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This chapter provides an analysis of images produced and employed in protests against surveillance in Germany in 2008 and 2009. For this purpose, a method of visual analysis is developed that draws mainly on semiotics and art history. Following this method, the contribution examines a selection of images (pictures and graphic design) from the anti-surveillance protests in three steps: description of components, detection of conventional signs, and contextual analysis. Furthermore, the analysis compares the images of the two major currents of the protest (liberal and radical left) in order to elucidate the context in which images are created and used. The analysis shows that images do not merely illustrate existing political messages but contribute to movements’ systems of meaning creation and transportation. The two currents in the protests communicate their point of view through the images both strategically and expressively. The images play a crucial role in formulating groups’ different strategies as well as worldviews and identities. In addition, the analysis shows that the meaning of images is contested and contextual. Images are produced and received in specific national as well as issue contexts. Future research should address the issue of context and reception in greater depth in order to further explore the effects of visual language on mobilization. Overall, the contribution demonstrates that systematic visual analysis allows our understanding of social movements’ aims, strategy, and collective identity to be deepened. In addition, visual analysis may provide activists with a tool to critically assess their visual communication.

The growth of police operated surveillance cameras has out-paced the ability of humans to monitor them effectively. Computer vision is a possible solution. An ongoing research project on the application of computer vision within a municipal police department is described. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Following the demystification of computer vision technology, its potential for police agencies is developed within a focus on computer vision as a solution for two common surveillance camera tasks (live monitoring of multiple surveillance cameras and summarizing archived video files). Three unaddressed research questions (can specialized computer vision applications for law enforcement be developed at this time, how will computer vision be utilized within existing public safety camera monitoring rooms, and what are the system-wide impacts of a computer vision capability on local criminal justice systems) are considered.

Despite computer vision becoming accessible to law enforcement agencies the impact of computer vision has not been discussed or adequately researched. There is little knowledge of computer vision or its potential in the field.

This paper introduces and discusses computer vision from a law enforcement perspective and will be valuable to police personnel tasked with monitoring large camera networks and considering computer vision as a system upgrade.

Police technology fundamentally shapes the police role, and the adoption of technology is even linked to the success of police reforms. Police adoption of emerging technological tools changes the way police interact with citizens. The change in police citizen interactions can then have serious implications for the social control that police have over citizens, the civil liberties citizens enjoy, police accountability, and the legitimacy that the police hold in contemporary American society.

While technology impacts these critical issues in policing, not all technology adopted by the police is likely to influence their relationship with the public. As such, this chapter closely examines the ways that several emerging technologies adopted by the police (i.e., body-worn cameras (BWC), aerial surveillance, visual surveillance, social media, mapping and crime prediction, and less lethal force technology) impact issues related to social control, accountability, and legitimacy. The current literature seems to indicate that some innovations such as BWCs enhance police accountability and legitimacy, and also expand social control. Other technologies such as aerial surveillance and conducted energy devices increase social control, and display a complicated or unclear influence over police legitimacy.

Social signal processing under affective computing aims at recognizing and extracting useful human social interaction patterns. Fight is a common social interaction in real life. A fight detection system finds wide applications. This paper aims to detect fights in a natural and low-cost manner.

Research works on fight detection are often based on visual features, demanding substantive computation and good video quality. In this paper, the authors propose an approach to detect fight events through motion analysis. Most existing works evaluated their algorithms on public data sets manifesting simulated fights, where the fights are acted out by actors. To evaluate real fights, the authors collected videos involving real fights to form a data set. Based on the two types of data sets, the authors evaluated the performance of their motion signal analysis algorithm, which was then compared with the state-of-the-art approach based on MoSIFT descriptors with Bag-of-Words mechanism, and basic motion signal analysis with Bag-of-Words.

The experimental results indicate that the proposed approach accurately detects fights in real scenarios and performs better than the MoSIFT approach.

By collecting and annotating real surveillance videos containing real fight events and augmenting with well-known data sets, the authors proposed, implemented and evaluated a low computation approach, comparing it with the state-of-the-art approach. The authors uncovered some fundamental differences between real and simulated fights and initiated a new study in discriminating real against simulated fight events, with very good performance.

Public video surveillance tends to be discussed in either utopian or dystopian terms: proponents maintain that camera surveillance is the perfect tool in the fight against crime, while critics argue that the use of security cameras is central to the development of a panoptic, Orwellian surveillance society. This paper provides an alternative, more nuanced view. On the basis of an empirical case study, the paper explores how camera surveillance applications do not simply augment surveillance capacities, but rather have to deal with considerable uncertainties in the process of producing a continuous, effective, all‐seeing gaze. The case study shows that the actions of human operators and the operation of camera technologies each place limits on the execution of electronic visual surveillance, instead of efficiently enhancing the powers of the surveilling gaze. The analysis suggests that the effects of video surveillance are rather ambivalent and uncertain, thus showing that public camera systems are not simply beneficial or malign.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the potential of visual cultural studies (VCS) to inform and extend research on “accounting and the visual”.

A VCS framework is utilized: to draw together and organize work on “accounting and the visual”; and to illustrate how concepts and empirical studies from VCS can develop and extend accounting research.

The “visual culture turn” in the social sciences has generated considerable theorizing and empirical research pertinent to accounting research. In particular, it can deepen studies of accounting visuality – accounting's visibilities, invisibilities and ways of seeing – and stimulate new imag(in)ings.

The paper introduces accounting researchers to questions, topics, concepts and debates in the VCS field and illustrates how accounting and VCS research can mutually inform each other and foster interpretive/critical accounting projects.

VCS can frame studies of “accounting and the visual” (i.e. affirm it as a distinct field, with rich interdisciplinary connections) with implications for developing and extending accounting research.

To discuss and review the shift to computer enhanced self‐monitoring CCTV surveillance systems of public spaces and the social implications of this shift.

A review of the research and evaluation literature concerning CCTV surveillance systems culling out the history of public space CCTV systems and the concerns associated with first and second generation CCTV surveillance.

The main difference between first and second generation surveillance is the change from a “dumb camera” that needs a human eye to evaluate its images to a computer‐linked camera system that evaluates its own video images. Second generation systems reduce the human factor in surveillance and address some of the basic concerns associated with first generation surveillance systems such as data swamping, boredom, voyeurism, and profiling. Their enhanced capabilities, though, raise new concerns, particularly the expansion of surveillance and its intrusiveness.

Additional research is needed to assess CCTV surveillance on a set of social dynamics such as informal guardianship activities by citizens.

The adoption of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems should not be an automatic response to a public space security problem and their deployment should not be decided simply on the technology's availability or cost.

This paper provides a concise overview of the concerns associated with first generation CCTV surveillance and how the evolution of computer‐enhanced CCTV surveillance systems will alter and add to these concerns. For researchers it details research questions that need to be addressed. For practitioners and government officials considering the use of public space CCTV surveillance it provides a set of issues that should be considered prior to system adoption or deployment.

The news of recent mobilizations in Arab, European, and North-American countries quickly spread across the globe. Well before written reports analyzing the unfolding mobilizations, images of protests circulated widely through television channels, print newspapers, internet websites, and social media platforms. Pictures and videos of squares full of people protesting against their governments became the symbols of a new wave of contention that quickly spread from Tunisia to many other countries. Pictures and videos showing the gathering of people in Tahrir square (Egypt), Puerta del Sol (Spain), and Zuccotti Park (United States) quickly became vivid tools of “countervisuality” (Mirzoeff, 2011) that opposed the roaring grassroots political participation of hundreds of thousands people to the silent decisions taken in government and corporation buildings by small groups of politicians and managers. The presence, and relevance, of images in mobilizations of social movements is no novelty. Encounters with social movements have always been intrinsically tied to the visual sense. Activists articulate visual messages, their activities are represented in photos and video sequences, and they are ultimately rendered visible, or invisible, in the public sphere. Social movements produce and evoke images, either as a result of a planned, explicit, and strategic effort, or accidentally, in an unintended or undesired manner. At the same time, social movements are perceived by external actors and dispersed audiences via images which are produced both by themselves and others.