Chicago Pondering Huge Camera Network

andyring writes "According to ABC7 in Chicago, mayor Daley rolled out plans to install thousands of video cameras in public places across the Windy City. In some ways, I suppose there are positives, as all the existing and future cameras are tied in to the 911 emergency center, allowing a 911 dispatcher to actually watch the area in question when someone dials 911. Dispatchers will be able to control some of the cameras, such as panning and zooming in."

Comments

Fuckin' Daley

[Naikrovek]

This is also the mayor that destroyed Meigs Field under cover of night and with police protection to keep people away while he did it.

This guy is a fucker. Underhanded bastard with no concern for the citizens of Chicago.

Re:Fuckin' Daley

[Anonymous Coward]

What personally bothered me most about the Meigs Field incident was that he had lost several attempts to turn it into "Hillary Rodham Park" and a number of other park ideas as Meigs field lobbyists were able to hold it off, but under the veil of "potential terrorism" he tore it down.

That's like saying "let's tear down the roads on Wacker Drive and run the Chicago river through it because a truck bomb could be outside of a building". But obviously he doesn't want to do that, he just wanted his park and since he couldn't get legislation passed to do it, he had his chronies go in and do it for him and because he's the mayor of Chicago and part of a vast political machine he faced little recourse from the law or media for doing so.

Re:Fuckin' Daley

[littlerubberfeet]

The destruction of that airfield was fully illegal. It was done with bulldozers in the middle of the night. It was done in the name of "Homeland Security". I think Daley is just an asshole. On top of that, by destroying the runways, he destroyed emergency/alternate landing locations for aircraft with problems.

Mayor Daley might have kileld people. The fire department's Helicopter squad was based at Meigs. When it was moved, it upped the response time to the lake by 10 minutes. In April? 2004, they were too late in rescuing people off the lake.

There ware about 15 planes stranded at the field. It costs a LOT of money to have a $250,000 Piper disassembled, shipped, re-assembled and then have the airframe re-certified. Anyone in the AOPA/EAA/ General Aviation community will turn red and rant for hours when one goes and mentions Meigs or Daley.

Anyway, like the parent post, anyone with such bad judgement should never be alowwed to make important decisions.

"Fucker" is not a good description. "Murderer" might be more accurate.

Excellent book: Transparent Society by David Brin

[joelparker]

How will these cameras affect our freedom?
For some good ideas, read some David Brin:
The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

Zooming cameras eh?

[loraksus]

"Dispatchers will be able to control some of the cameras, such as panning and zooming in."

Yeah. On tits and ass.

(search for breasts)
a la http://www.aclu.org/NationalSecurity/NationalSecur ity.cfm?ID=10059&c=111

This is just another case of law enforcement making up (or wanting to) for gross incompetency by using technology.

I forgot to mention

[jeffs72]

The usa today article is HERE. The article was pretty informative.

Re:to stop all re-threads here

[yintercept]

Wanna see people driving around in Salt Lake City? You can see roads before you drive. When you are late for work, you can call your boss and prove that you are in a traffic jam. The technology is going to happen. Personally, I think our best bet is to keep it as open as possible.

The Witness Program - Peter Gabriel & Human Ri

[joelparker]

Last I checked, there was plenty of freedom before cameras even existed.

There are major exceptions: places where there's minimal freedom until cameras arrive. -Joel

A Lens on the World: Musician Peter Gabriel Provides Human Rights Activists With Cameras for the Cause

By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, Nov 21

...

For the past decade, activists and nongovernmental organizations all over the globe have taken up video cameras to document injustices in their countries, sometimes risking their lives to bring human rights abuses to light.

Women in Afghanistan used hidden cameras to capture the depredations of Taliban rule and, later, the aftermath of the U.S. military campaign. Garment workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan smuggled a camera into sewing factories where women worked 14-hour shifts under lock and key, often without pay, to make clothes for the Gap and other American retailers. In Sierra Leone, young women spoke publicly for the first time about the rapes they endured during a brutal 10-year civil war. In Burma, civilians who are being forced into relocation camps by that country's military regime are filming the activities of the very army that threatens to kill them.

What these and more than 150 other groups have in common is Witness, a nonprofit group founded by musician Peter Gabriel in 1992 that provides cameras, technical training and distribution support to people whose stories would otherwise most likely go unheard and unseen.

The more than 25 documentaries co-produced by Witness have been broadcast on television, used in network news stories, shown at film festivals and meetings, streamed on the Web and presented as evidence in federal courts, international tribunals and the United Nations. Though only one film has resulted in the filing of criminal charges, many have been used as evidence in war crimes trials or have prompted long-awaited policy changes. Others have simply spurred progress toward collective healing. Nearly every Witness film has illuminated crimes, injustices and crises that otherwise would have been known only by their perpetrators and victims.

Re:Cameras and Chicago

[javaxman]

let the bastard honk. As a frequent pedestrian, I can't tell you how many times I've almost walked *into* the car of some jerk-off rolling a red light right-hand turn. It's a lame thing to do- enough people do it, you'll find right-on-red illegal.

You're *supposed* to stop at red lights, it keeps people from getting killed, that's why they're *red*.

Drivers in Chicago anyway, jeesh...

CCTV

[flossie]

We have almost saturation CCTV coverage in the UK. It doesn't make a great deal of difference. You just find that all the kids who want to cause trouble are all wearing grey tops with hoods and/or baseball caps. There is not a lot a camera can do when they all look the same, all over town, every day.

Re:"Mayor Daley..."

[Mister Transistor]

Heh. I got some news for you. We got Kennedys in Chicago, too. You may have heard of Marina City and The Marina Towers (also called the "Corn Cob" Towers) built in the '60's; the Kennedys owned them (but I heard they were sold recently). They also own River City here, a newer condo/apartment development at the South end of the river by Harrison and Wacker.

But the reason that Daley is so popular as the parent said is due to his dad, who set up a well connected political machine. This, although somewhat corrupt, made money for everyone and most everyone had jobs, and that made him and his administration very popular. Chicago was known as "Da City Dat Works".

Re:Privacy in public

[Cromac]

In the UK cameras don't have nearly as much effect on criminals as simple lights do.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/08/31/constants urveillance.ap/index.html

A study by crime reduction charity NACRO found the technology reduced crime by only 3 percent to 4 percent while better street lighting led to a 20 percent reduction. The Home Office is conducting its own evaluation.

I'm sure they're a big help in solving crime after its been comitted, but at least in the UK cameras don't seem to be much of a deterant to crime.

Sorry for posting the same link in two replies, but it was more appropriate to follow this post.

Re:UK has this..

[0123456]

And the violent crime rate in the UK is growing fast. You see, crooks don't care about being photographed, particularly when they're wearing hoods and masked, whereas they do care about police patrols catching them in the act. Replacing police patrols with people sitting in a room eating donuts and oggling girls' boobs on CCTV does nothing to reduce crime.

Re:not in my back yard

[miu]

A message to the tinfoil hat crowd: you're not that interesting.

Ba-Zing!

You got mugged so now I should just ignore the possibility for abuse in a constant surveillance system? Moron.

People worried about these kinds of plans are not all paranoids opposed to any surveillance or law enforcement technology, some of us want real answers and details on storage duration, conditions under which footage is stored, what right we have to access live and archive footage, and so on.