Little Brother: Could and Should Wearable Computing Technologies be Applied to Reducing Older People’s Fear of Crime? Mark A. Blythe1, Peter C. Wright2 and Andrew F. Monk1 1
Department of Psychology Department of Computer Science University of York, England
2
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Abstract This paper considers whether emerging wearable computing technologies could and should be applied to reducing older people’s fear of crime. A design concept based on nearly existing technology is suggested and problematised. The paper begins by exploring the sociological and criminological literature which debates why older people are most likely to fear crime although they are least likely to be victims. It goes on to report findings from ethnographic studies of key care and social service professionals in York, England. This fieldwork reflects the ways in which assistive technologies for older people can function as signs of vulnerability and also reports the uses of relatively simple information and communication technologies in providing critical back up and reassurance for elderly users. The fear of crime is then considered as an information problem centring on three questions: what’s going on, what can I do about it and can I get help? Possible applications of emerging wearable surveillance technologies are then considered in an exploration of the design concept of the Cambadge. This is a “Chindogu” design concept, an “un-useless” idea that solves some problems but creates larger ones, used here to reason about security and privacy issues in relatively concrete terms. The “Cambadge” is a wearable wireless webcam for older people to broadcast video and audio data to police or community websites. This technology almost already exists and the concept is situated in the context of developing fields. It is argued that the design problems of such surveillance technology are inherently political. The Cambadge is then considered in relation to the history and philosophy of surveillance and the massive demographic shifts of the ageing population. It is argued that utopian visions of the uses of such technology under theorise power and accountability. The paper concludes that technological innovations will not adequately address older people’s fear of crime without accompanying social and cultural change.
Keywords Fear of Crime, Older People, Wearable Computing, Personal Ubiquitous Computing, Webcams, Internet Communities, Surveillance Technology, Privacy, Social Dependability.
1 Introduction: Older People’s Fear of Crime It is not difficult to find horror stories about older people so terrified of crime that they are reluctant to leave their own homes. Such narratives are common in local newspapers, national tabloids and everyday conversation: Anne: A lady of mine, she’s in her eighties […] heard a commotion on the street, went out and found it was cordoned off by the police. They were telling people out on the street to go back into their homes. A friend of hers was trying to get through [the cordon] and the police wouldn’t let him. When he finally got through he told her that some guy had arrived at a house just up from where she lives carrying a gun […] It all turned out to be about drugs […] On top of that she lives next door to the house who had their wheelie bin destroyed by one of these extra large
fireworks […] You know these explosions we’ve been hearing? The bin scattered all over the street. She’d been hearing bangs throughout the night. She wouldn’t’ even look out of the window she was so frightened. Her next-door neighbour banged on the window and shouted “Are you OK?” And she said “Yes, but I’m not opening the door or the window”. She said the street now where she’s living is, in her words “horrendous”. It used to be a nice street but now it’s full of druggies and vandals. (Age Concern York staff member) Despite such traumatic incidents older people are the least likely group to be the victims of crime in the UK, the most likely being16-24 year old males. And yet older people, women in particular, are most likely to be worried about crime and personal safety (Age Concern 2002). Thirty percent of women over sixty say they feel “very unsafe” walking alone in the dark compared to just 14% of women aged 16-29 years (Ibid). The next section explore why there is such a wide discrepancy between older people’s fear and the incidence of crime.
1.1
Exaggerated Fears
There are a very great number of reports, articles, papers and books on older people’s fear of crime in both the sociological and criminological literature. A recent report by the UK charity Help the Aged (HTA) “Older People and Fear of Crime” lists 250 titles in its bibliography (HTA 2002a). Much of this literature is concerned with the meaning of the two observations above: one, older people are least likely to be the victims of crime; two, they are most likely to be afraid of crime. One explanation for this discrepancy is that older people have exaggerated fears. This claim is often linked to criticism of the mass media for heightening fear. One study found that 42% of tabloid newspaper readers thought that the national crime rate had increased compared with just 26% of broadsheet newspaper readers (Simmons 2002 cited HTA 2002a). However, the notion that older people have an unrealistic fear of crime has been severely criticised in recent years.
1.2
The Problematisation of Terms
Every term in the phrase “fear of crime and older people” has been challenged by researchers working in the area. First, the term fear; this has been criticised because, often, fear is not the only emotion experienced: anger may be felt as much as fear. Fear has also been contrasted with low level but constant and therefore debilitating anxiety (Brogden and Nijhar 2000). Second, the term crime; this has been seen as inadequate because it is not just crime that is feared. There is also anti-social behaviour, which while not necessarily criminal, is certainly threatening and frightening (Sparks 2001: 891 cited in HTA 2002b: 26). Third, and most importantly, there is the term “older people”, older people are not a homogenous group: they do not live in the same places, they do not have access to the same resources, they do not have the same abilities. They are not, in short, a “they” at all. A middle class person living in a gated retirement community with state of the art security systems might have an exaggerated fear of crime; but an older person living
on their own in a council flat in a high crime area may have an entirely realistic and justified fear of crime.
