Do Security Cameras Prevent Crime
Comments
Clive Robinson • March 31, 2005 eleven:49 AM
As a resident of the Britain in South London, I am simply to aware that the cameras practise non piece of work.
The primary trouble is one of cost, security in any form costs a lot of coin information technology'southward supposedly costs UK businesses and home owners iv Billion GBP (viii,000,000,000 USD) This is non including the Authorities spend on the Police etc.
One consequence that has been noticed is that initially crime moves away from the cameras which is why they are often touted as a success. However within a short flow of time the crime returns. Usually the criminals accept baseball caps and hooded tops etc to hibernate their identity, and "practice the job" very speedily.
The criminals obviously know that a camera similar a burgler alarm only represents a threat when you don't know how to alow for it in terms of time, identification hiding etc.
The uncomplicated fact is that you need a human elerment on the ground (Police etc) that tin reply quickly.
Oh the big plus point for security cameras in the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland is that you can use them for making money, y'all just sell the video footage of the criminals etc to who always wants to purchase them.
The latest Idea is to cover the United kingdom with special cammeras to option up unlicenced car drivers, so the secret is out they are now simply there to make money, like the Gatsos and other "traffic calming" technologies.
Distressing if I audio a scrap cynical most CCTV and other cammeras, but I cannot walk out of my front end door without being observed by atleast two cammeras, and however be in view if I walk the 3 or four miles into my local town heart. Oh and the violent offense etc on my route and the surrounding surface area has gone up for the terminal three years.
Saar Drimer • March 31, 2005 one:06 PM
Security cameras accept the result of making people (falsely) feel safer and as a result they reduce the utilise other security measures (such as not locking the dorsum door or non using the business firm-warning) and thus making the robbers' chore much much easier. This is a classic example of an unintended consequence.
Davi Ottenheimer • March 31, 2005 1:48 PM
Bruce, do you agree or disagree? The link you provided might really be interpreted to say the opposite of your title. For instance, the writer suggests:
"I don't know everyone, though, who thinks there shouldn't be a camera behind the counter at the convenience store."
Hmmm. If they (you) retrieve surveillance cameras do non reduce crime, and so why would they say all convenience shop counters need 1?
Or are you really trying to announce something like to "guns don't impale people…"; something tricky like "cameras don't stop crimals, cops exercise, so we need more cops"?
Cypherpunk • March 31, 2005 2:15 PM
Perhaps the problem is that we don't have ENOUGH surveillance. David Brin writes nigh what he calls a "transparent society" in which surveillance cameras are everywhere. And then, criminals could be tracked from the scene of the crime back to their lair. Wearing a hat or a hood would not assistance them because they could be physically traced and arrested.
John Navratil • March 31, 2005 two:25 PM
Roughly xx years agone, radar/traffic cameras were tested in (I believe) Friendswood, TX to catch speeders (information technology's a criminal offense, too). The exam failed as the cameras couldn't differentiate betwixt the judges, police force and other members of the mandarin court and the trivial people. I wonder if and when surveillance volition go so pervasive as to exist opposed by the privileged.
Eric K. • March 31, 2005 two:30 PM
Imagine my surprise at yet another article posted here in which yet another attempt at security is denounced.
Bruce is e'er quick to point out what isn't secure, but we've however heard nada from him near what security practices he would recommend.
Apparently, we're all screwed. In that location's aught nosotros can practise, then permit's all but not exercise annihilation!
Oh, wait, that's not secure either.
Davi Ottenheimer • March 31, 2005 iii:ten PM
Bruce, you know, the more I recall about this, the more I wonder what y'all might be thinking past annoucing to the earth that surveillance does non reduce crime.
Yesterday your log mentioned the futility of trying to avoid identity theft. Fine, every bit Eric Chiliad. points out you seem to say we're all screwed. Maybe you are depressed about the state of things.
But let me signal out that C. Drake made a brilliant comment about a real-life case where a guy tracks down and successfully gets his ID thieves convicted. Yous should check it out. In particular, you should make note of the function where the victim states:
"In Portland, the police department is so strapped that unless information technology's a person-to-person crime, it's pretty low priority."
