CCTV comes to Costa Rica

Written by alanp

Say goodbye to civil liberties and privacy rights, Costa Rica has decided to embrace Big Brother and install a series of survaillence cameras throughout the country. From the porous borders to the dark and shady streets of San Jose President Oscar Arias has decided that the ever growing crime wave can only be reduced by the installation of these cameras.

Forgive my cynicism, but for someone who lived in London, a city with 4,000,000 of these “crime-preventers” I never really felt that safe, this may have been due to the gangs of tracksuit clad youngsters roaming the streets looking for trouble and/or a lack of cops on the beat. (This is not paranoia, I also lived in NYC during 9/11 and at no point did I worry about walking the streets at night by myself or any other time for that matter and this in spite of the media campaign telling us how danger lurks around every corner and everyone is a suspect.)The crime rate in the UK has shot up dramatically in recent years (along with more and more cameras) particularly gun crime and convictions are not in keeping with this, so do they actually work or is it just an excuse to spy on us?

So while some cameras may be helpful in certain areas I would not advocate a blanket coverage throughout the country as I think this will have a long term detrimental effect on Costa Rican society as a whole.

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