--> a draft version is available as PDF-file (60 kB)
submitted to the online-Journal Surveillance and Society.
If we will find time and contemplation in the next future,
we will prepare a HTML version with pictures for these pages.
Railway stations have become places between public and private. In this exploratory case study, we are looking at the CCTV system at the Zurich main station, the largest railway station in Switzerland. This railway station is partly used by train passengers, partly by customers frequenting the station's shopping area.
Looking at different types of CCTV systems, we are asking about the different motivations that have been leading to the installation of the cameras, about their functionality and their effects on passengers and customers. Based on our observations, we are going to present a typology of different uses of CCTV systems: (1) access control, (2) conduct control, (3) registering evidences, (4) flow control and the planning of deployment.
As a conclusion, we will have a look at some future trends in the use of CCTV in railway stations, focussing on (a) individualization, (b) automatization, and (c) commodification. In the last part of our presentation, we are going to ask about the limits of the spreading of CCTV systems in railway stations, focussing on the efficiency on one hand (costs, opportunity costs, failures), and on several possibilities for opposition on the other hand (customers, trade unions, data protection commissioners, sabotage activists).
A draft version of the paper is available as a PDF-file (60 kB).
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