (Polity 2007).

Table of Contents

Preface 1. Introduction Part 1: Situating Camera Surveillance Growth 2. 'There’s no Success like Failure and Failure’s no Success at all': Some Critical Reflections on the Global Growth of Camera Surveillance 3. What Goes Up, Must Come Down: On the Moribundity of Camera Networks in the UK 4. Seeing Surveillantly: Surveillance as Social Practice Part 2: International Growth of Camera Surveillance 5. Cameras in Context: A Comparison of the Place of Video Surveillance in Japan and Brazil 6. The Growth and Further Proliferation of Camera Surveillance in South Africa 7. The Piecemeal Development of Camera Surveillance in Canada Part 3: Evolving Forms and Uses of Camera Surveillance 8. The Electronic Eye of the Police: The Provincial Information and Security System in Istanbul 9. Policing in the Age of Information: Automated Number Place Recognition 10. Video Surveillance in Vancouver: Legacies of the Games 11. Selling Surveillance: The Introduction of Cameras in Ottawa Taxis 12. Deploying Camera Surveillance Images: The Case of Crime Stoppers 13. Hidden Changes: From CCTV to ‘Smart’ Video Surveillance Part 4: Public Support, Media Visions and the Politics of Representation 14. Anti-Surveillance Activists v. The Dancing Heads of Terrorism: Signal Crimes, Media Frames, Symbolic Politics and Camera Promotion 15. Surveillance Cameras and Synopticism: A Case Study in Mexico City 16. Surveillance Culture and Appropriation: CCTV as Found in Footage in Manu Luksch's Faceless 17. 'What Do You Think?': International Public Opinion of Camera Surveillance 18. Towards a Framework of Contextual Integrity: Legality, trust and compliance of CCTV Signage 19. Mitigating Asymmetric Visibilities: Towards a signage code for surveillance camera networks 20. Is it a ‘Search’?: The Legal Context of Camera Surveillance in Canada 21. Privacy As Security: Surveillance Camera Signage and Informed Consent 22. Reversing the Conventional Wisdom on Video Surveillance in Canada

Editorial Reviews

'What the editors have assembled is an ambitious transnational compilation.'

'The collection of 22 academic essays tackles this general engorgement of camera surveillance and the issues relating to it from several useful angles.'
-Steve Hewitt, University of Birmingham, in Literary Review of Canada, vol 20, no 6

From the Publisher