4 ms·

Dummy cameras feel like 'Security Theater' to me.

ramy_d 11y ago
I wouldn't quite say that. Dummy cameras give petty criminals a risk they hedge their actions against. Security theater would be telling people they can feel safe from personal injury because of said cameras. Someone else put it succinctly: Surveillance is not Security.
- lowmagnet 11y ago
  You don't have to tell someone that something exists for their safety for it to qualify as theater. I agree that criminals hedge a petty crime vs. getting caught. I now think of this as a sub-type of theater, one that both fakes security and deters incidents via placebo in equal fashion. You've changed my mind.
sveiss 11y ago
But unlike, say, extensive airport screening procedures, it's fairly easy to test if dummy CCTV cameras have an impact on crime rates. I don't know if such a study has been done, but if it works and impacts the intended endpoints, it isn't really theatre.
- lowmagnet 11y ago
  I agree with you that there may be a placebo effect. Perhaps I could call them part of the "set" on which the theater conducts its act.
sliverstorm 11y ago
More panopticon, maybe?
- lowmagnet 11y ago
  I assume in a panopticon the guards watch the prisoners. I don't think I can assume that about a dummy camera.
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    In the panopticon, you could be being watched at any moment. If you don't know which cameras are dummies...
archgoon 11y ago
No, 'Security Theater' is for when you perform a bunch of actions to make people 'feel' safer without actually making them safer. We accuse airport security screening of being security theater because it is unlikely to be effective against a targeted attack, the very failure mode that the policies were instituted to prevent. In this case, however, the intended targets are presumably crimes of opportunity, not exhaustively preplanned crimes. For these, the threat of "you're being watched, and if you do something, we'll see it" is probably sufficient. Also they provide low grade confrontation situations to be defused by someone pointing to the camera and saying "There's a camera monitoring this".
- lowmagnet 11y ago
  Putting up a dummy camera sure seems like one action taken to make people feel safer to me. It isn't the whole theater, just part of it. Public transportation of the terrestrial variety has very little theater, and very little security anyway. Even the cameras that do work probably exist for the playback, not for the live "surveillance". I just don't think they're watching closely enough.

I wouldn't quite say that. Dummy cameras give petty criminals a risk they hedge their actions against. Security theater would be telling people they can feel safe from personal injury because of said cameras. Someone else put it succinctly: Surveillance is not Security.

lowmagnet 11y ago
You don't have to tell someone that something exists for their safety for it to qualify as theater. I agree that criminals hedge a petty crime vs. getting caught. I now think of this as a sub-type of theater, one that both fakes security and deters incidents via placebo in equal fashion. You've changed my mind.

sveiss 11y ago

But unlike, say, extensive airport screening procedures, it's fairly easy to test if dummy CCTV cameras have an impact on crime rates. I don't know if such a study has been done, but if it works and impacts the intended endpoints, it isn't really theatre.

lowmagnet 11y ago
I agree with you that there may be a placebo effect. Perhaps I could call them part of the "set" on which the theater conducts its act.

sliverstorm 11y ago

More panopticon, maybe?

lowmagnet 11y ago
I assume in a panopticon the guards watch the prisoners. I don't think I can assume that about a dummy camera.
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  In the panopticon, you could be being watched at any moment. If you don't know which cameras are dummies...

archgoon 11y ago

No, 'Security Theater' is for when you perform a bunch of actions to make people 'feel' safer without actually making them safer. We accuse airport security screening of being security theater because it is unlikely to be effective against a targeted attack, the very failure mode that the policies were instituted to prevent. In this case, however, the intended targets are presumably crimes of opportunity, not exhaustively preplanned crimes. For these, the threat of "you're being watched, and if you do something, we'll see it" is probably sufficient. Also they provide low grade confrontation situations to be defused by someone pointing to the camera and saying "There's a camera monitoring this".

lowmagnet 11y ago
Putting up a dummy camera sure seems like one action taken to make people feel safer to me. It isn't the whole theater, just part of it. Public transportation of the terrestrial variety has very little theater, and very little security anyway. Even the cameras that do work probably exist for the playback, not for the live "surveillance". I just don't think they're watching closely enough.