Why does he mention this? It's considering the victim is hot on the trail of the thieves and is standing at the same annals where his identity was stolen, and he wants the police to reply. Instead, he'due south working the case himself. Notation:
"I hop in the motorcar and drive down to Denny'due south and ask to speak to the manager. […] I pulled out my Visa. 'This card was used here this morning. Someone has seen the thief. I know your registers shop the solar day's credit menu transactions. Is there whatsoever way you can look upwards this number and tell me who served them?'"
Aye, that'due south right, a Camera would assist take hold of the bad guy. Ever footstep up to a depository financial institution teller and wonder why in that location is a dedicated photographic camera pointing right at your mug? Perhaps it is because information technology performs a preventative as well as detective command office for security.
Granted, the ACLU researcher you linked to has some interesting questions that need to be answered, and peradventure you were in a rush to postal service a title, but today'due south log needs serious clarification.
State of israel Torres • March 31, 2005 3:38 PM
Surveillance cameras are about every bit good every bit locks… they are made to keep the honest individual honest in a timely fashion… and actually nothing more than bear witness that a criminal offense has occurred at one point in time.
Israel Torres
Scott • March 31, 2005 5:17 PM
Mr. Ottenheimer,
I'g the writer of the linked post, and though manifestly I wasn't clear, I'1000 not arguing against camera placement in convenience stores because those are private cameras and the store owner can exercise what they want. I'm arguing against cameras used past the government, by police enforcement, particulary in public areas.
Everyone can toss out hypotheticals, only the longitudinal study from Britain cited in the Grits postal service found that generalized camera surveillance empirically did not reduce crime, although in narrowly defined circumstances (particularly parking facilities) they measured some benefit. Historically, when the regime installed cameras, the motivation was essentially a hunch that they would assistance, but it was an intuitive leap, not a proven fact. Now, studies like the one by the British Home Office are identifying precisely where cameras preclude crime and where they don't. Using them elsewhere, I'd argue, is a waste product of constabulary resources too as unnecessarily invasive of privacy. Best,
Scott • March 31, 2005 five:21 PM
By the way, Bruce, thanks for the link! I merely bought a re-create of Secrets and Lies I'm planning to read over the weekend, so it's a timely honour.
Watching Them, Watching Us • March 31, 2005 5:28 PM
Perhaps some of those commenters who take simply skimmed the article may accept missed the link to the official United Kingdom Home Office criminological research study headed by Professor Martin Gill:
"The bear upon of CCTV: fourteen case studies"
http://world wide web.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/rdsolr1505.pdf
This confirms previous studies, that CCTV in the United Kingdom (we accept far more than experience of it than most other places in the earth) does not decrease offense or the fear of crime, for diverse reasons, which include the fact that many CCTV schemes are not linked to expensive control rooms which are properly manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
CCTV does non have much of a deterrent value if the criminals exercise not actually know that they are under observation. What is the bespeak of a alert sign which you cannot read in the dark, although the CCTV surveillance photographic camera may take night vision, or which is beyond your visual range, even though the photographic camera has powerful optical and digital zoom adequacy ?
Most CCTV systems accept far more than cameras than warning signs (some take no visible alert signs at all), which is the incorrect way effectually, if they are meant to act as a deterrent.
Apart from the poor quality of many CCTV images from older systems, particularly ones which utilise analogue video recorders and which often re-use the video tapes as well often, and never pay to take the camera lenses cleaned periodically, there is the whole problem of actually positively identifying someone even from a practiced quality image.
Human beings are fifty-fifty worse at positively identifying faces from CCTV, than they are in picking out suspects from a police force line up. The failure rate is somewhere betwixt twoscore and 50 percentage.
Then there is the whole question of really using CCTV footage as difficult
show in court. Most systems simply have not invested in the duplicate signed copies, sealed evidence numberless, contained evidence custodians etc. that are needed to provide a courtroom of police force with an unbroken chain of evidence, showing that information technology has not been tampered with.
A date time postage on a printout from a CCTV monitor tin can be faked on the almost basic of personal computers, and far more than sophisticated video editing and manipulation tools are easily bachelor, especially for digital systems where there is oftentimes no physical prove of tampering, which tin can sometimes be detected with analogue tapes.
Consequently CCTV footage is rarely, if ever, presented straight in court, where it might be challenged frame by frame. Not every trial is a Rodney King or OJ Simpson media event.
