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Ubiquitous Surveillance
lightray writes: "The New York Times is running an article titled A Cautionary Tale for a New Age of Surveillance which gives an alarming view of America's possible future -- and Britain's present." Excellent article, just excellent. (The author has also written a good book on privacy recently.) "And rather than thwarting serious crime, the cameras are being used to enforce social conformity in ways that Americans may prefer to avoid."
.. I was not used to the CCTV cameras and found them quite disturbing.
For about the first 5 months living here, I thought that they might give me some sense of security. They did, until my Brother was beat up in the street.. the cameras didn't help him, and he spent 1 night in the hospital.
2 months later, a work mate was robbed , while he was in his house. Cameras didn't help him.
2 1/2 months after that another work mate was robbed. Cameras didn't help (out of his house).
(I am not making this up).. about 2 weeks after the last robbing, my friend was drug out of his car (about 1 block from the office I work) and had the shit kicked out of him for not yielding to another driver. The damn cameras (which where on that street) didn't pick up anything useful that the police could use to find the person that did it. (on that note, I waited with my friend for over 1 hour for the police to even arive to the scene).
Thus far I am the only person in our very small company that hasn't been either asulted or burgled, and Reading England (Uk) has cameras everywhere. Though, about 9 months ago, a CORPSE was found across the street in the garden from my house in near a building of flats. THERE WAS A CAMERA 150 FEET FROM WHERE THEY FOUND THE CORPSE, no-body was ever cought. (Though, they feel that the person was killed and dumped off, he had been out of prison for only 6 days).
My guess is that anyone that would be watching the cameras are too busy trying to look down someones shirt or sleeping on the job.
What I feel we need here in our town is not more cameras, they haven't done a bloody damn thing. More cops on the street would help, and make the ones that are out there a bit happier about their jobs. Criminals here seem to operate without any regard for getting cought. Maybe if the police had guns and the society here wasn't centric to drinking oneself sick before 11:00pm (when the pubs close) things wouldn't be so bad..
Living here though makes me think twice about gun-laws, never had ANYTHING like this happen to me living in the western united states, but maybe I was in a closet..
*sigh*
It's Goldstein, not Goldberg. I think Goldberg is some wrestler...
And we're at war with Eastasia, not Oceana you bloody fool.
"Face recognition useless for crowd surveillance"
"Face-scan outfit rushes to exploit WTC atrocity"
troodon.net
And he's another Brixton resident :)
It's an interesting peice, however it seems the opinionated view of the author has introduced a number of misleading themes and factual inaccuracies into the article. This guy has an ax to grind?
"There were cameras on the backs of buses to record people who crossed into the wrong traffic lane."
Erm... no, he probably confused the British meaning 'on the backs of buses' to mean physically located on the back of the bus on the outside, then extrapolated his view on from there. Some double-decker buses do have cameras on them *inside* the bus so they can indenty vandales post event. They don't put cameras on outside of buses.
"We had a match! But no, it was a false alarm. The license plate that set off the system was 8620bmc, but the stolen car recorded in the database was 8670amc"
That is clearly made up... no British numberplate is that format, even private ones. Until last month they were like so : Y123 ABC with the Y denoting the year of registration (Feb 01), they used to be ABC 123Y until the late 70's (reversed). The new ones introduced last month are as the following : BY51 ABC, the BY denotes the registration area (Birmingham in this case) 51 means the car was registered in the second half of 2001, and the ABC is random (exluding rude words). Even going back pre-war they used to be like the following "POP 303".
8670amc or 8620bmc is simply not possible, you never find the letter '8' on any British numberplate because and the format is all wrong.
ANPR (numberplate recognition) was implemented in The City to make companies feel more comfortable after the Docklands bombing.
Facial recognition (the Mandrake system) is only currently used in Newham and is not commonly found anywhere in the country, so some of the exgurations in the article are a little unfounded, however his concerns are quite just. The Mandrake system is utterly fallable though, up until a point that it's laughalbe, there's been quite a few programmes (e.g. Mark Thomas Product) that have clearly ripped the system apart. And since the premise of CCTV lies soley upon perception, Mandrake isn't taken seriously. So I'm not really very concerned at this at all at the moment, the problems they face implementing a reliable system areinsurmountable, give it 20 years then I may take these concerns seriously.
Society itself is still very anonymous if you hang round City's that have cameras then it's pretty easy to see that the cameras have a very limited field of view, if I wanted to get away from them it would be extremely easy. I believe when criminals finally realise how fallible the cameras are they will take no notice of them and since CCTV is purely about perception and nothing else, they will become useless. You are starting to see some very overt criminals that do the crime right in front of the camera without a care, they know very well the vast majority of cameras are not actively monitored, and if they are, the operator has at least two-dozen cameras to monitor. When they show the footage of these criminals the quality is that poor it's impossible to even see who the person is, let alone whether they're male or female.
