Eyes wide open

Afzal Guru is asleep. The country’s most famous convict, who insists only L.K. Advani can give him deliverance, lies in the suspended animation of an afternoon siesta. Books lie scattered around the white-tiled floor of a wellventilated cell and sunlight streams in. Guru forms only one of six notebooksized frames in a 29-inch LCD TV, one of 14 such screens on the wall of a swank control room being impassively scanned by a bespectacled B.K. Gupta, Director General (Prisons).Until last year, the massive Tihar Jail complex in Delhi—nine separate prisons housing 11,000 inmates—was rife with complaints of bad food, shabby treatment from jail staff and sodomy among inmates. Clearly, a difficult task for just 1,300 jail staff to keep a vigil. All this changed around four months ago, when nearly 258 CCTV cameras went up in critical locations like high-security cells, entrances, kitchens, general barracks and halls housing a large number of prisoners. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}With 200 more cameras on the way, Asia’s largest prison is now Big Brother country. Gupta even sounds Orwellian: “The prisoners know they are being watched, the staff knows that their actions are being monitored. There is no room for ambiguity.”Welcome to the surveillance society in which jails, temples, mosques, malls, markets and schools are policed by silent sentries. Director General (Prisons) B.K. Gupta keeps a watch at the high-security Tihar JailWith CCTV footage admissible as evidence, “show me the footage” is fast becoming a buzzword for the police to confront and convict criminals.“CCTV footage helps in deducing useful information regarding the scene of crime, identification of accused and reconstruction of the sequence of crime,” says Delhi Police spokesperson ACP Rajan Bhagat.Every crime, it seems, now has a CCTV rewind moment. Two retired college professors—a husband-and wife duo—were caught on camera lifting jewellery from an exhibition at Pragati Maidan in Delhi. A thief cleaned out jewellery worth Rs 15 lakh from a shop in Karol Bagh and then made a ransom call asking for Rs 5 lakh to return the gems. His associate had disconnected the CCTV camera in the shop, however, it captured an image of the thief leading the police to him. The Mumbai Police were not as lucky when they trooped into Hypercity mall. The CCTVs had erased (after storing for two days) what would have been modelactor Maria Susairaj’s greatest screen performance—shopping for bags and a large kitchen knife to chop up Neeraj Grover’s corpse into pieces.In North America and Europe, which make up over 65 per cent of the global CCTV market, the cameras are de rigueur. They’re used to monitor traffic flows and deter public offences and act as valuable crime-fighting tools. British police presented CCTV footage as key evidence to pin the 2003 rape and murder of British teenager Hannah Foster on fugitive Maninder Pal Singh Kohli. It was easy enough in a country which has over four million cameras and counting. The cameras also caught the four bombers behind the July 2005 London terror attacks, strolling with bomb-laden backpacks into the underground. The most well-known breakthrough in a terror attack also came from CCTVs in the US when recordings identified the 911 bombers at airports.“The explosive development of infrastructure in the past five years— malls, airports, office complexes and call centres—are key growth drivers,” says Iqbal Singh Jagdeva, president of the Asian Professional Security Association. A Frost and Sullivan report on the Indian electronic security business estimates the Indian video surveillance and CCTV market to be worth Rs 333 crore. It forms about 29 per cent of the Rs 1,150-crore electronic security market in India, which is growing at 14 per cent per annum.The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) recommends CCTVs as standard fitment in most infrastructure facilities, including all the new airports under development in the country. Caught on cameraChain snatchers grabbed a bag containing cash and an ATM card from a nurse at a Delhi hospital. They went on a shopping spree with the card but were caught and arrested, thanks to CCTV footage.A couple teaching in a management school was arrested for stealing jewellery worth Rs 2 lakh from a showroom at a Delhi hotel. Police had analysed CCTV footage of them carrying out a theft at another showroom.The 79 pan-tilt-zoom CCTV cameras at Bangalore’s new Devanahalli airport ensure that the seven agencies in the Airport Operations Control Centre have an uninterrupted view of the entire airport from the airside area to the passenger facilities. Also aiding the growth of the industry is the looming spectre of urban terror and a lengthening list of possible terror targets—from public transport systems to markets and places of worship. The Frost and Sullivan report outlines these growth-drivers (see graphic, next page). Terrorist attacks create an instant clamour for CCTV footage from the authorities. After the Delhi blasts of 2005 that left dozens dead, police installed over 300 street cameras in seven busy markets including Chandni Chowk, Karol Bagh and the tony Khan Market. Railway stations and interstate bus terminals are now covered by CCTVs and Delhi Police even installed an operational CCTV control room in 2004. Ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the capital will have the country’s densest network of cameras to scan traffic violations at major intersections.Schools are the newest entrants to this technology. At the St. Soldier Public School in Bhayander, Mumbai, five electronic eyes monitor students and teachers alike. Recently, a senior teacher was asked to leave because the cameras caught her slackness in the classroom. “Every school must have CCTVs,” says Lt. Colonel Sodhi (retired), the chief trustee of the school. However, Shyama Chona, principal of Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram, differs: “CCTVs take away the freedom of students and teachers. It’s silly to put them in classrooms or staff rooms.”The electronic security market is a peculiar one. It’s driven almost entirely by knee-jerk reactions rather than any strategic appreciation of security. “We don’t have a strategic approach to security,’’ rues Pramod Rao, managing director, Zicom Electronic Security Systems. “People spend lakhs on plasma TVs but not even a few thousand on electronic security,” says a leading CCTV installer. “After each terror strike and major accident, authorities wake up and go into overdrive for a week. We usually have only the first week to make the sale, before the furore subsides.”Worse, the lack of a regulatory framework to govern the industry ensures that it is the flyby-night operators who thrive in a crisis. Delhi alone has over 1,000 CCTV installers. The market does not have any oversight nor does it have any legislation like the Security Requirements for the Commercial Sectors, which Dubai implemented in 2005. Existing cameras in India are either poorly serviced or don’t work, defeating their very purpose. Six of the 16 CCTVs installed at the Ajmer Dargah after the serial blasts last year were recently found to be non-operational.While revenues from the market are concentrated around the high and low end, the large untapped mid-segment, comprising offices, retail outlets, schools, residences and banks, is still left untouched. (See graphic: Factors fuelling the CCTV boom) “Of a potential Rs 3,080 crore, we are currently tapping only 1,150 crore or 37 per cent,” says S. Mushtaq Mohammed Khan, deputy director, Environment and Building Technologies, Frost and Sullivan.Cameras cost from Rs 2,000 for the fixed focus units to Rs 1 lakh for sophisticated day-night cameras that have PTZ facility and are linked to a digital video recorder. However, users often choose poor quality, non-ruggedised cameras without concealed wiring which makes it easier to sabotage them. “People sometimes install CCTVs only for the sake of it and are not concerned with quality,” says Jagdeva. The lack of any legislation also means there is thin line between a spycam and a CCTV. A security firm once turned down a request from a gym owner to install cameras in the ladies’ changing room ostensibly to deter thefts. “But I can’t stop him from buying it off the shelf,” shrugs the executive.“CCTVs are alright as long as people are warned by a notice saying they are under surveillance. It is like a ‘right of admission reserved’ tag put up by many establishments,” says Pravin Anand, patent and trademark lawyer. ‘You are being watched’ could well be the new rite of passage into the surveillance society.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 12, 2008--- ENDS ---

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Eyes wide open

The closed circuit TV camera is taking on the role of silent policing but an unregulated market and lack of awareness hinder its actual impact.

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