A friend of mine went to a protest. Before leaving her house, she decided to wear a face mask. Not because she was sick, but because she didn’t want to be identified. She is a student, and the idea of being recorded made her uncomfortable. That moment stayed with me. It made me realise that behaviour can change even when nothing is happening directly — just the possibility of being watched is enough.
From there, I began to pay more attention to how surveillance exists in everyday life. In the United Kingdom, cameras are part of the environment. There is roughly one CCTV camera for every 13 people. They are in streets, transport systems, shops, and buildings. You don’t always notice them, but you know they are there.
As an international student in London, this became more present to me. Being in a new country means you are not always sure how things work — what is acceptable, what might have consequences. Because of that, behaviour becomes something you think about more carefully.
At the beginning, I was trying to understand how surveillance affects behaviour. But that felt too limited. It focused too much on control. What became more interesting was how people continue to act, participate, and exist in public space even with that awareness.
This is where the project started to shift.
Suspicion by Design shows that this is no longer only about cameras. Systems and algorithms now analyse data and flag behaviour before anything happens. Suspicion is built into how these systems work.
Through reading and observing, I started to focus less on surveillance itself, and more on how people deal with it.
People make small decisions all the time.
They change how they dress.
They stay quiet.
They choose where to stand.
They decide when to be visible and when not to be.
This led me to my research question:
How can people remain confident in their behaviour in public spaces where surveillance is present?
Going forward, I want to explore this through observation and small experiments. I am interested in how clothing, movement, and being part of a group can affect how people feel and act.
The aim is not to remove surveillance. It is to understand how people live with it, and how they continue to show up in public space.
Bibliography
- Big Brother Watch. Suspicion by Design. 2024.
- Politics.co.uk. CCTV Statistics in the UK. 2020.
- Migration Observatory, University of Oxford. Student Migration to the UK.
