Surveillance Studies: Policing and Surveillance - Coursework Example

POLICING AND SURVEILLANCE by Your Name Presented to Professor Name Class Name University of Name City, State December 30, 2009 Abstract Police officers serve an essential function within the civilizations that they operate within in terms of upholding law and order. Surveillance equipment such is used by police and law enforcement in order to catch criminals, deter crime, and keep people safe. The regular use of such equipment to monitor civilians as well as the prison population is something happening now. As surveillance equipment becomes capable of monitoring people more closely, some claim that they have invaded the public's right to privacy. The fine line between keeping law and order and personal privacy is a boundary that takes effort to be able to maintain. Policing and Surveillance The police are members of society entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the law, working to deter crime, and keep the public safe. In order to accomplish this purpose,those who work in the field of law enforcement depend on the cooperation of the public as well as their training and the use of the latest technology. CCTV cameras, otherwise known as closed circuit television cameras, are a piece of technology utilized by police officers and other similar law enforcement officials for the purpose of upholding the law. What the general public might not be aware of is that the members of law enforcement whose job it is to use surveillance technology properly do not always do so. A multitude of different types of surveillance equipment are utilized by law enforcement, and how such surveillance equipment is used by those in a position of authority is just as significant to the enforcement of the law and the deterrence of crime as the technology is in and of itself. In a general sense, those who are employed as members of the law enforcement community are individuals whose job it is to keep the general public safe and to enforce the law. Whether a person is a police officer in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, or Canada, he or she can expect to have some extremely similar duties. A police officer is someone who writes out tickets for traffic infractions, breaks up fights and makes arrests for assault, brings those who commit acts of theft, vandalism, or burglary to justice, and engages in a host of other related duties in order to safeguard the public and act out against illegal or antisocial activities. It is the job of a member of the law enforcement community to act in a manner conducive to furthering the interests of those on the side of the law by promoting the goals of justice in a way that is fair and impartial. Just because a person might happen to be a police officer doesn't necessarily mean that he or she is out to get someone. Those who work in the field of law enforcement are professionals who are trained to do their jobs in from an unbiased, ethical perspective. For many people who work as police officers, security guards, or as other types of security officials in many parts of the world, a certain standard in terms of professionalism, knowledge, skills, and conduct is expected of them. In places such as the Britain and Ireland, those who desire to become police officers are expected to have a positive moral character. A person who might be looking to police work as a career will want to either have a full, unrestricted driving license or be in the process of obtaining one before they put in their application for the job. Information such as that which can be found on the Could You Police website gives an accurate description of some of the requirements of the job; physical fitness is also expected to those who want to do police work (Could You Police 2006). In addition to physical requirements, most police officers are expected to be adept at the mental components of what it means to be a police officer, as well. In Britain and Ireland as well as many other countries in the world, a person who desires to work as a law enforcement officer can expect to be required to pass a written test. According to the Could You Police website, “Everyone who wants to become a police officer has to complete a two-year probationary period working on the beat as a patrol constable. Many officers prefer to spend the majority of their careers on patrol – but others opt to transfer to more specialist areas of work. Whatever you choose, you will be guaranteed a varied, exciting, and challenging role”(Could You Police 2006). No matter what role a person might play in terms of any type of a job in an area of law enforcement that they might have, being observant, mentally awake, and able to interact with people and things in their environment in an intelligent way is absolutely essential. Members of the law enforcement community such as police officers, special constables, and those in similar roles come into contact with others who work within the justice system in order to enforce the law, deter crime, and keep the public safe. Texts such as Surveillance, Crime and Social Control by C. Norris and D. Wilson talk about a lot of the basics of surveillance against crime; victims of crime, lawyers and those who work within the criminal justice system, and families of those who might have been the victims of violent crime are just a few of the types of individuals who those who work as police officers come into contact with on a regular basis as a part of their job (2006 p. 432). Police officers as well as others who work in the field of law enforcement who are similar to them are people who are trained to know what the law is as well as how to best enforce it. B.C. Welch talks about how surveillance equipment is a reality of the modern world that those who work in the field of law enforcement are trained to utilize in