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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."
And, contrary to what the report says, MANY terrorists have been caught using CCTV: most recently, the loony rascist who planted a nailbomb in my local market street was caught using CCTV images. PLenty of IRA bombers have been caught in similar ways.
This is not to say that the potential for abuse isn't there, or that there won't be some test cases before things are bedded down; and it behoves us to be *cough* vigilant about abuses of the system.
But really, Americans should worry more about your right to avoid having to mop your children's brains off the floor because they had a bad attack of the teenage blues and decided to end it all. What's more, even in this hotbed of class A 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.
I find the idea of being constantly watched rather creepy, though I guess the article claims that the camera monitors focus on good-looking girls so maybe it's not an issue.
Anyway, I have less of a reaction to cameras in general, and wonder what people would think of this: The cameras exist, but there are no humans scanning, they simply go into a N-day archive that may only be viewed with a warrant, i.e., when police know something illegal happened in the vicinity of the camera.
I personally would have less of a problem with that kind of surveillance.
And it was such a nice little place when I was a kid... I can believe it, particularly the burglary, though to be fair the murder rate should be a fraction of an equivalent town in the US - a search of the local paper Get Reading yields just the one stiff found in recent months, the one I think you're referring to.
Thought about moving out of the town centre? You're probably in the worst place in the whole county...
cheers
alex
(Richmond, Surrey - CCTV capital of West London)
We need to make America like Israel where they just randomly start bombing people or killing children they don't like because of a stone throwing or other excuses.
Then we will have an onslaught of mask wearing in public streets, and disguises will become common.
Dont know if this is any coincidence or what. In south london (where I live), since all the CCTV camera's have been deployed, a new fashion has started to emerge. Young, male, 'hood-looking types have started wearing baseball caps and hooded tops - at the same time - in such a way that their face is pretty much obscured.
and thats it really....
"No, it ISN'T."
Isn't what you mean to say. "It keeps terrorists off of planes AND keeps punks out of shopping malls." It sounds like you are arguing it doesn't do anything...
"So they And, contrary to what the report says, MANY terrorists have been caught using CCTV: most recently, the loony rascist who planted a nailbomb in my local market street was caught using CCTV images. PLenty of IRA bombers have been caught in similar ways."
OK good. So where are the punks supposed to shop?
"This is not to say that the potential for abuse isn't there, or that there won't be some test cases before things are bedded down; and it behoves us to be *cough* vigilant about abuses of the system."
Very vigilant. How about specific legal protections, like being able to log into a web site and perform meta surveillance. If the security team looks up a skirt and you are watching their peticular cammera, you look up a skirt!!! Bet they won't do it again after the first time they caught.
"But really, Americans should worry more about your right to avoid having to mop your children's brains off the floor because they had a bad attack of the teenage blues and decided to end it all."
Having guns here is about keeping the govenment (local or federal) in check. Kids can kill themselves with a car and a closed garage too. Cars can be far more dangerous than hand guns. What if the Columbine kids ran over kids at 3:30 with their parents SUV. Would we ban SUVs??????
"What's more, even in this hotbed of class A 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."
Me too, I just hope the police don't start exercising undue force, for your sake. They keep swat equiptment, including machine guns, at every station right?
Bin Ladden attacked the USA and NY specifically for our freedoms and tollerance. Let me spell this out for anyone who dosn't get it. Female Afganistani imagrants can walk around UNVAILED here. That makes Bin Laden and the Taliban look REALLY BAD when word gets back to the homeland. Our freedom threatens their Draconian grip on their people so they tried to destroy a symbol of our successful marketplace made possible by our broad FREEDOMS.
If cameras make those women feel as if they must wear a mask for fear that somone will find SOMTHING that they are doing wrong then BIN LADEN HAS WON! Even if it is from his grave. The attacks were a SUCCESS if the blanket of uniform bland gray ash that covered Greenwich Village remains there!!!!! After all, where are the punks supposed to shop?
Sincerly
A pissed off NYer
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Brin's vision is interesting, but naive. That's the peril of smart, well meaning people devising ideas like this. Public access of ubiquitous surveillance would be used for negative purposes. That's beyond even making voyeurism a public value. If you think that wouldn't happen you clearly haven't watched the absolute trash the American public enjoys watching on TV.
Count me out.
2) "biometric surveillance is being used to keep punks out of shopping malls". Has anyone seen a punk in the UK since the 80s? Didn't think so.
3) "And rather than thwarting serious crime, the cameras are being used to enforce social conformity in ways that Americans may prefer to avoid." - if it's not illegal, someone watching the camera output may see the "lack of conformity", but no-one will act - how can they? And others see these people when they're in the camera areas anyway, so what's the difference?
4) "The license plate that set off the system was 8620bmc, but the stolen car recorded in the database was 8670amc" - these aren't even in a valid UK license plate format! Good accuracy!
5) "database that would include not only terrorists but also all British citizens whose faces were registered with the national driver's license bureau" - unlike in the USA (oh my how much privacy there is there), most drivers licenses in the UK don't even have photos on them! They're not used for identity. We don't have to show ID to have a casual drink at a bar or buy cigs. Talk about lack of privacy...
6) "Ditton notes that the cameras can sometimes be useful in investigating terrorist attacks -- like the Brixton nail-bomber case in 1999 -- but there is no evidence that they prevent terrorism or other serious crime. " - so if they don't *prevent* it, they're worthless? If you catch the people that did it, you prevent them at least from doing it again and can bring them to "justice". This is what happened in the Brixton nail-bombing.
What makes you so in love with the cameras to prompt this flurry of flimsy criticisms?
