Britain is the World's Surveillance Leader

hax0r_par writes "It seems that in Britain, surveillance on the general public is happening and being recorded 24/7. They are playing the angle that this is allowing for criminal surveillance, which seems justified by the article. But it really is something to take into paranoid consideration now that we've got the technology to make this possible."

Comments

Is it REALLY a bad thing?

[Pete (big-pete)]

I would welcome rather than fear more cameras on the streets in the UK. There is one thing that privacy advocates are forgetting, for there to be an impact on your privacy there needs to be either a person at the other end of the camera, or an automated consequence.

With so many cameras, I doubt there is the manpower or the interest for someone to look at them all, only the ones that are really relevent - where a crime or suspicious behaviour has already been reported. After this the cameras are simply pointing out the facts of the situation, and are we really that afraid of facts and consequences of our actions (if those actions are illegal or suspicious)?

At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable situation, look at the impact the congestion charges (and enforcement cameras) have had on London traffic for example.

-- Pete.

Re:Is it REALLY a bad thing?

[Armchair Dissident]

At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable situation, look at the impact the congestion charges [wikipedia.org] (and enforcement cameras) have had on London traffic for example.

With respect, this is the same government that introduced the RIP act. When they later attempted to expand the act, they were forced to back down due to popular protest. They later expanded it anyway.

This is the same government that last year suggested the idea of "Voluntary entitlement cards" and stated categorically that they were not going to be compulsory identity cards. The consultation headed by "Millenium Dome" Falconer discarded all responses that were sent via the faxyoump service, despite clear assurances that they would be recognised and claimed that the voluntary card was accepted by the public. This year we learnt that the government was bare-faced lying and intended to introduce the cards as compulsory identity cards all along (it's laid out in bold font in the legislation proposal). Blair defended this position by stating that the Falconer consultation supported compulsory id cards. Even though the consultation was for a voluntary system, and even though it demonstrated the lack of support for it.

This is the government that attempted to stop a group of train crash survivors from getting a public investigation into the crash by hiring private investigators to determine what the political affiliations of the survivors were.

This is first government since the 1970's to introduce internment, which worked so wonderfully badly last time. This is also the government that sought to limit the right to trial by dury, and has seriously considered reducing the burden of proof for serious offences to "balance of probabilities".

I'm glad you trust this government, but their record is not an honest one that merits trust.

Re:Is it REALLY a bad thing?

[SgtChaireBourne]

If a crime happens somewhere close to where you are, and you match the vauge description given by witnesses to that crime? Then you are guilty. At very least, you'll be explaining why you were there, and trying to explain that you didn't do the crime.

The initial suspect in last years assasination of Sweden's Foreign Minsister, Anna Lindh, is a good example of how that can happen even on camera. The press and police caught hold of the first kook running a double life that they could catch on CCTV and hung him out to dry. Granted the character is question wasn't the best character, but pretty much every mistake or failure in his life was trotted out by the media. If his life wasn't ruined before, that did it for sure. Oh. And it turned out that it was actually someone else they saw on the tape.

CCTV is a waste of time and money. The resolution is so bad that it's hard to impossible to recognize even acquantances, except by gait or clothing. I've used CCTV as a guard. I also know some small business owners who use CCTV, despite constantly wondering who has entered the premises. Quite often the potential customer has time to walk back out.

My take on the whole CCTV thing is that it's just the latest scheme to sell expensive things which waste more time and resources.

Actually there are checks in GB

[Space cowboy]

You are entitled to see any footage recorded of you at any time - not that this is (yet) commonly done, but there was a politically/comedy-orientated issues show (forget the name, could have been Gorman) where a host filmed his attempts to get the camera footage that he knew he was caught on.

You can't just walk into the records office and say "I want all camera footage of me at any time in any place", but you can obtain footage if you're more specific - how specific I don't know. Perhaps if more people did this (and then sued if the footage wasn't forthcoming) the authorities would be less likely to be so keen on them...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only way I'll be happy with continual surveillance of such overwhelming magnitude is if *all* the footage from *all* the cameras are available online - the average MP is going to be a lot less happy about cameras being used left, right, and centre if he knows he'll be caught speeding at 4:00am by some anorak

That said, the vast majority are in London (which visitors to the country think is typical - it couldn't be farther from the truth!), and a huge percentage of the headline figure are the CCTV cameras in shops that point at the counter, all privately owned and I don't have a problem with them if they help prevent robbery.

Simon

Re:Actually there are checks in GB

[BenjyD]

It was Mark Thomas, political comedy genius.

Guns in Britain - I live here

[TimothyTimothyTimoth]

Handguns were banned in Britain after a middle-aged hand-gun enthusiast walked into a school and shot most of the kids. At the time handguns were incredibly rare, mainly owned by handgun sporting enthusiasts, olympic competitors, etc. I don't have the figures but I would reckon one houshold in a thousand had one. Hardly a deterrent to burglars. It has nothing to do with the recent rise in gun crime which is being caused by hand guns illegally smuggled in from the Carribean by drugslords. The rise in gun crime is nearly all crimnal-on-criminal killing. I've not heard of a gun being used in a house burglary.