The same is true for all the "add on" technologies which go well beyond simple video CCTV, which are being tested and deployed e.g. Automatic Number Plate Recognition, facial recogniton, "gait" (how you lot walk) analysis, "Suspicious beliefs" anlaysis (how long you linger well-nigh a "protected" object), whether you appear to exist engaged in "stabbing" or "kicking" motions etc. all conducted in the visible light or infrared spectrums, with or without photon multiplier image intensification.
And so there are the controversial and voyeuristic "run into under your dress" or "see your child naked" imaging technologies like Passive Millimetre Wave, Teraherz, Ultra Wideband and Low Intensity Backscatter X-Rays imaging etc.
These technologies cannot exist dis-invented, and they take their place in the armoury of anti-crime and security tools, but they are merely not a technological magic prepare for societal problems, especially where they are somehow promised equally existence "cheaper" then employing police or security guards "on the streets".
Peter • March 31, 2005 5:32 PM
The essay quoted is quite right insofar as it goes. I also note a story that is of some peripheral interest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/two/hello/uk_news/4392631.stm
However, while monitoring cameras so every bit to detect crime might not be productive, using the tapes as an aid to solving a offense appears to work quite well.
Davi Ottenheimer • March 31, 2005 seven:02 PM
@Scott
Cheers for clarifying. I understand your position: "I'm arguing against cameras used by the government, by police enforcement, particulary in public areas. Anybody can toss out hypotheticals, but the longitudinal written report from Britain cited in the Grits mail service plant that generalized camera surveillance empirically did not reduce crime."
If you take Bruce's log entry "Why Surveillance Cameras Don't Reduce Criminal offence" and read your post, and and so read the study, you have to wonder why the log entry wasn't titled "How to Reduce Crime with Surveillance Cameras" or "How to Effectively Deploy and Manage Surveillance Cameras". Alas, Bruce simply stated that Cameras do not reduce crime….
What you have happened upon is an opporuntity to make Surveillance technology more effective in reducing crime. All I ask is that while in hot pursuit of Ceremonious Liberties you try to avert throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Surveillance technology is merely now reaching a period of innovation and adoption that will make it a relevant and useful tool in prevention as well as detection of offense. We would be remiss to blame the failure of the deployment and administration of cameras on the devices themselves, on Bobby's or even British civilisation:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/athenaeum/2005/01/british_pub_hou.html
Peter • March 31, 2005 7:12 PM
I'1000 not sure that I'd say that security cameras, even the sort of science-fiction see-all network scenario proposed earlier, are going to deter criminal offense, merely because they don't target the reasons why people commit crimes in the offset identify. Nor would I think it viable to use tapes or files from such devices in court, because proving something "beyond reasonable doubt" is such a big ask when you have to convince a jury. Muddy the waters enough with timestamps and grainy images, and whatever jury will get confused.
But I see them as just another tool in detective work. Utilise them in conjunction with other techniques to find suspects or reduce the pool to a number that can be dealt with by other means. A good cop tin can commonly work out in an interview if a suspect is worth investigating further to proceeds difficult testify that tin can be used in court, such equally through a search, or through evidence from third parties, or records from banks and other institutions with reasonable security on their information.
What concerns me well-nigh these things is whether they are price-constructive. If they aren't delivering results, so it makes no sense in spending the customs'south coin on employing people to diameter themselves rigid watching a dozen monitors at once, or worse, to charm themselves past prying into the lives of community members, such as zooming a camera down the top of a pretty girl, or post-obit the progress of a romance in a side street. Add in infra-red or x-ray capability and you lot are merely asking for misuse.
To my mind, the respond in using surveillance cameras as a crime-fighting tool is to brand police force departments pay for them out of their normal budgets. If they go results, so they volition exist paid for. If not, then the money and manpower volition be diverted to more productive endeavours.
Davi Ottenheimer • March 31, 2005 7:sixteen PM
We tin can complain about the CCTV technology, or nosotros can assemble up a list of requirements and map it to the emerging engineering science. The fact is, the failures of existing and past surveillance applied science is beingness addressed and improved fairly quickly, if not exponentially.
Quite bluntly, I find more than people inquire for surveillance than not these days when we talk nigh how to feel safe when walking to their car, continuing in elevators, etc. (as the study rightly identifies). This should have us directly towards the reason why I am happy to see that the ACLU is interested in the issue: when people realize security is FOR them and non to exist used AGAINST them, they mostly can't await to sign up. The problem is therefore mainly about restoring trust in public spaces, and so I look forrard to hearing the ACLU's recommendations on how that can be accomplished today. Sorry, no hypotheticals allowed.
