Abstract: Airports are places that are heavily surveilled by different
(technical) means, including CCTV (Closed Circuit Television). So far, the
literature on CCTV has not paid much attention to the practices behind the
screens of the CCTV monitors at airports. In this article, we present an
in-depth, ethnographic study of the use of CCTV in the Military Police's
control room at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. We find that, since nobody is 'at
home' at Schiphol, surveillance through CCTV is a challenge for the police. The
operators in the control room are constantly struggling with the question how
to spot deviance in a situation where they believe normal behavior does not
exist. Our study shows that the categories for singling out the abnormal
identified by Norris and Goold are rarely used by the Military Police at
Schiphol. Instead, they heavily rely on routine, transmitted, and retrospective
surveillance.
