He paradox of caught-in-the-act surveillance scenes: Dilemmas of police video surveillance in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This article reports some of the issues raised by field research conducted in the official video surveillance system in public spaces that is operated by the Military Police on behalf of the Rio de Janeiro State Department of Public Security. The research was conducted at the Command and Control Center (CCC), where the images from all the cameras in the police battalions are brought together and at the police batallion at Copacabana (19th BPM), the first area at the city where surveillance cameras were installed. This system is treated as a sociotechnical network, formed by the interaction of individuals and technological elements, further increasing the importance of an observation from two different levels of this network. Special attention is drawn on what I call "the paradox of the caught in-the-act surveillance scenes", dilemmas emerged around the conflict between the work of surveillance and the aesthetics of surveillance, and also on a main videosurveillance problem: (human and/or technical) overdetermination. © The author(s), 2012.