Anonymous • March 31, 2005 viii:39 PM
@Clive
you said,
The latest Idea is to embrace the Uk with special cammeras to choice up unlicenced car drivers, so the secret is out they are now just there to make money, similar the Gatsos and other "traffic calming" technologies.
I think you'll discover the event with unlicensed drivers, is that that as well means their insurance may not (will not?) pay out in the case of an accident.
Before y'all see this equally 'revenue' raising, consider the issue of someone you know/dearest being hit past a auto driven by an unlicensed driver. Whatever expensive medical bills, hereafter treatment and payouts you may wait to receive for care may non be forthcoming.
Finally, equally to speed cameras, if you don't desire to pay, don't speed. It's actually that simple.
Davi Ottenheimer • April 1, 2005 1:20 AM
@Erik
"Manifestly, we're all screwed. There'south nothing we tin practice, and so let'southward all simply non do anything!"
The Register has an interesting perspective on the problem you lot identify:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/31/spam_king_bankrupt/
"Only why, asks a reader, has the MSM [mainstream media] ignored [Spam Rex Richter's bankruptcy]? Probably because subsequently a decade of libertarian propaganda, a kind of weary fatalism has fix in."
Email is an first-class example of a the challenge of technical evolution and mainstream adoption with regard to a "throw upwards your easily and quit" approach. Spreading gloom and doom does not negate the fact that regulation is a large piece of the puzzle (forth with technical and security innovations).
So Bruce, permit'southward come across some innovative and pro-regulation entries, delight.
Ben Smyth • Apr 1, 2005 5:38 AM
My personal feel with CCTV…
I parked my motorcycle in possibly the about secure location in the whole of Hitchin… In articulate view of non i, not two, just three CCTV cameras; within an artillery length of the Corn Exchange door staff and a busy area of town.
On my return, approximately thirty minutes after closing (by which point the door staff from the pub had gone and information technology had qot a bit quieter) my bike had gone.
[It was probably also the merely fourth dimension I didn't use an additional lock]
I reported the incident to the police, who did nothing – not fifty-fifty check the CCTV tapes! (I know this because I have a contact in the quango, who operate the cameras [and therefore tapes]).
…if the police are non going to use the resources available to them (probably because they are out hassling motorists) why bother?
Phoenix • April one, 2005 6:43 AM
@Watching Them, Watching The states
I do believe that under british law warning signs are REQUIRED to be posted in club for the bear witness to be admissable in court, not having those signs makes them even more pointless and a waste material of money, I believe they work in certain instances, in certain limited ranges, but plasting them over Brixton high road does bugger all to lower crime , the angle of some of them requires the criminal to actually accept to wait up in the management of a camera to get a good facial, i mean whos going to do that?
Increasing the law strength is one choice, merely that doesnt give people much balls either, as alot of us are loosing faith in the force
Ac • April ane, 2005 9:xi AM
Very often the example institute hither remind me on that famous machine that goes 'ping' from the Monty Python film "The Pregnant Of Life".
It seems that a lot of technological "solutions" are machines that go 'ping'. They don't necesserely solve anything, but there's a lot of 'political' motivation to buy them.
clive robinson • April 1, 2005 ix:40 AM
@Anonymous
I am not a car driver I preffer to ride my push bike. Also I practise not know if you are from the U.k. or not, only the traffic laws etc are somewhat odd in the UK.
First off in the UK in that location are allready quite constructive messures in place for collecting unpaid "road fund" which the taxation is often known as and is around 300USD/yr.
Basically if yous are the "registered owner" of a machine and yous have non paid upwardly y'all get a court summons after near 1.5 months. In that location are as well other arangments for imprisonment etc.
Also y'all pay your "Road Fund" to the Britain Government (key not regional/local) who then spend it on what they see fit (Generally not roads blow prevention or Health or other related activities).
I looked dorsum to some of the contempo quotes about these new cammerers given by the press, and it would appear they are for directly applying "extra fines" which would have the revenue split between the cammer operators ( the likes of Capita etc) and the authorization (either police or regeional/local authorities). These Local authorities then spend the money on what they like. On a side note Capita who run the congestion charging system in London have been subject to many many (upheld) complaints about the mode they extort money out of motorists who have paid etc.
