i) Ser policromáticas;
ii) Ter capacidade de iluminação, resolução, ampliação e abertura de foco que garanta o reconhecimento e identificação das matrículas dos veículos.
Para proteção de instalações com interesse para a defesa e a segurança, para a proteção da segurança de pessoas e bens, públicos ou privados, e prevenção da prática de factos qualificados pela lei como crime, em locais em que exista razoável risco da sua ocorrência, e para prevenção de atos terroristas [...], devem as câmaras:
i) Ser policromáticas;
ii) Permitir a gravação de som quando autorizada;
iii) Ter capacidade de iluminação, resolução, ampliação e abertura de foco que garanta o reconhecimento e a identificação de indivíduos (...)
E tudo isto porquê?
Governo assumiu como prioridade a adoção de políticas e medidas concretas que contribuam para fazer de Portugal um país mais seguro com o objetivo de reforçar a autoridade do Estado e a eficácia das forças de segurança.
Ao longo dos últimos anos a tipologia dos crimes, quer pelo crime em si, quer pelo método utilizado, tem vindo a sofrer transformações profundas, sendo que hoje está claramente mais organizado, complexo e sofisticado. E isso não poderia deixar de apresentar consequências relevantes no quadro da segurança das pessoas e bens públicos ou privados.
Com vista à salvaguarda da segurança das pessoas e bens e à melhoria das condições de prevenção e repressão do crime em locais públicos de utilização comum, a utilização de sistemas de vigilância por câmaras de vídeo constitui uma ferramenta valiosa na dissuasão da prática de crimes que não deve ser desperdiçada, atendendo ao aumento do número de pedidos de instalação de sistemas de videovigilância por parte das autarquias e de outras entidades e organismos.
Assim, o recurso pelas forças e serviços de segurança à videovigilância, no espectro de finalidades a que se refere a lei, constitui uma mais-valia na execução das missões que lhes estão confiadas ao serviço da comunidade, melhorando, assim, a segurança coletiva.
Não há estudos, não há nada, excepto o "aumento do número de pedidos de instalação de sistemas de videovigilância por parte das autarquias e de outras entidades e organismos". E por esse aumento de pedidos, assim se aumenta a "segurança coletiva"...
Mas convém lembrar algumas coisas sobre estas fantásticas videovigilâncias:
Assessing the impact of CCTV: there was a lack of realism about what could be expected from CCTV. In short, it was oversold – by successive governments – as the answer (indeed the ‘magic bullet’, Ditton and Short, 1999) to crime problems. Few seeking a share of the available funding saw it as necessary to demonstrate CCTV’s effectiveness. After all, why would the government be giving out money for this and not other measures if it did not work? Yet it was rarely obvious why CCTV was the best response to crime in particular circumstances. […]
Assessed on the evidence presented in this report, CCTV cannot be deemed a success. It has cost a lot of money and it has not produced the anticipated benefits. However, the findings on effectiveness were hardly surprising given the context in which CCTV schemes were implemented. The report has suggested that there were several contributory factors. Money was not given to the most needy areas, nor always to all those that had made a good case. There was little emphasis on showing why CCTV was the best solution, only that it was an acceptable one. More generally, there was no blueprint to follow and schemes were picked to be guinea pigs for the application of public money (Gill et al. 2005d). Perhaps the greatest criticism should be reserved for a policy which gave money to areas that had justified their claim on what appears to be thin evidence. Also, policy guidance made it a legitimate use of funding to install cameras for the purpose of reducing fear of crime, which does not encourage project designers or implementers to work out how the cameras might achieve this. Perhaps there was little surprise when it was found that implementation commonly failed. There were few clear guidelines and each area was left to find its own way.
CCTV boom has failed to slash crime, say police: Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.
1,000 CCTV cameras to solve just one crime, Met Police admits: Fewer than one crime is solved by every 1,000 closed circuit television cameras, the Metropolitan Police, Britain's biggest police force, has admitted.
Crime prevention effects of closed circuit television: a systematic review
It was found that CCTV had no effect on violent crimes (from five studies), but had a significant desirable effect on vehicle crimes (from eight studies).
Across the three settings, mixed results were found for the crime prevention effectiveness of CCTV. In the city centre and public housing setting, there was evidence that CCTV led to a negligible reduction in crime of about two per cent in experimental areas compared with control areas. CCTV had a very small but significant effect on crime in the five UK evaluations in this setting (three desirable and two undesirable), but had no effect on crime in the four North American evaluations. More schemes showed evidence of diffusion of benefits than displacement.
The four evaluations of CCTV in public transportation systems present conflicting evidence of effectiveness: two found a desirable effect, one found no effect, and one found an undesirable effect on crime. For the two effective studies, the use of other interventions makes it difficult to say with certainty that CCTV produced the observed crime reductions. The pooled effect size for all four studies was desirable (a six per cent reduction in experimental areas compared with control areas), but non-significant. Only two of the studies measured diffusion of benefits or displacement and evidence was found for each.
In car parks, there was evidence that CCTV led to a statistically significant reduction in crime of about 41 per cent in experimental areas compared with control areas. However, for all of the studies in this setting other measures were in operation at the same time as CCTV. Most studies did not measure either diffusion of benefits or displacement.
A REVIEW OF CCTV EVALUATIONS: CRIME REDUCTION EFFECTS AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ITS USE: Future developments in technology, such as license plate recognition, facial recognition, and algorithmic image interpretation to alert operators to unsanctioned events will also need to be monitored and evaluated, in terms of both their impact on reducing crime and their social control of citizens, particularly those who are already marginalized
CCTV AND THE SOCIAL STRUCTURING OF SURVEILLANCE: The power of CCTV operators is highly discretionary as they have extraordinary latitude in determining who will be watched, for how long and whether to initiate deployment. The sum total of these individual discretionary judgments produces, as we have shown, a highly differentiated pattern of surveillance leading to a massively disproportionate targeting of young males, particularly if they are black or visibly identifiable as having subcultural affiliations. As this differentiation is not based on objective behavioural and individualised criteria, but merely on being categorised as part of a particular social group, such practices are clearly discriminatory.
