‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Data Subjects: Media Representations of the ‘Surveilled’ in Three UK Newspapers’1

Rachel L. Finn and Michael McCahill Trilateral Research and Consulting, LLP and The University of Hull

Introduction

Drawing upon the preliminary findings of a broader ESRC-funded project on the ‘surveilled’, this chapter examines media representations of ‘data subjects’ in three UK newspapers over the last decade. There is a long tradition in social science of looking at the ways in which ‘news stories’ impact upon our understanding of ‘community’ and mark the boundaries of that community. Anderson (1991) has argued that historically the newspaper has acted as an important part of the dissemination of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation because it used vernacular language and represented a standard object with which everyone in the imagined community had a relationship. In the context of media reporting on crime, there has always been a clear division between those who truly belonged to this ‘imagined community’ and the ‘deviant outsiders’ who were ‘in the community but not of the community’ (to paraphrase Greer, 2004). For instance, during the Victorian period of industrialisation and urbanisation the so-called ‘criminal classes’ were a constant source of anxiety.

These processes continued during the twentieth century when media-inspired ‘moral panics’ over working class youth subcultures led to calls for more intensive policing and surveillance of these populations (Cohen, 1972). Media constructions of ‘marginalised’ populations as deserving of surveillance was further demonstrated by British press opposition to the continued use of ID cards after the Second World War, because they ‘put the law-abiding citizen in the same row of filing cabinets as the common thief with a record’ (Daily Express, March 12, 1945; cited in Agar, 2001: 110). This contrast that is often drawn in the British press between ‘law-abiding citizens’ and ‘deviants’ who are ‘deserving’ of surveillance has continued in recent press coverage on the introduction of ‘new surveillance’ technologies. Regional press coverage on the introduction of CCTV cameras for example found a rhetorical construction of a binary opposition between ‘us’, law-abiding citizens who supported the introduction of cameras, and ‘them’, ‘mindless thugs’, ‘vice girls’, and ‘rowdies’ who were to be its targets (McCahill, 2002). Similarly, media representations of ‘speed cameras’ involved a discursive strategy which suggested that CCTV cameras that monitor ‘them’ (e.g. thieves, robbers, muggers, etc.) are ‘good’, while speed cameras that monitor ‘us’ (motorists) are ‘bad’ (McCahill, 2003). Here, the news

1 The findings presented here are part of a broader ESRC-funded project entitled The Social Impact of 'New Surveillance' Technologies: An Ethnographic Study of the Surveilled, Reference Number: RES-062-23-0969.

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media works to ‘confer’ belonging in the community on to certain subjects of surveillance through these different representational strategies (Lawler, 2004).

In this chapter we will build on these findings by arguing that a strategy of ‘positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation’ (van Dijk, 1998: 61) has been the central discursive strategy in newspaper reporting on the introduction and use of ‘new surveillance’ technologies. However, critical reflections on the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary reveal a complexity in the representation of ‘Others’ in the media. In his research on media representations of child sex murders, Greer (2004) distinguishes between different categories of ‘Other’ in the press. ‘Stigmatised others’, such as asylum seekers, drug addicts and homosexuals, are ‘of society but not in it’ in that they are a product of social relations although they are ‘criminalised on the basis of some failure to conform to the “proper way of doing things”’ (Greer, 2004: 111, emphasis in original). In contrast, ‘absolute others’, like terrorists and child sex murderers, are ‘in society but not of it’, where they are recognised as existing within society however they are considered entirely outside accepted social relations (ibid., emphasis in original). Meyer (2007) argues that mainstream media representations of paedophiles distinguish this criminalised group as a special category of ‘Other’ through language that dehumanises them as ‘monsters’. Our research also recognises these multiple categories and finds that different linguistic strategies are used to signify the ‘we’ of the community and to differentiate specific categories of ‘Other’.

Whether or not media reporting on ‘new surveillance’ technologies is ‘critical’ therefore seems to depend not much so much on how surveillance is being conducted but on who is on the receiving end of surveillance monitoring. With this in mind our current analysis focuses on media representations of ‘data subjects’ rather than ‘new surveillance’ technologies. While drawing upon previous research which has demonstrated how media reporting in this area revolves around a binary construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (McCahill, 2003), our current analysis of ‘data subjects’ reveals that there are in fact multiple categories of ‘them’ and multiple categories of ‘us’ who are targeted by different technologies. In short, we found that ‘good’ data subjects (‘innocents’, ‘motorists’, ‘international travellers’) are described in ‘neutral’ or ‘inclusive’ language, offered advice on ‘how to avoid surveillance’ and are equipped with the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ capital required to ensure that their voices are heard in media discourse. In contrast, we found that ‘bad’ data subjects (‘criminals’, ‘yobs’, ‘prostitutes’) are described in ‘emotive’ language, are not offered any advice on ‘how to avoid surveillance’ and lack the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ capital required to ensure that their voices are heard in media discourse.

Methods

While media analysis involves a diverse range of theoretical approaches and complex methodological strategies, our approach simply aims to identify a number of recurring

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themes and issues in newspaper representations of those on the receiving end of ‘new surveillance’ technologies in the context of policing and criminal justice. This analysis is focussed on three UK newspapers in order to provide a survey of how ‘data subjects’ are represented in news publications. Articles on ‘new technologies’ of surveillance were searched in the following newspapers: The Times and Sunday Times (a national newspaper situated on the right of centre with a readership of 1.8 million), The Guardian and Observer (a left of centre newspaper with a readership of 1.25 million) and The Daily Echo (a local newspaper in Northern City with a circulation of 51,000). The two broadsheet newspapers and the more populist, local Daily Echo provide a range of political and social perspectives for this overview. It is of course widely acknowledged that the readership of newspapers has been in decline for a number of years now due to increased competition from ‘new’ media, especially the internet. However, traditional news organisations continue to provide an important source of information and increasingly use the ‘new media as a resource, tapping into the viral circulation of online content and weaving it into their news genres and production techniques’ (Chadwick and Stanyer, 2010: 4). This is particularly the case with images from CCTV footage and the amateur video-footage provided by the ‘citizen journalist’ (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010).