order to best accomplish goals related to their jobs as well as how surveillance equipment has many benefits for police in regards to helping them reduce crime (Welch 2007 p220). For a police officer or security guard, a closed circuit television camera is a piece of technology that he or she is extremely likely to have seen or worked with during the course of his or her employment. K. Painter and N. Tilley talk about how proper street lighting, regardless of the addition of a CCTV camera, aid police in being able to see at night (Painter and Tilley 1999 p110). Audio surveillance is a form of monitoring that has been around for a significant amount of time, and it is a form of monitoring that police officers use today. I.V. Hogg and R. Hutchins mention that watching emails, internet traffic, web transactions, and tracking cell phones are all different types of surveillance, as well (Hogg and Hutchins 2002 p.30). For a police officer with intelligence, resources, and solid professional skills, many surveillance resources are available. Analyzing social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace is the latest technique that confident law enforcement professionals are using to keep an eye on people. In some cases, individual people who act as informant are utilized. Computers can do a lot of monitoring work that would take the average police officer a sizable length of time to accomplish manually. Keeping track of bank transactions and other things out of the ordinary is a task that is made simple when someone working within law enforcement can retrieve the needed information at the touch of a button. P.C. Van Duyne mentions surveillance in relation to serious crimes like human trafficking, gang dealings, and drug trafficking, and in reference to many of the surveillance technologies used by police to watch possible criminals today, there is a wide variety of it, and there isn't much that modern technology can't do (Van Duyne 2001 p.204). What is happening in the realm of law enforcement today is that closed circuit television systems and technologies like them are being used more and more for surveillance purposes; law enforcement officers are becoming increasingly adept at the use of surveillance equipment, surveillance technology is improving, and surveillance footage is being used more and more for the apprehension and conviction of criminals as well as for the monitoring of those who may have already been incarcerated. According to P. Knepper and J. Shapland, law enforcement has been using surveillance for quite some time,“Anarchists stabbed president Carnot of France, short the Spanish prime minister Canovas del Castillo, and shot King Hubert of Italy. To counter the anarchist threat, Scotland Yard applied methods they had developed over the years to detect and arrest criminals, which generally meant physical surveillance and the use of informants.”(P. Knepper and J. Shapland 2009 p87). Police officers and those who work in fields related to law enforcement certainly know how to use surveillance equipment, but the question of whether or not they know how to use surveillance equipment in a way that respects individual liberties and privacy is one that the public has found difficult to ignore. As an increasing number of technological advancements in the area of surveillance equipment are made, the question of where to set a limitation on the powers of law enforcement in terms of how, where, and when to conduct surveillance is an inquiry that needs to be raised. CCTV cameras are meant to be something that serve as a method intended to assist with combating crime, and law enforcement needs to properly use surveillance methods like CCTV systems in order to accomplish this purpose while respecting individual rights such as privacy at the same time; surveillance is an area of law enforcement that is accompanied by a vast number of related concepts. David Lyon raises some fascinating issues regarding police use of surveillance,“Concerns about such misuse of surveillance technologies are not without basis. In the 1960s and 1970s the FBI and local law enforcement officials kept tabs on thousands of citizens who were active in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and in some cases harassed innocent people. Today, the tools of surveillance are improving with the growing capacity of central data banks that include DNA.”(Lyon 2003 p). For many residents of Britain as well as those who make their home in other parts of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and other westernized nations, that increased amount of control is something that is a part of the problem. Particularly to those who live in the United Kingdom, surveillance has become a part of their society and daily life that has changed the landscape of the nation. According to Benjamin Jervis Goold,“Over the past ten years, the United Kingdom has become the most watched citizenry in Europe”(Goold, 2004, p.1). The United Kingdom has more cameras than many other westernized nations, and some of these cameras can even come with loudspeakers enabling those who are monitoring the closed circuit cameras to talk to the members of the general public that they happen to be watching. Monitors in charge of watching closed circuit television systems can tell those who happen to be passing by to pick up trash, or to stop fighting. Car theft, shoplifting, assault, public drunkenness, vagrancy, and a great deal of other antisocial types of behaviors can , as per the claim of law enforcement, be dealt with through the use of surveillance. Suspects can be watched, followed, and recorded without their knowledge or consent; all of the advancements in regards to the capabilities of the surveillance technology that exist today give the police and members of law enforcement a much greater amount of control than they did in