Thus goes the headline in today’s Groan.
Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
Am I surprised by this revelation? Am I buggery. CCTV was always going to be a placebo, a comfort blanket for the hard of thinking and terminally gullible. It makes a certain portion of the population feel safe; it doesn’t actually make them safe, though.
The first and most obvious reason being that the clued up criminals will simply move their base of operations to an area devoid of CCTV. This leaves the more empty headed variety to carry out their nefarious activities under the watchful eye of the CCTV operators. But, even then, it still isn’t working… Why might that be, then? What about all this fantastic face recognition technology? And what about all those cop shows where someone says “enhance that, please” and a pin-sharp image of the suspect is displayed neatly on-screen?
Ah, ain’t fiction wonderful. They can do all sorts of things in fictional TV land – travel through time and space, speak English to aliens and be immediately understood, solve crimes with DNA alone and, importantly, enhance an image that is so dreadfully low resolution that all you should get is a few unrecognisable pixels – but, hey presto! we get a razor sharp picture of the perp with not a pixel out of place. The reality is somewhat more mundane. The reality is that a low resolution image cannot be enhanced because it doesn’t have enough information in the image to enhance. And, frankly, facial recognition is a pile of poo.
So, there you have it, the entirely predictable being announced. The surveillance state has wasted millions on piss-poor technology that achieves bugger all. The low tech solution would be to spend that money on police officers patrolling the streets, but that, presumably, isn’t sexy enough.
Reading on through the article, though, they want to utilise the technology anyway – quelle surprise.
The warning comes from the head of the Visual Images, Identifications and Detections Office (Viido) at New Scotland Yard as the force launches a series of initiatives to try to boost conviction rates using CCTV evidence. They include:
· A new database of images which is expected to use technology developed by the sports advertising industry to track and identify offenders.
· Putting images of suspects in muggings, rape and robbery cases out on the internet from next month.
· Building a national CCTV database, incorporating pictures of convicted offenders as well as unidentified suspects. The plans for this have been drawn up, but are on hold while the technology required to carry out automated searches is refined.
They also complain that the use of images in court cases has a poor record. Well, given the poor quality of the images, I suspect that a decent defence counsel would drive the proverbial coach and four though it. And, what is it with these people who think that national databases are going to do what good old fashioned policing won’t? Sure, if you have a decent image of your suspect, it will help – but go back to the original point; they are not decent images. They are, frankly, barely recognisable. You have only to see what they put out on news items and Crime Stoppers to get a feel for the poor quality of the pictures CCTV produces. They are little better than photofits.
Why do I get the feeling that the police are looking to make their lives easier rather than making a proper effort to secure safe convictions?
Seem to be a control mechanism rather than having any positive effect. And can be switched off as and when is necessary, e.g. on 7/7.
jameshighams last blog post..[rewarding kids] extrinsic and intrinsic
CCTV, the panacea of all of our modern ailments………Not!
The surveillance state has wasted millions on piss-poor technology that achieves bugger all.
Ahem, shouldn’t that be billions?
Curly, I read your blog entry about this – although the police officer seemed decent enough, the principle is appalling. I was horrified – not as much as I should have been as I’ve come to expect this type of behaviour unfortunately.
Mark, what’s the odd few zeros among friends?
Just like those street-smart missiles which the Pentagon solemnly assured us in 2003 were going to pin-point and take out Saddam and his wicked henchmen without injuring a hair on the heads of innocent Iraqi civilians.