Table 1: Number of articles analysed in each newspaper by keyword

Key Word The Guardian The Times The Daily Echo Total

CCTV 227 209 308 744DNA Testing 273 291 59 623Speed cameras 99 331 111 541Biometrics 120 190 8 318Electronic Monitoring 63 65 27 155Drug Testing 33 43 17 93PNC Database 16 24 6 46ANPR 13 9 5 27

Total 2547

In each newspaper a keyword search for each surveillance technology was carried out in Lexis Nexis between the dates of Jan 1 2000 and Jan 1 2010. Our original keyword searches produced the following numbers of articles on each surveillance technology: CCTV – 8308; Electronic Tagging and Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) – 446; DNA Testing – 3419; Drug Testing – 819; Speed Cameras – 2159; Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) – 97; Biometrics – 1352; and the Police National Computer – 372. These articles were scanned to determine whether they were ‘peripheral’ news stories, or if they focussed on the surveillance technology in question and the subjects of that surveillance technology. Peripheral articles were excluded from the analysis if they mentioned the technology in relation to policing and security but were not focussed on that technology

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and/or if they did not discuss ‘the surveilled’. The exclusion of ‘peripheral’ stories left 2,547 articles in total. Table 1 indicates how these stories were spread across the various technologies and newspapers.

Table 2: Number of articles in each representational theme

Data Subjects Number of Articles Percentage

Generalised ‘Others’ 581 23%Dangerous ‘Others’ 518 20%Privileged Mobilities 461 18%Innocents on Databases 144 6%Citizens 13 5%Caught on Camera 430 17%Others 280 11%

Total 2547 100%

The following analysis is centred on the major themes running through these articles ‘in total’ and concentrates on the new technologies which carried the highest proportion of articles overall. While there was a clear reproduction of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ binary in these articles, this binary was separated into seven major representational themes, which are reproduced in Table 2. The remaining articles represented in Table 2 as Other, included articles which did not fall into any of the above themes or made up very small micro-themes, including articles on the drug testing of soldiers, biometric registration for employees to control building access, etc. ‘Bad’ Data Subjects

Generalised ‘Others’

Generalised ‘Others’ were discussed in all three papers as targets of surveillance. This construction of data subjects included those who were referred to as ‘offenders’, ‘criminals’, ‘suspects’, ‘burglars’, ‘thieves’ and ‘vandals’. This category of the surveilled was discussed in 23% of all articles in all three newspapers (581 articles) and was the largest representational theme. These targets of surveillance were often over-determined by their ‘offending behaviour’, as a review of newspaper headlines illustrates:

‘50 tagged offenders go on run’ (The Times, 4/3/00) ‘CCTV out to catch dog foulers in the act’ (The Guardian, 15/3/02) ‘Drug testing for offenders’ (The Daily Echo, 21/8/03) ‘Nine out of 10 young criminals convicted of new offences’ (The Guardian, 28/10/05) ‘Thief caught on CCTV stealing gifts jailed’ (The Daily Echo, 31/12/05) ‘Bow-legged burglar betrayed by gait’ (The Times, 15/4/08)

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Within the articles themselves, the targets of surveillance were specifically ‘Othered’ through linguistic strategies that separate ‘them’ from the rest of ‘us’. Many of these articles actively used an us/them binary through a reference to ‘them’, ‘they’ and ‘their’ drug problem or offending. An article on CCTV states that ‘if anyone commits an offence they are likely to get nicked, and that makes them think twice about offending’ (The Daily Echo, 9/9/00, emphasis added). Furthermore, talking CCTV cameras ‘warn yobs and litterbugs they will be punished if they do not stop misbehaving.’ (The Sunday Times 4/3/07, emphasis added). Some articles went further and explicitly contrast ‘them’ with ‘us’. An article on the ISSP scheme in 2000 quotes (then) Home Secretary Jack Straw as stating that the scheme involves that will help young offenders to turn away from crime and that the supervision ‘in the community’ means that ‘we'll make sure they tackle head on their offending behaviour’ (The Guardian, 25/9/00). Although it is unclear whether the ‘we’ Straw refers to is the ‘community’ or the government, the contrast draw between ‘we’ with ‘them’ illustrates the exclusion of generalised ‘Others’ from both the community and the state, where the expansion of the community to overlap with the state is the crux of Anderson’s (1991) argument. Furthermore, the reiterative representation of generalised ‘Others’ as ‘they’ or ‘them’ performatively excludes these targets of surveillance from the imagined community of the newspaper readership through language which separates ‘them’ from ‘us’.

