Mapping CCTV in Vancouver

Yesterday, I joined about 40 volunteers to help create a topography of surveillance camera use in public space in Vancouver's downtown and downtown east side. My partner and I spent the entire day gazing upwards to locate those often difficult to spot devices. My neck still hasn't recovered.

See these links for coverage of the event in the local media: The Vancouver Sun, CTV, The Georgia Straight, and 24 hours.

Surprisingly, we found close over 100 cameras in the few streets my partner and I mapped from Victory Square toward Drake Street. The majority of cameras we spotted were privately owned, and likely were installed without considering the impact on public space. Restaurants cleverly installed dome-shaped cameras on patio awnings, and liquor stores sported clusters of dark domes looking squarely into the street.

Bill Brown, of the Surveillance Camera Players, leads a political theatre group that protests against the proliferation of cameras in New York. He notes that the vast majority of cameras installed are private businesses intent both on fulfilling insurance obligations, and on deterring theft.

Publicly owned cameras may be justified on the grounds that they help deter crime and apprehend criminals.

However, in the UK, which is one of the most heavily surveilled nations in the world, a number of studies and reports have found that claim to be in error. This is just one of these reports, demonstrating that each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London solve just one crime per year:

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent."
He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security

Hopefully the UK experience will provide some context for Vancouver decision-makers to consider.