Big Brother gets bigger as Cape Town's arsenal of security cameras grows

“The world’s most boring movie” draws 120 people to watch it in front of huge monitors every hour of every day.

The City of Cape Town’s transport management centre in Goodwood serves as the cinema, a 24-hour live stream from 1,600 CCTV cameras installed around the city.

“An officer is only aware of his immediate surroundings,” said JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security. “You have eyes in many more places than if you had officers on the ground. You can cover much more territory [with the cameras].”

In addition to the 159 new cameras planned for public transport interchanges and bus stations this year, the city adds an average of 30 to 40 cameras annually, according to metro police superintendent Kevin Cole.

“There was a time when every single camera was actively monitored but as the network grew, we came to the realisation that that was not sustainable,” said Smith.

“It’s passive surveillance: analytics does the monitoring for you with less human error, then it draws an operator’s attention to dispatch officers. It’s the world’s most boring movie ... they’re constantly observing, constantly recording.”

In the three months to the end of February, cameras detected 4,211 incidents, 36% of them criminal.

Operators work with national police, emergency and medical services and local neighbourhood watch groups to ensure measures are taken after cameras detect an event.

“The camera on its own does nothing, it must be linked to a response,” Smith said, adding that 278 neighbourhood watch groups communicate with the transport management centre via WhatsApp.

Cape Town is the only city in the country to use a computer-aided dispatch system, which allows operators to better co-ordinate responses by comparing where a crime was reported to where police are situated.

A gunfire tracking system called ShotSpotter “allows operators to listen to crimes being committed according to the triangulation of gunshots”, Smith said, and licence plate recognition technology has led to a 44% reduction in property crime since being introduced.  

Addressing concerns over privacy, Smith pointed to the Protection of Personal Information Act, which ensured that only the City of Cape Town and appropriate police services would be able to access the data.

“Cameras that have eyes on windows of apartments or private homes are hooded so they can’t see in,” he said. “We are cognisant of the issue and take civil liberties very seriously.”