7) "They are ways of putting people in their place, of deciding who gets in and who stays out, of limiting people's movement and restricting their opportunities." - so you ban vandals and troublemakers from harassing people in malls. And this is bad, how?
8) "But Britain's experience in the fight against terrorism suggests that people may give up liberties without experiencing a corresponding increase in security." - thieves and muggers are being caught by this system (and others). That certainly increases my security.
9) "transparent society -- one where neighbors can peer into each other's windows using the joysticks on their laptops. " - is ANYONE talking about this? Didn't think so! This guy needs to read his own article.
I'll grant, you do seem to love them cameras! Flimsy criticisms, though.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
It's interesting to also note that
while the incidence of serious crime
has been dropping by leaps and bounds
in the last 15 years (with a slight
bump in the '80's for the crack epidemic)
the public perception of how much crime
occurs has increased dramatically.
I saw a survey recently where American's
were asked how many murders occured every
year, the over-estimated by a factor of
40 ( in other words, they thought that
40 times more murders occured than actually
did). What's interesting is that this figure
correlates with the number of murders
per capita shown on TV. They overestimated
robberies, etc. by similiar amounts.
It's this perception that is driving the fear.
One might ask in whose interest it is to
keep this misapprehension alive? The
government?
It's called shooting back. :-)
Steve Mann, the father and inventor of the wearable computer has covered this extensively, at wearcam.org there are several papers and perspectives on this. We are under camer all the time. In the UK the police have just added their group of cameras, In the USA there is the same amount of watching being done. Many times you will see traffic monitoring cameras pointing into neighborhoods instead on the highway, in a department store you are visible on at a minimum of 3 cameras at all time. Any US resident that thinks that they are not on camera is nuts. My house has 5 cameras covering the back yar, front yard, driveway, and front and back doors. If you watch the cameras you can also watch my neighors. (Sorry, I'm not gonna have my webserver demolished by slashdot
Steve Mann has every year, the day before Christmas an event called shooting-back day. Very few people have the balls to participate, I did once. You go to stores in a pair, one person videotapes the other person who starts taking photos of the store's and or mall's security cameras. why? to document the person taking photos of cameras being accousted by the store security/management/etc.. They get scared when you watch them watching you.
Only someone with some serious guts and isn't a whiney baby will participate... and it is a helluva rush!
Watch the watchers!
http://wearcam.org/mcluhan-keynote.htm
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I live near a big city with a "gay quarter". Basically, there's a small part of the city where a lot of gay men and lesbians have been moving to, and where when you walk down the street or to the area's public aquare you're more likely to see gay people holding hands and kissing than you are to see straight people doing so.
This is fine with everyone except the ultra-right Xtian moralizers who want to decide morality for everyone else, because it is a small area, and because everyone knows about it. It also happens to be a very, very nice part of town, with great restaurants and shops, but I digress...
The point is, being gay is not something everyone can be open and honest about in this and most other countries. Gays deserve to be able to express themselves by holding hands or kissing in public just as heterosexuals do, and in this certain part of the city they can do so without offending anyone else, without worrying who may find out, etc. But with CCTV on every corner, their ability to have this part of town where they are in fact the majority and the "normal" ones goes away. With a camera on every street, they'd have to worry about who may be watching, who might see their license plate, who might see them holding hands and turn them in to a boss, their family, etc.
This is just one example of losing important freedoms to this. What's more vital than the right to free association? The right to express oneself, and in an appropriate area full of like-minded people no less? A few cameras would cause a very tangible chilling effect on the ability of these people to have their little slice of town where they're all normal and accepted and don't need to fear being outed or blackmailed for expressing themselves in ways no different from the ones we heterosexuals enjoy.
And what of that, too? Would everyone be so content to enjoy a nice kiss on a street or in a park or town square, if there were cameras around manned by leering strangers who amuse themselves by watching? Britons may not be so big on public displays of affection--though in the linked article there were a few teenagers making out and prostitutes getting rogered on windowsills--and some more conservative Americans aren't either, but a vast majority of us find nothing wrong with a bit of kissing and affection in certain public areas. But we don't want and don't deserve a leering audience of voyeurs recording it if we give our dates a kiss and whatnot. Cameras like that may impose a certain un-American stodginess and reversion further into Puritan sexual mores.
In fact, some of my fondest memories from high school involve "making out" with my gorgeous 16 year old girlfriend just about everywhere we went, and it never hurt anyone--in fact, once, we were kissing a bit fervently while waiting for the L, and a big Texan standing near us turned to his girl and said, "Honey, I think they've got the right idea," and that couple started kissing a bit, and before the train came every couple in the place seemed to be kissing and holding one another. It sounds corny, but such a nice feeling of love and affection pervaded the place as you've never experienced before.
Romantic moments like that are actively discouraged when you know there are cameras everywhere and leering pervs behind them. And Americans like romantic moments like that.
Even more importantly, there's a broader ramification. Americans have a specific constitutional right to assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances--i.e., we have a right to protest. A camera on every corner would discourage many from exercising this Constitutional right--the FBI has been known to abuse its powers and put people on "lists" for peacefully protesting, or doing anything contrary to the current establishment. Giving them face recognition technology with which to match peaceful protesters who are merely exercising their fundamental rights with databases--there's talk of just using all drivers license databases--is a gross violation. We have explicit Constitutional rights in this country which we'd be discouraged from exercising based on likely abuses of this system--the FBI has been known to abuse every power they have, from surveilling unlawfully against political dissidents like Martin Luther King, to shooting innocent women and children at Ruby Ridge. So, we certainly can't trust them with this.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Actually, they do have cameras on the outsides of the buses in London to bust people using the bus lanes illegally
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?