Millions and millions of dollars are spent annually on surveillance equipment. The cameras scan and record activity from high crime areas to recreational beaches. The conventional wisdom is that the surveillance cameras are a deterrent to crime. It has been compared to having a virtual policeman on the corner. A study at UC Berkeley is at odds with this conventional wisdom:

“A new UC Berkeley study of San Francisco’s 68 security cameras appears to indicate what many city officials have long suspected: The controversial devices perched at the city’s roughest street corners don’t have much of an effect on violent crime.”

link: S.F. video cameras don’t deter crime, study shows

The prevalent argument has been that citizen should be willing to trade some privacy for security. Supposedly, there is no expectation of privacy when in public. There will be a strong reaction to studies such as this one from UC Berkeley. The advocates of surveillance security will state that there is a very simple solution to change the effectiveness of the cameras recordings. Of course, that solution is… more surveillance cameras.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

Tags: surveillance cameras, privacy, security, study, uc berkeley