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Houston Police Chief Wants Cameras in Homes
An anonymous reader writes "In one of the most blatant and frightening statements made on privacy, the Associated Press reports that Houston's police chief wants surveillance cameras in apartment buildings and even private homes. Chief Harold Hurtt wants building permits to require cameras in shopping malls and large apartment complexes. He also wants them in private homes if the homeowner has called the police repeatedly. So, if you're in Houston, don't call the cops too much, or they might install a camera the next time they show up. And what does Hurtt have to say about privacy concerns? 'I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?'"
I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?
m l. Perhaps Mr Hurtt would like a camera in his home, given that he seems so enthusiastic about them? Maybe it could be placed in his bedroom, or somewhere equally degrading.
Try telling that to Shi Tao http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0909/p01s03-woap.ht
Anyway, doesn't the fourth amendment protect against unreasonable search and seizure? I'm pretty sure this would count as an unreasonable search.
First, nobody is talking about live surveilance in homes. He's talking about all the times that cops get called out to domesic violence 5 times per week to the same house. Put a closed circuit camera in the house with a padlocked VHS recorder. That way its no longer he-said-she-said...
People have NO IDEA the type of assholes cops have to deal with.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
Someone hit that guy over the head with a copy of 1984.
Then fire the dumbass. Some people just don't understand that crap will not be tolerated.
Our country was not founded on this crap. Hell, if anyone reads the writing of our Founding Fathers, Documents such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independance, they might just learn we're taught to overthrow the government when they abuse the people. If this crap goes unchecked then what alternative do we have?
I know it sounds bad but then again, it IS their words and hope we protect the country from idiots like him.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
"If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free..."
"...If someone intrudes on our privacy - by peering into our home, going through the personal things in our office desk, reading over our shoulder on a bus or airplane, or eavesdropping on our conversation - we feel uncomfortable, even violated.
Imagine, then, how we will feel if it becomes routine for bureaucrats, police officers and other agents of the state to paw through all the details of our lives: where and when we travel, and with whom; who are the friends and acquaintances with whom we have telephone conversations or e-mail correspondence; what we are interested in reading or researching; where we like to go and what we like to do.
A popular response is: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
By that reasoning, of course, we shouldn't mind if the police were free to come into our homes at any time just to look around, if all our telephone conversations were monitored, if all our mail were read, if all the protections developed over centuries were swept away. It's only a difference of degree from the intrusions already being implemented or considered.
The truth is that we all do have something to hide, not because it's criminal or even shameful, but simply because it's private. We carefully calibrate what we reveal about ourselves to others. Most of us are only willing to have a few things known about us by a stranger, more by an acquaintance, and the most by a very close friend or a romantic partner. The right not to be known against our will - indeed, the right to be anonymous except when we choose to identify ourselves - is at the very core of human dignity, autonomy and freedom.
If we allow the state to sweep away the normal walls of privacy that protect the details of our lives, we will consign ourselves psychologically to living in a fishbowl. Even if we suffered no other specific harm as a result, that alone would profoundly change how we feel. Anyone who has lived in a totalitarian society can attest that what often felt most oppressive was precisely the lack of privacy.
But there also will be tangible, specific harm.
The more information government compiles about us, the more of it will be wrong. That's simply a fact of life. ...But if our privacy becomes ever more systematically invaded by the state for purposes of assessing our behavior and making judgments about us, wrong information and misinterpretations will have potential consequences.
If information that is actually about someone else is wrongly applied to us, if wrong facts make it appear that we've done things we haven't, if perfectly innocent behavior is misinterpreted as suspicious because authorities don't know our reasons or our circumstances, we will be at risk of finding ourselves in trouble in a society where everyone is regarded as a suspect. By the time we clear our names and establish our innocence, we may have suffered irreparable financial or social harm... [go ahead, read the rest, its well-worth it.]
"If you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?"
Wrong, according to whom? You? The mormon manning the camera who thinks drinking is against God's law? The Jewish officer next to the Mormon who has a problem with my delight in cooking pork?
Everybody sees the world through their own lenses of right and wrong. If I am being observed by somoene with a radically different belief structure than my own, it stands to reason that in their eyes I very well may be doing something wrong. It is completely the right decision to want to hide my behaviors from such people, allowing them to navigate through the world with their own peculiar perceptions without slapping their personal prejudices against me.
We do not live in a homogenous society. We live in a society of great diversity where people are offended on a reasonably consistent basis by the behavior of others in society. Offense and prejudice breed harassment and worse. It is absolutely critical that people hide their personal lives from each other, and especially those who have the authority to act on their prejudices. Anyone who thinks differently - well, those are the ones who have the most dangerous prejudices of all - the ones who think they have the authority and RIGHT to force their view of the world on others.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
The problem I have with the whole "if you have nothing to hide..." argument is that it can be really hard to even know when/if you are doing something illegal! For a variety of reasons:
People have a hard time separating their personal judgement from what is law
A prime example is our history of sodomy law. All it takes is one deeply religious person in power who is unable or unwilling to separate church from state before you have a problem.
From the current Florida lawbooks:
Are you living in Florida with your unmarried girlfriend or boyfriend right now? (Oh wait, this is Slashdot
People misinterpret things, especially when they don't understand
What happens when big brother misinterprets your repeated login attempts because you forgot your password as attempted illegal entry into a computer system?
