Crime, punishment, and CCTVs

ONCE confined to banks and selected government offices, close-circuit television systems (CCTVs) are now in many of the malls (especially those in Makati), bus stations, LRT and MRT, hotel lobbies and elevators, and airports. There are even cameras on a few major thoroughfares, aimed at catching traffic violators.

The country’s seaports are soon to have CCTVs as well, in compliance with international rules and regulations. But although all these may sometimes seem too much, the Philippines is still a long way off from the likes of London, which has been practicing what security experts call “blanket monitoring” for more than a decade now.

Up until the bombings in London last year, when it took only days for the authorities to come up with video grabs of three of the four suspects on their way to the spots where they would carry out their dirty deeds, only a few outside that city probably knew that dwellers and visitors there were being kept under tight watch through hundreds of thousands of close-circuit TVs.

In fact, the average Briton was having his movements recorded at least 300 times a day as some 2.5 million CCTVs scattered all over the country kept silent vigil. London, which has the highest concentration of CCTVs in the world, had about half a million.

Though not the only surveillance gadgets now in use (as demonstrated in last year’s Garci wiretapping scandal), and also hardly the most sophisticated, CCTVs are certainly among those widely used to monitor a public that is largely unaware it is being watched. This is because the cameras have become so small and are usually placed in unobtrusive spots. Some manufacturers have even been able to produce cameras the size of buttons — truly a far cry from the days when these were as big as shoeboxes. And with China now also making them, the prices have gone down, thereby enabling more people — and yes, cities — to buy them, sometimes in bulk.

That only means there are more CCTVs out there, watching and recording away. But only a few seem to think that’s a bad thing.

Read more about CCTVs as part of i Report‘s continuing Voyeurs and Exhibitionists series at pcij.org.