Why end users should be honest about the role of CCTV surveillance

This is a global security industry website (in case you hadn’t noticed) so it’s fair to say that most of our readers understand the huge benefits of video surveillance.

But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep a check on how and where we use the technology.

Public trust is essential, and without that confidence in the need for CCTV there can be no case for it.

In the UK, last August’s riots resulted in a huge upswing in public support for the use of CCTV. Control room operators were able to trace back through video in order to find images of suspects before they’d had a chance to cover their faces.

Promote professionalism

But it’s not all positive, the situation with G4S failing to deliver enough guards to the London 2012 Olympic Games dented public trust in security companies as a whole, in the UK and around the world.

And a failures such as those in the Indian city Pune, where bombings were carried out and security cameras failed to catch them – due to either a fault or the cameras simply not being turned on, depending on who you believe – also undermines public confidence.

The list goes on with even the UK surveillance commissioner questioning whether full HD CCTV equipped with face recognition technology could be a breach of human rights.

At last week’s inaugural Global Security Summit, the head of the UK-based Security Institute, Mike Bluestone, said that if the industry as a whole is to get away from negative criticism, then “we need to keep raising security sector standards.”

He added that organisations need to help build professionalism throughout the industry, and talk to the wider business community and the media to promote professionalism.

Openness builds trust

For me, however, building trust in CCTV comes through honesty and openness about the role that it plays.

An interesting project in Denmark has been attempting to map security cameras across the country through user-submitted, geotagged images.

Daily Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information released an app earlier this year, alongside a series of articles discussing the use of surveillance in the country.

The app had around 4,500 downloads, and 2,200 CCTV cameras have been tagged, photographed, and verified by journalists.

Users are then able to view a map of Denmark with all of the locations of the cameras precisely marked along with a picture, providing a snapshot of the distribution of CCTV in the country.

Exercises like this, if produced by the security industry, could increase public trust and confidence in the aims of video surveillance.

Many people are paranoid about where they’re being watched – such as on the toilet – so let’s be open about it.

With the public on side they are more likely to become evangelists for security measures themselves, and will be more receptive to steps that encourage them to be vigilant for security threats themselves.

The idea of ‘dealing with the insider threat’ has been written about at length, but step one of this has to be building trust in security in the first place.

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