Dangerous ‘Others’

Dangerous ‘Others’ were represented as targets of surveillance in 20% of articles in all three newspapers (518 articles) and this group was heavily represented in articles on DNA testing and the Police National Computer. In total, dangerous ‘Others’ made up 42% of the articles on DNA testing (275 articles) and 65% of the articles on the PNC (24 of 37 articles). There was also some overlap in relation to Electronic Monitoring and CCTV surveillance, where 20% of articles on Electronic Monitoring (32 articles) and 25% of articles on CCTV (182 articles) focussed on dangerous ‘Others’. This group of ‘the surveilled’ includes those defined as ‘sex offenders’, ‘terrorists’, ‘murderers’, ‘paedophiles’, ‘rapists’ and ‘attackers’. These dangerous ‘Others’ were further differentiated from ‘us’ through particular discursive strategies. Again, a review of article headlines illustrates the representations of these targets of surveillance, where this group of dangerous ‘Others’ was defined in proximity to violence and through the use of emotive language:

'“Dracula” sex fiend hits sixth victim’ (The Observer, 9/7/00) ‘“Spy in the sky” systems to track sex offenders’ (The Times, 5/7/04) ‘Rapist caught after 14 years’ (The Times, 24/1/06) ‘CCTV shows would-be bombers trying to blow themselves up' (The Times, 17/1/07) ‘Killer returns to the bar to spend victim's cash’ (The Daily Echo, 18/9/07) ‘Ipswich murder trial: DNA matches, CCTV film and a pattern of sightings - the case against Wright’ (The Guardian, 17/1/08)

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In addition to behaviourally defining the subjects of surveillance as ‘rapists’, ‘killers’ and ‘sex offenders’ within the article headlines, emotive language also appears in the text. The articles above further described subjects of surveillance as ‘child killers’, ‘paedophiles’, ‘masked men’ who were ‘finally caught by DNA evidence’, ‘terrorists’, ‘dangerous sexual predators’, ‘attackers’, ‘assailants’ and ‘evil monster[s]’. This functions similarly to the emotive language identified by Meyer to describe sex attackers as ‘Other’, and specifically to construct them as ‘persons excluded from the category of humanity’ (2007: 70). Persons discussed in these articles are often referred to by name and the crimes that the person is accused of are often detailed. For example, ‘child killer’ Ian Huntley featured in all but one article on the Police National Computer in The Daily Echo. Significantly, because of British crime reporting laws, these articles often discuss convictions and evidence that emerges in trials, which allows the papers to utilise an assumption of guilt as well as name the defendant.

Certain linguistic and discursive strategies were also used to mark this group of dangerous ‘Others’. This is exemplified by a particular theme running through the articles on DNA testing in the national press - the process of weeding out the ‘criminals’ among ‘us’ by identifying criminals who were masquerading as ‘us’ through DNA testing. The following article exemplifies this theme:

‘Focus: Guilty genes: They think they got away with it. But 600 killers face justice: Time may be running out for murderers in the community thanks to DNA evidence’ (The Observer, 25/2/01)They have lived as model citizens. Surrounded by family and friends, many have brought up children and appeared every inch the loving grandfather, wife or husband. As time has passed, they have relaxed a little and begun to believe they are untouchable. There are up to 600 such people living freely in Britain today, The Observer can reveal. He or she could be a work colleague, a neighbour, the teacher of your children or even your closest friend. All share a common secret which they hope to take to their graves: they are murderers. But the day they have dreaded may be close at hand.

In articles within this theme, the ‘rapist’, ‘killer’ or ‘attackers’ masquerade as ‘us’, and these articles suggest that DNA technology is the only way in which to be certain that ‘a model citizen’ is not a dangerous ‘Other’. Articles about the July 7th ‘bombers’ on CCTV footage make use of a similar strategy where a headline in The Guardian states, ‘A casual shopper in Boots - then he set off to kill: Chilling new photo of bus bomber released’ (2/10/05). Within these articles surveillance technologies act as ‘tools’ to reveal that ‘they’ are among ‘us’.

‘Good’ Data Subjects

Unlike articles which ‘Othered’ ‘bad’ data subjects, the construction of ‘good’ data subjects relies upon inclusive and neutral language. These groups of surveilled were described in terms which highlighted their privileged mobility as ‘drivers’ or ‘holiday makers’, their lack of criminal behaviour as in being declared ‘innocent’ or their position as ‘citizens’. This

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linguistic strategy was often used alongside a critique of surveillance practices and highlights the potential misuse of government powers of surveillance. Overall, this representation of ‘the surveilled’ accounted for 29% of all articles in all three newspapers. However, this was split into three major representational themes. The first theme is comprised of those with ‘privileged mobilities’, where the articles construct speed cameras as threatening the mobility of middle class drivers or construct biometrics as enabling a continuation of privileged mobility for airline passengers. The second theme includes the population of the DNA database with subjects defined and described as ‘innocent’. The third theme involves the use of biometric ID cards to access citizenship privileges.

Privileged mobilities

In the ‘privileged mobilities’ news theme, ‘data subjects’ are defined in neutral terms such as ‘drivers’, ‘motorists’ and ‘travellers’. In total, 18% of all articles on ‘the surveilled’ in all three newspapers focus on those with privileged mobilities. This includes 70% of articles on speed cameras (378 articles) and 25% of articles on biometrics (63 articles). Articles within this theme primarily focussed on ‘drivers’ being caught by speed cameras or biometric passports that enable individuals to travel internationally. Although some articles in all three of the papers referred to those who drive above the speed limit as ‘offenders’, this represented a very small proportion of articles. Even those articles which did describe these data subjects as ‘offenders’ tempered this with further, and often more frequent, mention of ‘drivers’ and ‘motorists’. Examples include an article in The Daily Echo which stated that ‘police used the new...cameras to clampdown on motorists - at times catching one speeder-a-minute’ (25/2/00, emphasis added) and an article in The Times entitled ‘Police plan speed blitz to catch 3m drivers a year’ (The Sunday Times, 21/6/01, emphasis added). Discussions around the introduction of biometric passports for ‘British citizens’ and its impact on international travel also use neutral language to describe the subjects of surveillance. Articles within this stream date back from 2001 and discuss the use of biometrics, principally iris scanning systems, for ‘passengers’ and ‘travellers’ beginning with ‘North Americans who frequently use British Airways or Virgin’ to by-pass check-in queues (The Guardian, 1/8/01). A 2002 article in The Times invites ‘frequent fliers’ to ‘Jet away in the blink of an eye’ using iris scanning (19/1/02). Articles in this theme also discuss the ramifications of the delay in introducing biometric passports that will mean that a specific subset of British travellers to the USA for a particular amount of time will have to apply for visas at significant cost and inconvenience. Within this theme, biometrics provides a way for persons with already high mobility to maintain their high mobility status within a framework of increasing scrutiny and inconvenience for the masses.

Innocents on the database

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Another significant theme emerging from news articles was the storage of the DNA of ‘those arrested but not charged or convicted of crimes’ on the DNA database. Here, the individuals populating the DNA database are largely described in language that is neutral and/or discusses the targets of this database surveillance as ‘innocent’. This representational theme made up 6% of the articles in all three newspapers (144 articles), with 94% of these articles mentioning ‘innocents’ in relation to the government population of the DNA database (135 articles).2 This debate presents a clear binary within articles, where the rights of ‘innocent people’ are pitted against ‘murderers’, ‘rapists’ and other violent criminals ‘caught’ by DNA testing. In both national newspapers, articles within this theme change in tone from 2000/2001 through to 2009. While there are feature pieces in both The Times and The Guardian that question the police storage of DNA information on individuals throughout the decade, by 2006 the debate has erupted such that the following headlines in news articles begin to appear:

‘24,000 youngsters on police DNA database’ (The Guardian, 22/1/06) ‘We are all suspects now’ (The Times, 3/11/06) ‘DNA test “puts innocent at risk”’ (The Times, 24/3/08) ‘Police to destroy DNA profiles of 800,000 innocent people’ (The Guardian, 3/5/09) ‘From schoolboy squabble to DNA database in one easy step - if you're black’ (The Times, 24/11/09)

These articles discuss the storage of DNA information on ‘youngsters’, ‘children under 10’, ‘innocent citizens’, ‘Britons’ and ‘law abiding citizens’. In a linguistic twist, 27 articles that critique the DNA database in The Times and The Sunday Times refer to the storage of DNA of ‘unconvicted people’ (13/9/02), ‘cleared suspects’ (26/5/06), and ‘those charged but not convicted of crimes’ (4/3/08) as well as ‘innocents’ (8/12/08) and ‘innocent people’ (17/12/06). The government attempts to thwart this line of discourse through for example, the ACPO citing statistics that 8500 ‘people who were found innocent’ were later linked to crimes including 114 murders and 116 rapes (The Guardian, 18/9/08, among others).

Verifying Citizenship

Another key group of ‘the surveilled’ to emerge in newspaper articles were ‘citizens’ whose identities could be verified through national identity cards or passports that were secured with biometric technology. In fact, the principal way that biometric surveillance technologies like iris scanning, facial recognition and fingerprint scanning were discussed in newspaper articles was in relation to the identity card debate and verifying British citizenship or legal residence (52% of 255 articles on biometrics). In total, 5% of articles in all three newspapers focussed on using biometric ID cards to verify citizenship. Within these

2 Other articles about ‘innocents’ mentioned ‘innocent drivers’ having their journey’s tracked by Automatic Number Plate Recognition Systems or people who were convicted of minor crimes many years ago having their details stored on the Police National Computer. However, this discussion is confined to the representation of ‘innocents’ on the DNA database because of the concentration of articles on DNA testing within this theme.

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articles there was a clear construction of ‘the surveilled’ as ‘citizens’, ‘Britons’ and ‘foreign residents’ and often neutral language like ‘a person’ or ‘an individual’ was used to discuss those whose data would be collected. Before 2004, articles in all three newspapers offered a balanced view of biometrics on ID cards with a clear focus on the security of identity cards. A 2002 article in The Times entitled ‘Blunkett pushes benefits of compulsory ID cards’ within this section quoted government sources stating that the ‘hi-tech’ cards would carry ‘an individual’s personal details’ and enable ‘people’ to ‘identify themselves’ and prove an ‘entitlement’ to services (6/2/02). In these articles, the problems that would be experienced by ‘Others’ like ‘illegal workers’, ‘fraudsters’ and ‘criminals’ were used to balance the potential benefits for ‘citizens’, ‘residents’, ‘Britons’ and ‘us’.

In each of these three themes, articles use particular linguistic strategies to construct these ‘good’ subjects of surveillance as ‘us’. For example, articles often construct those with privileged mobilities as ‘us’, while articles that do mention ‘them’ are often arguing that the police should spend more time catching ‘real criminals’ like burglars and drink drivers rather than ‘law abiding citizens’. A feature piece in The Times states that those who ‘dread’ cameras are ‘law abiding motorists’ who ‘slip’ over the speed limit because they are on an unfamiliar road, and it continues by asserting that ‘most of us’ drive (24/6/04, emphasis added). These ‘law abiding drivers’ are contrasted to ‘real criminals’ (i.e. ‘them’) in a number of articles, where an article in The Times, for example, states that police ‘are failing to catch drunk and careless drivers but are issuing a record number of speed camera fines’ to ‘motorists’ (1/5/04). In relation to new visa requirements for the USA, an article in The Guardian noted that travelling to the US will be ‘a trial for most of us’ (26/2/04, emphasis added). Furthermore, articles begin to directly address readers, for example by stating that the collection of DNA undermines the principle that ‘we are innocent until proven guilty’ (The Times, 15/6/07, emphasis added) or through comments that ‘if you happen to have been in the hands of the police then your DNA is on permanent record’ as stated by a senior judge (The Times, 11/9/07, emphasis added). Similarly, an article on biometric identity cards discusses how a ‘terrorist’ who looks reasonably like ‘you’ and who cloned ‘your’ passport could travel unimpeded (The Guardian 17/11/06), while The Times noted that ‘our’ security could be in danger (6/8/08). Here, unlike ‘Others’ who are excluded from the community through language like ‘they’ or dehumanised through words like ‘monster’, these ‘good’ data subjects are included in the community in these articles through performatives such as referring to ‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’ or directly addressing readers as ‘you’ or ‘your’.

