Information Polity

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2012-0265

Wagenaar, Pieter ; Boersma, Kees

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2012-0263

Airports are places that are heavily surveilled by different (technical) means, including CCTV (Closed Circuit Television). So far, the literature on CCTV has not paid much attention to the practices behind the screens of the CCTV monitors at airports. In this article, we present an in-depth, ethnographic study of the use of CCTV in the Military Police's control room at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. We find that, since nobody is 'at home' at Schiphol, surveillance through CCTV is a challenge for the police. The operators in the control room are constantly struggling with the question how to spot deviance in a situation where they believe normal behavior does not exist. Our study shows that the categories for singling out the abnormal identified by Norris and Goold are rarely used by the Military Police at Schiphol. Instead, they heavily rely on routine, transmitted, and retrospective surveillance.

Fussey, Pete

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2011-0253

Largely catalysed by hosting the XXX Summer Olympic Games, East London is currently experiencing significant urban regeneration at a rate not seen since the period of post-war reconstruction. In doing so, a series of processes that serve to heighten the intensity of cameras in this already saturated video surveillance landscape are occurring. At the same time, these developments, whilst affecting East London, demonstrate a number of key issues, debates and crises germane to the dissemination and operation of video surveillance across the UK as a whole. These include the intensification and cohesion of video surveillance networks; the role of CCTV in urban regeneration schemes; tensions between disparate applications of CCTV and aspirations for a coherent regulatory framework; and, crucially, how CCTV can be justified at a time of severe economic crisis. The paper explores these issues via the identification and analysis of three broad processes operating in East London: the 'additionality' of Olympic-related surveillance measures; the centripetal surveillance-pull of Olympic-related regeneration programmes; and the co-option and integration of extant CCTV facilities. The strong emphasis on surveillant economies of scale and the integration of existing surveillance infrastructures invite reflection on post-Foucauldian theorisations of networked 'societies of control'.

Svenonius, Ola

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2012-0264

This article reports on the results of a study on surveillance and plural policing in the Stockholm public transport system. More specifically, it analyses a SEK 500 million (EUR 55 million) investment called The Security Project, through which the Stockholm public transport authority seeks to address a perceived security deficit among its passengers. At its core, the Security Project was an investment in Sweden's largest CCTV system, and many other surveillance measures. The article describes how surveillance became central to addressing security concerns in the Stockholm public transport system. It applies a diachronic case study methodology and uses a framework that highlights centralisation of governance networks and normative cohesion as means to study plural policing and surveillance. The article addresses current debates on these topics, primarily Coaffee's and Duijnhoven's recent work on urban security. It aims to show how the roles of the police, private security and surveillance practices in general have been altered by the Security Project, and how the project produced contradictory effects through centralisation on the one hand, and a maintained (chaotic) diversity of policing on the other.

Zurawski, Nils

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2011-0250

This case study examines how CCTV is used in local politics as a vehicle for different actors with different agendas. In discussing an actual case from Hamburg, in which five cameras have been installed and removed within two years, the article will give an account of local politics, in which CCTV is used for various purposes and part of many different agendas. Most interestingly, the arguments' focus is usually on crime prevention, but here they are modified towards the issue of urban regeneration over the course of the cameras' lives. The analysis explains of how CCTV is used in politics, ultimately proving that the technology is more an instrument of politics than of actual crime prevention. And lastly the article will show how the changes of the arguments develop in the process of negotiating CCTV within local politics by local actors, thus making surveillance cameras less given and untouchable than they often seem.

Galdon Clavell, Gemma ; Lojo, Lohitzune Zuloaga ; Romero, Armando

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2011-0254

Over the last two decades the use of video surveillance has grown in scope and numbers. However, research on the national contexts that have driven such developments tends to concentrate on Northern and Western Europe. This article explores the situation of CCTV in Spain, its legal framework, perceived shortcomings, public perceptions and specificity – such as a pre-9/11 concern for terrorism but its minimal impact on the justification for CCTV, a rights-based and a priori control of video surveillance devices and a deployment pattern that differs from those identified in the literature on CCTV at the European and global level. In providing an account on how Spain has joined the 'surveillance society', it exposes a picture of unevenness, legal loopholes and resistance, and provides a unique overview of CCTV deployment in a Southern-European, post-authoritarian country.

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2011-0255

2012 Information Polity

doi: 10.3233/IP-2012-0266