previous decades. Those who believe that the surveillance in the United Kingdom has gone too far have made the observation that surveillance in terms of the closed circuit television cameras that are used on Britain's streets today has changed the face of police work in the United Kingdom. Instead of traditional police work that functions because of the cooperation of the public, police work today depends on the cooperation of machinery designed to watch the public. Police that once relied on punishments and punitive measures now focus on risk management and reliance on monitoring devices to deter crime and control the public. Members of the public who once aided police officers, security guards, and members of law enforcement by willingly offering information now cower in fear of a vast assortment of closed circuit television cameras and other devices intended for the purpose of surveillance and monitoring. There isn't any doubt that closed circuit television systems and other surveillance devices aid police officers and law enforcement professionals with the completion of the goals of their jobs, but there are those who believe that surveillance technologies are devices that should be used with a greater degree of intelligence than law enforcement has currently been utilizing. Those who believe that law enforcement should utilize surveillance technologies with a greater degree of intelligence are not alone in that belief; the government of the United Kingdom is an institution that agrees with them. Earlier this year, the court ruled against the use of precautionary surveillance. According to an article called Court Curtails Met Surveillance by Dominic Casciani on the BBC News website, “Judges said police had been wrong to retain pictures of a lawful arms trade activist who was not suspected of any criminal offence[sic]. The Metropolitan Police said they acted reasonably in retaining pictures of the campaigner, Andrew Wood from Oxford”(May 21, 2009). Police had been using surveillance technologies to keep an eye on an anti-arms protestor, and the court decided that the utilization of surveillance technologies is such a manner was a course of action that was beyond the boundaries of what law enforcement should be allowed to do. According to the court, those who are members of law enforcement should not have the ability to target someone simply because they think that person is going to break the law if there is no evidence to support that belief or reason to suspect that person of any wrongdoing. Closed circuit television technology certainly does give law enforcement the ability to follow one particular person around if they desire to, but that is a power that members of law enforcement should be expected to use their better judgment in exercising. The prison system is another place when a different number of surveillance technologies are utilized; however, unlike the general population who has a reasonably right to privacy, those who have committed a crime are individuals who have been proven to be a threat to others. Closed circuit television systems as well as a host of other monitoring tools and techniques all come together in order to ensure that those who might have committed a crime will be kept under control. For those who have already been found guilty of a crime, there is no longer any doubt whether or not correctional officers have a reason for their surveillance. Monitoring tools are also used to keep track of people who might be under house arrest. Parenti makes some intriguing observations about the prison system, “Thus we see prison as increasingly self-sufficient, generating its own population. The propellant in this process is the continually expanding infrastructure of routine identification and surveillance. By this means, prison extends its social power outward into the free world, feeding itself and creating a subcaste of permanent convicts”(Parenti, 2003, p.171). Police officer watch prisoners in order to make sure that they do not have an opportunity to escape and to monitor their whereabouts within the prison system as well as their behavior. Tools like closed circuit television cameras which allow the surveillance operator to speak to the person being monitored as well as other techniques and devices all aid correctional officers in keeping a close watch on a population of individuals who who be dangerous to themselves as well as other people if they were not monitored on a twenty four hour basis. From the perspective of those that work in the field of law enforcement, there are many who agree with those who believe that surveillance technologies such as the kind used to watch prisoners should all be used with a degree of discretion. Some police officers and members of law enforcement in a large number of westernized nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and others even go so far as to make the statement that surveillance technologies really don't help law enforcement as much as the mass media makes it appear as if they do. Those who work on the side of the the law make the argument that what they have doesn't help, and the equipment that would help them costs too much for them to be able to afford to purchase and use on a regular basis. David Lyon makes the claim that,“Evidence from German shopping malls in Berlin, at any rate, suggests that the effectiveness for its stated purposes is limited.”