Within this theme of ‘good’ data subjects, readers are also encouraged to consider the negative social consequences of these surveillance systems. The consequences of being ‘trapped’ by speed camera surveillance are highlighted in many articles, where ‘drivers’ will experience a 12 month driving ban if they ‘tot up’ 12 points on their license, which could lead to loss of income or being fired from a job. Articles on DNA storage also express concern ‘that it will be impossible for anyone to refuse to give DNA samples to police in the

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future’ (The Times, 9/7/04). A particular micro-theme looks at the disproportionately large numbers of black and ethnic minority people whose details are stored on the DNA database and reflect on whether this is a reflection of ‘crime’ or an indication of ‘who the police think commits crimes’ (New Scientist, quoted in The Times, 12/4/05). For example, ‘black men’ in London have been ‘forced’ to submit DNA samples as was the case for in the hunt for a serial rapist (The Guardian, 16/6/04; The Times, 9/7/04). This theme of social consequences particularly gathers pace as the case about the storage of DNA information on ‘innocent people’ is heard before the European Court of Human Rights, which subsequently ruled this storage of information illegal. Finally, after 2004, when 66% of articles on biometric identity cards began to focus on the flaws associated with biometric identity cards or the potential insecurity of data, newspapers discussed the categories of persons who might not benefit from this surveillance technology including but not exclusively, ‘the disabled’, ‘bald men’, ‘pensioners’, ‘those with dark complexions’, those who have ‘weepy eyes’, those who have done heavy manual labour and the ‘homeless’.

Caught on camera

The ‘caught on camera’ theme, which includes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ data subjects, accounts for 17% of all articles in all three newspapers (430 articles). This theme discusses the ‘synoptic’ display of ‘offenders’ in The Daily Echo’s ‘Caught on Camera’ campaign (278 articles), ‘victims’ of crime (113 articles) and ‘police officers’ in stories of alleged police brutality (39 articles).3 Here, images of ‘the few’ who are captured on film are reproduced or discussed for ‘the many’ who are reading the newspapers (Mathiesen, 1997). The Daily Echo’s ‘Caught on Camera’ campaign (2000-2009) includes 278 separate photos from CCTV footage. A trawl through the photos included in the campaign shows that young working class men, primarily in working class sub-cultural attire like ‘hoodies’ ‘tracksuits’ and/or baseball caps, are the ‘face’ of crimes caught on CCTV. Specifically, the campaign includes 193 photos of white men in casual or sub-cultural attire under 40 who were wanted for shop theft or criminal damage (69% of the total). The stated purpose of the original 2000 campaign was to help police and shop owners deal with ‘retail crime’. However, by November 2001, pictures related to ‘assault’ began to appear alongside photos of ‘shoplifters’, and the re-launch of the campaign in 2008 sought information on a ‘range of offences’ including ‘theft, burglary, robbery and assault’ (11/8/08). Previous studies have noted that these type of campaigns attempt to construct ‘active citizens’ who help the police with enquiries (Norris and Armstrong, 1999; McCahill, 2002). However, updates to these ‘Caught on Camera’ cases on the website reveal that many people have been arrested, identified or turned themselves in

3 These figures include some double counting, where for example, articles that synoptically displayed images of ‘thieves’ caught on CCTV were counted in the generalised ‘Others’ section as well as the Caught on Camera section. However, the 278 ‘Caught on Camera’ images includes 50 images within articles that did not mention CCTV and therefore were not returned or ‘counted’ in the CCTV keyword search. Secondly, articles that represent victims of police brutality and police themselves were counted within the ‘victim’ totals as well as the ‘police’ totals.

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as a result of being ‘Caught on Camera’ for petty offences. Being featured in the ‘Caught on Camera’ campaign necessarily means that the person has not been identified by police, thus suggesting that they are not a ‘prolific offender’ of the type normally ‘known’ in local police circles. In fact, 88 of the 123 individual cases published in The Daily Echo online and in print after August 2008 involved shop theft and other petty theft incidents, which suggest working class identities. These incidents included thefts from large supermarket chains, chemists and discount clothing chains (£25 worth of clothing in one instance) as well as ‘theft of confectionary’ from a newsagent and taking ‘£200 from a cash machine after it was left by a previous user’. These working class young people may use sub-cultural attire like ‘hoodies’ and baseball caps to attempt to evade surveillance, but these attempts are thwarted by the synoptic display of their images in local newspapers among peers who may ‘turn them in’ or encourage them to ‘turn themselves in’.

