Slashdot Mirror
CCTV Cameras In UK Get Loudspeakers
An anonymous reader writes, "Big Brother is another step closer in the UK where the ever ubiquitous CCTV cameras are being fitted with loudspeakers so that camera operators who spot activities deemed 'anti-social' can berate the citizens below. In January 2004 there were more than 4,285,000 CCTV cameras in the UK (roughly 1 for every 4 households). No data about the number of CCTV cameras now in use in the UK is available."
Can they play the 1812 overture?
In soviet Russia, you don't tell the government what to do, it tells YOU! Oh....wait....crap
Curiosity killed the cat, but cats have 9 lives.
"Afterwards she said: 'It's quite scary to realise that your every move could be monitored - it really is like Big Brother. 'But Middlesbrough does have a big problem with anti-social behaviour, so it is very reassuring.' " And this is why it is truly Airstrip One.
Personally, I think this will backfire. It's possible to simply learn to accept that law enforcement is watching and recording everything you do in public, as millions of Britons have apparently done. But when those cameras start vocally reminding you of their presence, they may be much more difficult to ignore. We'll see: this will be interesting to watch whatever happens.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Come on now, that enough of that you two, get a room! And young lady, cover up a bit!"
I retrained myself from imagining what a seedy operator might say but 'go on, give her one for us lot, we are watching'
or, the fun, shouting out 'give me your wallet', or 'I am watching you, yes... muahaha... you'. Or basic wolf whistling and 'nice tits love'.
Bastards. Luckily I got all the deviant behaviour out of my system before I started dosing.
Not without incident.
*slash* applies for a job as a camera operator
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Well, just because it may be boring to you, does not mean it doesn't exist. We are rushing headlong into an age of massive amounts of ability to violate privacy due to the ability to store the data, and the medium to create it. We are not having a true debate in society about how to balance safety and privacy. It's a pity it bores you, but for some of us, we can at least make an attempt to have some dialogue about the issue before we jump into the abyss.
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When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
Yeah, I keep seeing Daily Mail stories getting posted here on /., and I definitely find it irritating, because of the reasons you just gave. It's not the impression I really want to be giving to foreigners about my country...
Anyhow, adding loudspeakers to these cameras might be a good thing (bear with me, don't mod me down yet!). If the number of cameras stays the same, well we are just getting spied on the same as before, but with loudspeakers, now people will notice the spying is taking place. As it stands, cameras are easy to forget about in day-to-day life, but hearing the voice of authority booming down from on high is sure to raise some alarm. Hopefully we will finally see some kind of backlash! (Now you can mod me down)
The constant privacy concerns on slashdot ( which, btw, I tend to agree with ) are, in this case, focused on the wrong end. The important issue is not the number of public cameras ( as at least one poster has noted, they are in a public area where you could have no expectation of privacy anyway ), but who has access to the other end.
A public webcam, which anybody can look at on the net, is very different from a public cam which only the cops get to look at. The people who control the data get to control the facts.
Rather than bemoaning the number of cameras and now their accompaning audio, you should be complaining about the fact that you don't have access to them.
Public crime is like bugs: if there are enough eyeballs, the problem will be fixed.
Number of rubbish bags stolen from the front of my house in the last month: 6
I bet the devils did it on the same day each week!
They do it where I live too. Big gang of fellers in a great big antisocial looking lorry.
Joking aside, many of us who were alive before and during WWII do see the parallels of today's Western society to that of Soviet Russia. I was 12 when World War II started in Europe. At that time we didn't know it as 'World War II', as the future magnitude of the conflict was yet unknown to us.
Unlike most young students today, in Wales we were expected to keep up to date on world affairs as part of our studies. Every day we'd read from papers like the Daily Herald and The Manchester Guardian, and from The Economist weekly. We knew of the world around us, and we knew of what went on in the Soviet Union.
Many years later, in the mid 1990s, I was lucky enough to get to work alongside people from nations like Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and even Georgia. It was very interesting to hear them tell of their lives in the Soviet Union. In many respects, what they said mirrors the social situation we have today.
They'd tell of fearmongering from the government and the media (which itself was government-run). This fearmongering was used to turn the people against other nations and peoples, and even against certain ideals.
A result of this fearmongering was a sense in insecurity between individuals. Few people would trust one another to any extent. People knew they were being watched at all times, but they never knew by who.
We seem to have much the same today. Many people in our society today share the same paranoia about others, hyped on by the efforts of the mass media. The media itself is guilty of extreme self-censorship, and won't challenge the government to any extent. It thus becomes what is essentially "government-run", even if the government isn't directing day-to-day operations and selecting what stories are printed.
Today, as evident by this article, we are all being constantly watched by shadowy figures within various governments. The level of security is extensive, as is the cost. And what's worse, there is little to show but extreme inconvenience for law-abiding citizenry. Some are even shot dead, as we saw in London a year-and-a-half ago.
Those of us who lived in the Soviet Union, and those of us who were even just alive during that time period, we all agree: Western society is beginning to severely duplicate the Soviet experience.
Thus the loudspeakers. I picture the scenario going something like this:
"Hey you with the ski-mask on, we see you! Stop beating up on that poor old woman. Don't you take her handbag, I mean it. Stop it! Really, we're going to find you, Mr. possibly a 6'-4" possibly male most-likely caucasian. We have software that can recognize you by your walk. Hey, stop that! Stop walking all funny! Okay boys, it's got to be John Cleese, no one else that tall can walk that funny, go get him!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton