Many argue that having surveillance is a good thing and can help keep the city safe. I agree with this but also feel like its wrong. I can give a personal experience that i have encountered within surveillance.
I was coming back from my breakdancing class, (yes i breakdance) around 6.00pm. As i was walking to the bus stop with my cousin we where approached by a pair of youths. At first they wanted some many, some me and my cousin simply said no sorry we don't. I don't think they liked that answer so they then started to follow us asking if we had weed on us, i have no idea why it seemed that we had weed on us as me and my cousin have never touched the thing. Again answering no they then started to chase us. We got beat up for no reason. Me and my cousin ran when the opportunity to flee came, so we did. A couple of days later we had reported it to the police. There answer was that they would check the CCTV footage around that area where it happened. After waiting 3 agonising weeks to get justice, we had no result as the excuse was that there were to many people and that it wasn't working around that time.
This personally made me mad, i was asking to myself, why do we have CCTV if there is no organisation or if it doesn't even work. We didn't have a leg to stand on because the two muggers could have been anyone, and to be honest when you are scared of someone you don't really take a minute to have a look at them because you are getting punched in the face. Anyway as i now finish my rant, i feel that having CCTV cameras are in a way pointless.
Advantages:
Let people know that they are being watched to prevent crime.
Help monitor certain areas of violence, graffiti and so on.
Makes it a safer place for pedestrians to go where they want without having to worry.
Disadvantages:
Sometimes they can be used to spy on people.
Makes them feel like they are being watched constantly.
Who knows who's watching on the other side.
Invading personal space.
Even though i strongly feel against CCTV, looking at case studies i have found that CCTV helps reduce the number of crime within each area, monitoring everyones moves. In the past there has been numerous cases where if an incident has happened, Surveillance came along to solve the mystery. This also enables CCTV images to be used within the media industry to create a greater emotional impact towards it's readers. In some sense when a crime is made and has been cracked, CCTV come and takes the title rather than looking at the case itself and within its own transcripts.
Surveillance has been portrayed within an ill manner towards the public audience. Yes it may be preventing crime but it also invades peoples private space. CCTV is now almost everywhere, for example Shopping Malls, Library's and so on, in some sense this is just a way for the government to say that yes they are fighting combat when really they are taking a back seat and watching everyone within there day to day routine.
The main question that we can all be asking our selves is that, can this continue and if so will it get worse as technology is increasing so are they ways around crime. Can we all cope with being watched. If i want to sit down and eat my Mc chicken burger would i need to worry about some random guy watching me eat, A pervert may be on the other side watching people. So you don't know whether to trust the police system because even the police have there odd characters.
Sources:
http://www.no-cctv.org.uk/faq.asp
http://whatiscctv.com/
http://content.met.police.uk/Article/CCTV/1400011385250/1400011385250
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