In addition to the perpetrators of crime being captured and/or displayed on CCTV, articles that discussed or reproduced synoptic displays of ‘victims’ revealed distinctions in how different types of victims were represented. CCTV articles about ‘victims’ included a small but significant stream of articles that discussed footage of the ‘last known movements’ of murder or abduction victims and missing persons to ‘jog memories’ or footage from murder victims’ last known movements being shown in court. This included footage of Damilola Taylor ‘skipping’ on his way home from school (The Times, 1/2/02), and ‘11 year old schoolboy’ Rhys Jones (The Guardian, 10/10/08). Other ‘victims’ appear in ‘disjointed footage’ like ‘missing teenager’ Milly Dowler, ‘21 year-old’ Rachel Moran, ‘missing girls’ ‘Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells’, ‘teenager Luke Durbin’, ‘model’ Sally Ann Bowman and ‘typical teenager’ Jeshma Raithatha. Other examples include images of ‘mothers’ who were murder victims or caught up in the 21/7 attempted bombing in the Underground. These include five separate women who were described as ‘mother-of-one’ or ‘young mother’. However, victims who worked as prostitutes are often represented in contradictory ways as both ‘prostitutes’ and ‘victims’. For example, an article in The Daily Echo on 28/6/06 refers to one such victim as a ‘mother’ in the title, ‘Posters to help police in hunt for mother's brutal killer’, but describes her as a ‘murdered prostitute’ immediately afterwards in the first line of the article. A similar article in The Sunday Times (17/12/06) discussing footage of the ‘last known images’ of one of the Ipswich murder victims illustrates a similar ambiguity. It refers to the woman as ‘one of the five prostitutes murdered in Suffolk’ then describes the ‘haunting images of... [the] 24 year old’. It continues by stating that the footage ‘shows her preening herself and preparing for the evening ahead as a street walker’. Greer notes that certain categories of ‘idealised’ victims make better ‘press conference material’ than others (2004: 114), and that middle class victims get more, and more favourable, attention than working class victims. In this theme, newspapers confer specific types of identities on specific types of victims, with some victims being constructed as ‘idealised victims’ and represented as ‘typical teenagers’ and ‘mothers’, while less ‘idealised’ categories of victim are represented differently, principally here as ‘prostitutes’.

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Other synoptic displays include the ‘powerful’ in particular ‘police officers’, being captured on CCTV. This reversal of ‘hierarchies of surveillance’ often involves the ‘display’ of police officers in compromising situations, such as accusations of police brutality (McCahill, 2003). Indeed, a number of newspaper articles have pointed out that police officers have come under increased scrutiny as a result of advances in surveillance technology, including police officers being required to give DNA samples for the national DNA database to rule them out of crime scene investigations (The Times, 5/6/00), and the introduction of CCTV into police kitchens (The Guardian, 20/2/09) and custody suites (The Times, 15/4/08). However, unlike other perpetrators or suspects of assault who are described as ‘attackers’, police who are linked with assaults are generally described in ways which continue to highlight their professional and powerful status as ‘police officers’. Articles comprising accusations of ‘police brutality’ are centred around four main incidents. The death of Christopher Adler in the police custody suite in Hull, the arrest of Delbo King in Manchester, the arrest of Toni Comers in Sheffield and the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London. Despite these accusations of ‘brutality’ during arrest or ‘wrongful death’, the police officers involved in the incidents continue to be referred to as ‘officers’, ‘police’, ‘PCs’ and by their titles like ‘Sergeant’:

Police constables Neil Blakey and Nigel Dawson carried Mr Alder unconscious into the station's custody suite [...] Mr Blakey spent two minutes taking off his handcuffs. Shortly afterwards, PC Mark Ellerington left the room (The Daily Echo, 16/4/02).

An investigation is under way after a police officer was captured on closed-circuit television repeatedly kicking a black man as he was held down on a pavement by other officers. [...] The 20-minute footage appears to show an officer assaulting Delbo King (The Guardian, 21/3/04).

CCTV footage near a Sheffield nightclub showed an officer appearing to beat a female suspect during an arrest. [...] One officer, named as PC Anthony Mulhall, was seen striking Ms Comer five or six times after claims that she had grabbed him by the genitals (The Times, 8/3/07).4

The police officers filmed striking Ian Tomlinson are also referred to as ‘officers’, however these articles are far more likely to describe Tomlinson as being ‘attacked by a police officer’ (The Guardian, 7/8/09) than the careful way in which Delbo King and Toni Combers ‘appear’ to be beaten by ‘officers’. This suggests a possible shift in the news frame, where police become targets of news media ‘Othering’ (Coleman and McCahill, 2011), however as discussed in more detail below, police officers’ access to different forms of ‘capital’ often tempers these occasional shifts in media representation.

4 A commentary piece in The Guardian offers a rare alternative representation of those involved in Toni Comers arrest, describing ‘a slight black woman surrounded by four burly men and a police dog’ (13/9/07).

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Media, Capital and Resistance

News reporting is said to be shaped by the organisational pressures of routine news production which structure the relationship with ‘sources’ and leads to ascendancy being given to the ‘primary definers’ (Hall et al., 1978). Previous research on news reporting on CCTV in the local press, for example, found that 71 per cent of voices cited in 186 CCTV stories belonged to those who were promoting the system (i.e. members of the Chamber of Trade, police and councillors) (McCahill, 2002). However, other empirical studies on crime news production have revealed ‘that there is more diversity, negotiation, and contingency’ involved in the process of news production, particularly in relation to the ‘news sources’ which now include many groups who are critical of the establishment and criminal justice institutions (see Reiner, 2007). Similarly, as we will see in this chapter, news ‘sources’ now include the representatives motoring organisations and individual motorists who are highly critical of police use of speed cameras. However, these processes remain very uneven and ‘culturally and structurally loaded’ (Reiner, 2007: 326), because while the majority of the ‘surveilled’ in our sample of newspapers remain passive and silent in these stories, the ‘critical’ voices heard in relation to ‘new surveillance’ technologies come from ‘respectable citizens’ with certain types of ‘social’ and ‘cultural capital’ that positions them as middle class. Here, we utilise Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of ‘forms of capital’ to demonstrate that social, cultural and economic capital assist ‘good’ data subjects to resist or critique surveillance measures. Bourdieu defines ‘social capital’ as social networks, connections and relationships and ‘cultural capital’ as education, job titles and ‘taste’5. He goes on to suggest that these ‘forms of capital’ enable individuals to successfully negotiate different ‘fields’, such as news media. Thus, middle class ‘voices’ with ‘forms of capital’ are authorized to speak within a media ‘field’ that recognises them as comprising a ‘fictionalised “we”’ (Lawler, 2004) that is threaded through their respectable jobs, economic capital, access to journalists and ability to form lobbying groups.