Then you get fined past primal government if you exercise not pay your route fund, and get additional fines by the local government if you drive your car in their surface area.
I have besides seen reports on studies that show that "non physical" traffic pasivation systems not only exercise not work, they actually increase the likley hood of accidents. This is because drivers get to know where the cammeras are and utilize excessive speed between them then restriction of a sudden to reduce speed where they are. The results of this lunatic behaviour are adequately obvious and have been reported in the press. Also that some people only regard the fines as a normal business organization expense and then they do not act every bit a deterant.
Additionally the tab for road accidents is usually picked upwardly by the health service in terms of immediate (and often longterm) care.
SO I withal stand up past my original annotate that the cammerers (existence a non physical traffic control system) are merely a money raising system.
If anybody has evidence to the contry I would exist very happy to see it.
Diego Zenizo • April ane, 2005 9:49 AM
Camera survelliance needs money to work.
Hollywood has tons of it.
Problem solved….
Scott • April 1, 2005 iv:19 PM
@Ottenhemer, you wrote:
"What you take happened upon is an opporuntity to make Surveillance engineering more effective in reducing crime."
The British study plant that cameras didn't reduce crime in xiii of 14 areas tracked over fourth dimension. We tin contend whether the glass is 13/14ths empty or 1/14th full, simply on the whole, I think it's hard to argue for standing to waste resources on generalized camera surveillance in public areas.
As well, just to have said it, the opinions expressed on my blog are my ain, non any ACLU policy unless expressly stated. The postal service represented my personal musings trying to reconcile the results of the British survey with Dennis' arguments. I proposed an untested, maybe untestable hypothesis to explain the written report results, but wouldn't desire anyone to describe implications from that about ACLU'southward official opinion. Best,
Laura Jean • April 1, 2005 5:39 PM
Why would we believe that surveillance cameras would deter criminals really?
You have to understand the way criminals remember. Well-nigh people who commit a law-breaking do non believe they will ever exist defenseless nonetheless lacking in logic this sounds. They also tend to be more impulsive and lack the ability to really remember things through.
Convience shop robers tend to be after some quick cash to meet the needs of an addiction and so they are even less smart about their crimes.
Do cameras increment arrest rates?
For the careless criminal they would seem to make good evidence.
The problem with survelance cameras is that they are a 3rd response to the trouble, they come to belatedly in the chain of events. The all-time they tin be used for is to effort to catch the criminal not forbid or intervene.
Peter • April 2, 2005 ane:38 AM
"I reported the incident to the police, who did nothing – non even cheque the CCTV tapes! (I know this because I have a contact in the council, who operate the cameras [and therefore tapes])."
Aw, c'mon! Just how ofttimes practise law exercise much about stolen vehicles? They take the details, but if there's nothing unusual – like there'south a child or a briefcase full of diamonds inside – that's most it.
I realise you'd similar the cops to drop everything and get back your motorbike quicksmart, but fair suck, mate!
Now, if yous had been murdered in total view of the cameras, you could expect some serious action.
Ben Smyth • April 2, 2005 5:nineteen AM
@Peter
Indicate taken, merely there was a spate of bike thefts going on at the time – hence you'd expect some organised outfit.
Thomas Sprinkmeier • Apr two, 2005 6:58 AM
@Peter,
I'd expect "some serious activeness" to a murder, cameras or not.
I believe the betoken is that the cameras were put in identify to forestall bottom crimes (like cycle theft), not on the of risk that they catch a murder.
The camera organization failed to prevent the theft and was not used to recover it.
Either the organisation failed, or people were lied to about the reason information technology was put in.
Peter • April 2, 2005 1:27 PM
Stealing a bike and murder are two extremes of the offense spectrum. I seriously dubiety that these particular cameras were touted as beingness able to eliminate small-scale criminal offense. Crimes that very few police departments would practice much most anyway, not because they don't care, just because they take more serious crimes to investigate.
I suggest that if a police force department has fourth dimension to chase downwardly security camera tapes of a minor crime like this, then the community probably doesn't demand much in the way of security anyway.
But if the crime had been more serious, say robbery or assault or rape, then action would probable accept been taken to examine the tapes, non just for possible identification of the offenders merely to determine what had happened.
