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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."
Looks like a little while before we have a camera in every household. That will be doubleplusungood. We are still at war with Oceana, right? We've always been at war with them. Unless the Spies of Goldberg have been acting on us again.
JoeLinux
well I live in the UK, and when my girlfriend was hit by a car those cameras came in very useful. They are only in PUBLIC places (and only high streets for that matter). If you want to do private stuff, do it in a private place, it's that simple. The paranoia against cameras seems unjustified to me but hey I live with them and have not been arrested or stopped yet :P
Of course, protecting airports is only one aspect of homeland security: a terrorist could be lurking on any corner in America. In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, Howard Safir, the former New York police commissioner, recommended the installation of 100 biometric surveillance cameras in Times Square to scan the faces of pedestrians and compare them with a database of suspected terrorists. Atick told me that since the attacks he has been approached by local and federal authorities from across the country about the possibility of installing biometric surveillance cameras in stadiums and subway systems and near national monuments. ''The Office of Homeland Security might be the overall umbrella that will coordinate with local police forces'' to install cameras linked to a biometric network throughout American cities, Atick told me. ''How can we be alerted when someone is entering the subway? How can we be sure when someone is entering Madison Square Garden? How can we protect monuments? We need to create an invisible fence, an invisible shield.''
Most of the criminals are mostly low tech.
Even the terrorists were pretty low tech, with their box cutters and library Internet use.
If we want high tech criminals we should do something like this.
Then we will have an onslaught of mask wearing in public streets, and disguises will become common.
It will also become common not to trust your fellow man. The "lawful" person has many reasons to wish to hide from the eye of public surveillance.
We may not catch many terrorists, but we will catch petty criminals and philanderers (in some countries) using this technology.
It will "blow-back" us to Kingdom Come. Do we really want to walk around distrusting our fellow citizens, every second of the day?
Oh, wait.. we already do.
Goat sex free since 2001
hey they can stick cameras in public places as far as I am concerned because well if you do something in a public place then you are doing it to the public and can be recorded by the man walking the dog as well as the police
I have no problems with them taping me walking home but if they want to see inside my house or tape what I say to friends then that's a different matter
regards
john jones
"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear."
Just because you've got something to hide, it doesn't mean it's illegal. What if someone used these cameras in a public area to, say, watch for two men/women kissing or something, then send someone over to harrass them. There are better examples but that is the only one off the top of my head. Didn't we used to have some rights that protected us from this sort of thing? What if a camera just happened to be pointed towards somebodys window... Could be just some guy, or maybe someone they suspect of something but can't get a warrant to watch... You know this is going to be massively abused. They said wire taps wouldn't be abused either...
... is why this is such a big issue. I would prefer wanted criminals be caught through a technique like this. They're dangerous to our society and dont belong on the streets.
I know a lot of people are worried that a system like this can be abused by authorities to track people. I have two uncles that are former police officers (one now is in the Secret Service, other died). Let me explain the point of view of the current SS agent:
There is so much work that a police dept in a major city like NY or Tampa that has to be done that there is no room to abuse a system like an automated facial recognizer. If someone were to abuse it, his/her overall job performance would go down because they would be tracking innocent people instead of catching wanted suspects.
I also have an example of a situation where this would work. I live in Philadelphia. About 2 years there was a serial murderer and rapist in Center City, and got dubbed the name Center City Rapist. A picture of the guy was found and wanted signs appeared all over town, on lampposts, park benches, etc. Also on those signs were how he attacks and how he targets single women who live alone. But the guy got away.
Last month his DNA was found on a rape & murder victim in Denver, Colorado.
If FaceIt were running on Denver and have the Center City Rapist's photo in the db, that guy would have been caught because of his high profile from Philly and perhaps one young woman would still be alive today because of FaceIt.
The murderer and rapist is still on the run.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
The cammeras in the UK have always seemed suspect. Not because they are there but because of what they're not doing. Here are 2 true stories:
Friend is hit by a car in an area with literally tens of cameras. What happened? Nothing. Nothing was caught on camera.
Friend gets the shit kicked out of him by bouncers in a night club. He was in front of a camera as it happened. What happened? Nothing. Tape 'dissapeared'.
WTF type of crime are these cameras supposed to catch? Assault and "Hit and run" type crimes do not benefit. A terrorist incident isn't likely to happen in half the places they seem to be used.
My greatest worry about new 'Net laws' is that in a society dominated by legal precedant, the line between virtual and reality is all to penetrable.
To give an example of this thin line:
hacker ((cracker) but I'll use hacker here) = terrorist
The fact is the actions of a hacker translated into the real world could be pretty serious. But they are'nt IRL. I was glad to see that hacker != terrorist.
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 other words, what you're saying is that if it had been a GOOD camera, they would have caught the criminals. What I see in these complaints (and the ones in the article) is that putting phony crap cameras doesn't do any good. Well, duh.
If you're going to put in cameras, make sure they are very good ones that can do some good.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I live inthe UK, so it was interesting to read the article about "big brother" and CCTV in the UK.
