How do you Handle Surveillance Cams in your Sci-fi?

Disarming surveillance equipment seemed unrealistic. I think the only realistic way to avoid your identity being exposed is by being disguised.

What role does surveillance play in your scifi world? Is it a paranoid society that must put cameras in every nook and corner? Is it a society that's built more on trust and wouldn't want cameras everywhere?

Are the security cameras networked? Can it be hacked?

The thing with surveillance systems is that with any useful number of cameras you quickly end up with far, far more footage than can be watched by humans. Therefore obfuscating your appearance even a little bit, or obfuscating what time you did your intrusion can make it really difficult to find the time / camera that shows the intruder.

For example: MC has a way to break into the building that is quiet. MC breaks in, does all their stuff on camera, waits an hour after they are done, and then blows open the main door on their way out. Everyone goes looking in the logs AFTER the door explosion time stamp.

Alternately there are patrols in the building and the MC dresses as one. Are the cameras high resolution enough to be able to spot the differences in the regular uniform vrs. the disguise?


This all changes if you have an AI watching the cameras. Real world AI uses facial recognition and other pattern recognition methods that can easily be defeated by face paint. Draw some dark lines on your face and the computer won't be able to tell that there's a face there. Modern computers and AI systems don't "see" or have a concept of the real world as a place full of persistent, 3D objects.

If you have a "fully sapient AI" then you have essentially magic. You can still maybe exploit holes in its programming, or have the MC make friends with it, or use one of the above solutions if the AI is coded too rigidly. You can also exploit human failings. The AI catches the MC but the human it reports to doesn't do anything about it because they don't believe the AI or don't want to do their job.

Lots of ways that a sneaky character should be able to deal with cameras while still providing some tense scenes. Waiting after you've completed the heist so that people won't look at the correct time would be excruciating. Every little noise would be terrifying.

Thinking you have the AI software fooled, but realizing that the cameras are pointing at your face and getting a message that the software was updated to track the camouflage you're using, would be a good panic moment too. Or thinking that the AI reports to the person who doesn't do their job, but the competent person switched in for duty tonight, etc.

Bonus points if you let it work 1-3 times first and then the tried and true method completely fails, forcing the MC to improvise.

Probably won't be of much help But I wrote a few things into my story:

Everything is monitored by the ID you have that records all your comings and goings including on the roads which are all toll roads, and on mass transit which the poor use.

The rich are able to create fake IDs allowing them all the privacy money can buy. And they don't always use the highways, they can fly their cars when they want.

Some people reject IDs and live outside of society so to speak, squatting, bartering, etc. (Maybe has plot holes but meh, it's fiction)

In poor neighborhoods they've broken the street and apartment cams (cameras) so many times no one wants to invest in replacing them one more time. But most of those people use IDs so some of their movement is tracked.

And in at least one guard tower the guards themselves put a cam on a loop so they can sleep without being caught.

In the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, Murderbot often hacks local cameras to delete the footage of its passage or convince the AI programs monitoring them that Murderbot is not important or doesn't exist, but this is far-future tech and Murderbot isn't human; it often exploits a blind spot in which humans never envisioned a robot simply asking a resident AI for permission to bypass protocols.

Hacking cameras to run loops of blank footage seems to be a common trick, at least in fiction. Cutting power can be riskier unless covered by a broader event.

The best way, now and in the future, would probably involve an inside helper to deal with cameras and security, though the less the helper knows about the caper the better.

You might research modern-day heists and crimes where cameras were present for ideas to build on, maybe... people are generally quite adept at coming up with ways to circumvent security when they have their hearts set on a crime.

A: Hack the system so it plays video you have prerecorded on a loop
B: Figure out where the cameras are and what they see, and avoid them

Drascus said:

The thing with surveillance systems is that with any useful number of cameras you quickly end up with far, far more footage than can be watched by humans. Therefore obfuscating your appearance even a little bit, or obfuscating what time you did your intrusion can make it really difficult to find the time / camera that shows the intruder.

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Defeating facial recognition because no one would be watching the screens of the major surveillance systems.

