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Traffic Cams Co-opted for Surveillance
Aardpig writes "The Register has a brief piece reporting that some traffic-monitoring CCTV cameras in London are offline today, for "operational reasons so that maintenance can be performed". Coincidentally, or not, the offline cameras happen to lie along the route of today's May Day demonstrations. As The Reg points out, the same happened earlier this year, during two of the anti-war demonstrations which took place in the capital. The UK is already one of the most monitored states in the world, as far as CCTV monitoring goes. Does this bode ill for our future privacy, or is this a necessary measure to maintain safety at large protests?"
If you're in public and you're doing something, it's not a matter of privacy. It is by definition impossible to have privacy when everybody else is there, too.
So if the government wants to preempt the use of a surveillance camera to keep tabs on a public location, I see no problem with that.
Now, if the government turned one of those cameras toward my bedroom window, I might get a little miffed.
The government can still use the cameras. It's only the general public that's been cut off.
They'll be used for the new hit sexy movie, The Real London Mayday Parade.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
No. This is really a "Bad Thing"(c)
To me it looks a lot like the government is trying to keep people from seeing just how many other people oppose the government.
May day is a revolutionists holiday. The government is using it's power to keep people from seeing other viewpoints, and at the same time, it may do whatever ugly things to the crowd without anyone seeing them.
If a government is just, it has no reason to hide.
FOr good or bad, whatever. THe interesting bit is, every time they have a parade/demonstration in the us, they get their pictures taken by chinese guys i vans with high quality camera.
THey just had one of their members, a U.S. CITIZEN arrested in china, getting off the plane to visit his family. Basically he was arrested for something he did in this country. THE Skylarov case comes to mind. I like how the us and uk are emulating china in their policies.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Legal interpretation will need to be modified to take into better account the simplistic and inaccurate nature of this old canard. There is a qualifiable difference between someone observing you briefly in a public place with their eyes or their other senses, and a camera recording your image for posterity, or encapsulating the salient features of your visage and comparing it with a database of others so as to identify you. The only expectation I have in public is that I will be observed by other HUMANS, limited by their human capabilities. I don't have, and will never accept, the expectation that aspects of my appearance will be forever preserved and analyzed by non-human systems.
police in many cities worldwide do video surviellence of major demonstrations/protests/etc - but as part of their own defense. Some protest groups, for whatever reason, are quick to say there was undue police force involved if they get arrested, deny things like resisting arrest, etc. The tapes are used to counter those arguments.
Think I'm off my rocker? Guess what - protest groups bring their own cameras to do their own surveillence of the police. It's used both ways to keep everyone (protesters and police) in check.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
What? You really believe that the BBC, ITN, Sky, CNN, and a million other news agencies won't turn out to watch on the off chance they can film just that happening and show the world.
You think the government don't know that?
Maybe they are not broadcasting because they are traffic cameras, and there is no traffic during the demonstrations. The cameras were built to broadcast traffic conditions, not broadcast political messages.
I don't think the British government is trying to hide May Day, seeing as how it's the #1 story in the Europe section of BBC news.
So why do you think they block them every time there is a large anti-gov event?
no sig.
Yeah these cameras switch themselves off when they detect no traffic...
You havent thought this through have you.
Maybe they block them if there is a pro-gov event as well. Most people tend not to protest if they support the government.
A non-conspiracy possiblity is simply that they can't cope with that many hits. These are designed to be looked at a few hundred times a day by people wondering what the best route to the M4 is, not by several thousand trying to watch the may day protests.
Sure I know the media can video events and cut them up into nice bite sized pieces, editing out the cops kicking ass and peaceful people (including women and childern) being gassed.
I've not only seen it, Ive been on the reciving end of that so called great media attention.
There is no good reason not to show this shit in real time. The only possible reason is to keep people unaware. Thats what I have a problem with.
