It is currently estimated that the UK is monitored by over 4.5 million CCTV cameras, making UK residents one of the most watched nations in the world.   Of course the United Kingdom is not alone and football clubs from all over Europe have followed suit by installing CCTV camera networks inside stadiums.  Germany itself was the country of origin of the CCTV camera and networks of the these are visable at most stadia.   CCTV of course can be a valuable tool in crime detection and prevention, but there is a difference between monitoring potential crime and watching football fans enjoying themselves.  In the UK inparticular due to amongst others issues all seater stadia, the boundaries between these seem to have been blurred.   The system also seems to be dangerously unregulated with a number of unregistered and unaccountable stewarding staff within stadia having the authority to take orders from CCTV camera crews and enforce ejection, threats and warnings.

In football grounds today there does seem to be a general approach of clubs enforcing wide ranging ground regulations without independent regulators assessing these  systems and the  stadium crimes identified.  There is evidence for example of fans being found not guilty in courts of law but still punished by 'in-house' club rulings.  Another worrying statistics is the potential of CCTV being misused and abused through images and video imagery being transferred between clus and police forces through information sharing agreeements and photo sharing orders.  This again raises questions about the potential of such systems for unjustified intrusions into our privacy at games.  There has been a large clampdown in some stadia as regards fan use of telescopic lens photograph.  Against that the photography of supporters inside the ground has spiralled out of control.

Clubs suggest that CCTV is used as a crime deterrent but the use of cameras has far been outstripped by its use in enforcing ‘stadia rules’ on supporters for even the most basic misdemenours.  So where does the initiative behind all these camera come from? Are the roots of usage in the strategic aim of arresting the hooligan problem of the 1980’s or are they a product of the modern communicative world?

Politically, the Home Office has spent a huge amount of its crime budget on CCTV over the last 10 years yet crime rates in this country are still comparable with countries who have very few cameras. There is now estimated to be more than 4.2 million cameras in the United Kingdom which is one for every 14 people.   There is also an increase on the use of CCTV camera networks used as tools to bring prosecutions in criminal courts after crimes have been committed rather than a tool to stop crime before the event.  

Just as the laptop today is far in advance of the clunky computer you could purchase in 1995, so  the technology on the high street and in stadia has becoming more sophisticated and dominant.  It would appear also that regulation and safeguards on whom is using the systems have not kept apace.   There is evidence to suggest that some cameras are now combined with databases which use 'facial recognition technology' to scan and automatically identify fan faces in crowds.

CCTV is also increasingly being used in stadiums to identify patterns of behaviour that suggest a crime or rules infringment is about to occur.  The massive growth in the scale and use of information held in government databases is another reason behind the popularity of the cameras in stadiums.    In wider society what we have is what has been called a "dataveillance" system where the use of credit card, mobile phone technology and loyalty card information is used to monitor people.Database collation by clubs is another aspect to this.

Some watchdogs have suggested that by 2016 retail shops will scan customer as they enter stores; schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.  In stadiums such tracking devices have long been in place with new turnstile mechanisms scanning and tracking access to stadiums.

Overall what we have in the UK is a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about people.  Within the premise of endemic surveillance why would football be any different?  Data protection rules and ideals are stronger than ever before and put fundamental safeguards in place.    But when these are being crossed what is being done to ensure that these boundaries are not done so again?

In reply to queries high level police networks such as he Association of Chief Police Officers have said there are safeguards against the abuse of surveillance by officers and stewards inside stadiums.  Club security personal and stadium managers meanwhile have said that innocent fans have nothing to be afriad of inside stadium.

One question is whether society in general has increasingly come to rely on digital whereabouts technology.   Satellite navigation devices continue to fly off shelves  from any store from Asda to Currys.  Where as before the road map of Britain got you to your destination so we are persuaded to ditch the practical map on the dashboard approach to navigation in favour of a calm computerised voice that gets you to your destination.

Look in your pocket at your mobile phone and if you want an upgrade companies are offering location-based services to allow users to find restaurants, museums and other amenities via their phones.   Google maps, google street maps and the likes can take you in a virtual world to your front door via a computer or mobile phone screen.  At a lower scale smart travel cards, such as Transport for London's ‘Oyster’ card, are allowing people to travel without coins, change and queuing.   While all of these technologies are hugely convenient, they are also becoming our very own pocket-based stalkers. 

