An Orchestration of Electronic Surveillance

• Date: 01 December 2007
• Author: Nelson Arteaga Botello
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567707311566
• Subject Matter: Articles

An Orchestration of

Electronic Surveillance

A CCTV Experience in Mexico

Nelson Arteaga Botello

Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Mexico

Electronic surveillance has significantly expanded in Mexico over the past 10 years. This

represents a change in the form of social organization, where electronic surveillance presents

two faces: care and control. On the one hand, surveillance is used to reduce risks; but on the

other, for administration of the population. This article examines, in the case of an urban

municipality in Mexico, how local authorities and members of society define the problem of

violence and delinquency, and how this definition constitutes an orchestration of the relationship

of different powers in determining the organization of electronic surveillance, and institutionalizes

a certain logic of cultural and social exclusion.

Keywords: closed-circuit television (CCTV); electronic surveillance; Mexico; problematiza-

tion; social control

Over the past 25 years, a substantial expansion of electronic surveillance systems has occurred

on a global scale. It is in developing countries where this increase has been most substantial,

especially in the private security area, but not exclusively (Lee, 2004; Newburn & Jones, 1998;

Sanders, 2005). The surveillance technologies that are used range from metal detectors, scanners,

and iris recognition scanners to closed-circuit television (CCTV) and various surveillance systems

such as detection access control and biometric equipment. Most of these were developed for the mil-

itary during the middle of the 1940s under the context of “national security programs” established

during the cold war (Casella, 2003).

Currently these technologies permit the establishment of borders, spaces, or places in areas consid-

ered to be low risk for social disorder (Bloomfield, 2001). In fact, the location of these spaces and the

delineation of these borders do not result in anything new. Modern states have always developed social

control mechanisms through the use of various techniques; among which the first may be the different

types of national census (Giddens, 1985). However, the technologies developed in the second half of

the 19th century play a significant role in the construction of new forms of social control, which can

be referred to as a true “control revolution” (Kim, 2004). This revolution can be sustained,among other

things, with the increase of information capacity that can be processed and handled.

Thus, the life of contemporary societies has turned into a continuous movement between electronic

apparatuses that register the comings and goings of people: in commercial centers, bank offices, public

places (such as parks and avenues), housing complexes, stadiums, hotels, education centers, metro

stations, buses, and of course—after the events of September 11th—airports. In this way the systematic

surveillance of everyday activities has become commonplace (Abe, 2004).

325

International Criminal

Justice Review

Volume 17 Number 4

December 2007 325-335

© 2007 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

10.1177/1057567707311566

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