Controlling CCTV in Public Spaces: Is Privacy the (Only) Issue? Reflections on Norwegian and Danish Observations

Abstract

This paper examines data from an observation study of four CCTV control rooms in Norway and Denmark. The paper asks whether issues other than privacy might be at stake when public spaces are placed under video surveillance. Starting with a discussion of what values public spaces produce for society and for citizens and then examining CCTV practices in terms of those values, we find that video surveillance might have both positive and negative effects on key 'products' of public spaces. We are especially concerned with potential effects on social cohesion. If CCTV encourages broad participation and interaction in public spaces, for instance by increasing citizens' sense of safety, then CCTV may enhance social cohesion. But the discriminatory practices we observed may have the opposite effect by excluding whole categories of the populace from public spaces, thus ghettoizing those spaces and hampering social interactions. Though tentative due to limited data, our analysis indicates that structural properties of CCTV operations may affect the extent of discriminatory practices that occur. We suggest that these properties may therefore present 'handles' by which CCTV practices can be regulated to avoid negative effects on social cohesion.