But it is not just offline activities that are and can be mapped. Where we go on the web has become one of the most traceable of all our footprints and we routinely give out personal information which in turn creates vast data trails. Willingly, people are increasingly willing to share data from geographical information for projects such as OpenStreetMap to highly personal videos of themselves on MySpace or youtube.com.   CCTV cameras in football stadiums are then just another means of  this continual ‘oiling of the digital society’ but the undercover operation on football goes further back than CCTV. 

So far back as the 1960’s there is evidence from fans to suggest that plain clothes officers were being used to infiltrate travelling supporters.  Terminology such as ‘spotters’ were a common occurance amongst football fans as far back as the pre-CCTV era of the 1980s.   The belief of the police by the 1980s was that football hooligans had transformed themselves from an ill-organised mob into highly-organised forces yet detectable groups with a complex network of hierarchies and identifiable members.

Some police were given new identities and instructed to live the life of a hooligan and mingle with other hooligans.   These tactics resulted in the launch of numerous early morning raids on the homes of suspected football hooligans.  Today CCTV footage is analysed and ued as means of tracking down suspects.  Later on police developed more methods of containing and monitoring football fans through means such as ‘containment and police escorts’.   A common occurance in the 198o’s and early 1990’s was that of the police groupings escorting visiting supporters from railway and strategic coach stop off pointss to and from the football ground.   With this containment opertion fans were literally surrounded by police, some on horseback and others with police dog units.   

In contrast to this approach the later nineties then saw the use of the less confrontational tactics.  Such as the use of early CCTV systems and that of posting officers at specified points en route to the grounds to watch and monitor now fragmented hooligan groups or individuals.   Morover the en masse arrival of football fans at British Rail stations around the country on a Saturday lunchtime has declined with the disappearance of football specials.

CCTV was first introduced into football grounds around the middle of the 1980s and is now present in almost every Premier, SPL and lower league football ground where large crowds over 2500 regularly congregate.  The effectiveness of such camera surveillance has also been improved by the introduction and enforcement of all-seater stadia across the country. More recently though has come a new development the rise of ‘porno coppers’ who shadow fans within and outwith stadiums with handheld camera systems.   Police though have went from using these systems primarily in a bid to deter violence but now also to gather intelligence, create databases of fans, fan groups and to monitor the strategic efficiency and effectiveness of crowd control methods.

With hand held camera and extensive CCTV camera networks has come the ‘Photophone’ system which allows the police to exchange photographs of football fans from CCTV and other sources via telephone and computer links or even via club websites.  This system also allows information about individuals to be readily available to the police, stewarding firms and operational stadium managers on matchdays.

Following the 2002 Commonwealth Games Manchester City Football Club moved from its older Maine Road ground to the new all-seated City of Manchester Stadium.  With the move came the upgrading of the club’s security procedures.  Now cameras cover virtually all public areas in the stadium, and this is what club and police officials call ‘match day safety.’

New CCTV systems are of course based on digital as opposed to analogue systems.  This has meant the transfer and storage of information via databases rather than tapes storage.  Typical security offices within clubs will have wall to wall DVD’s on the shelves which police on control rooms can cross reference or view.   Meanwhile the scrutinisation of supporters is  more analytical and powerful.    Intensive viewing software is used to search for images without having to stop recording and capture multimedia images.   Both high resolution Jpeg images and continuous Mpeg4 video recordings can be taken at the same time and used by stadium security personal.

Some inner ground systems work in tandom to ‘tip off’ or 'flash  remind' recommendations from stewarding and police staff.   Discs after games are often burned the day after a game and this is often used to provide supplementary evidence to help us push through enforcement policies. Likewise the CCTV systems have given low skilled stewarding staff the ability to call control rooms so that cameras are capturing footage whilst or before the steward goes in to sort it issues out.

When CCTV systems first arose they were a product of Germany around  1942.  Nobody could have forseen the extent to which cameras would dominated football stadia.   Whilst the first cameras were intended to observing the launch of V-2 rockets, the design and installation of these system has grown to a massive scale and used for the most simple of monitoring activities.

Stella Rimington the former director general of MI5 has been quoted as stating that Britains counter terrorism policies risk turning the country into a police state.  Its no understatement to say that whilst counter terrorism efforts are seldom the aim of video analytics in football stadiums the increased use of such systems have made football watching another part of a country which has become not a police state but one obsessed with survelliance.

Thanks to CPL for the submission of this article