Information technology'southward not the cameras that decide if action should be taken, nor even the people controlling the cameras. It's the people who are going to have to investigate the criminal offence, brand an arrest and prosecute the offender who make up one's mind if action will exist taken.
John David Galt • Apr 2, 2005 2:14 PM
As I see it, the point of this article (which I agree with) is that cameras by themselves don't deter crime. There has to be somebody watching the camera, or at to the lowest degree scanning through them ofttimes plenty that a crime is probable to be seen, and the watcher has to take the ability and willingness to send assistance to the scene immediately. (A worthwhile enhancement would exist a mike that detects specific sounds such every bit a scream and switches the scanning person's view to its source.)
If this level of service is non going to be provided, then I'd put up signs alarm people that they're responsible for their own safety and advising them to deport guns (if immune there).
Whether cameras are unacceptable invasions of privacy is another question. I feel that even when used in public places, where people's coming and going are public information, if there are and so many cameras (and adept enough software for viewing what they've seen) that yous tin can follow a person's movements from place to place, then doing and so is in outcome "stalking". Doing so should be prohibited for non-police (outside of their ain private holding) and should require a warrant for police force.
Jim • April 2, 2005 10:43 PM
Y'all disable the things with a shotgun or the tools you have. Article of clothing a mask and the camera is useless. The photographic camera is $600.00 and the mask is $ane.00 at the thrift store. The security people are sitting there looking at footage a calendar week after the crime is over and done with. More than dumb globe domination schemes, so put cameras everywhere.
Peter • April 3, 2005 i:58 PM
"The camera is $600.00 and the mask is $1.00 at the thrift store. The security people are sitting there looking at footage a calendar week afterward the criminal offense is over and done with. "
What's the problem? The photographic camera isn't going to solve the crime. But seeing how a criminal acts, fifty-fifty a week after it happens, provides a lot of data. Enough for modus operandi to be noted and maybe linked to somebody already known.
A security camera is only another tool for crimefighting. Not a magic bullet.
Anonymous • April three, 2005 8:32 PM
@Clive
I did live in the uk until recently, so I understand the rules.
You lot said,
"SO you become fined by primal government if y'all do not pay your road fund, and get additional fines by the local regime if you drive your automobile in their area."
I'm non sure what you are complaining about… OK, if you believe the printing (and why wouldn't you) these are purely revenue raising cameras for people who oasis't paid their road taxation, what'southward the issue ?
Fair enough if you've paid and they say you oasis't … complain.
Fair enough if your car is stolen (kept past the renewal date) and you get a fine … complain.
If i rent a dvd from blockbusters and don't return it, they will fine me. If i hire a book from the library and don't render it, they volition go on calculation fines onto the account until i return information technology and pay off the fines.
And so why should life exist magically different for motorists ?
clive robinson • April four, 2005 4:thirty AM
@Bearding
Every bit I indicated I am not a motorist (for various reasons), however I have two main objections,
The first is the cost of such a system compaired to information technology's extreamly low return rate (Await into the London Congestion accuse for an example of this). The merely people who realy benifit are the private companies that run the systems.
The second is mission creep, after the expensive organisation has been installed and plant to be nolonger effective (criminals piece of work by natural selection which is why technical only security systems initialy work then fail), they have to find a new use (such as route tolls) to justify extracting vast quantaties of money out of people for carrying on their everyday activities (see my before post with regards to micro fries in dustbins).
The result of this sort of stupidity is that a percentage of the population will always discover ways around these systems and commonly at the expense of everybody else. The goverment solution is to go more and more high tech solutions which are all going to neglect eventually equally people larn to conform to them… The merely people to benifit are the private companies who supply the systems.
If you want security the solution you put in place needs to be as flexable and adjustable as the criminals (ie human beings). Then back up them correctly with adaptive applied science to requite them a slight border. Non the other way around, information technology is doomed past the proceses of adaption and natural pick past the criminals who will ever end up with the edge over the police.
An example of how to make a technology like cammeras flexable is to put them in rented unmarked cars/vans/etc and motion them around so finding them is very difficult, therefore the ability to adjust past the criminals is vastly reduced.
Information technology is later all a game of True cat and mouse, and the cats should always behave like cats not mice.
Roger • Apr 4, 2005 11:30 AM
@Scott,
I did read the original paper, equally I find that newspaper reports of inquiry are rarely authentic. On the footing of this reading, I take to say that the report which characterises this as failing in all just 1 case out of fourteen is non accurate.
