This is my submission to Galway City Council’s recent public consultation on CCTV in Galway city.
UPDATE 21/07/26: Galway City Council today posted on Instagram about new installations of CCTV/audio alert* equipment around Galway less than 2 weeks since the public consultation ended. The post was then deleted after I’d questioned this process. Screenshot below:
I have today written to the environment office of Galway City Council with the following:
“I would like to know what the point of the public consultation on CCTV was when the Council has announced new CCTV installations in the city today on Instagram, less than 2 weeks after the submission deadline? Were submissions even read? Were they discussed? Is there a record of the discussions? Were councillors involved? Is there a procurement process for CCTV providers, and how long does procurement usually take on other projects?
It looks to me like this was a paper-pushing exercise where public feedback was simply to fill in some boxes on decisions that had already been made, and that is not how local democracy is supposed to work.”
I have been assured that this “will be forwarded to the relevant person for their attention and response” but I’d break several world records for breath holding if I were to take that on faith.
Below is the original submission.
———————————-
CCTV today is treated as a panacea for all of society’s ills but it betrays one of the basic principles in criminal law: the presumption of innocence. Every single CCTV camera has the implication of guilt for the public simply by walking down the street. The state has diagnosed us all as potential criminals and created a vast panopticon while ignoring that the original panopticon was a prison, with inmates who at least had been found guilty of some crime. We are afforded no such due process in this closed-circuit permanent gaze by the state.
CCTV does not solve the causes of crime, from illegal dumping to more aggravated criminality: for example the proposed addition of CCTV to combat such dumping makes no address to factors such as inadequate waste collection or access to facilities. For something like illegal dumping CCTV is an expensive game of whack-a-mole where detection and prosecution is preferred to prevention; the dumping will simply move along to another camera-less site. At what point does it become illogical to keep chasing dumpers with more and more cameras?
Before such installation of CCTV occurs the question needs to be asked: have the local communities been canvassed on what their waste collection needs are, or what suggestions they might have to deal with it? Where incentive exists to illegally dump, that incentive can be co-opted by the state, or local authority: how would a free, regularly emptied skip placed near sites of illegal dumping compare to permanent surveillance infrastructure? How would it improve the quality of life for communities who are surveilled as a matter of course, with all the subtle frictions that creates on the fabric of a community’s life? What is the monetary cost of maintaining a skip compared to permanent surveillance infrastructure? If the opportunity exists to remove the circumstances of criminality why not take that opportunity?
CCTV is an unfortunate reality of a capitalist society where property is more important than ideas of holistic wellbeing for the public. It is just another symptom of a state that prefers to plug holes than take systemic, structural investigation seriously. It has a role in the collection of evidence in crimes in order to prosecute, but it has very little role in the prevention of such crimes. Any discussion around increasing CCTV needs to first ask the question around if enough is being done to prevent crime in the first place. Are existing deterants like the presence of Gardai on the streets being fully availed of? Are we educating our kids about subjects like consent? Are we providing adequate mental health services? Are we eradicating poverty in our society? The answers to these questions and others like them tends to be a resounding no in my opinion, and that is the condition of the society that wants to change nothing except add to the terabytes of biometric data of a population treated as a seething mass of individual suspects.
States and their organs habitually abuse their powers. With the collection of such copious amounts of data comes a responsibility to not just conform to data protection law, but where the possibility to profile based on gender, race, age etc, simply for walking down the street exists, to proactively avoid such profiling in advance. There is no need to catalogue the granular biometrics of innocent people on the fly, and steps should be taken to aggressively delete CCTV footage, data, analytics, and metadata on a regular basis. Whatever about what the law allows that data should never be exported to territories that do not respect EU law on data privacy, nor should that data ever be used for training of AI or similiar technology. We must have our right to live the life of innocent people, to exist without becoming a criminalised digital avatar, enthusiastically respected.
Want to order a caricature? Click here.
Want to make an enquiry? Click here.
Top-rated caricature artist in Ireland! See my reviews here.
See even more examples of my art at the bottom of this post!
I’m Allan Cavanagh and I have been professionally producing caricatures and cartoon art for over 20 years.
*Those pole-mounted boxes that bark in a tinny AM radio voice at you to pick up after your dog even if you don’t have a dog and were hoping to have a nice relaxing walk for your mental health and blood pressure.