For example: MC has a way to break into the building that is quiet. MC breaks in, does all their stuff on camera, waits an hour after they are done, and then blows open the main door on their way out. Everyone goes looking in the logs AFTER the door explosion time stamp. ...

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I like that idea.

This all changes if you have an AI watching the cameras. Real world AI uses facial recognition and other pattern recognition methods that can easily be defeated by face paint. Draw some dark lines on your face and the computer won't be able to tell that there's a face there. Modern computers and AI systems don't "see" or have a concept of the real world as a place full of persistent, 3D objects.

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I like this idea and it made me think of those people that paint incredible images making flat surfaces look 3D.

If you have a "fully sapient AI" then you have essentially magic. You can still maybe exploit holes in its programming, or have the MC make friends with it, or use one of the above solutions if the AI is coded too rigidly. You can also exploit human failings. The AI catches the MC but the human it reports to doesn't do anything about it because they don't believe the AI or don't want to do their job.

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More ideas I like.

Lots of ways that a sneaky character should be able to deal with cameras while still providing some tense scenes. Waiting after you've completed the heist so that people won't look at the correct time would be excruciating. Every little noise would be terrifying.

Thinking you have the AI software fooled, but realizing that the cameras are pointing at your face and getting a message that the software was updated to track the camouflage you're using, would be a good panic moment too. Or thinking that the AI reports to the person who doesn't do their job, but the competent person switched in for duty tonight, etc.

Bonus points if you let it work 1-3 times first and then the tried and true method completely fails, forcing the MC to improvise.

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Great stuff!

The answer is going to depend on your sci-fi setting, but no defense is perfect and security is a trade-off between impenetrability and convenience. A standard business office or other 'we do it because it's easy and if anything happens we'll review the footage later,' might have lots of wireless cameras because that lets them slap them wherever they want them and is easy to setup. But for your protagonist infiltrator, signal interception is easy, as is bypassing the consumer grade security protocols to mess with things.

Or more automation makes things less secure when people presume that their digi key cards means those electronic locks are the ultimate defense because you can only get in if you have an authorized keycard/id signal/whatever. And then someone gets their hands on the ID code for head of security, which gives them full building access and other research lets the intruder know ahead of time where the few cameras are.

To prevent wireless intrusion, all cameras are hardwired in. Great at being harder to penetrate, but it also means installing the cameras is much more laborious since you need protected physical connections for each of them, and if there's a convenient junction box, or the like where an intruder can get at them, they have a physical point of entry into your system.

Ultimately, just look at why cameras aren't the end all and be all of security today and extrapolate from there to fit your setting.

Often stairwells and roof tops have no cameras. Inside a build there can be service tunnels and crawl spaces to make repairs that have no cameras. A camera can only be as good as the lighting in the area. Night and other poor lighting conditions can make the footage from a camera inconclusive. Finally it could be the footage isn't stored for a long period of time or at all, making it impossible to review.

Emissarius said:

If you're writing a sci-fi, and your MC does lots of sneaking around inside towers and buildings, how do you usually have them avoid surveillance cams aside from carrying a piece of tech that busts every camera in the building? Writers of fantasy usually don't have a problem with that sort of thing, and having been one myself for years, neither did I. Now that I'm writing a fantasy-turned-space opera though, I need to circle back and find an explanation for all the MC's espionage moments. Any suggestions/ references from novels or TV would be appreciated.

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FWIW, I thought I needed espionage cameras around my Big Bad Facility and then realized... I could simply leave them out of the picture. As far as I can tell not a one of my readers spotted them missing, I suspect because the story was focused more tightly onto other aspects of the tension and conflict. I just got rid of them, put the tension and challenges elsewhere, and it worked.

In other words, I think it's possible to write the story so that the reader's brain is 'full' of what you are giving them, and by virtue of that you can leave out things that are problematic.

Possibly some readers wouldn't buy it. Possibly your set up will demand cameras--like if they are a requirement elsewhere in your story and so your readers have been shown that they are already part of the world.

This article about false facial recognition came across my desk this afternoon. Thought it might be of interest here.

indianroads said:

This article about false facial recognition came across my desk this afternoon. Thought it might be of interest here.

