VISUAL SURVEILLANCE

Visual Surveillance

Visual Surveillance

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a case study on the ethical issues involved in Visual surveillance.

Case Study

The case is about a girl Elisa, a 25 year old waitress living in a rented home. Once she had the feeling that whenever she showered, her landlord used to disappear to the garage area. She took this activity as a suspicious act and decided to visit garage. Once, when her landowner was not home, she went into his room, and there she found some video tapes. When she opened that tape, her blood went cold, because these were her naked videos while showering. She was shocked to know this that, her activities are being recorded, and this is considered to be an issue of ethics. She went inside and checked her washroom; there she found a clock and a camera inside that clock. She complained against her landlord and based on the evidences, her landlord was sent to prison for 13 years prison.

Facts & Analysis

Such kinds of stories occur anywhere, and anyone can be a victim of such stories. It is an important issue to be taken into consideration. It is observed that, even in places like the college dorms, hotel swimming pools, public bathrooms, dressing rooms and the trial rooms are not safe and are monitored by the surveillance cameras. Public and private areas are being spied for immediate viewing. The main disadvantage of this camera is that they are very small in size and can be kept inside even in any pen. These cameras cover the activities of a wide range of area. The increase in the technology of surveillance cameras is the main reason that it is getting cheaper and easily accessible. The increased usage of the surveillance camera is considered to be a threat for the law and enforcement agencies and the government.

The usage of CCTV is growing to an unexpected level; it monitors the activities of the public and private place around the globe. According to a research, estimated number of CCTV cameras in Britain is 200,000, these cameras are monitoring the public place, and on average, it is recording one place 300 times a day. There would be a time, when the CCTV would be used as TV and telephone is used. Thus, maintaining privacy would be difficult and unavoidable. Some laws have been enacted by the government and the police, against the invasion of people's privacy. One of these laws is the Patriot Act, and it is considered to be a frightening situation in the future. People, whether they want or not, won't be able to hide anything.

The question arises here that how our privacy is being invaded by the government agents and the business people. There are different technologies used by these agents such as ultrasonic or very low frequency bugs, optical bugs, acoustic bugs, and wiretaps. These devices are of very smaller size that even they are smaller than the head of a ...