Liminal Surveillance. Intensified use of an existing CCTV system during a local event

Abstract

This article is about the targeted, temporarily intensified use of an already existing, permanently installed surveillance system for the safety and security management during a local event at the campus of the University of Illinois, USA. In particular it is the CCTV system that is analyzed after an ethnographic control room study. It became clear that the law enforcement intensified the use of the CCTV system during the festival. The temporal, intensified use of a surveillance system is in this article labeled as 'liminal surveillance'. Not only could the police intensify the surveillance as a result of the liminal use of the CCTV system, but they also could test the system in extreme circumstances, advocate its use, and raise attention for safety and security issues during the festival. In this article both the intended and unintended consequences of liminal surveillance are discussed.

The Heartbeat of Fieldwork

“…Then the pace changes again and J. switches to another programme of actions calling the workers on the street. Consider the scene just described in comparison with the following vignette from Boersma (2013) referring to his account of an 'Unofficial St. Patrick Day' local event, monitored from a police surveillance room:…”

Big data, surveillance and crisis management

“…Crisis managers can use big data analytics to create improved operational pictures (Wukich 2015). Another example is the use of social media data by crisis management organizations as part of early warning systems (Culotta 2010), and for crowd control and monitoring (Trottier and Schneider 2012;Boersma 2013;Procter et al 2013). There is growing evidence that social media data can contribute to a better understanding of the situation and eventually to a more adequate and robust crisis management (Yin et al 2012;Cassa et al 2013).…”