Ah, I remember my first WTO protest in Seattle. They didn't gas the violent undercover cops tearing up Starbucks and trying to create a panic...they gassed old men and pregnant women. They gassed people who were simply sitting around in the place they were told that they could. And the thing is that tear gas don't immobilize you, it just really pisses people off and then they get violent. The police are generally the cause of violence in many protests.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
If it is, you dont get out much, do you? Thats why the cops are there, to keep things quiet. NOT to protect you.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It may not be a coincidence, but that still doesn't make it a big deal. Since there may be a lack of traffic along the parade route, it seems to me that it would be a good time to take the system down for maintenance. There probably won't be a big need for it.
...then let them go out en-mass armed with vaseline and ski masks. Smear the vaseline over the lenses (or paint-ball) and they will become useless. As long as you don't damage the camera, you haven't really hurt anything irreparably.
Ahhh, isn't that what a free press is for? I don't think they'll be able to keep them out. A government's desire for secrecy is in direct opposition to the press's need to pry into every nook and cranny and "give the viewer what they want", which is scandel. Which is the worse violator of the everyman?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
someone is seriously confused. The cameras we're talking about do not broadcast images to the public.
These are traffic cameras used to track car license plates to enforce compliance with the London congestion charging system (where you need to pay £5 per day to drive in central London during weekday rush hours). The pictures are never made available to the public -- they get sent to the charging control system (which is run by the Mayor of London, not the UK government), which automatically checks them against a database of license numbers. The only time a member of the public will ever see one of the images is if they challenge a fine for non-payment of the charge. Then the photos can be produced as evidence in court.
As for the May Day thing, it's perfectly possible that the cameras being used to monitor the demonstration. However it's not clear that's legal -- it might be considered an "improper use" of the system, since that wasn't why it was built.
Moreover most of central London is covered by CCTV, so there's not much advantage to be gained.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Is this at all surprising? How many other rights have been taken away in the name of protecting the public. Do you feel safer now that the (law abiding) population is disarmed and you no longer have a right to self defence? (gee... the criminals didn't bother to obey the law and crime is skyrocketing!! Imagine that!)
What did you expect them to use the cameras for?
When will the public wake up and realize the the only way to stop the crime is to start punishing the real criminals and stop treating citizens like criminals. (homeowners who shoot intruders should be given medals, not thrown in prison.)
If the cameras need maintenance the only logical time to perform that maintenance is when they are not needed, like during a May Day or something.
You don't want to turn them off when they are doing their normal monitoring, you might miss something.
Coding Blog
I've videotaped public demonstrations here in Los Angeles (on both the pro and anti-war side) and had no problems with the police or others[*]. The police will film protesters for exactly the reasons cited previously.
It is a fact that even when the police are just doing their job, they look like the heavies. I've seen many cases of protesters deliberately trying to provoke the police, relying on the fact that the cops automatically look like villains.
D
[*] I have been mildly assaulted (hit with no injuries) a few times by anti-war people when I've mentioned my pro-war views during anti-war events, but that has nothing to do with my videotaping the events.
My friend, if I've got a swarm of people with Vaseline and ski masks at the ready, we're probably not going to be too concerned about going outside to screw up CCTV cameras. ;)
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
Isn't it possible that they picked this day for the maintenance because they knew there wouldn't be any traffic to monitor? I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case but it's just as good an explanation as the government taking control for surveillance purposes. Let's not get too paranoid when there are obvious injustices right out in the open.
There never has been a Constitutional right to privacy in the U.S.; they take away what we never had. I do not know about the United Kingdom though.
You can lead a horse to water,but Rember what a wet horse smells like (Red Skelton 1963)
During that peaceful pro-democracy protest, Chinese officials that _weren't_ beating and murdering uncooperative students were setting up video cameras to record the rest. Those faces were broadcast on state television, and almost ALL the protesters were turned in by "loyal patriots".
In the USA we have freedom of speech and freedom to assemble. When you get down to it, most of our rights exist only because somebody hasn't figured out how to take them away yet. A good example of this was the key escrow scheme that was supposed to be inside all encryption in the USA, granting government the ability to read all encryption (luckily defeated.) The government was going to make damned sure that if you used your right to communication and your right to privacy, that it could be circumvented. When someone invented better privacy, the government made it illegal.
