[imagesource:wikicommons]
Even if you fool the beach patrol, the City of Cape Town might be watching you drink beer from your kid’s sippy cup on the beach without you even realising it.
While the use of technologies such as long-rage CCTV cameras and drones is effective at watching over beachgoers, some have now raised the concern that this might be a potentially creepy invasion of privacy.
Mayoral Committee member for safety and security, JP Smith, said the city had deployed drones and CCTV to identify offenders at beaches over the past two festive seasons.
“From kilometres away, invisible to the human eye, we zoom in and identify offenders, who think they are one step ahead of the law,” said Smith.
Booze on the beach is not a new problem and every year scores of people hide alcohol in the coolers and beach towels and sometimes even bury it in the sand to avoid the leering eyes of patrollers.
However, surveillance researcher Heidi Swart told Daily Maverick that the city needs to inform residents when they are employing drone technology to monitor them. Swart says the use of high-definition, omnipresent cameras allowed officials to monitor individuals daily over a long period and learn their behaviour patterns.
Even more paranoia-inducing is that in addition to gathering data about people’s lives, the city was monitoring people in states of undress.
“Who gets to see that data? Are you comfortable with some man sitting in a room somewhere looking at your half-naked body?”
Swart went on to say, “Every single little bit of information about you is yours. So when they’re capturing you on film, that’s your data. But of course, you have no control over it. You don’t even know how long [and] who’s looking at it. You’re completely reliant on the honesty and the integrity of whoever owns this camera, is taking this footage and is storing this footage.”
“Is that surveillance really necessary? Because you’re only allowed to collect data if it’s absolutely necessary. And I would argue it’s not. The vast majority of people are not criminals, [and] are not drinking on the beach.”
Swart went on to tell DM that there needed to be “a specific legal framework for CCTV cameras within the Protection of Personal Information Act to regulate this kind of surveillance”.
Brandon Joubert, another video surveillance expert, makes the googling eyes of all the cameras seem even more creepy by saying that when a camera focuses in on a person beyond what a normal onlooker could observe, it could be deemed a search and an invasion of the person’s reasonable expectation of privacy.
“The average citizen does not expect high-resolution, magnified examination of any part of their person or possessions without consent or justification which would meet the threshold required to enforce a physical search of a person.”
In other words, checking out your sun-kissed bikini bod does not fall under ‘surveillance for your safety’.
Joubert said that in a crime-ridden society such as South Africa, law-abiding citizens should welcome the deployment of drones, but people need to be clearly informed when drones will be deployed, and for what purposes.
Cape Town’s JP Smith however said that the long-range, high-definition CCTV and drones at beaches are used to identify offenders, and there were no public privacy concerns related to this technology on beaches. The footage collected is also stored in a “secure manner”. Beaches are also, as a matter of fact, a public space.
Still, no one really knows when they’re being watched. “There is no legal obligation to notify the public regarding the operation of CCTV cameras in public spaces.”
Smith said drones were only used to monitor public open spaces and city land and did not encroach on private residences.
The use of surveillance technology has become crucial to curbing crime in our city, so concerns about a guy in a booth checking out your tanlines trump the potential to stop a crime from happening, or prevent some drunken fool from drowning in the Atlantic? Until people start behaving themselves in public, it seems there is no other option.
While this issue of being spied on is being hashed out, enjoy this live YouTube feed of Clifton 4th Beach that’s been running for years:
[source:dailymaverick]