(Lyon 2007 p109). To many members of law enforcement, suspects caught and recorded by surveillance cameras are hard to recognize on a computer monitor or closed circuit television screen. In addition to difficulty with the discernment of suspects, some police officers and law enforcement officials often make the assertion that surveillance software and hardware that is adequate in terms of fulfilling the needs of police and law enforcement is too expensive to be of any practical use. While some make the claim that a person shouldn't have anything to fear from surveillance unless he or she had something to hide, other members of the general public, law enforcement and civilian alike, fear that places like Britain have become too accustomed to the use of surveillance. There are those who hold the opinion that it is the responsibility of each member of the general public to be accountable for his or her own behavior; it is not the job of a police officer, security guard, or other member of law enforcement to be anyone's nanny. According to Maureen Web,“Today, the same warning could be made with respect to the new symbiotic relationship that is developing between an immense security/intelligence establishment and an ambitious information technology industry. This new corporate-security complex is an aggressive driver of the project for globalized, mass registration and surveillance”(Web, 2007, p. 195). When a member of law enforcement almost literally has the power to watch everything any member of the citizenry chooses to do, at least while he or she is in public, then that is something that changes the nature of what it means to be a member of the law enforcement community. According to J. Klosek “Information-sharing and data-mining programs can lead to a very serous erosion of privacy rights. Under the programs, there will be very few aspects of human life free from surveillance, inspection, and examination. When taken in sum, these different systems detract from the well-established right to be left alone.”(Klosek 2007 p.55).The role of a police officer, security guard, or other member of law enforcement changes when it becomes the job of the police officer, security guard, or other law enforcement personnel to practically be responsible for others instead of to just be responsible for enforcing the law and preventing crime. Surveillance systems that can give a monitor the ability to tell Britons to pick up their trash may be spectacular, but there are those who believe that telling citizens to pick up after themselves shouldn't be a part of a police officer's job. I. Cameron talks about surveillance and privacy at great length, and from a sociological point of view, being able to draw the line and set boundaries to establish an adequate balance between surveillance with regards to practical use for law enforcement in contrast with an appropriate amount of privacy for members of the general public is an essential step in terms of preventing the abuse of such technologies (Cameron 2000 p.147). To Britons who might be sick of living in a society rife with surveillance, that line appears to have already been crossed. Closed circuit television systems are pieces of equipment that have the appearance of having made their way into every step of the judicial system, and that is a step too far for many people. A society where surveillance is rampant is one where people look over their shoulders and out of their windows while harboring a feeling of apprehension as to who might be gazing in their direction while safely on the other side of a complicated, powerful, highly technical piece of surveillance equipment. In a modern civilization where surveillance is the norm rather than the exception, members of the police force no longer operate with the full trust and cooperation of the public. A public that is watched is a public that views members of law enforcement, police officers, and security guards as authority figures who are watching them instead of as public servants who are looking out for the best interest of others. Gary T. Marks makes a chilling comment relating to a somewhat antiquated, almost forgotten, specific case in the US that many of those in the UK are likely to understand and relate to at least by at least a margin of a small bit,“The White case found that no privacy right is invaded when an undercover agent records or transmits sound.”(Marx 1989 p43). Bibliography Cameron, Iain. (2000). National Security and the European Convention on Human Rights. Cambridge: Kluwer Law International. Casciani, Dominic. (May 21, 2009). Court Curtails Met Surveillance. Retrieved on December 28, 2009 from the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8061050.stm Goold, Benjamin Jervis. (2004). CCTV and Policing: Public Area Surveillance and Police. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. Hogg, I. V. & Hutchins, R. (2002). Counter-Terrorism Equipment. Virginia: Greenhill Books. Klosek, J. (2007). The War on Privacy. New York: Praeger Publishers. Knepper, P. & Shapland, J. (2009) Urban Crime Prevention, Surveillance, and Restorative Justice: Effects of Social Technologies. Boca Ration: CRC Press. Lyon, David. (2007). Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lyon, David. (2003). Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk, and Digital Discrimination. New York: Routledge. Marx, Gary T. (1989). Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. London: University of California Press. Norris, C. & Wilson, D. (2006). Surveillance, Crime and Social Control. New York: Ashgate. Painter, K. & Tilley, N. (1999). Surveillance of Public Space: CCTV, Street Lighting and Crime Prevention. New York: Criminal Justice Press. Parenti, C. (2003). The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror. Cambridge: Basic Books. Van Duyne, P. C. (2001). Cross-Border Crime in a Changing Europe. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Webb, M. (2007). Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post 9/11 World. New York: City Lights Books. Welch, B.C. (2007). Preventing Crime: What Works for Children, Offenders, Victims and Places. Lowell: Springer. Working for the Police. (2006). Retrieved on December 28, 2009 from the Could You? Police website: http://www.policecouldyou.co.uk/working_for_the_police.html Read More