1.3
The Reality of Fear
It has also been argued that it is precisely because older people are most afraid of crime that they are least likely to be victims. “Lifestyle theory” explains the discrepancy between fear and incident with reference to older people’s routines: “The elderly take more precautions in their day to day lives to avoid potential crime – they are more likely to stay at home”. (Brogden and Nijhar 2000: 60) By staying inside they are less exposed to danger and suffer less crime but they become voluntary prisoners in their own homes. This can have debilitating physical effects as they may for instance do less shopping and even develop malnutrition (Ibid: 62). The notion of exaggerated fear plays to the stereotype of the older person as infirm, panicky and not to be taken seriously. Older people’s fear of crime can be seen as entirely rational if only because the consequences of crime can be so serious. Those on low incomes find it more difficult to replace things after loss and to insure themselves against risk. Help The Aged point out that having to replace even a lost bus pass may be an overwhelming ordeal for an older person. Older people’s fear of crime, then, is far from paranoid, neither is it general and pervasive, it is often time and place specific. “Certain types of places elicit particular levels of fear; e.g. public transport, areas near to pubs and clubs after dark, being stranded in an unfamiliar area, unlit spaces, underpasses and places where foliage could hide would-be assailants” (HTA 2002a: 20) Help The Aged note that older women, sometimes alone for the first time after being widowed, are particularly vulnerable to fear and should be the focus of further work (Ibid: 19). As the population ages and care resources become ever more strained, hopes, as in so many other areas of social policy, are pinned on emerging technologies.
2 The Field Work The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration on Dependability (DIRC) involving five British universities has conducted research on “dependability” in a number of industrial and medical contexts. Dependability is a deliberately broad term used to encompass many concerns including reliability, security and safety (Leveson 1995). Recently work began on the dependability of assistive technologies for older people living at home. In this context dependability has been considered not just technologically but also in relation
to psychological and social factors. If, for example, a new technology were to increase an older person’s sense of safety but also increase their sense of isolation then it could not be thought of as socially dependable (Blythe and Monk submitted). In order to explore the issues facing older people living independently then a number of ethnographic observations and interviews were carried out with older people and with key medical, care and social work professionals. The next section draws on interviews with: ambulance crew, often the first response when an older person is attacked or has an accident; city council occupational therapists, who visit older people at home and suggest what assistive technologies might help them to remain independent; and members of York’s mobile warden call service. It also draws on interviews with professionals who deal with young offenders: a community police officer and a senior social worker on a youth offending team. All names have been changed throughout to protect client confidentiality. Their reflections are used to focus on the design requirements of socially dependable technologies that might address the fear of crime among older people.
2.1
Intergenerational Conflict
There is little doubt that for these professionals, the fear of crime amongst the elderly in some parts of York was not exaggerated at all: in certain areas ambulance crew and mobile wardens would, themselves, only go out in pairs. Jimmy: You don’t go out by yourself. You go, two of you. And that’s us; if you were a pensioner you’d just be asking for it. They’re like a prisoner in their own homes (Emergency Medical Technician) A number of incidents were recounted where crewmembers had been called out to older people who had been attacked by “kids”. Tim: Somebody came up behind her, grabbed her bag, knocked her to the floor. They don’t even see their attacker. She’d gone down and split her head, she never even knew what had hit her! She didn’t even know that her bag had gone. (Paramedic) Neighbourhoods were described as getting progressively worse around people as they aged. Jimmy: Trouble is now generations have gone on, the parents of these children, they were just as bad. The children see what the parents do and think it’s the rightful thing to do so they copy it. (Emergency Medical Technician) Here, a senior warden at the mobile warden service, offers a typical account of how an area becomes pathologised over a period of years: Margaret: It’s an awful way for things to happen, but you end up with the same families generating themselves over and over again. So all the trouble causers, their kids become trouble
causers and their grandchildren, and because they stay in the same area because that’s what they’re used to and the area just gets worse and worse, and that’s what happened round here. (Senior Mobile Warden) Older people’s fear of crime is, in one sense, the fear of one generation of another. The community police officer interviewed was quick to note that the young people who behave anti-socially are often victims of poverty and abuse themselves. A senior social worker on a youth offending team illustrated this vividly with the case of Sophie, a fifteen-year-old young offender currently serving a detention order for assault and burglary. Sophie and an older male accomplice had noticed that an elderly woman who lived near them (eighty nine year old and wheel chair bound) was visited every day by a carer at particular times. Arriving an hour before the carer was due Sophie and her accomplice claimed that the usual carer was sick and that they were her replacements for the day. When they gained access to the house Sophie distracted the older woman by asking her what she wanted doing and started cleaning while her accomplice searched other rooms stealing cash and a credit card. They were caught because the actual carer turned up early, the young man escaped but the carer held onto Sophie despite being kicked and punched. Sophie was using heroine at the time and claimed to be on the drug when the assault took place. Sophie’s social worker pointed out that there was a history of similar offences in the family. Many of Sophie’s family were in prison for committing distraction burglaries (e.g. posing as someone working for the gas board calling to read the metre) Pat: Mom and Dad had committed the same, similar offences, dad is quite, notorious in term of fighting as well, lots of assaults, Mom is a recovering heroine addict and there are also issues around sexual abuse in the family not by dad but by extended family members committing abuse against Sophie and her siblings so it’s quite a horrendous background really... (Senior Social Worker, Youth Offending Team) The most vulnerable members of the younger generation then prey on the most vulnerable members of older generations. It is not just routines of care that can indicate an easy target; particular architectures and specific technologies can also signify vulnerability.
