Smile, you are being filmed

Cargo theft and public security

Abstract

As an outcome of an instigating research effort that last three years, from 2017 to 2019, Leonardo Ostronff’s book Não existe almoço grátis [“No such thing as a free lunch”] introduces us to the ways in which video surveillance systems located in supermarkets, which observe things and people, provide challenging analytical clues about the operation of cargo theft in Brazil. Drawing on an exhaustive inventory of surveillance strategies of goods in stores, distribution centers, and transportation, the research ties the relationship between seemingly unconnected actors, namely the state (police), companies (private security), and crime, involved in the market of illicit and licit cargo. It is from this place, difficult to realize because it blurs the normative borders of those categories, that the author invites us to think about the implications of the so-called “public” security in Brazil, where private interest overlaps, or is confused with the public management of order. The security market transforms into an asset what was state´s monopoly, the legitimate use of violence.