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Normalised surveillance

Every day, we are tracked and watched by a vast surveillance infrastructure. Most of the time, we are not even aware of the devices and data monitoring tracking our movements and behaviour. Discourse on mass surveillance has become less critical, normalising its’ practices and workings, while at the same time highlighting its’ benefits, such as an increase of security or the ability to enforce law and order. In comparison to other countries such as the United Kingdom, the amount of public space covered with CCTV cameras in the Netherlands lags behind. There is room for public debate about how many cameras we want, where we want them, and what their purpose is.

According to the Amsterdam City Council, in 2014, Amsterdam had 203 municipal CCTV cameras, which is 1 camera for every 3,900 Amsterdam citizens. In comparison, Rotterdam has 1 for every 2,100 citizens and London has 1 for every 1,000. Each camera costs Dutch taxpayers €17,000 and the running costs for all 203 in Amsterdam is €1.5 million per year. These statistics only include city-owned cameras; there are many other semi-public spaces in the city covered by privately-owned CCTV cameras.

Taking this as a starting point, as a group of master’s students in the Urban Studies programme at the University of Amsterdam, we decided to look behind reasons for this normalisation of surveillance and challenge its underlying assumptions through an intervention in the city. We invited visitors of Bos en Lommerplein, a heavily surveilled semi-public square in Amsterdam West, to an open dialogue about the CCTV system on site, curious about their experiences and opinions of it. In what follows, we relate our findings with further debates on surveillance in public space and in the Netherlands.

Bos en Lommerplein

Bos en Lommerplein is a privately-owned building complex, encompassing an underground car park with a square built on top of it. There are several shops, apartment buildings and offices along the square, which houses a market on Tuesdays through Sundays and also functions as a walking passage for residents of the surrounding apartments. The square was redeveloped between 2001 and 2004 in a public-private partnership. This was part of a larger restructuring effort of the neighbourhood to increase the aesthetics and liveability of the area.

The socio-economic composition of the neighbourhood is made up by large Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch populations and maintains a lower than average income. In recent years, parts of Bos en Lommer have been gentrifying, with numerous redevelopment projects and place-branding taking place, attracting a different social crowd. In the local area plan for Bos en Lommer, the municipality announced its’ aims to make the area more attractive and improve the square’s shopping facilities.

What is striking is that the square itself is completely empty, with no benches, trees or other objects except for the lampposts located within the open space. This is most likely related to the regulations enforced at Bos en Lommerplein. The owner of the square, a private American equity firm named Lone Star Funds (who have owned the space since September 2017), introduced ten rules of conduct for the square that should be adhered to. Surveillance cameras help monitor whether these are followed.

“Look up – I’m looking at you!”

Our intervention took place on a Monday early afternoon at Bos en Lommerplein. By highlighting the presence of the seventeen cameras through posters, we attracted the attention of passersby. People reacted in different ways: some read the signs and looked for the cameras, others seemed puzzled, and some pedestrians approached us, interested in what we were doing.

Most of the people we talked to were unaware of the number of cameras on the square, stating they had not noticed them before or never questioned their presence. When asked why they thought there were cameras, they suggested a variety of reasons. Some argued that it might be to increase security through preventing petty crime and drug or alcohol abuse. Others believed the cameras were a means to control certain social groups, pointing out that the neighbourhood had a large immigrant community that seemed unequally affected by surveillance. People had varying feelings towards ‘being watched’; some claimed it made them feel safer whereas others seemed indifferent, saying they had nothing to hide and that the cameras did not intrude on their privacy.

“The more cameras, the better”

Many passersby commented that the CCTV contributes to a feeling of safety, connected to perceived criminality in the area – ‘perceived’ because many have only heard about crime and illegal behaviour on the streets of Bos en Lommer without experiencing it themselves. This perception of safety is very personal, illustrated by the comments of one woman who said she would take a detour while walking home at night, staying close to the busier main roads, as the square felt ‘scary and dark’ to her.

A man added to this, saying he would also like a private camera at his home for reasons of keeping burglars away. On the contrary, another woman who has already lived in Bos en Lommer for twenty years stated: “It is not unsafe around here, but people get that feeling. There are many cultures living together here, and I think that is why it may seem unsafe for outsiders [not living in the neighbourhood], but BoLo really is not unsafe. You can easily walk outside at 22.00 o’clock.”

