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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 stay indoors in a dark room while coding so often that the cameras will never find me! What is this outside world you speak of, I know nothing beyond cubeland and break-room.
I am !amused.
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
.. 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*
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.
Unfortunately the most viable one goes right in the opposite direction of the one that public safety and survaillence advocates want.
It is the solution hinted at by the brave actions of the Passengers of Flight 93, who figured out what was happening, and fought back.
It is what is called in the US code of Laws as the un-organized malitia and consists of every adult in the US. It consists of every adult getting trained on self defense, on how to use a weapon, how to apply first aid, how to take care of oneself. It consisists of every adult being able to be responsible for them selves, and the people around them.
This is just the exact opposite direction from the direction some folks want to go.
It is the direct of all citizens taking responsibility for the government and the society, not the government taking reponsibility for the citizens.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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....
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.
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