2.2
Signs of Vulnerability
Many of the care workers interviewed discussed, without prompt, signs of vulnerability to crime: architectural or environmental indicators that residents would be easy victims. Residential care homes were seen as obvious targets by this senior mobile warden:
Margaret: Elderly accommodation is a prime target, often looking at a street of houses, and looking at the front doors, you can’t tell if there’s an elderly person living there or not. But these places [care homes] are like magnets because people know that there are elderly and disabled people living there. I think this is a big problem because you know that the people inside are vulnerable. And its always granny - gives her grandson the code to get in the door, and he tells his mates, that’s how things happen, and you get vandalism, residents being terrorised, kids running through the building. All sorts of things. In this particular case you get washing machines pinched out of the laundry room. It’s a big target isn’t it? (Senior Mobile Warden) It was not just buildings specifically designated for older residents that were seen as easily identifiable targets. An Age Concern volunteer noted that one of the reasons people “pack in” and go into care is an inability to look after the garden: Joe: If they get too frail to do the gardening and they start to see it go to rack and ruin this can be very distressing […] There’ s also a security risk. If the garden is unattended crooks can see that there’s an elderly person living there and they target the house. (Age Concern Volunteer) Similarly, the Occupational Therapists interviewed pointed out that grab rails outside of front doors can be signs of vulnerability. Consequently there was often resistance amongst their clients to the suggestion that they should have them fitted even where they would be of clear benefit. There are, then, important symbolic as well as functional issues to consider in the development of technologies for older people.
2.3
Technological Reassurance
York’s mobile warden service is a council funded organisation which fits customers homes with an alarm system operated by telephone and pendants that users wear around their necks or wrists. These put calls through to a central database operator who sends out a primary carer or a warden at any time of the day or night. One of the principle benefits of the service is reassurance. Knowing that someone is there and easily contactable is very important when customers feel vulnerable: Eleanor: Some people use it to talk to the call operators at night. What we call reassurance calls. So if they know Claire or they know Paddy or Judy, whoever’s on nights, they recognise their voice and they have a chat to them. (Mobile Warden Manager) The main “selling point” of the warden call service was a quick response to accidents, but there was also an element of reassurance with regard to the fear of crime. As has been seen, this was not reassurance that there was no
risk or that their fears were ungrounded. The fear was not pervasive or paranoid but place and time specific: MB: Is there any time of the day where you’re more likely to be called out? Mandy: Oddly enough we’re more likely to be called out on a Friday night [laughs] that’s a very popular day to be on call. People start feeling vulnerable as the weekend comes up and people are away so you tend to get a few more calls than Monday to Thursday. (Mobile Warden Call Operator) In the event of an accident or a crime, help could be reached at the press of a button on the pendants clients’ wore (or were supposed to wear). This very simple information technology offered enough reassurance and back up to enable people to live independently for longer. It may be that even simple information technology is useful in this context because the fear of crime itself is, in some respects, an information problem.
3 The Fear of Crime as Information Problem The fear of crime can be thought of as a series information problems at a number of different levels. Most obviously there is the problem of inaccurate information. As in the exaggerated fear hypothesis, there may be a wide discrepancy between the actual risk of crime and the perception of that risk. However, as previously argued, fears may be entirely justified in which case the information problem becomes, not - what is going on, but - what can I do about it and can I get help? There are a number of areas of response to these three types of problem. It should be stressed that these questions apply to the fear of crime, and not crime itself. Victims of actual crime face a great many other questions and problems not addressed in this paper.
3.1
What’s going on?
Intergenerational conflict can be the result of misinterpretation as well as victimisation. There are a number of initiatives which address this type of information problem. There are talks and presentations from groups like Help The Aged and there are local newspaper campaigns to address the fear of crime by featuring “good news” stories. When fears are justified the problem must not only be addressed, it must be seen to be addressed. When police are targeting particular areas publicity about the work may be as important as the work itself. The community police officer interviewed reported a recent scheme in York where a mobile office would be set up outside “busy areas”. A line of local convenience stores and the benches in front of them was one such area. Often there would be groups of anti-social youngsters, street drinkers or drug users congregating in small groups but while the police van was in parked in front of the convenience store the area was unusually quiet. “Zero tolerance” policies and harsh sentencing are frequently promoted as important because of the “messages they send”, these messages are not necessarily effective in deterring criminals but they may be effective in reassuring frightened people that something is being done.