Those who remained ‘passive’ and ‘silent’ were largely comprised of different categories of ‘bad’ data subjects. Our analysis did not find any examples of dangerous ‘Others’ directly representing themselves in newspaper articles or letters to the editor. Generalised ‘Others’ did occasionally represent themselves, often providing a more nuanced account of the experience of surveillance. In relation to CCTV, this principally occurred through people’s experience of ‘talking’ CCTV cameras:

‘The camera has shouted at me and I didn't like it,’ said Paul Everett, a 17-year-old shop assistant. ‘All I was doing was hanging around with my mates and it told us to move along’ (quoted in The Guardian, 5/4/07)

5 On ‘taste’ in particular, see Bourdieu 1984.

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In The Daily Echo, ‘young offenders’ were more likely to represent themselves than in other newspapers, particularly with reference to the Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme (ISSP) scheme, where Northern City was a pilot area. The change in young people’s lives as a result of ‘bringing order’ often included personal stories of ‘young tearaways’ who had changed their ways.

‘Jamie thought he was heading for jail now he's working and learning’ (The Daily Echo 9/4/04) ‘Mother: “He [Martin] has changed 100 per cent”’ (The Daily Echo, 28/12/04)

Some of these articles also recognised the ambivalent nature of electronic monitoring schemes where one person subject to the scheme described it as ‘a strange kind of freedom’ (The Guardian, 22/11/00). However, while the voices of young people such as ‘Jamie’ and ‘Martin’ appear in these articles, this self representation is primarily used to support the theme of surveillance controlling the behaviour of these ‘offenders’. Those who were invited to represent themselves were not able to set the terms of the debate within the articles in which they featured, nor were there examples of letters to the editor written by ‘offenders’ or ‘offenders’ organising themselves to support or resist surveillance measures. This indicates a particular lack of social or cultural ‘capital’ useful in the journalistic field where young people, despite being enabled to represent themselves, are unable to resist characterisation of themselves in relation to their offending behaviour and are not enabled to critique the surveillance programmes themselves.

In contrast to newspaper reporting on ‘bad’ data subjects, articles on ‘good’ data subjects (‘law abiding motorists’ ‘passengers’ and ‘drivers’) shows how the latter can use their social and cultural ‘capital’ to resist surveillance in various ways. This included having access to journalists, participating in the debate about surveillance through letter writing and the formation of lobbying groups and having economic capital to purchase or enable resistance measures. Almost 40% of the articles on speed cameras within The Daily Echo and 26% of articles on speed cameras in The Times were devoted to ‘the surveilled’ representing themselves, while this represented only 10% of The Guardian’s coverage of speed cameras. There was also a small micro-theme of articles within citizens’ biometrics where ‘the surveilled’ also represented themselves. Almost all of the articles within this stream featured quotes or letters from persons in relatively privileged social locations, indicating that those who are already in privileged locations have the ‘cultural and social capital’ to influence the terms of the debate.

Articles which contain quotes from the subjects of speed camera surveillance often give information about the privileged social location of the ‘driver’ in order to highlight their ‘everyman’ status. An article on the 1st September 2002 in The Times serves as a concise example. It quotes Captain Gatso, the head of the lobbying group, Motorists Against Detection, that was formed by drivers to protest against speed cameras, and describes him

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as a ‘Londoner in his mid-30s with a respectable job’. The article goes on to quote a ‘computer salesman’, a 55 year-old ‘sales manager’ who has been caught twice in clear conditions, a 42 year-old ‘mechanical engineer’ who was caught ‘rushing his son to hospital’, a 28 year-old web designer and a 42 year-old ‘London executive’. All of the people represented in this article were of reasonably privileged locations, all were adult males and all of the names suggested settled British identities. The article concludes by saying that the people behind this campaign argue that they are ‘like you and me’, and are ‘law abiding citizens’. While these people’s employment information appears to be highlighted in order to illustrate their status as ‘respectable’ (in relation to ‘real criminals’), it also indicates that those with privileged social locations and particular types of ‘social capital’ have more access to journalists and news media organisations that would enable them to influence the terms of the debate. These ‘good’ data subjects also strengthen this ‘voice’ through the formation of organisations, websites and chat rooms specifically oriented to that side of the debate, for example, Motorists Against Detection, the Association of British Drivers and Safe Speed. Representatives from these organisations are often featured in newspaper articles, particularly national newspapers.

