The idea relates to the notion that CCTV has evolved to fill a niche left by the redesign of our urban environment. Our cities evolved in a certain way, with streets a particular depth and buildings a particular height, partly to permit this kind of continuous, passive surveillance. The advent of modern technologies, such as steel frame structure, the car, the elevator, the telephone, all disrupt the established order of building cities. In terms of surveillance, this manifests itself in under-observed spaces, and a resultant need for electronic supervision.
I’m reading a paper by Christine Hentschel called “CCTV, “Living Cameras,” and Their Objects in a Post-Apartheid Metropolis”. She discusses another inverted situation: community-based surveillance systems, like the one in Lisbon, used to supplement or completely perform the task of regular CCTV systems in crime-ridden South Africa. Networks of nightclubs and bars, local traders and street hawkers, down to the highly-marginalised car-watchers, are treated as surveillance systems allowing varying degrees of access to either police or criminal organisations.
A further twist to the phenomenon of watching as surveillance is seen in a new company set up in England last year, Internet Eyes. By signing up individuals to watch randomly selected camera feeds (they win a prize if they see a crime), the operation of watching is crowd-sourced to strangers, both spatially and socially seperated from the site of surveillance.