;-) into the front of a shop.
The subject is not really as controversial here as it might seem. I know that my local town council (Wokingham) has been pressing to get funding to install CCTV in the twon centre for some time. The argument for CCTV is made every time there is a ram-raiding incident, or some other such crime where someone drives a 4x4 (SUV to Americans
I personally think that the sheer amount of data collected from CCTV cameras is so great that any general surveillance and control of the population at large would be very difficult. I would assume that most CCTV cameras do not have a pair of human eye-balls watching them. It's only really worth digging through mountains of material when a serious crime has been committed, ususally murder (which is pretty uncommon in this country).
Personally I feel more reassured than threatened by CCTV, I'm do nothing that I want to hide (but then I'm not an anti-globalisation eco-nutter!), but there is a reasonable chance that CCTV might catch anyone committing a crime against me - which works for me!
In 1994, a 2-year-old boy named Jamie Bulger was kidnapped and murdered by two 10-year-old schoolboys, and surveillance cameras captured a grainy shot of the killers leading their victim out of a shopping center. Bulger's assailants couldn't, in fact, be identified on camera -- they were caught because they talked to their friends -- but the video footage, replayed over and over again on television, shook the country to its core.
In most cases, this is what would happen! The captured images would mostly serve the media.
At any point, it is the human element that is the weakest. No amount of technology can replace that part, whichever way you look at it. Networking people takes on a whole new perspecive here =)
Sorry, but whoever wrote that greatly underestimates how desperately America strives for social conformity.
You don't get kids kicked out of school for wearing Pepsi T-Shirts during a Coca-Cola employment drive day, if you don't love conformity.
You don't get Jerry Falwell if you don't love conformity. My god, if there's a man and his masses who would love everyone to conform, it's that gang of hoodlums.
You don't get Sikhs going turbanless this month in a country that doesn't threaten their lives for not conforming.
And you certainly don't get Brittany Spears and the other kiddy bands if conformity isn't desired.
Cameras to enforce conformity? Hell, yes! It's the American Way!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The important part: Brin wanted ANYONE to be able to tap into the cameras, ANY TIME. He also wanted cameras watching the watchers: we should be able to turn into our local police station, and make sure they're doing their job properly. This is the part that's missing from current proposals in the US and current practice in the UK, yet it would clearly be beneficial:
In a world where surveillance seems impossible to avoid, I can only wish that Brin's vision had a better chance of becoming reality.
The right to complete anonymity is going to be a thing of the past, in my opinion, and that may be for the best. Your "permanent record" will be attached to your identity, and your identity will be bound to your natural credentials such as facial characteristics, retinal scans, and genetic fingerprints. Strangely, this could make the world a freer place and a place more tolerant of non-conformity.
Real world security is no different from network security really. You try to protect vulnerable systems from unauthorized access and damage. To accomplish that, you use identity-establishing mechanisms, authentication procedures, and security policies (or laws). These things have been around forever, but technology is making them a whole heck of a lot more efficient -- and we probably need it.
Picture a world in which everyone is genetically fingerprinted and face printed. Seems scary, of course, but picture it. There would be cameras everywhere tracking your whereabouts by signalling your location to a giant database. If an authorized agent of the government wanted to know where you've been, who you were with, and who they were with, etc., it would be a simple query.
Just about any crime that involves even so much as a lost hair or a few skin cells would be immediately, conclusively solved. Would-be hijackers would lose their right to fly the minute they had lunch with bin Laden's stepsister's cousin. O.J. would not be golfing.
People would commit fewer crimes and would shun those who do. In short, it would once again be like living in a small isolated village where everyone knows everyone else.
How do you prevent abuse of the system? First ask yourself if it is easier to control a well-defined system or a pell mell system like we currently have. If the system were well defined, you would have the right, as in credit reporting, to dispute your record and to know what it is.
You wouldn't have government officials asserting that someone was "linked" to something by who knows what vague circumstance. The database would be authoritative and objective. If you were caught on camera on more than one occasion with someone, that's a link. If that someone later proves to be Timothy McVeigh, yes, you have some explaining to do.
A (legislatively and technologically) well-defined automated system of identification, authentication, authorization, and tracking might better protect freedoms than the current hodgepodge of manual and automated systems. The current system of law enforcement is way, way too subject to abuse by its all-too-human participants. Keeping someone off of a flight because they look "Arabic" is discrimination. Keeping someone off of the same flight because they had lunch with bin Laden's stepsister's cousin is reasonable.
Would security automation make it difficult to speed, throw your cigarette butts out of your car window, smoke marijuana, hire a prostitute, dump your car battery in the river, etc.? Yes. But if you don't like the laws, change the laws or the penalties for breaking them. There would still be a democracy to enact the laws and a system of human courts to exercise discretion.
The freedoms of nonconformists and minorities would probably be better protected under a better automated security system than under the current semi-automated system. There would be less of a tendency to "profile" people if we knew their real identities, their track record, and whether they were dangerous to us as individuals. It is anonymity that forces us to generalize about others in my opinion.