For a start, although in that location were 14 projects, they did ~75 studies inside these, depending how y'all count them. Prof. Gill found that in many cases it was non possible to arrive at a definite decision due to the many difficulties that can be associated with such studies. This was non necessarily because no effect was seen nor necessarily considering the event was pocket-size; for case in one case vehicle crime was reduced 41% from 1641 to 972, just this apparently huge result was statistically insignificant because the background rate in that region fluctuated by very wide margins. If a study tin can't distinguish between a genuine 41% reduction and normal variations then the merely way to obtain useful information in that written report would exist to maintain observations for a much longer period than their funding immune. In another case a autumn in vehicle crime of 42% was statistically significant, only withal could non be counted equally changes in parking regulations had altered the mode of parking vehicles in the expanse, and then the results where not directly comparable. Many other examples were confounded by the fact that cameras were installed at the aforementioned fourth dimension every bit other crime-reduction projects. Birthday simply sixteen of the 75 studies returned usable data, indicating overwhelmingly that this study was far likewise short to be useful. Of those 16, half-dozen studies in 3 projects showed a definite positive effect, which is a good deal meliorate than 1 in xiv.
Among the remaining 10 we have the difficulty of studies in which a reported law-breaking rate increased, simply it was the opinion of the authors that this was due to improved detection or reporting of an existing crime rate (mainly shoplifting and public disorder near pubs), usually due to other projects installed at the same fourth dimension. Again, more than research is required to actually empathise these results.
At that place were also two studies in which in that location was a definite increase in crime, only in 1 of those cases the increase consisted largely of attempts to vandalise the cameras, at the aforementioned time equally the burglary rate plummeted; while in the other, the camera setup was a new experimental organisation which was establish to be ineffective.
Information technology is also notable that in that location seems to exist considerable variation according to the care in design and planning of a arrangement, ranging from the Borough experiment which was completely useless, to the advisedly planned Project Hawkeye which resulted in a statistically significant 73% reduction in its targeted crime.
Overall, it seems to me that the principle results of this study are:
* that information technology was likewise short and more than work is required;
* that in the cases where a definite conclusion can exist reached, CCTV produced a useful consequence in a little over one tertiary of studies;
* to the extent cameras are effective, they are more constructive in high law-breaking areas; and
* at that place is considerable difference between carefully planned and carelessly planned or poorly maintained systems.
Israel Torres • April 4, 2005 3:19 PM
… not to mention that who knows who is on the other side of the camera lens? Sure it may exist intended for a security team, but there are plenty of examples where attackers accept complete admission to a surveillance arrangement without being discovered in a timely fashion. The more complex a organisation, the more than places there are to hibernate. (e.1000. wireless systems, internet cameras)
State of israel Torres
Thomas Sprinkmeier • April 4, 2005 half-dozen:51 PM
"Overall, it seems to me that the principle results of this study are:
* that it was too short and more piece of work is required;"
Isn't that the event of every written report?
Ed T. • February 16, 2006 ten:35 AM
Well, it seems that the police chief in Houston (where "K-Mart 'blue-light special' is a euphemism for "You're Under Arrest – All of You!") has issued a brainfart calling for the installation of surveillance cameras on some of the downtown streets, and is thinking about making the installation of such systems (which would be monitored by police officers) a requirement for new building permits for some types of buildings (including apartment complexes and private homes!)
I have written my thoughts on this idiocy:
http://www.etee2k.net/blog/index.php/2006/02/sixteen/surveillance_cameras_coming_soon_to_a_st
carbon14 • May 7, 2008 9:26 AM
It really depends on who got murdered, if a police officer gets killed, they volition shoot tear gas through your windows if you don't volunteer to let them search without a warrant. on the other mitt, if its a poor person who gets murdered, they volition simply shrug almost the 'mystery', if a ghetto gangster gets killed, thats a celebrity anyway, they volition take an interest, they like hangin with another gang.
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About Bruce Schneier
I am a public-interest technologist, working at the intersection of security, technology, and people. I've been writing about security issues on my blog since 2004, and in my monthly newsletter since 1998. I'yard a fellow and lecturer at Harvard'south Kennedy School, a lath fellow member of EFF, and the Chief of Security Compages at Inrupt, Inc. This personal website expresses the opinions of none of those organizations.
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