Or how about when you open your e-mailbox and receive those "hot teens!" spam and you're mistaken for a pedophile because you "downloaded child porn" thanks to the attached jpeg?
There are plenty of silly, stupid and broad laws on the books
I won't even bother to comprehend how many silly, stupid and broad laws there are. Check out some of your state's dumb laws (DumbLaws.com coral cached) and discover your true criminal identity.
And lets not forget about the growing issue of computer crimes created by politicians who have been bought or simply don't understand. If the RIAA/MPAA gets its way, it'll soon be illegal to put a DVD in your computer or record your favorite movie aired on TV to watch later.
... anyway
My point is that you are mistaken to think that you have nothing to worry about if you've supposedly done nothing wrong.
First, everyone in this country has probably broken or will eventually break a law or two unknowingly or willingly. And secondly, history has proven that whoever has the power to monitor the people will undoubtably abuse that power according to their beliefs and to their advantage -- whether it's in public locations or in the privacy of your own home.
This idea is constitutional and is permitted by US constitution in that the the citizens have a right to monitor the government.
As far as am concerned, THAT is a true use of my money. I get to exactly note how my money is spent.
What do you say Mr.Policeman?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
That's better than one speeding ticket I got.
I had a crack in the engine block of my old 1989 Toyota Celica. The car was beaten up, and wouldn't accelerate quickly. In city traffic, I had a hard time breaking 35 miles an hour. I didn't want to invest any more money in the car, and so let it die peacefully of old age while looking around at Camaros.
I was driving around in Maryland, I forget the name of the town, and there's a stretch of road, that goes something like 35 to 25 to 35 again, in a stretch of only a couple blocks. There's an old, closed gas station, there. I'm driving in to work one morning on a business trip that had me commuting from Waldorf to Lexington Park. Driving... not fast, since my car couldn't, at this time, go fast.
So, a police officer, no lie... walks out in front of my car, holds his hand up, and stops me, waves me in to the gas station, and writes me a speeding ticket, 19 miles per hour over so I don't have to show up in court. I go, "but officer, I can't have been speeding," (and to this day, I know that I can't have been), and he just gives me this sharp tone that says he's going to make it a lot worse on me if I don't just pay the fine. I paid it, driving another 200 miles to fight the ticket didn't sound like it made an ouce of sense.
Essentially, according to him, he walked out in front of a vehicle going 45 miles per hour in order to pull it over. Additionally, my vehicle that was highly unlikely to be going 45 miles per hour at all in stop and go traffic would have had to have been going that fast less than a half-mile or so in front of where he decide to slowly walk out in front of my car in order to bring it to a stop.
My guess is, since there were 3 other police cars pulled in at the same gas station, all writing tickets for other cars, that this is a common offense in that town.
I work in local government. I am around cops all day. 2 of my friends actually became cops. Over the period of 2 years while training and first year of service, you can definatly see a change in their attitude. They become very detached from reality. I think very few cops these days actually become officers to uphold the law and make the world a better place. Some do it for the rush and excitment. A lot do it for the power. Some do it simply because it's a steady government job that doesn't require anything more than a high school diploma.
A great deal of police think that if you were clocked at 45, you were going 45 and you are just lying. There's this attitude that if you were pulled over or arrested, you are guilty (even before trial). If not, that would mean the police are wrong (oh my, god forbid that!).
What happened to you is actually a common police tactic. Not ticketing you for the primary accused charge, but some made up lesser charge (seat belt, tail light, reduced speeding ticket). Most people won't fight it because they are scared if they get in court the officer might bring up the original charge and have a huge ticket. Guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it. Which is sad, because a lot of people pay for tickets they should fight because they are scared. The police are very aware of this and use it as a common tactic to make a ticket stick.
And that's the sad state of many police departments in the united states. Making the world safe and fair for us by upholding the law is only about 10% of their motivation anymore. Revenue and power through selective accusations seems to really trump that these days.
I can't even tell you how many times I've seen the police flick on their lights just to run a red light. Or let off their friends when they pull them over. The clincher? I'm at a crowded restaurant one night (30 minute wait time). Cop walks in with two chicks, looks at the line. Walks right past everyone and finds a recently vacant table. Asks them to clean it and sits right down. And no one said anything because he was a cop. That really sums up their attitude right there.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
And while you're at it, you can always learn a bit from our good friend Stalin and make a few of them your special observers of the other children and their parents. We can call them "secret police" - oops. I mean "hidden little enforcers of sunshine and homeland happiness"
There's a space in the url. Try this:
6 7462745475
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-53665520
I say, if my fellow 2-wheelers want to skip the helmet and go pavement surfing, then let them. If they want to be idiots, thats fine - they just have to deal with the cost. Hell, I signed a paper for my ins. co. saying that if I got into an accident w/out a helmet, then I'm not covered. I also always wear a helmet. Personally, I'd like to see similar discounts for wearing body armor - you wear it, you get a discount. You get into an accident w/out it, then you owe back payments (plus interest) on the higher premium. Between training, experience, and safety equipment, I'm probably one of the safest riders around - but I still pay $180/mo because I ride a sport bike, even though I have 0 tickets, 0 accidents, and always wear full body armor (yes, even in 100+ degree weather). As far as I can tell, helmet laws are either one more way to collect revenue from fines, or to attempt to protect idiots from themselves. I just wish there was less reliance on laws (esp. the "absolute letter of the law"), and more on personal accountability... but looking around at modern society, I doubt that'll happen any time soon.
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.