Highway CCTV Cameras and Their Impact on Privacy

More than ever before, we find ourselves under a constant surveillance of CCTV cameras. According to a Wikipedia entry, CCTV stands for “closed-circuit television,” which is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. CCTV cameras are being used in various locations, ranging widely from private apartment areas to public highways. This entry will focus on the issue of the currently installed CCTV cameras on the highways in South Korea, which are used in detecting cars that drive way past the speed limit in order to charge fines to those speed-drivers. On major Korean highways, you can see cars whiz by and come to a sudden slow-down in speed when right under a camera in order to avoid getting caught by those speed detectors. Once your car gets caught on video, within three weeks, you will receive a letter in your mail stating how much you are being charged for your speeding ticket—the fee varies, depending on how much more you drove above the speed limit—with a picture—the front view of your car, car license plate, the driver and the front passenger—attached to the letter.

Although the highway CCTVs were initially implemented with the good-natured intentions of reducing the number of accidents and deaths that take place on highways, we cannot deny the inevitable truth that these CCTVs have started to trespass into our privacies. For example, the fact that the front passenger was once made visible in the speeding ticket letter—not anymore, thanks to the South Korean government‘s realization of the issue’s seriousness—demonstrates and poses a question as to how much further, to what extent, technology will continue to monitor our lives.

We believe that although such measures of erasing the front passenger's face have significantly improved the conditions of people's privacy, there still is room for more improvement. Since only the face of the front passenger is erased from the picture, there still is the possibility of knowing whether the passenger is a male or female. It is good to see that the Korean government has been proactive on this issue, but more improvements can be made to lessen the degree to which such CCTV systems pry into our lives. We hope to see a future where technology is used in a helpful way while embracing our privacy. If no further preventative measures are taken, things may start to look REALLY ugly, first with a soaring increase in divorce rates and unhappy families!

It is in a way scary to know we’re being watched almost EVERYWHERE we go, except that we don’t exactly know WHEN. It reminds us of the recent discussion of the panoptic tower from class...!