3.2
What can I do about it?
Declining physical abilities may make older people feel less able than previously to defend themselves or to run away from attackers (HTA 2002a). Responses to this problem include self-defence classes and firearms. In America there is, of course, a major industry which supplies light and heavy firearms to anyone that wants them and reassures those who feel vulnerable that they can respond effectively if they are attacked. Although firearms are illegal in the UK the recent case of Tony Martin has caused much debate about whether they should remain so. Tony Martin is a Norfolk farmer who was convicted of murder after he shot a teenage burglar who broke into his home. A highly publicised campaign was set up to free him and his sentence was reduced to manslaughter. Readers of the right wing tabloid press then may yet win the right to shoot teenagers in the back as they are running away from their property. Whether the ownership of firearms actually makes anyone safer is of course highly debatable, but the level of support for men like Tony Martin indicates that a lot of people are very afraid and some of them would feel safer if they were armed.
3.3
Can I get any help?
“More bobbies on the beat” has been a cry that has resonated with older people and media pundits for many years now. A much cheaper response is increased remote surveillance. CCTV schemes are running on almost every high street in the UK, areas of high crime and particular shops have been targeted in most cities. How effective CCTV is has been much debated and some studies conclude that it makes almost no difference to levels of crime or the fear of crime (HTA 2002a). One of the main problems is the manpower required to monitor cameras that are on all the time, this difficulty will be returned to in later sections. Better street lighting, on the other hand, has been shown to dramatically decrease both crime rates and the fear of crime (HTA 2002b). Other approaches that address the problem of getting help or at least letting others know what is happening have developed in relation to communication devices. These include personal alarms such as rape alarms and also mobile phones. Mobile phones have been seen as greatly improving the safety of vulnerable individuals. Graham Brown, the head of research at the consultancy mobileYouth recently described “mobile parenting”: “a phenomenon widespread in areas where parents exhibit concerns over child safety or spend most of the working day away from the home,” (Shukor 2003). Indeed some parents will not allow their children to leave home without their mobiles. Fear of Crime information problems and common responses to them can be summarised and categorised as follows although the boundaries between each category are not rigid. Table 1: Information Problems and Common Responses to the Fear of Crime
Information Problems What’s going on?
What Can I do about it? Can I get Help?
Common Response Education Programmes Environmental Improvements (e.g. removing graffiti) Publicity about crime initiatives Self Defence Classes Weapons provision Increased policing CCTV Better Street Lighting Burglar Alarms Personal Alarms Mobile phones
Most of the solutions in the right hand column address only one or at most two aspects of the information problems in the left hand column. The mobile phone for instance addresses the second and third problem but not necessarily, the first. Being in fairly constant contact with others is reassuring but there are risks associated with mobile phone ownership. Mobile phone theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the UK but there are other problems associated with relying on a mobile phone for help. A would be attacker is unlikely to be sympathetic to a request for a brief halt in the proceedings while the victim just makes a quick call to the police. Personal alarms might not be entirely dependable either. Car alarms, home and business burglar alarms are such frequent features of city soundscapes that they are all but ignored. Even panic alarms linked to particular carers may not always be taken seriously. The carer may think that the user is panicking and not respond to every call. There are thousands of static CCTV cameras recording twenty four hours a day seven days a week in many western cities, most of the tapes are useless because “the sheer mass of the data would be impossible to handle” (Lyon: 2001: 52 cited in Kaskela 2003). It is possible that CCTV has a limited impact on crime because it is commonly thought that no-one is watching the camera footage. Countless films depict security guards slumbering in front of myriad monitors. The common responses to the fear of crime then only address partial aspects of the information problems outlined above. The following section outlines the possible application of emerging information communication technologies to the development of a personal ubiquitous computing technology that might address all three aspects of the fear of crime information problem.