‘Good’ data subjects make further use of ‘cultural capital’ through letter writing to newspapers. A small portion of letters from ‘drivers’ in relation to speed cameras referred to speeding drivers as ‘offenders’, while a larger proportion of letters discussed drivers as normally ‘law abiding’ who had been ‘tricked’ by ‘bad’ cameras. These letters often included information about negative social consequences and emotions as a result of getting ‘caught on camera’. A letter in The Times from the 10 June 2007 contains many of the recurring features of these letters. It argues that there is no consideration of a ‘drivers’ previous record or history and that this will create a ‘nation of very angry people’ who ‘believe they are living in a police state’. The writer felt that ‘persistent criminals’ are given second chances but those with ‘minor traffic offences’ are not. In relation to biometrics, Times readers in particular also wrote letters to the editor that ‘ranted’ about situations in which biometric scanners did not work well and passengers had to ‘give up’ (The Times, 7/10/07 and 16/2/08). A woman from London said that the fingerprinting procedure at the US border did not hold them up, but it did make her feel like a ‘criminal’ (The Times, 3/10/04). These letters explicitly differentiate middle class data subjects who have been caught by ‘bad’ surveillance technologies from ‘criminals’ who should be monitored.

These privileged targets of surveillance can also use economic capital to evade surveillance and are actively encouraged to do so with newspapers providing advice or discussions on how ‘drivers’ can ‘beat’ speed cameras legally. The only other context in which articles in these newspapers offered advice to ‘the surveilled’ on how to avoid surveillance was in relation to the introduction of biometric passports to enable ‘Britons’ to travel to the US without a visa. Otherwise, newspapers did not offer advice on how to resist surveillance in respect of any other technology. For instance, the following articles discussed how ‘motorists’ could use economic capital to ‘buy’ license points; purchase counter surveillance

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devices like GPS locators that include the locations of speed cameras; purchase speed camera insurance plans; register at false addresses; and pay for legal advice on how to use ‘loopholes’ in the law to avoid a fine:

‘Students sell car licence points’ (The Sunday Times, 2/9/01)‘New Micro Roadpilot - The Essential Driving Aid’ (The Daily Echo, 1/8/03)‘Lost Your Licence But Need To Drive? Try Chaufferplan’ (The Daily Echo, 31/1/03)‘Drivers use address scam to cheat speed cameras’ (The Guardian, 9/4/06)‘Drivers challenge spy camera law’ (The Guardian, 24/9/06).

Finally, in relation to synoptic displays of surveillance, a number of articles illustrate that police officers have means of resisting surveillance or discarding evidence through a ‘social capital’ that gives them access to CCTV materials and resistance strategies. As a result, often when ‘officers’ appear on CCTV, the footage is lost, goes missing or turns out ‘blank’, as reported in The Guardian:

‘Policeman stole video tape to protect two colleagues’ (25/11/01)‘After the bombs: Row over “blank” CCTV tapes at station’ (23/8/05) ‘CCTV footage goes missing after man dies in police station's “cage”’ (22/8/09)

In relation to the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting a Times article states that ‘The first officers on the scene after Mr de Menezes was shot took away all CCTV tapes but allegedly found them blank.’ Despite the fact ‘tube workers [told] investigators [...] that three out of the four cameras covering the platform were definitely working’ (25/8/05). Similarly, articles after the G20 protests in London have noticed that ‘officers’ have been ‘disguising their identity’ by not displaying their collar numbers during the policing of protests (The Observer, 19/4/09). Some articles have argued alongside social theorists that the proliferation of CCTV cameras and mobile phone cameras has ‘Turned the Tables on the Big Brother State’ (The Times, 16/4/09). However, the continued representation of ‘police officers’ as ‘PCs’, ‘officers’ and ‘detectives’ maintains a discourse of respect and privilege that is inaccessible to ‘attackers’ and ‘assailants’ who are members of the public. ‘Officers’ who are synoptically displayed in these articles as a result of accusations of assault have all been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, while those displayed as part of the ‘Caught on Camera’ campaign have often been arrested or forced to turned themselves in. This illustrates that the outcomes of synoptic display are contingent on pre-existing social relations like privilege and various forms of capital, and that the ‘synoptic’ display of the powerful engaging in misbehaviour may not ‘turn the tables’ in the way that The Times suggests.

Conclusion

As Thomas Mathiesen (1997) has pointed out, with the development of the mass media the Benthamite project of the panopticon (where the few see the many) has been accompanied by the synopticon, where the many observe the few. For many writers these developments

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have had a significant democratising impact on surveillance processes by allowing ‘bottom-up’ scrutiny of the ‘powerful’ (Meyrowitz, 1985). However, as we have argued in this chapter, synoptic representations of crime and surveillance continues to reinforce asymmetrical power relations. In short, ‘good’ data subjects who find themselves on the receiving end of surveillance monitoring are presented in ways which foreground their privileged locations as ‘motorists’, ‘citizens’ or ‘international travellers’, while ‘bad’ data subjects, who are often working class, are represented as ‘criminals’, ‘yobs’ and ‘prostitutes’. These pre-existing social relations are also made transparent in relation to ‘victims’, where middle class ‘victims’ are idealised in contrast to the marginalisation of some working class victims.

Furthermore, while new media may be characterised by increased democratisation and an undermining of traditional hierarchies, this piece suggests that in relation to traditional media outlets such as newspapers, ‘primary definers’ continue to have prominence in relation to defining appropriate targets of criminal justice initiatives (Hall et al., 1978). This chapter demonstrates that the ability to challenge these media representations of the targets of surveillance is also shaped by existing power relations. As Lawler (2004) notes, the authority to speak must be distinguished from the ability to speak, whereby certain classed categories of people are recognised within the media as having more authority to define the terms of surveillance debates. Thus while ‘bad’ subjects (‘deviants’ and ‘outcasts’) have become ‘mute witnesses’ whose faces are often seen, but whose voices are very rarely heard in media discourse on surveillance (Jermyn 2003: 176), ‘good’ data subjects use their ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ capital to influence the debate by arguing that ‘new surveillance’ technologies should be directed at ‘them’ and not at ‘us’.

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