Abstract
The question of the state’s right to surveillance must be answered in a balanced manner with due consideration given to public interest and privacy. In CCTV: A Technology Under the Radar? Inga Kroener uses the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to provide a detailed analysis showing that maintaining this balance is complicated by the political, social, economic, and cultural changes that Britain has undergone since the end of World War II.
Through the presentation of a well-organized argument, Kroener illustrates how closed-circuit television (CCTV) became interwoven with the fabric of British society. She first takes up the general notion of what surveillance claims to be, its relationship to the contemporary concept of a “surveillance society,” and how CCTV and video surveillance technology are associated with that relationship. This is followed by an elaboration on the socio-historical context of postwar Britain along two different dimensions: the relationship between changes in the stratification of the British public and changes in science and technology policy; and the relationship between criminal justice, policing, and politics. With these three premises, Kroener is able to sufficiently contextualize the manner in which CCTV slipped “under the radar.” She demonstrates how CCTV was first used as a transmission technology and later shifted toward a crime-prevention technology, despite archival evidence of the police’s initial reluctance to use the technology.
While, up to this point, Kroener’s use of the STS lens is insightful, it becomes limiting when she states that “policy and media discourses support[ing] a myth of effectiveness” of CCTV as a technology provide safety and security. This fault is also found in her discussion of countries that have had vastly different experiences with CCTV. Here too, the relationship between the rationality of crime control and surveillance, a theme present throughout the historical context presented earlier, is missing from Kroener’s international comparisons. And these international comparisons are the final prong of Kroener’s strategy for answering this crucial question: “why has Britain become so camera-surveilled?” Kroener’s answer is organized, but incomplete—if only because the conclusions she draws in regard to public engagement in the “surveillance society” ultimately rely on a discourse concerning the rationality of crime control.