The Legitimization of Cctv as a Policy Tool: Genesis and Stabilization of a Socio-Technical Device in Three French Cities

Germain, Séverine; Douillet, Anne-Cécile; Dumoulin, Laurence

doi:10.1093/bjc/azr075

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Why is this so? One answer to this question is that pictures help police in investigating crime, that courts tend to favor video surveillance images as evidence over witnesses, or that surveillance systems makes it easier to react to emergency callsin short, that security governance networks increasingly depend on surveillance in their everyday practices, as Germain et al (2011) argue. Another proposition, which I develop in this article, is that video surveillance has become part of a policy discourse that takes peoples' affects as the main objective for security governance, and in which security measures are evaluated in terms of their reassurance function.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The body politics of the urban age: reflections on surveillance and affect

Svenonius

2018

Palgrave Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The article theorizes surveillance and affect in the context of urban security policy. Surveillance, as commonly understood, provides the means to "know" a person or a population, and to a certain extent to control or manage her/him/it. Hence, surveillance and knowledge are intimately tied together. New modes of surveillance are, therefore, also contingent upon new ways of knowing. This article discusses surveillance and affect in urban politics and let these concepts communicate with empirical research on urban security. The starting point is empirical research in three European cities on changes in local level security policy between 2000 and 2010. In all three cases, significant changes in the governance networks' approaches about security were observed. These changes coincided with new developments in the use of surveillance technologies to increase feelings of security. In this process "performative" surveillance became a central aspect of urban security policy, with particular focus on affects related to fear of crime, old age, and gender. The article theorizes the relationship between security, surveillance, and affect. The argument put forward is that new security policies were instances of the production of a discourse in which the precognitive, instinctual affects were increasingly targeted. The article shows how proponents of the new type of security governance articulate policy goals focusing on fear, threat, and surveillance. It contributes to a small body of literature on urban security and emotions by showing how cultural differences play out when similar policy goals that target citizens on the level of pre-cognitive affects are implemented.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The body politics of the urban age: reflections on surveillance and affect

Svenonius

2018

Palgrave Commun

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For instance, the CCTV system was finally integrated into a tactic for managing incidents with potential defaulters 26 although it was initially designed to identify the preparation of crime. Regarding open-street CCTV, while the official function is most often deterrence to reduce crime rates, actual uses are marked by a concern for offender tracking and identification (Germain, Dumoulin and Douillet 2012). Norris and Armstrong (1999b) propose the concept of 'expandable mutability' to underline the fact that surveillance cameras set up for a particular goal are actually used for other purposes.…”

Section: Germain: a Prosperous 'Business'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without supporting the whole theoretical background of the actor-network theory-especially the perfect comparability between human and non-human actors-the team of researchers used its mode of reasoning, taking into consideration the possibilities and limitations of the technological tool itself to understand its development. This approach prevented them from overrating technological determinism and thus allowed them to show that the use of technology is likely to enlist a number of actors: its users, first, through buyin arrangements, but also its detractors, through the weakening of opposition, made possible by the development of the device itself (Germain, Dumoulin and Douillet 2012). Three mechanisms of CCTV buy-in by direct and indirect CCTV users were highlighted.…”

Section: Germain: a Prosperous 'Business'mentioning

confidence: 99%

A prosperous ‘business’. The success of CCTV through the eyes of international literature

Germain

Dumoulin²,

Douillet³

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article deals with a paradox: video surveillance becomes widespread, in more and more numerous social and national spaces, while its effects in terms of crime prevention and\or law enforcement and community reassurance are not demonstrated. Through a critical analysis of the international literature on CCTV, this article attempts to identify the reasons advanced to explain the ‘success’ of this technology. Three kinds of approach, which embody three ways of defining the political and social impact of CCTV, can be distinguished: surveillance studies, impact analyses and use studies. This paper discusses these works and the answers they bring to the understanding of CCTV development. It claims that micro-level case study analysis allows grasping subtly the locally observable mechanisms by which new actors can be enrolled in the device and new legitimizations are made possible.

show abstract

“…The recorded visual information is sent to a closed circuit television (CCTV) control center that supervises the VSS device concerned, and to administrator(s) there with proper access rights. The information is then made available for preventing possible incidents/accidents in target area(s), and for understanding the root cause of and investigating any incidents/accidents once they have occurred, and presenting evidence for resolving situations [1][2][3][4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Mechanism of Masking Identification Information regarding Moving Objects Recorded on Visual Surveillance Systems by Differentially Implementing Access Permission

Park

Kim

2019

Electronics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Video surveillance systems (VSS), used as a measure of security strengthening as well as investigation, are provided principally in heavily crowded public places. They record images of moving objects and transmit them to the control center. Typically, the recorded images are stored after being encrypted, or masked using visual obfuscations on a concerned image(s) in the identification-enabling data contained in the visual information. The stored footage is recovered to its original state by authorized users. However, the recovery entails the restoration of all information in the visual data, possibly infiltrating the privacy of the object(s) other than the one(s) whose images are requested. In particular, Artificial Intelligence Healthcare that checks the health status of an object through images has the same problem and must protect the patient's identification information. This study proposes a masking mechanism wherein the infiltration of visual data privacy on videos is minimized by limiting the objects whose images are recovered with differential use of access permission granted to the requesting users.

show abstract

The Legitimization of Cctv as a Policy Tool: Genesis and Stabilization of a Socio-Technical Device in Three French Cities

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

The body politics of the urban age: reflections on surveillance and affect

The body politics of the urban age: reflections on surveillance and affect

A prosperous ‘business’. The success of CCTV through the eyes of international literature

A Mechanism of Masking Identification Information regarding Moving Objects Recorded on Visual Surveillance Systems by Differentially Implementing Access Permission

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About