4
Chindogu Notions: The Cambadge
Chindogu objects are “unuseless”: they solve one problem but create larger ones. Kawakami’s “Portable Lamp Post”, for instance, solves the problem of poor street lighting but creates the larger problem of having to drag a lamp on wheels around[Kawakami 1999]. Chindogu is concerned with the minutiae of
everyday life, it can identify previously overlooked problems and suggest technological solutions for them. Chindogu objects must exist. Chindogu notions do not have to and they can be useful for thinking about problems (Blythe and Monk 2002). It is possible to imagine a wireless wearable web cam for older people streaming audio and video data to a website monitored either by police or community members. When the user felt alarmed they would activate the camera and the situation could then be assessed. Like Kawakami’s portable lamp such a “Cambadge” would be personal and portable broadcast CCTV. Such a device could be configured in a number of different ways: always on, activated by users, or activated by events. They could be highly visible or invisible. An always-on set up would create the kind of problems of data generation and review currently faced by CCTV so activation by the user is likely to be the simplest configuration. The Cambadge could broadcast to a number of possible watchers: individual to carer, individual to community network, individual to the police. Various scenarios for different “Cambadge” schemes are explored elsewhere (Blythe submitted). The Cambadge is used here as a Chindogu notion to focus on the sociotechnical challenges of reducing older people’s fear of crime. Unlike static 24/7 CCTV cameras the broadcasts (as opposed to recordings) from the Cambadge would be temporarily and spatially specific to immediate problems. The eyes of the law would no longer be always open, staring for most of the time at nothing: the gaze would be focussed wherever one or more Cambadge users became frightened. In this sense the Cambadge would address all three questions of the fear of crime information problem. What’s going on? When the user turns it on they are linked to another person’s (possibly expert) assessment of the situation. What can I do about it? The Cambadge would be empowering in the way that a phone or personal alarm is empowering. Can I get help? Help would be available from community members or the police, depending on the scheme’s configuration. Of course such a device would not eliminate crime, it would not help, for instance, the woman attacked from behind who did not know what hit her as described by the paramedic earlier. But, as previously noted, the fear of crime and crime itself are quite different, though related, problems. If what we see is recordable and referable then it becomes socially significant. In cinema, the camera’s gaze conveys significance. It is not like the gaze of a person because it is constrained by edges, it is selective: the frame of the screen directs our attention onto it’s subject. The camera’s gaze is the gaze of an audience, it is the gaze of a witness. Where there is a witness there is signification. The most frightening death is the meaningless death, the death which no-one notices, the story that no-one tells (the undiscovered dead body in the flat). If there is a witness to our experiences available when we want one (and only when we want one) then perhaps we will feel the reassurance of signification. Someone wearing a Cambadge would have the ability to call a witness whenever they wanted reassurance. They need never really walk alone. Although such technology may seem outlandish the next section will demonstrate that if it does not yet exist it will not be long before it does. There
are a number of emerging technologies which when combined could result in just such a device. Indeed there are so many researchers in such diverse fields working on this kind of surveillance technology that it may already be in development and no originality is claimed for the idea. If it is not yet being tested somewhere then it is probably a matter of time before it is.
4.1 Emerging Technologies David Brin speculates that there may be a Moore’s law for cameras. He points out that over the last ten years cameras have decreased in size and increased in speed and accuracy at an astonishing rate. He argues that at the current rate of development cameras will pervade the world and there is little we can do to prevent it (Brin 1998). Lightweight portable surveillance cameras have been commercially available for some time. They are generally wired to a portable recording device worn on a belt. Cameras have been fitted on glasses and hats, other examples can be found at spygadget.com. It is illegal to use them in the UK but not, curiously enough, illegal to sell them. Another interesting legal anomaly is that images taken with CCTV cameras are subject to data protection laws but images taken on mobile phones are not and can be broadcast wherever the user chooses (O’Hagan 2003). The main applications of this kind of technology are currently covert surveillance and pornography. There is already a porn site which purports to show footage taken with spy glasses (www.streetblowjobs.com). Leisure applications have also been imagined. Jason Brotherton of Bull State University has developed a prototype portable data capture system using lightweight head-mounted cameras, GPS units, and online maps which is intended to record experience and relate it to others with possible applications including: vacation capture, trip planning, and education (Brotherton 2003). Similarly Hewlett Packard recently developed a pair of sunglasses that constantly record images to be reviewed and made into photographs later. These sunglasses constantly take pictures of whatever the wearer is looking at. Images are processed in a handheld computer or at a home PC. Problems of image overload are being tackled by system metadata which captures information about images such as whether the picture was taken while walking or running, whether the subject is smiling and how well the subject is framed (news.bbc.co.uk 2003). There has, of course, been a great deal of work on surveillance cameras in the field of ubiquitous wearable computing. Steve Mann has invented and tested a series of portable recording devices to engage in what he calls sousveillance from the French word sous “below” and veiller “to watch” (Mann et al 2003). In a series of performances reminiscent of the detournements of the Situationists Mann and his collaborators took portable recording sousveillance devices into public places and gauged the reaction of members of the public, store managers and security guards. One version of this counter surveillance technology was presented in a glossy brochure advertising “sousveillance” technology as high fashion (Mann et al 2003). The sousveillance technology broke the “unstated rules of asymmetric surveillance” (Ibid) in other words if department stores can film us why can’t we film department stores? The technology felt empowering for some users (Ibid). Although this sousveillance technology does not yet broadcast
streaming images to police or public websites such a wearable CCTV scheme is quite feasible. Although wireless and ubiquitous access to the web is not yet available such developments as wi-fi and wireless LAN mean that it is becoming a very real possibility. The number of wireless wi-fi hotspots are growing daily and it is becoming much easier to find outdoor and public access points to down and upload images to the internet. While it is now possible to make recordings with wearable cameras it is not yet possible to wirelessly broadcast these recordings in real time. When wireless and ubiquitous web access is available the Cambadge will be a very real possibility. Following the attacks of 9/11 there are plans to use WebCams broadcasting to sites around the world for citizen to citizen surveillance. The US Homeguard http://www.ushomeguard.org/ scheme will work as follows: “Every chemical installation, large factory, bridge or dam, will be surrounded by web cameras 100 feet apart. The cameras will take pictures almost continuously and these will be transmitted to the internet. An infinite horde of “lookers” will be paid to examine a selection of these pictures (whether one or one one thousand) when they log on anywhere in the world” (O’ Hagan 2003) It is possible to imagine then a similar resource of community watchers, monitoring Cambadge broadcasts. Of course the Cambadge could be used not just to protect potential victims but also to police criminals. The electronic tagging of young offenders has become routine in the UK. Tagged offenders wear a bracelet on their ankle which puts a call through to a security firm if they are not back at a designated address by curfew time. Such systems tell social workers and the police where offenders are but they do not tell them what they are doing. While random surveillance through a Cambadge may violate certain human rights this is not to say that this would not be attractive to governments with little regard for them. Pat, a senior social worker on a youth offending team reflected at length on the notion: Pat: It’s a political question isn’t it? When Jack Straw initiated the youth offending service, the crime and disorder act 98, that was very much on the back of a big public wave of outrage in terms of the spiralling criminality and young offenders and anti social behaviour[…] And there was a definite shift to more punitive measures and I don’t think we’ve particularly changed in terms of the political arena. So I think that [the Cambadge] isn’t as outlandish as we would have thought maybe twenty years ago - the whole kind of big brother - it seems like a natural step to me, we’ve gone that way. We’re going for electronic tagging so we can monitor when people are in or out of certain places, CCTV is on the rise in terms of the way we police our city centres and that’s spreading further […] whether it’s right is
another thing and it doesn’t rest easy with me. It really is that Big Brother state that people have feared for the last twenty thirty years, that’s where we’re heading. (Senior Social Worker, Youth Offending Team) As previously noted there are many possible implementations of Cambadge schemes and the design space has been explored in greater detail elsewhere (Blythe submitted). Broadcasts could be configured as: peer-to-peer, potential victim to the police, potential victim to a community network and random monitoring of offenders by the police. Unlike a personal panic alarm the Cambadge would not rely on the perceptions of the user alone. The person at the other end of the camera has more information about the situation than the state of mind of the user. A user might panic and hit her personal alarm but it is not this fact alone that would prompt a response. However the social and political ramifications of such technologies are of equal importance to and are, in many respects, indistinguishable from the design space. It is important then, to acknowledge the deeply political nature of such technology and the next section reflects on that in relation to the philosophy of surveillance technology.
5 The Politics of Surveillance Those of us who reside in the UK have been living for some time in a surveillance society where everyday life is routinely monitored (Lyon 2001). The UK has the highest density of CCTV cameras in the world and the British government has invested over £205 million in over 1400 CCTV projects (O’ Hagan 2003). Britain has spent more on its surveillance technology than any other European country, indeed by 1997 the bulk of Home Office crime prevention expenditure went on CCTV in public places (Ibid). It may be that technologies like the Cambadge would help to reduce older people’s fear of crime but this would not be the only effect of such a scheme. In considering surveillance technology it is important to problematise the notion of the user. There would be no single user of the Cambadge scheme, users would be multiple: the older person, the person, group or organisation monitoring the broadcasts, and the state. Furthermore, if such schemes are to be socially dependable it is important to consider not just the users but the people that the technology is used against: the young offender, the anti-social neighbour, the career criminal. Designers may shape but they cannot determine the way that their technology is used. The problems of increasing state surveillance are inextricable bound up with the protection of individual rights. All of the emerging technologies outlined in the previous section have caused alarm in terms of the protection of privacy. Our relationship to surveillance technology is at best ambivalent: we want to be protected but we do not necessarily want to be watched. The design problems inherent in the development of surveillance technologies then are also and inevitably political problems. Ubiquitous and wearable computing now make possible fantasies of the total police state. The Big Brother of Orwell’s imagination is becoming the little brother of ubiquitous computing. The UK government are currently
considering plans to put “electronic traffic police” into every car on the road. A microchip embedded in the chassis of the car will identify the vehicle to roadside sensors which can monitor speeding and other traffic offences. The UK’s Automobile Association applauded the plan and the Herald newspaper reported this story uncritically. The counter cultural newsite Disinformation however, linked to the story with the announcement that UK residents were about to lose more civil rights “as if there were any left to lose”. The Automobile Association’s support of the traffic surveillance plan is understandable, such a scheme may very well improve road safety and save lives, but fears over civil liberties are equally real. The law firm Covington and Burling was recently commissioned by campaigners at Privacy International to examine government plans to force ISPs to retain internet traffic data. The firm has argued that the proposals breach article eight of the European convention on human rights because "The indiscriminate collection of traffic data offends a core principle of the rule of law: that citizens should have notice of the circumstances in which the State may conduct surveillance” (Cited, Lettice 2003) Although the reduction of older peoples fear of crime is a laudable and important aim, a consideration of the dangers of increasing state powers of surveillance is unavoidable. Writers such as David Brin have argued that there are possible democratic uses for surveillance technologies. He suggests that Big Brother is only scary because we cannot look back at him and maintains that surveillance technologies could be harnessed and turned back onto the state to strengthen the kind of checks and balances on which democracy depends. In The Transparent Society he argues that “reciprocal accountability” has worked for us so far and that the power to call to account even the mighty is the unsung marvel of our age (Brin: 1998). He describes two cities in which tiny cameras monitor everything, in the first city the images are available only to the police but in the second anyone can access them. The first city is a totalitarian state but the second is a place of mutual accountability. (Brin 1998:4). It can be claimed that the development of individual surveillance technologies such as the Cambadge would be empowering. The policemen who beat Rodney King would clearly have been more reluctant to do so had they known that their actions would shortly be broadcasted around the world. Mann et al situate their sousveillance technology in traditions like the women’s and civil rights movements “Acts of sousveillance redirect an establishment’s mechanisms and technologies of surveillance back on the establishment.” (Mann et al 2003: 347) Surveillance technology then may be empowering in certain contexts. Confrontational documentary makers such as Michael Moore have long used the power of the lens and the tape recorder to challenge, mock and embarrass corporate CEOs and politicians.
There is an argument then that everyone should be held accountable and that the only people who really insist on their privacy are those that should not have it. This is a very old argument. Indeed the moralists who first used the word privacy in its modern sense, noted that it was only necessary for villains: “I have also to observe that privacy is inconsistent with every just notion of punishment.” (Wellington 1838 cited in the Oxford English Dictionary) Brin and other apologists for surveillance technologies rely on much the same claim. If you fear surveillance technologies then you must have something to hide; if you want privacy without accountability then you must be up to no good. If you object to corporate and state surveillance you can fight back with sousveillance. Mann et al cite William Gibson’s optimistic take on this: “You’re surveilling the surveillance. And if everyone were surveilling the surveillance, the surveillance would be neutralised, it would be unnecessary” (Mann et al 2003:347) But this is to under theorise power. The white jurors who watched the video of the policemen beating Rodney King acquitted them all, an act which triggered the L.A. riots. Visibility then, does not necessarily lead to accountability, although rioting might get you somewhere near. The notion that western democracies do in fact hold their politicians accountable was severely undercut when this year the US and UK governments decided to conduct an illegal oil war that was very visibly and vocally opposed by the majority of the people they were supposed to represent. Michael Moore and other American satirists tirelessly point out that George W. Bush was not democratically elected president and yet “W” remains in office. The ability to criticise then is not necessarily the power to hold to account. In Troilus and Cressida Thersites is licensed to mock Ajax while Ajax beats him: “He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! Would that it were otherwise; that I could beat him whilst he railed at me” (Act 2. Scene 3. line 3) Ultimately it does not matter what Thersites says, that is why he is given the freedom to say it. In raillery he confirms the power relations which he rails against. Power relations are affirmed rather than contested when such opposition is expressed. Visibility and freedom of speech then do not necessarily lead to accountability. It is a tired cliché that knowledge is power and the helplessness of the people of “democracies” to influence their leaders demonstrates well enough that while information may be a technology of discipline it is not power itself. Providing older people with a Cambadge would not necessarily empower them. Feminist film theorists have argued that the appraising and authoritative gaze of the cinema camera is inherently male. In less abstract terms a woman
walking past a group of men on a street corner may experience their gaze as appraising and intimidating. In other words, all gazes are not equal, some are gazes of power and some are not. Nor are all fears equal. The consequences of alarm are not the same across different demographic groups. To take an extreme example, if the Queen of England feels threatened or alarmed she can rely on an immediate response from a huge security apparatus. Less privileged elderly woman feeling frightened on the streets of York cannot expect such back up. Extending and multiplying the gaze may have some benefits but it would not redress the huge social imbalances which cause the crime that older people fear.
