Fact: by the end of 2013, statistics show that there will be more cell phones registered on planet Earth than there are people! wrote Jeff Little of the NSI in his think-piece in the July 2013 print issue of Professional Security.
The vast majority of these devices will incorporate a camera. The imagery from those cameras is improving all of the time. This makes the age of the citizen photo journalist a global reality – but what are the implications for crime-fighting? The increased prominence and effectiveness of CCTV images was highlighted after the London riots and the Boston Marathon bombings. But numerous other electronic eyes are now probing the environment, sitting in the hands of the public. Such devices can not only capture images in the first place but also offer the potential for rapid and wide distribution of a suspect’s image to smart phones and tablets in the hope of a quick identification in the immediate aftermath of a criminal event.
The UK’s Facewatch scheme pioneered by Simon Gordon goes much of the way along this route by simplifying the initial reporting of crime and, more crucially, speedily distributing images and CCTV clips, attached to those reports, of the suspects. It is the smart software now being developed which transmogrifies a standard CCTV camera into a facial recognition tool that may sway the balance of power away from the criminal and back to the victim and the law. We are all too aware that it is a very small nucleus of persistent criminals who perpetuate the low level crime which causes us all so much annoyance, aggravation and lost time. Technology could now be the bête noire of these regular offenders and we should exploit the advantages offered to the full. I am sure that the civil rights cohort will have a view about the transparency now possible but falling crime rates have to be in the interests of society at large and the silent majority should demand full use is made of the new public information space.
