I have written before about the increasing use of private security and the erosion of liberty in public space so I was interested in a piece in today’s Guardian, ironically, the result of a Freedom of Information request:
It seems increasingly clear that unelected, untrained and under qualified security guards from private companies (operating for profit) are deciding who has freedom to walk the streets and carry out perfectly legal activities … like taking photographs in a public space.
Interestingly, the article asserts that both the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and John Yates, Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism officer, have warned that police risk losing the support of the public through the inappropriate use of section 44.
Surely not.
I first photographed the burgeoning private security industry in the late 1990s for several magazines and over the years have continued to have assignments to do so.
UK - London - A private security 'operative' patrols South London council estateUK - London - A security guard at a gated community monitors a bank of closed circuit television screens.
So, I made it through the Ash cloud after all and spent six days on assignment in Israel. Lovely job in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: travel and food. Nice. I hadn’t spent much time in Tel Aviv before and really enjoyed the experience. Jerusalem was another story however. I’d forgotten that this can be the rudest city on the planet and with some notable exceptions (pretty much all the taxi drivers – notably, Benny and Salim the unfailingly helpful staff at the Addar, Samir at Pasha’s and half a dozen lovely stallholders at Mahane Yehuda market – especially Itzack and his boys), I had to really dig in and grit my teeth. What is it about Jerusalem that makes people so rude and unfriendly? Maybe I caught it on a bad couple of days – I tried, I really did but it was a bit of a slog. I had just had a particularly unpleasant encounter and was packing up for the day when I was beckoned over by a friendly fishmonger. Moses insisted that I sit down and take his picture and that we should pose together…
Israel - Jerusalem - Me and the friendliest man in town
A real gentleman. Moses, you’ll probably never read this but you restored my faith in the city and it even made up for the hour and more grilling I had at the airport the next day (note to self: next time use the empty passport – not the one with the Saudi, Afghan, Lebanese and Pakistani stamps).
It’s with some relief that I read today in the Times of India that proposals to institute identity cards and entry fees to Bangalore parks have been scrapped.
The extraordinary idea, the brainchild of Horticulture Minister, Umesh Katti was to restrict entry to two of the ‘Garden City’s’ finest public spaces, Lalbagh and Cubbon Park to those that could afford, as he put it, the ‘paltry sum’ of Rs.200/-“. Further, identity cards would only be issued to those that had been ‘vetted’ over security concerns.
Lalbagh (Red Garden) is around two hundred and fifty years old. Cubbon Park, a British creation, is a century old. Both are a counterweight to the modernist, business friendly theme park that are the suburbs of modern Bangalore. Like most Indian parks they are populated by walkers, joggers, lovers, hawkers and the poor, sometimes untidily sleeping where they can. Oh, and Bangalore has a Laughter Club (a very Indian get-together where people laugh in groups to improve their health). Subversives all. Dangerous, anti-social elements that need checking and vetting and searching.
The case is interesting as it touches something that I have been photographing in Delhi for a while – Indian public space. Because cities are so crowded, public spaces become part of the personal, private sphere – a microcosm of Indian society. India has a profound love of gardens and greenery. I have written previously that all the major religions of this country have in some part a great reverence of nature – whether the gardens of the Mughals or the significance of the Bodhi tree for Buddhists or the garlanded offerings of Hindus. To privatise such public spaces for spurious ‘security concerns’ seems to me to be a very profound political statement. As Bhargavi Rao and Leo Saldanha of the local ‘Environment Support Group’ said. “It is an effort to showcase Bangalore as an elite, investment-friendly city where public spaces are out of bounds for local residents, especially the poor.”
“… the era of the Free Market has led to the most successful secessionist struggle ever waged in India – the secession of the middle and upper classes to a country of their own… where they merge with the rest of the world’s elite”.
The poor and those that don’t quite fit into a corporate strategy are an untidy blemish and need to be excluded.
In fact it is entirely analogous to what is happening in much of the Western (well, read the US and the UK) world. Britain is the most spied-on country in the world in terms of CCTV and legislation passed over the last twelve years has meant that fundamental freedoms that we took for granted – like being able to photograph in public where we pleased – are no longer guaranteed. Extensions to pre-charge detention means that suspects in the UK can expect to be detained for periods exceeding those of other comparable democracies. As Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian yesterday, since 1997, the UK government has created more than 3000 new offences. 1,472 at the last count were imprisonable. You can be jailed for not having a licence for a church concert, smoking in a public place, selling a grey squirrel, trans-shipping unlicensed fish, or disobeying a health and safety inspector. All underpinned by a profit motive for private companies who have interests in surveillance, security operatives and prisons. If we make citizens afraid of each other they will be more pliable: I know photographers in the UK that have admitted to self-censoring in public. Taking pictures of children, of property, of the police are now likely to lead to confrontation with authority. A company has already found a way to ‘monetise’ this by paying ordinary people to watch CCTV footage and report anything ‘suspicious’.
Section 44 of the Terrorism Act in the UK no longer requires authorities to have reasonable suspicion to search people for such subversive activities as photographing on the streets. We are all suspects that have to be monitored. All the time. For our own good. Usually by private security. For profit.
Soon there will be nothing public left of all our public spaces.
India - New Delhi - a bench in the early morning mist in Nehru ParkIndia - New Delhi - A yoga class in Lodi Gardens in front of the Bara Gumbad TombIndia - New Delhi - A couple in the grounds of the Purana Qila, New Delhi, India. Such parks are often the only place where young lovers can meet away from their parents and familiesIndia - New Delhi - Men play cards on a traffic island in New Delhi, India whilst one of their friends sleep. The traffic islands in the centre of the city often have manicured lawns and are well cared for. Many people sleep here at night but in the daytime they are used as small parks by workersUK - Cirencester - A private Security Guard examines the licence plate of a vehicle outside a Gated Community, UK - London - A Private Security Operative patrols South London council estate
