Research: CCTV and privacy

CCTV and privacy

Statistics

The UK is the country with the most CCTV cameras per person in the whole world. We therefore thought we could comment on the current situation at the moment, as many people are realising that we have less and less privacy. This is because according to the guardian 'CCTV increases people's sense of anxiety' and actually doesn't make people feel safer.

We are also getting less and less privacy through the fact that we can also be tracked through social networking.

Our idea

The idea of constantly being watched is a particular favourite to the group.

In order to exaggerate this idea we were thinking of using other means such as having cameras on mobile phones and computers/laptops always on, giving the impression that the government or the police have completely taken away our privacy in order to maintain a safe country.

The development of our idea

We thought of this idea very early on and since then it has adpated. To being with we thought we would just track a girl through different means (CCTV, mobiles, laptops, cameras) however we soon realised that this would prove to be a rather boring movie. Therefore we are now building on a different idea by creating an exciting and crime related plot line for this girl to have, combined with her every move being tracked by the police. We all quite like the idea of having her realise at the end that she has always been watched through technology, with this the idea of zooming out of the frame she is in to reveal more people around her was another favourite as we'd be able to show that everyone was being watched.

A final thing we were considering was including social networking and showing how the girl was traced through that, there were many ways we were thinking of doing this, one being a timeline of all the different websites she had joined and all the activity she had done on them. This would show that nearly all the gaps of her life would be filled in by using technology.