However, there seems to be a general agreement amongst passersby about the idea that CCTV is to some extent necessary because it is the most efficient way to cope with street crime. Examples of criminal activities that people heard about were pickpockets at the market, car burglaries in the underground parking lot and deviant behaviour connected to alcohol abuse. Some also referred to the necessity of cameras for the safety of shop owners and the risk of robbery.

We also spoke to two caretakers that work at the square. They told us they are directly employed by the owner to overlook the square and manage most of the CCTV cameras installed. Next to this, shop owners also have their own private cameras. Their opinion about the CCTV was clear: “It is a shame that it is necessary, but it really is” – “The more cameras, the better.” They explained that the amount of burglaries is high in the area, and that CCTV is therefore an absolute necessity because it is the best way to find perpetrators. They also stated that a lot of crimes in the area still remain unsolved, and, following this logic, more cameras would be better. Ideally, they would also see publicly owned cameras installed on the square so that monitoring by municipal parties would become possible.

They told us about the regulations regarding their surveillance footage. First of all, the caretakers do not watch the monitors preventively, simply because “that would be pretty boring”. The only instances calling for this would be when a shop owner reported ‘deviant behaviour’ on the square by people with a ‘mental disorder’, so that they could watch these people before acting. No other parties can freely access the material. Only in case of a formal claim, the police can request the surveillance footage for specific time-slots. When asked about possibilities of improper use of the cameras, one of the caretakers answered: “I know that improper use does occur, yes. It does not occur here, but I do know stories of other places. Therefor,e it is very important to have a closed CCTV system, as we call it. This is not connected to the Internet, and we can only burn the footage onto CDs for the police, very old fashioned. This is the only way as a company, that you can be sure that the footage will not be misused, for instance by hackers.”

Choosing between two evils

The main argument brought up when discussing the extent to which increasing numbers of CCTV cameras are appropriate, was the link to privacy. Often stated not for personal reasons – as people agreed they ‘have nothing to hide’ themselves – but because the idea of mass supervision and control makes people feel uncomfortable and even angry. One man commented: “Everybody values their private lives, not only criminals. It is also about famous people, for instance, or people that are cheating. It is not good, but also not criminal and no one’s business to know. Such scandals in the news are often coming from cameras that were misused by the owner or hacked.”

A woman made a comment following this same logic: “‘They don’t have to know everything because a lot of the things you can just handle yourself. Not all private things that happen on the streets need to be controlled; I can deal with it myself.” After thinking about the discussion, we had on this topic with a group of passersby, one man summarized it nicely: “It is a dilemma of choosing between two evils. It is safety versus freedom. That is not easy, but we are all in this discussion together and that is what people should feel. We can think about these things together.”

Who controls you, and for what reason?

As a response to learning that the square is heavily surveilled by private parties, many people questioned why it is not clearer who owns the CCTV cameras and what the regulations for monitoring are. The influence of this awareness on people’s opinions was poignantly illustrated by a woman that at first said she was not bothered by the topic, but later returned to adjust this: “Actually, it does bother me. This increasing control everywhere is horrible. You are being controlled without knowing, and privacy is gone because the control becomes omnipresent. I would like to know more about the regulations”.

Questioning transparency of surveillance

Despite the contrasting viewpoints, our intervention showed that the presence of surveillance (both private and public) is something that one comes across on a daily basis, eventually leading to its legitimation and normalisation and to what the French philosopher Michel Foucault called “governmentality”, a shift from central government control to people’s self-control. CCTV functions as a type of “panopticon”, a system of control where the ones being surveilled cannot see the person watching them, and, therefore, are not sure whether or not they are actually being watched. The possibility of being watched, however, makes them act as if they are being watched the whole time, and they regulate their behaviour accordingly.

Our intervention shows that there is an obvious lack of transparency on who owns these cameras and what happens to the material. Most people we met and spoke with at Bos en Lommerplein thought the surveillance cameras were from the police or the municipality, whilst in fact they are owned by a private company. Why is this not clearly communicated to the people entering the square? Who decided that surveillance cameras were needed at the square at all? And what is being done with the camera footage gathered?

Our intervention revealed that these questions are not easily answered by the people making use of the square and, thus, the transparency of the surveillance cameras at Bos en Lommerplein is limited. However, it seems that this lack of transparency is an integral part of how these systems work – like a panopticon, relying more on people’s self-control than on specific crime prevention.

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