I'd be more worried about my personal private and data being looked into, ironicly, the data protection laws in the US are very weak, YOUR details can be owned by a company and therefore be sold to the highest bidder and used in various ways. In Europe, data about the person is the property of that person, you simply 'licence' a company to use it when you give up personal details, which can be revoked at any time.
The UK has intensive surveillance in the City's but very strong data protection laws, the US has the opposite, which means if the US does get cameras it could be a lot more nasty than the UK. I'm amazed how the US seems to value its privacy but does not enshrine laws that reflect those sentiments, corporate interests I guess.
I submitted this info as a story submission yesterday, but it was turned down by the Slashdot editors. However it does relate to the discussion of this story so I will slip it in here:
Trickster Coyote writes: Canada's Privacy Commissioner has ruled that constant videotaping from police surveillance cameras violates the Privacy Act and that even just monitoring the cameras without taping violates the spirit of the law if not the letter. Says the commish: "...monitoring and recording the activities of vast numbers of law-abiding citizens as they go about their day-to-day lives" is not a legitimate part of police activities. Read the official report or news articles from canada.com or The Globe and Mail.
Trickster Coyote
"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." -- John Lennon
Ideology is for ideots.
Channel4 in Britain did a four part investigation the whole concept of a surveillance society, including the panopticon. They actually went to investigate the birth place of the public application of CCTV cameras... the US shopping mall. They stated that the mall is the centre of the town and commerce in suburban America, in Britain the focus is still very much the local high street or town, now obviously the latter has been public space for hundreds of years whilst malls are private property or "privately administered congregation areas" which can operate according to the rules set out by the owner.
They actually showed the security guards in the US malls turfing out undesirables, like 'suspicious' looking kids wondering about, or kids just wondering about not spending any money, and people 'strangely' congregating around benches etc. This helped contribute to the whole sense of 'safety' the mall instils within consumers, and happy consumers' means they spent more liberally. This surprised me somewhat since you can pretty much do what you like in public places (i.e. the High street) as long as it's within the realms of decency, yet if the same was happening in a private mall you get turfed out.
Quite interestingly they went to NYC (this was pre Sept 11) and explained that security cameras were first erected in Times Square in the late 70's and were removed in a matter of months because of vociferous public opposition. They put cameras back in the late 90's to public approval and acclaim. It's interesting to see how the fear of crime has affected people attitudes over a 20 year period.
I agree with Brad Templeton's email essay on why this type of surveillance is dangerous:
"...Mr. Barrett is not alone in wondering why some people are so concerned about their privacy. While many are aware of the tremendous prices that some have paid in oppressive (and even non-oppresive) states due to lack of privacy and surveilance, most people pragmatically feel that these oppressive regimes are either in the past, or not an issue for those in the free world, not when compared to safety from crime.
"There is a great hidden cost to surveilance, however, and it is a cost paid by everyone. When we feel we are being watched we, feel less free. We censor ourselves, and refrain from otherwise perfectly legal activities, when we feel that our activities might be being watched, or worse, recorded either for the government or for the general public, or worst of all, our mothers.
"I include our mothers because I expect all of us understand the freedom one feels away from even our own families. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Just that when we're watched we want to meet other's expectations.
"In other words, we're all a bit shy.
"Cameras everywhere make us feel our public lives are being documented. We've never minded the random strangers who might see us on the urban street. We do mind the idea that goverments and companies and others might be making systematic recordings. When we are watched we are not free to be ourselves.
"That doesn't shut down what everybody approves of, but it does chill the counterculture, and those ready to explore. These explorers are vital to a healthy society.
"Oddly, this happens even if the cameras aren't on, or if what they see is only available to "trusted" officials.
here are three stories of police abuse in michigan, involving at least 90 police officers. if you think these guys have anything better to do than eat donuts and chase skirts then you need to get out more.
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http://www.freep.com/news/mich/lein31_20010731.
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/lein1_20010801.h
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/amber31_20010731
I have a friend who went t o Britain for an exchange. During his last month there, he was assaulted on the street and beaten within an inch of his life. He couldn't even eat solid foods for weeks in the hospital. The cameras in the intersection where he was beaten helped to catch the criminals who did this - otherwise, there may have been no way to find them.
While I agree that we have to proceed cautiously, remember that public is public, and if you do something there, you have no expectation of privacy.
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