The point here is that there used to be safety in numbers. Police couldn't round up, beat up or arrest everyone, so freedom of assembly was a de facto protected right simply because they couldn't stop you. Well, if you put cameras everywhere, you can catch everyone. There goes your freedom of assembly.
best time to perform maintenance probably isn't during an anarchist march!
Anyway the cameras are only in use weekdays from 7am to 6:30pm (the period of the congestion charge), so there's plenty of time to maintain them.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
So, we have a bunch of roads which are full of marching people instead of essentially stationary cars. What admin worth his pay check *isn't* going to seize the chance to take the system off line and perform any routine maintenance and upgrades that this allows. Plus of course, if there had been a serious incident, you could have simply refused any requests for pictures you can't provide with "sorry, the system was off" and avoid any potential legal/PR quagmire of having the data altogether.
Seriously, if the security forces in the UK wanted more up to date photos of the more militant members of the crowds, do you think they'd need to co-opt traffic cameras?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So the UK has a few cameras that note what you do IN PUBLIC. They help catch CRIMINALS you know. When there's a camera in my house then I'll worry.
I'm tired of Slashdot YRO advocates painting the UK as a police state.
Different cameras, I think. These are general purpose traffic webcams that simply take snaps of the roads every few minutes to give drivers an idea of how much traffic there is. I.e. These
Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.
No, they're on all the time.
These are traffic monitoring cameras, not congestion charge enforcement cameras.
For more detail on what the differences are, see my post above, or more usefully, see this article.
someone is seriously confused. The cameras we're talking about do not broadcast images to the public.
Yes, you're confused. These are not the Congestion Charge cameras.
As for the May Day thing, it's perfectly possible that the cameras being used to monitor the demonstration. However it's not clear that's legal -- it might be considered an "improper use" of the system, since that wasn't why it was built.
The cameras they use to monitor the demo are the moveable (pan and tilt) units on very high posts, which are used for all sorts of police/traffic activity. The webcams on the bbc website are just a low-res feed, essentially a gimmick; this coverage from May Day 2001 gives some idea of how the traffic cameras fit into the police operation.
Off topic? Seems more like "funny" to me... I should be allowed to moderate every day...
Recently the RCMP was admonished for this same type of behaviour. A camera in a clock tower in kelona, BC pointing towards a public park. Canada's Privacy Commissioner investigated and found was in voilation of Part 4 of our Privacy Act ..."Personal information is defined in the Privacy Act as any "information about an identifiable individual that is recorded in any form". An individual caught within the visual range of a video surveillance camera can, in theory, be identified. The captured image reveals information about the individual (such as the individual's whereabouts and behaviour). When the picture is recorded, there is a collection of personal information within the meaning of the Act.
Section 4 of the Privacy Act states that "no personal information shall be collected by a government institution unless it relates directly to an operating program or activity of the institution". ....."
See http://www.privcom.gc.ca/cf-dc/02_05_b_011004_e.as p for more info
Well, if they habitually take down the cameras along a protest route for "maintence" before each protest then actual terrorists just need to wait for the next planned protest and move stuff into place when those cameras shut down. Chuckle.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It took me a long time to realize the game of the anti-activist squad. There is a certain cost in time and possible bad publicity (the latter turning into internal pressure on the person responsible inside the organization) for 'taking out' an activist.
So, the goal is to find those who are organisers, who get other people to attend and generally make things happen- but who do not have the economic or political resources to defend themselves effectively.
This is ultimately the danger of modern surveillance. In the past taking people out has been risky because you might get the 'wrong' guy. I have personally seen cops plant crack on a protest organiser who turned out to be a very bad choice for them. He was straight edge, studying to be a catholic priest, and his dad was CEO of a major bank. Oops.
...this sort of problem. If a govt official takes action that is deemed to be clearly against the interests of public, or if he takes some action found to be clearly illegal, we should publicly execute him, after a fair trial in a recognized court of law.
Public service as a politician or high appointed official is supposed to be public service, and just like those who serve in the armed forces are sometimes required to give up their lives, so too should other govt workers such as politicians be forced to give up their lives if they transgress.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?