Gaze Ex Machina: Brief History of the Police CCTV Surveillance in Russia and Western Countries

Abstract

In the 1990s, both private and public sectors began to widely use new surveillance technologies around the world. Nowadays, almost every urban space is covered with various technical systems designed to provide its security. Surveillance cameras are perhaps the symbol of this policy. However, the ubiquity of is not something natural. This leads to the question: how historically did cameras populate city areas and serve the police force? In this article, based on the Everett Hughes’ idea of the changes in large technological systems, we show the evolution of police surveillance systems in Russia and foreign countries (primarily, Great Britain). Based on literature, sources, and field research materials we show that despite the rapid growth of video surveillance in European and American countries in the 1990s, its development occurred through specific stages. A typical sequence can be described as follows. A terrorist attack or a spectacular murder took place in country X, which caused a moral panic. The authorities responded by rapidly increasing the number of surveillance cameras and the spread of security infrastructures, believing that these technologies would solve the urban security issues. However, this dynamic is not universal and is not characteristic of the Russian case, where the development of video surveillance systems was not directly tied to specific events. The presented article does not aim to provide a detailed examination of the mechanics of the “leaps” through which surveillance systems passed but rather seeks to offer a general historical overview of the topic. By shedding light on the history of police surveillance, we hope to encourage researchers to delve more deeply into urban security systems as a whole.