Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.