Surveillance Camera in Our Society

Security is important to all society groups and nowadays, everyone is concern about his or her own safety in the public. There are already many incidents of terrorism such as the bombing of the subway in London, and the 9/11 attack in America. This has lead people to believe that the security is not tight enough for the public to be safe. Some security experts may think that security cameras are the answer. However, some think that the security cameras are intrudes in our privacy.

There are several benefits, and disadvantages in putting surveillance cameras in school, workplace, transport areas and streets.

An organization or a government must determine what is important to society before deciding on installing a camera system in a certain place. There are several reasons why the security cameras are used as an option to deter crime. These reasons are shown in the evolution of the use of surveillance camera to society. The main purpose of the camera is to capture images.

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The captured images are used as references for a particular moment or a person. These images lead the people in history to think that it can be used as a reference to create a criminal profile. Norris et al.

(1999) had shown in their book that photographing of criminals had been done since the year 1864. This was first done by Governor of British Gaol, James Gardner, had started to photographing customers that were sentenced to his custody to identify habitual criminals. This was then recommended and done in a large scale.

The photograph became an ideal tool for the recording and documentation of criminal records. This does not mean that photographs serve the purpose of deterring crime. During the old days, surveillance was done through scheduling of guards in particular areas; inspection is done once in a while.

The attention span of a person is short and people get bored and at times change places. Humans thought of a way to watch over a certain area through photography. This had become a reality when the Video Casette Recorder was introduced in the 1960s. The cameras had been used to check specific areas and it also has playbacks to show how something had happened in a particular time. Before digital photography, if a particular person is needed for identification, a tape must be examined frame by frame.

For example, if a certain something had happened in a place and the place have five cameras, the operatives are forced to study each cameras frame by frame in order to see what happened and also to identify the culprit. Technology had played a part in creating a better life for the operatives of video cameras. Digitalization had been introduced. Recording and processing through the use of computer has been done because of digitalization. As the year goes by more and more people and countries had installed surveillance cameras to monitor what is happening in the public and in their businesses.

Mark Kirstein (2007, p. 1) had stated that surveillance cameras has been growing from a compounded growth rate of 87. 9% from 2004 to 2010 and is expected to reach $3. 9 Billion. The reason for the growth of such is due to the increased public and private concerns regarding safety. Through the use of technology, the video camera identification was developed using facial recognition and biometrics software tools. Information Today (2007) had stated that Facial Recognition biometrics had been started by Alphonse Bertillon in the 1880s.

This had been based on the belief that a persons facial structure does not change after 20. Measurement of anthropometric features of the head has been done by Bertillon and had been adopted worldwide for 2 decades. Although the Bertillon method have been adapted world wide, there are still several inconsistencies in the system that had caused innocent people to get jailed. The system of Bertillon had been abandoned and fingerprinting was done in order to identify a criminal. Experts had looked for a way to enhance computer software to record images and use facial recognition in the decades 1960s to 1970s.

In the late 1980s, experts had used numbers to measure anthropometric features through the use of statistical analysis of multiple facial images. Algorithms had been used to compute mathematically for the facial features of a person. This technology can be used as a tool for surveillance purposes. Face recognition does not require close proximity to the person being observed. This technology is not applied to all law enforcement officers. It is on the discretion of the law enforcement agency if he or she would be using such technology.