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This was an important point:

his arrest points to a much larger problem of police overusing unreliable algorithms.

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The way police rely on unreliable lie detector tests comes to mind.

MaeZe said:

This was an important point:The way police rely on unreliable lie detector tests comes to mind.

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NEVER agree to take a lie detector test. NEVER EVER. Most likely out come is a falsehood indicator. Yeah - they rely too much on faulty tech. A FMRI might be better, but the standard lie detector is completely unreliable.

I HATE to speak in generalities - but many detectives just want to get the case off their desk. They often lock in on a suspect, and will ignore evidence and other suspects, railroading an innocent person into jail.

There are exceptions of course - but my personal bias has me thinking of these situations as just that, exceptions.

You can try it and see if it works.

A substitute for surveillance cams is guards. Watches. I did have a beta reader ask me where the law-enforcement was, so I needed something along those lines.

If you establish roving watches earlier, to establish how security is managed on your world, then when your kid is roaming around that solution may require less finagling (than cams) for the kid to get where he needs. (Someone can slip the watch a drought, he can hire an assassin (prolly not?) or heck they are simply roving elsewhere ... although you don't want things to be too convenient.)

Woollybear has given the answer (more or less) that I'd give. Are surveillance cams necessary for your world? If not, I'd de-emphasise or even delete them.

That said, I have a book coming out shortly set in 2030 with a federal agent as the MC. The story opens with him watching someone live on very sophisticated surveillance. Accordingly, I'd created a world with massive surveillance so I had to remember that all the way through the story.

I had a few ways of dealing with that but all I really wanted to achieve was NOT to have the reader wondering where the surveillance had gone. So, brush strokes, a reference here - a mention there, until another big surveillance scene where the system had been hacked - by whom, being the mystery.

I reckon I got away with it. No beta reader has complained about the surveillance handling, so I guess my point is: de-emphasise or ignore unless necessary to the story.

In my story, the MC belongs to a minor nobility, and as a 13 yo kid, he isn't allowed outside his family wing after bedtime. He sneaks into other wings after midnight hoping to uncover assassination plots. There are no doors leading into wings so there's no need to figure out how to unlock them, and once he gets there, there's rarely any need for him to enter bedrooms, so that's pretty safe, too. Maybe I should just ignore it and hope readers don't think something like: "Why isn't anyone reviewing the surveillance footage?"

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Auto-quoting isn't working right now so trying to do this manually.

For me, the crux of whether I'd notice the lack of surveillance comes down to your individual telling of the story. As others have said, don't emphasise what's not necessary. You say your character is running around looking for assassination plots. So this seems fairly black-and-white:

1. No-one believes these plots exist, but your character is searching regardless.
2. There is a real and present danger of these plots but no-one is taking them seriously (hence your character doing the work).
3. There is a real and present danger of these plots and your character wants to me more involved in resolving them.

In #1 and #2 you can easily just not mention surveillance. But in #3, it seems implausible that surveillance wouldn't be present. It all comes down to how you present the events - if everyone believes there's a risk, they'll take steps to cover it, and in a contemporary+ tech level that includes surveillance. But if there's no real risk, or no perception of risk, then it's much easier to just handwave and ignore the presence of security, even if in a strictly realistic scenario there would be.


As Black Prince reminds, one strategy is to have the character USE the surveillance rather than try to avoid it. If a plucky MC wants to look around a house with cameras in every room, it might be simplest to get into the security and look around through those cameras, rather than coming up with some mega-complicated stealth scenario.


One other point: you say the character "isn't allowed" to leave their wing of the building. How is that enforced? If there are guards posted there, for example, it would be inconsistent not to have guards elsewhere. The presence of physical watchmen, as Woollybear notes, is an easy way to ignore cameras. Again, while it might not be entirely realistic to have guards and not any other kind of surveillance, having some kind of visible security ticks a box that makes the situation seem more plausible. You only really need to mention multi-layered security in heist scenarios, where the impossibility of breaking in is the whole point.

HTH.