A Ban For CCTVs in Schools

CCTV, also known as a Closed Circuit Television, was installed for safety purposes such as crime prevention, fire prevention, and surveillance. Therefore, some people think that there should be CCTVs inside school classrooms to prevent school violence. However, I can’t agree with this because of several reasons.

           First, installing CCTVs inside schools may become an invasion of students’ privacy. Most people may think that CCTV data is only disclosed to police officers and other teachers with clear authority. But, there are times where this is not the case. According to Joongang Ilbo, a principal in high school used a CCTV to monitor the private acts of teachers and staff. Like this case, the school might use CCTVs to monitor not only students’ but also teachers for their every move. It’s an invasion of privacy for sure, and it is a crime of “infringement of secrets” according to the criminal law article 316. Additionally, crimes hacking CCTVs are increasing every year.

           Second, installing CCTVs will be too costly. In 2018, Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection had a sample inspection for about 17,000 CCTVs in schools. It was found that 97% of them had less than 500,000 pixels, which means the identification function is greatly decreased. It has to be over 1,000,000 pixels to identify people of cars clearly. On average, more than ten CCTVs are installed in school, and it costs at least 6-7 million won to upgrade them all to high definition. The school principal in a Suwon elementary school stated, “It costs a lot to install recording equipment which is a burden on school operating expenses.”

           Third, CCTVs aren’t effective in preventing violence and bullying. I think that installing CCTVs in classrooms school is like treating students as potential criminals. Also, CCTVS are not effective in crimes due to blind sports. This means that bullying outside of the school can occur. According to the Personal Information Act Article 25 Paragraph 5 “The operator of a fixed video information processing device must not arbitrarily operate the fixed video…to another location for a purpose other than the purpose of installing the fixed video information processing device, and the recording function cannot be used.” It is against the law to use the recording function, so it may be difficult to know how the case exactly happened with just the CCTV evidence.

           Installing CCTVs in schools isn’t right because it is an invasion of privacy, it costs too much, and it is not effective in preventing bullying. I hope the Office of Education finds a better way to prevent school violence.