Here’s why you should oppose AI security surveillance cameras in your neighbourhood

Look, fellow South Africans: I know we’ve all got a lot of shit to be mad about already but here’s why you should add neighbourhood watch groups trying to install AI crime detection cameras in your neighbourhood to your “things to get mad about” to-do list.

I live in a rich suburb in Cape Town. One of the reasons I moved to this particular suburb is that the rich suburb I formerly lived in (*cough* Tamboerskloof *cough*) started installing “crime detection smart cameras” all over the streets and I don’t like living in a Margaret Atwood novel.

Imagine my anger when my new suburb’s neighbourhood watch newsletter landed in my inbox this morning letting us know they’re raising funds to install exactly the same bloody cameras.

Here’s why I’m mad about this.

Camera systems like this are mainly designed to target property crimes like car break-ins. They might reduce these crimes, and they might not (more on this later). Even if they do, the cost to social justice and freedom can’t possibly be worth the benefits. Here’s why.

Do you trust unregulated private companies with this data?

This camera data is being collected by private companies. There is almost no public oversight over the surveillance and security industry. As a public, we have no way of knowing what is really happening with this data. There is no public regulator monitoring their behaviour.

It’s never even particularly clear which entities are actually providing the service and infrastructure. Although a single company will be paid for the service, there’s likely a whole squad of sub-contractors, manufacturers, network providers, etc. who all own a little patch of the system over which people’s personal data will travel.

It might not matter whether the intentions of any one individual company are good, so much as it matters what’s being done with the data. There’s no transparency in this industry. No knowing how many entities will have access to the feed.

Vumacam, one of the big CCTV companies in Johannesburg, uses cameras that are manufactured by Hikvision — one of the biggest suppliers of surveillance systems in SA, whose majority shareholder is the government of China, and who now face a ban in the US over cybersecurity concerns. Please read Heidi Swart’s excellent 2-part series about this.

Then, of course, there’s always the possibility that the data could be hacked and malevolent individuals could access a 24/7 feed showing all of your daily movements. Think this can’t happen? A security contractor for the UK’s metro police just had a breach that reportedly exposed over a million people’s biometric info.

It violates our rights and it might be illegal

Private surveillance of public spaces isn’t okay. It’s a fundamental violation of the right to privacy.

SA law has yet to catch up with international best practice on this, but in many countries, stuff like automatic license-plate recognition (something many of these private camera companies offer) is treated as a form of mass surveillance, which only the state can do, and only for national security and policing purposes.

The Protection of Personal Information Act specifically says that the collection and sale of information to third parties without a person’s consent is not legal. Private security companies in SA have argued that what they’re doing doesn’t violate this law. No-one’s challenged them in court on this yet, but it’s likely coming.

It‘s probably racist

Globally, there is evidence that “smart crime detection AI systems” are racist and perpetuate discrimination against black people, because the algorithms are trained on biased and skewed datasets. Here’s just one article about this. Black citizens get flagged as “suspicious”. They are followed and are made to feel unsafe and unwelcome in spaces they have every right to inhabit.

The security companies in South Africa have not shared information about how exactly their “smart detection” algorithms work — we don’t know if they’re flagging behaviour only or if they’re also implementing facial/feature recognition technology, or other class / racial / gender markers.

The point is, we don’t know what this technology is really flagging and there is no oversight over these companies to ensure that they don’t do racial profiling.

It might not even prevent crime

Surveillance cameras do often result in a drop in particular crimes in a particular area, but there are strong indications that crime isn’t actually being reduced, just displaced to other neighbourhoods.

So if you put up systems like this in your own suburb, you might indeed enjoy a drop in crime where you live, but another neighbourhood — likely a less affluent one — may experience a spike in crime as a result.

In December last year, I was mugged walking home from work. The man who attacked me grabbed me by the neck, bruising me, while he ripped away my most beloved possession: a gold necklace that my father gave me before he died. I was profoundly traumatised by this and I had to seek help from a therapist to recover. Trust me, I know that even petty property crime can be awful and I completely understand the desire to find a quick solution for it.

But displacing crime is actually one of the most unhelpful things we can do in the long run: by moving crime to poorer areas, we worsen inequality. And research has shown time and again that inequality is one of the strongest predictors of violent crime. So displacement isn’t only selfish, it’s also ultimately self-defeating.

It’s a threat to our democracy

Poor people have the right to be in rich neighbourhoods. There is a strong risk that systems like this will only push them further to the margins of our already spatially unjust cities.

South Africa already tried creating a surveillance state where some people needed to carry a Dompas to prove that they were allowed to be present in rich neighbourhoods. It wasn’t a great system.

Surveillance systems like this are just reproducing those injustices, except now we’re enlisting private companies to act as our enforcers. This is not how we create a just country. This is not how we build an inclusive democracy.

We can do better than this

Unchecked surveillance like this is a threat to the democratic principles that guide our constitution and our country — especially when it is being done by private entities with no public oversight. We need to find a better and more sustainable way of engaging with property crimes than submitting ourselves to constant unregulated surveillance by private militias in the hope that they’ll go rob our neighbours instead.

If this makes you mad too, here’s what you can do about it:

1. Find the contact information for your ward councillor and send them an email telling them you’re concerned about this.
2. Get in touch with your local neighbourhood watch group and remind them that they are not allowed to install camera systems like this without robust public participation (and the public INCLUDES all the people who are homeless / poor / domestic workers who also live or work in your area).
3. Share this information with your friends and neighbours to raise awareness about the problem.

Never stop fighting to build a better world, friends.

Thanks to Murray Hunter, who contributed all the best bits to this article, and Heidi Swart for writing about this better than I can.