ACR212 - CCTV Surveillance: Justifications, Privacy & Human Rights

This essay critically examines the use of CCTV surveillance technology as a means to control crime, focusing on its implications for privacy, civil liberties, and human rights. It discusses how CCTV is framed as a solution to crime by both the private sector and law enforcement, while also addressing the social, political, and legal challenges associated with its use. The essay highlights potential abuses, discriminatory targeting, and the lack of control over camera usage, emphasizing the need for limitations and balance to safeguard citizens' security and privacy. The work references various studies and perspectives on the impact of CCTV on individual freedoms and the potential for misuse of surveillance data.

Running Head: EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
Name of Student
Name of University
Author Note

1
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
1. Problem solved by CCTV surveillance
CCTV surveillance is placing the cameras in different public and private sectors and
monitoring the videos for different security purposes. The establishment of this security tool
is used by private companies and for various law enforcement act and hence proving to be
effective. CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) is a type of television where the public
distribution of the signals are not allowed. CCTV surveillance is used in a variety of purposes
for that prevention or detection of a crime scenario There are a variety of purposes served by
CCTV surveillance. In a private sector, the employees use CCTV as prevention to theft,
crimes, violations of rules and regulation. It also looks after the safety issues of the
employees. In the private sector, there are several codes of conducts and following the same
by the employees is a crucial task, which can be quickly done using the cameras (Schuck,
2017). The productivity of the private sector can be improved by employing regulatory
obligations to the employees. The actions, which can be monitored by the authority of an
organisation, includes goods scanning, good selection, price and amount of the excellent
introduction. The executives and the managers can look after the interior of the workplace by
sitting in there place. There can be control of all the activities that are running in the private
sector. A specific event in the time of occurrence can be evaluated. This is an excellent tool
for detecting or recording any unusual behaviour. CCTV cameras can be used to protect a
place or property when it is left vacant. This also allows prevention of crimes in school,
colleges, IT sectors and many others. This provides a secure environment for the employees
in a workplace as every action is recorded and people will think before conducting any illegal
activity . If any case there any crime occurs this help the investigating officer to evaluate the
offence and acting according to the law. The footage captured in the camera of any criminal
activity can be a piece of evidence in the court and can be used to give justice to the victim.
Security officers and law enforcement officers can watch the film that is recorded by the

2
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
CCTV. Many countries including Australia have utilised the CCTV surveillance to reduce the
crimes and to increase the security (Carr, 2016). However, there are several laws, which
limits the use of CCTV cameras so that it does not hamper the privacy of an individual.
2. Impacts of the use of CCTV for privacy, civil liberties, social justice,
and human rights
It is essential to respect the privacy of an individual while using CCTV
surveillance. The use of CCTV needs to be restricted to the prevention and detection of
crime and promoting safety. It should not affect the privacy and liberty of the people. The
political freedom of the citizen is also hampered. There are CCTV cameras installed in
public places, which can affect an individual willingness to exercise their act of
liberation. This can be used by many political parties and can discourage peoples from
organising assemblies. CCTV has the potential to affect all right to privacy (Small 2017).
The police and the government bodies need to come out with a proper justification before
installing CCTV cameras in a public place and ensure that the negative impacts of doing
the same are avoided (Patel et al. 2016). The people have to trust the administrator of the
CCTV surveillance that they will respect their rights. These cameras can bother the public
ways of how they are enjoying in the public place under cameras continuous monitoring.
Watching or monitoring the union activities can have negative impacts on the privacy, so
the CCTV cameras to ensure the confidentiality of the customers does not record the oral
communication or the audio (Costin, 2016). Many peoples claim that the installation of
CCTV cameras in public places invade their privacy. The CCTV surveillance is meant for
determination of criminal activities in an area by not invading in the privacy, civil liberty
and human rights. CCTV cameras can be installed in a workplace if it is not doing any
harm to the legal rights of the employees.

3
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
3. Social, political, and legal challenges
Several challenges come with the use of CCTV cameras:
Abused by Criminal: The law enforcement of the CCTV surveillance system can tempt many
criminal activities. For example, in the year of 1997 an officer of Washington, DC is accused
of using the CCTV footage to gather information on patrons in a Gay Club (Debus-Sherrill,
La Vigne and Downey 2017). The primary challenge comes when the CCTV cameras across
the city are used for criminal activity.
Abusing in Institutional: When the top authority of a system is engaged in wrong deeds the
whole law enforcement team to turn towards the wrong end. During the period of the
Vietnam War and Civil right movements, the police departments throughout the nation get
involved in illegal activities like harassing the political members who challenge the Vietnam
war (Costin 2016) .
Personal purpose: CCTV tools also tempt the people to use it for a particular purpose.
Michigan law enforcement has a database which tells that many influential officers use this
system for helping friends, threaten people and stalking others and many illegal purposes
(Debus-Sherrill et al.2017).
Targeting the discriminatory: According to a study, black people are surveyed more. This
video camera is operated by peoples who can be biased while doing their job (Schuermans
2016)
Lack of Control on the use of camera: The purpose of CCTV cameras have many positive
and negative consequences and without proper limitations and balancing using this
surveillance can cause several damages. The people who are operating the cameras need to

4
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
know the limitations of using the video footage. The lack of balance in the use of the CCTV
can challenge the security of the citizens
Voyeurism: Experts have seen that mostly male executives operate these cameras and they
use it to spy on a woman. This brings a question that the cameras which are used for security
purpose are now proved to be a danger to the woman.

5
EVALUATING CCTV SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
References
Carr, R., 2016. Surveillance politics and local government: A national survey of federal
funding for CCTV in Australia. Security Journal, 29(4), pp.683-709.
Costin, A., 2016, October. Security of CCTV and video surveillance systems: Threats,
vulnerabilities, attacks, and mitigations. In Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on
trustworthy embedded devices (pp. 45-54). ACM.
Debus-Sherrill, S.A., La Vigne, N.G. and Downey, P.M., 2017. CCTV in jail housing: An
evaluation of technology-enhanced supervision. Security Journal, 30(2), pp.367-384.
Patel, P.B., Choksi, V.M., Jadhav, S. and Potter, M.B., 2016. Smart Motion Detection System
using Raspberry Pi. International Journal of Applied Information Systems (IJAIS)–ISSN,
pp.2249-0868.
Schuck, A.M., 2017. Prevalence and predictors of surveillance cameras in law enforcement:
the importance of stakeholders and community factors. Criminal justice policy review, 28(1),
pp.41-60.
Schuermans, N., 2016. On the politics of vision and touch: Encountering fearful and
fearsome bodies in Cape Town, South Africa. Encountering the City: Urban Encounters
from Accra to New York, p.97.
Small, C., 2017. Surveillance and Your Right to Privacy. Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC.