| Summary: | This thesis coinsiders the two areas of CCTV research, town centre statistical studies and public attitude surveys and how CCTV has through widespread introduction, impacted upon the concept of privacy. The concept of privacy taken by this thesis is wider that the legal definition and is most briefly but relevantly defined as the 'freedom from surveillance by closed circuit television.' Town centre studies aim to look at the effectiveness of CCTV as a method of crime control. Public attitude surveys aim to use quantitative research questionnaires to discover the opinions of CCTV users, to gauge CCTV's effect upon the fear of crime and to analyse the public's expectations and actual experiences of CCTV and to consider if the social benefit of CCTV over the threat to privacy is on balance, worth the loss in privacy. Town centre and public attitude studies are the only types of published research thus far conducted upon CCTV. Three innovative studies have attempted to disperse the view that CCTV had specific uses, benefits and limitations. These studies focused on CCTV as a benefit to retail consumerism, the attitudes of offenders and the opinions and practices of CCTV operators. This thesis considers whether the threat to privacy is greater when surveillance is operated by private security companies in quasi-public places. The thesis considers how the general public's desire to shop has increased the likelihood of their submitting to such quasi-public space surveillance in return for the benefits of consumption
|
|---|