> drug dealing, there are still less than 400
> murders in the entire COUNTRY per YEAR. (Population 65 million.)
> Personally, I'm just happy that I can walk
> around Brixton at 3am without worrying that
> I'm going to be shot.
Really ? I'm glad someone is comfortable at Brixton at 3am in the morning, either you're a crack dealer or a spin doctor for New Labia. Even my friends who are locals admit to Brixton's dodginess.
I cannot remember a time I've been to any club in Brixton in the last few years when I haven't been uncomfortable coming out in the early hours of the morning, or much of the rest of the day for that matter.
Maybe you've not noticed the crack dealers, or maybe you choose not to notice.
I've just had to turn down a decent sex and drugs party in Brixton tonight precisely because it is such a dodgy area. Hence the fact I'm currently able to post to /.
The people holding the party actually said to me not to come, since Taxis rarely go to Brixton in the early hours of the morning because it is so bad, and unless I was a local, I'd be likely to be attacked. Given that I live North of the River, that would make me a non-local then.
Face it, areas like Brixton (South London), and Holloway (North London and my old locale), are only safe if you live there. Otherwise they are no go areas much of the time.
Personally, I wish some of our armed forces could drop fuel airbombs on Brixton and Holloway on their way to Afghanistan. Given that the locals are too politically correct to address the real issues (like bringing back stop and search might possibly help reduce crime for a start ?), I can see little other way you'll ever clean up some of the less salubrious areas of the U.K.
The only way I'd ever feel safe in Brixton is in a Challenger Tank, and unfortunately, there's nowhere to park one next to Brixton Station. And even if there was, I'm sure a Traffic Warden SS Nazi would find a way of issuing me with a parking ticket for it.
After the attacks, Bush said, "Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended."
The irony is that the terrorists did attack our freedoms, though not in any way Bush may have meant. They attacked our freedom, and the freedom of nearly everyone around the world, by giving a large amount of power to people like Bush. After the attacks in September, few people (and certainly no politician) would dare question that Americans must sacrifice civil liberties for the promise of "security".
And around the world, governments declared they were in solidarity with the U.S. government - China vowed to step up their efforts against "terrorists, extremists, and separatists" (separatists, as in Tibetans...), the Israeli government killed some more Palestinians, Russia vowed to step up their efforts to crush opposition in Chechnya, etc.
If Bin Laden wanted to decrease the power of George Bush, he made a serious miscalculation -- Americans are uniting behind Bush's efforts to take away our civil liberties, and around the world, everyone seems happy to allow Bush to bomb the hell out of anyone he wants.
Unfortunately, if "freedom will be defended," it won't be by the likes of Bush -- that will be up to us.
> You need to also work out at what point "public display of affection" becomes
;-)
;-)
> "causing an obstruction" (or worst, e.g. if the PDA's are causing such an
> obstruction that pedestrians are placed at risk of being run over to avoid them.)
??? "Causing an obstruction"? Like, causes you to get constipated? A bowel obstruction of some sort?
I think you mean "causes a distraction" or "causes a disruption" or some such. In any event, no, I don't need to work that out, because that's not what we're debating here. We're debating the efficacy and propriety of placing cameras everywhere, not "how far is too far" when it comes to public displays of affection.
And how would pedestrians be "placed at risk of being run over to avoid" PDA? If someone chooses to walk in the middle of the road rather than walk within a few feet of a couple who happens to be kissing, then that person surely deserves to have his stodgy Puritan bum run over. One less extremist Xtian moralizer in the world doesn't sound like a bad thing.
But people do tend to exercise common sense whenever they stop in public places. Much like a person will usually sit off to the curb or on a bench or otherwise off to the side, rather than sitting down in the middle of the sidewalk, so anyone kissing in a public place will probably have the sense to move off to the side rather than stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stand there with lips locked. A good general rule is, if it's an appropriate place to sit or to stand out of the main flow of foot traffic, and it isn't someplace dreadfully inappropriate like a schoolyard or such, then it's an appropriate place to express a bit of modest affection. Kissing, hugging, no fondling. Save the fondling for private places, or at least public places which are unoccupied and will be for a while...
I have a great story about getting caught going a bit too far in a public place we *thought* was secluded, but if I told it the mods would have a field day with that Off-Topic pulldown.
The most important part of my post, however, was the long paragraph at the end about cameras interfering with our Constitutional right to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances. It's an explicit right under the Constitution, and with biometrics-fueled cameras scanning the crowd and matching protesters with IDs, it would have a chilling effect on this right. The FBI has historically harassed people who have done nothing illegal, but piss them off for being political dissidents or holding unpopuklar or progressive views and values. Local police departments vary from very trustworthy to absolutely criminal. So we can't let ourselves be constantly watched when the watchmen are known abusers.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Then I pity your dog and nearby children.
Pervert!
At least gay men can tell the diffence between beastiality and pedophilia. Consentual sex is between two adults who agree on the action.
Control your own mind and stop letting the American Taliban from filling it with shit.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.