Thinking about surveillance in the city Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Thinking about surveillance in the city - Essay Example Closed-circuit cameras have become common in cities and they have become an important aspect of city security. Security teams and personnel form an important aspect of the city surveillance teams. Control of urban space and inaugurated surveillance measures are widely used worldwide. Ethical, legal and even moral questions arise when there is mass surveillance and accumulation of personal data from individuals without their knowledge and consent. The film and movie industry has always illustrated how city surveillance has become crucial and important in the modern age. One of the most iconic films that represents the divergent views on city surveillance is Minority Report (2002). It is vital to study and understand how minority report represents and handles the various views on mass or city surveillance through scholarly analysis2. Minority Report is a movie that was directed by Steven Spielberg based on Philip Dick’s Sci-Fi short story â€Å"The Minority Report† written in 1956. The film is set in 2054 in a modernized Washington DC where crime and murder have been wholly eliminated. Tom cruise takes the character of John Anderton, who is the head of a Pre-crime, a unit under the Justice department that works in the Jurisdiction of Washington D.C. Three psychic human beings called precogs have been harnessed and their power to see future crimes projected on computers. The precogs have the ability to see images of future murders and those who are identified are apprehended before they commit crimes after which they are incarcerated. The pre-crime unit is to face a national vote on its effectiveness and take it from the Washington D.C. jurisdiction to a national level. Anti-pre-crime advocates such as Danny Witwer who oppose the move. Witwer has been sent by the Justice department to access the abi lity and effectiveness of pre-crime. Pre-crime surveillance is 100 percent accurate but while at the labs, John Anderton becomes