6 Discussion: Panopticism and Demographic Change Foucault and Foucaultian scholars have given much thought to a prison called the Panopticon designed by the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. In it, prison cells were tiered and faced a central observation tower. The prisoners would never know if they were being observed or not and so would feel as if they were under surveillance all the time: producing an internalised, efficient and low cost system of disciple. When video surveillance became common in western cities it was quickly noted that they worked on the principles of the Panopticon, the power of seeing without being seen (Lyon 1994 cited Kaskela 2003). However, the CCTV systems of the last twenty years were not strictly panoptical because, as has previously been noted, we do not think we are being watched all of the time. Being filmed all the time is not the same as being watched all the time. The digitisation of surveillance systems has meant that the otherwise useless mass of data is now searchable, achieving a panopticisation of digital space (Norris, 2002 cited Kaskela 2003: 304). It has further been argued then this searchable digital surveillance has at last truly turned our cities into super panopticons (Ibid). Foucault argued that panopticism is the foundation of every major institution in the western world: the school, the factory, the hospital, the asylum, the army, the prison. For Foucault it was the principle of panopticism that made each of these institutions so similar despite their widely differing purposes. Each of them used the same technologies of discipline: the timetable, the records system, the roll call, the uniform and so on. He argued that these technologies of discipline developed because of the massive demographic changes of the eighteenth century. Small villages can be policed by far simpler, and largely physically violent, technologies of discipline; in more complex societies consent and self-discipline are the only cost efficient ways of maintaining hegemony. Anonymity and the sheer number of bodies to control in the cities of the industrial revolution saw the development of a set of disciplinary technologies which did not rely entirely on direct physical interventions: “For the old principle of “levying-violence,” which governed the economy of power, the disciplines substitute the principle of “mildness-production profit.” These are the techniques that make it possible to adjust the multiplicity of men and the multiplication of the apparatuses of production (and this means not only “production” in the strict sense, but also the production of knowledge
and skills in the school, the production of health in the hospitals, the production of destructive force in the army” (Foucault, 1991: 208). It is sometimes forgotten that Foucault was first and foremost a historian and his analysis was situated in the demographic changes of the industrial revolution. What then of demographic changes to come? Humanity is currently facing the greatest demographic shift in history. By 2050 there will be more people in the world over sixty than there will be people under age fifteen. This is a historic reversal of proportions and it is without precedent (United Nations 1999). It is also a global phenomenon, occurring in both the “more” and “less developed” world. Declining fertility rates and increased longevity will have far reaching and profound consequences, year on year, for the rest of our lives. In 1999 15% of the European population were eighty years of age or older, in 2050, barring holocaust or pandemic, that will have doubled. It is statistically likely that we will live longer than any other generation could possibly have hoped or feared. The interests of young and old will, to some extent, be diametrically opposed. As the number of retired people increases the burden on those of working age will increase. Intergenerational conflict of the kind discussed throughout these pages is unlikely to fall in such circumstances. How then will the technologies of discipline extend to protect the aged population? Brin may be right when he argues that the development of surveillance technology will continue whether we like it or not. The advent of ubiquitous computing has made the possibility of total, detailed, state surveillance a reality. Technologies like the Cambadge could result in the creation of a police state if they are concentrated solely in the hands of existing power bases (Blythe submitted). Open community based schemes would perhaps be more democratic, less open to abuse and may also provide an increased sense of security for older people but this is far from certain and the developers of such technology must consider the political dimensions of possible deployments. Although proliferating surveillance technologies may be good news for older people and for those wishing to protect their property they may be very bad news for young people without property to protect. This is not to argue that we must protect the rights of poor rapists, muggers and burglars. It is to underscore the reality that where there is power there is also resistance and that the increased surveillance of dispossessed youth will not eliminate conflict. But the issue is deeper than this. Even when older people stay indoors they are not immune from attack. They are not, in other words, safe in their own homes. Older people are at risk not just from strangers outside but also from relatives and care givers inside. Marxist and feminist criminological accounts suggest that older people are vulnerable because they are economically marginal and “there is no benefit to the wider society in costly protection” (Brogden and Nijhar 2000: 106). The burden of care currently falls on largely female workers either in the form of daughters offering free support or female care workers offering professional
but low paid care (Ibid). Older people’s fear of crime is likely to increase with the growing numbers of older people. No technological intervention will meet the demographic challenges of the twenty first century without social and cultural change. Until older people are valued more, technological responses will be at best superficial. Social rather than technological approaches to victims and offenders are rarely popular although there is a strong argument for preventative work: Pat: Preventative work would be not working with offenders, working with younger kids, not crisis intervention after the fact once they’ve been to court. Why not invest in family work, why not invest in outreach work in the community? Move away from the punitive authoritative approach of “we are agents of the state and we’re here to work your order”. Let’s go out and invest some of those social workers and hours of time before the kids ever get to that stage. Now it may sound idealistic but to me that’s a better way of working but what we’re talking about is a heavy investment in a short amount of time which the government haven’t got or aren’t willing to invest which will save money down the line [...] I understand politically why that’s difficult because it is a big investment and it’s about electioneering as well and the government will want to respond to that section of the public who want to hang ‘em high. Although purely technological and legislative responses to crime and the fear of crime are unlikely to work this is not to say that they will not be supported by the UK government, which, as previously noted, has invested more in surveillance technology than any European state; nor is it to say that it will not be extremely popular with the right wing press. However, no solely technological development could effectively combat the crime that older people fear. That would require cultural and social change far greater than the technological advances that make the Cambadge possible.
Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Dependability Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration ("DIRC") funded by UK, EPSRC.
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