CCTV cameras in the City of Cape Town play a negligible role in reducing crime, said\u00a0Professor Jane Duncan of the Media Policy and Democracy Project at a panel discussion held in Salt River on privacy in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Only about 5% of the 2,640 incidents captured on CCTV cameras in 2015 resulted in arrests, she said.<\/p>\n
There are currently 560 cameras operating throughout Cape Town<\/a>, according to the City of Cape Town.<\/p>\n Also speaking at the event, Dale McKinley, author of a document on privacy and surveillance in South Africa<\/a>, pointed to a number of areas where private information is collected about citizens, such as biometric data for social grants and CCTV surveillance systems.<\/p>\n He said most South Africans do\u00a0not realise how much personal information they were giving to the state and private companies.<\/p>\n \u201cVery few South Africans seem to understand or know what their rights are with regard to privacy issues,\u201d McKinley told the audience.<\/p>\n He criticised the proliferation of CCTV cameras in the City.<\/p>\n \u201cIt almost goes without saying that people would give up some rights to feel more secure,\u201d said Duncan, explaining the rationale for introducing cameras.<\/p>\n But the use of CCTV is being advanced by \u201canecdotal successes\u201d when\u00a0academic research paints\u00a0a different picture, said Duncan.<\/p>\n She said that in spaces such as parking lots CCTV cameras could be beneficial, but in \u201cmore public spaces\u201d CCTV cameras simply\u00a0\u201cdisplace crime\u201d.<\/p>\n Duncan said a study conducted by the police in Benoni in Gauteng found that when CCTV cameras were rolled out in the CBD, crime began to drop, but this was accompanied by an increase in crime in areas outside the CBD where there were no CCTV cameras.<\/p>\n In Cape Town, Duncan said cameras were heavily subsidised by local businesses in the CBD, but in townships such as Khayelitsha\u00a0CCTV cameras were mostly publicly funded because businesses did not have the same interest in funding the cameras.<\/p>\n Duncan said that in the UK, CCTV cameras had been used to track the movements of activists.<\/p>\n CCTV cameras can incorporate facial recognition as well as number plate recognition. But Duncan said the cameras had difficulty recognising black faces and the faces of young people. This could lead\u00a0to cases of mistaken identity where\u00a0a young black person might\u00a0be falsely accused of a crime.<\/p>\n Another concern raised at the event was that of biometric data. McKinley said biometric data could be falsified. If this happened, there was little recourse;\u00a0while pin numbers could be changed, fingerprints could not.<\/p>\n Some countries are therefore moving away from the use of biometric data, he said.<\/p>\n The Department of Home Affairs used biometric data \u201cto control people, to allow government tracking and surveillance on a level not otherwise thought possible\u201d said McKinley.<\/p>\n The main reason given for the roll out of biometrics and smart IDs in South Africa was to \u201cprotect \u2018national security\u2019\u201d, boosting the fight against terrorism and organised crime. Other justifications were to stop people from using multiple identities or fraudulent documents.<\/p>\n But, said McKinley, there is \u201cample evidence\u201d suggesting that poor management of existing records made it likely that digitised records would contain false or incomplete information.<\/p>\n\n
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