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?"

Comments

No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[cloak42]

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.

Re:No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[91degrees]

Fair enough. We're the ones that are cut off though, not the government. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/travel/jamcams/north_c entral.shtml

Re:No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[missing000]

Privacy is not the issue.

Access to information is the issue
The government either wants to keep the parade quiet, and / or they want the ability to beat and gas the crowd without people watching it live.

Any government that abuses people in the name of "privacy" is really evil.

Re:No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they want to keep their servers from getting /.ed by all the people who want to watch the parade without going out there themselves or live too far away.

You people need to get over your frothing paranoia.

Re:No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[PD]

Well, those are the government's cameras, so they presumably can turn them off when they want to.

But, as far as I know, it's not illegal (yet) for private citizens to own cameras and use them. Where are your cameras? Why isn't there some effort to provide private camera coverage of these demonstrations?

If the opponents of a protest are smarter and better prepared than you, then who is really to blame? I know that organizing demonstrators can be like herding cats, but somebody has to think of these things and get the counter-surveilance implemented.

Re:No Privacy Possible in a Public Place.

[missing000]

Well, those are the government's cameras, so they presumably can turn them off when they want to.

I don't agree. The government pays for the cameras with money collected from the people, no? If thats the case, then the people deserve equal access when the cameras are placed for civilian use.

But, as far as I know, it's not illegal (yet) for private citizens to own cameras and use them. Where are your cameras? Why isn't there some effort to provide private camera coverage of these demonstrations?

There is. It's grassroots, but we are out there. For examples of what I'm talking about, I suggest you look at indymedia.

If the opponents of a protest are smarter and better prepared than you, then who is really to blame? I know that organizing demonstrators can be like herding cats, but somebody has to think of these things and get the counter-surveilance implemented.

There are also real limits imposed by the police when people try to do this. They take your cameras, arrest you, beat you, etc. I'd like to get cameras mounted from above, where they are hard to get at, and broadcast in real time, but the costs plus the government censorship is really prohibitive here.

I'd even bet that they would consider that kind of observation as some kind of domestic terrorisim.

Frined of mine ins into Faulin Gong.

[Unknown Poltroon]

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.

That is a simplistic argument

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:seems logical...

[andyt]

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.

Seems to me that the difference is that the police can make those cameras "go away" fairly easily.

Thud! Splat! No more pesky camera.....

Paranoia?

[BigNumber]

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.

Remember Tiananmen?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Isn't this a good thing?

[misterpies]

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.

Their point?

[Zocalo]

As The Reg has already pointed out, the traffic cameras used for the administration of Central London traffic access dues they are are talking about do not have an appropriate license for surveillance. The upshot of this is that the pictures gathered by the cameras can only be used for the intended purpose of billing drivers who take their cars into Central London The Reg has stated. I take that to mean that even if there was a major incident photographed by one of the cameras it would not be admissable in court anyway.

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?