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London Police Equipped With 360-Degree Cams
OriginalArlen writes, "In a story so surreal I had to check the primary source, the Register reports that the (London, UK) Metropolitan Police are trying out the use of eight tiny cams, mounted in the police helmet, to provide 360-degree evidence gathering in the event that an officer witnesses a crime. The press release also gives more evidence of the stealth spread of ubiquitous ANPR systems across the country as a spin-off 'benefit' to the London car congestion-charging scheme, which is likely to be rolled out across the country in the next few years. Are we already living in a Panopticon Society?" According to this report from the information commissioner for Great Britain, yep.
Maybe I'm the only one, but when I saw the headline, I thought of the line in Robocop: "You idiot! His memory is admissible as evidence!"
This won't really change a thing in favour of the citizens. It will be used to cover their backs when the police doing things right (which is most of the time), raise a bit of revenue when they sell it off for a britains-dumbest-criminals-type tv show, but don't forget the poor brazilian guy who was executed on the tube last year. The police "lost" the videos for that one, and the tube system is already wall-to-wall with cameras for our "security".
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
If a cop's got one of these on and he does something out of line, you can just look at the tape, whereas otherwise it might just be your word against his.
The key to a "Panoptic" society is that you can be watched at any time, but not always all the time, and you don't know at any given moment whether you're being watched or not. Thus you turn everyone into paranoid little crazies, easily controlled and turned against one another.
As for just looking at the tape, consider the Brazilian guy the British police shot a while back. Police say he was running and leaping turnstiles, witnesses say he wasn't running and he even stopped to pay his fare. But hey, there's closed-circuit cameras everywhere. Let's go to the tapes.... oh wait, looks like all the cameras were turned off that day! Wow! what a coincidence! (the "non-existent" tapes later turned up)
This is apparently a very common tactic. If you ever see a group of police with their badges covered chances are there is going to be some trouble. I learned this first hand at the Seattle '99 WTO protest. I was up in front of a big crowd and there was a line of cops done up in full riot gear with their names and badge numbers covered up, most were holding clubs but a few had AR-15s - it was very weird and intimidating because the crowd was mostly just sitting around and singing stupid songs about democracy and freedom like a bunch of hippies. It was about as non-threatening as you could get, many people commented on how the names and badges were covered and how the cops were just standing there staring and a lot of people felt scared. Other people tried to engage the cops in conversation (all of it friendly, I didn't hear a single insult towards the police). There had been reports of a small group of masked people smashing some windows earlier, but no violence of any sort at this point. After I was there for about a half hour or so someone in charge showed up in a car and talked to the guy who I assume was in charge of the riot cops. About 10 minutes after that the riot cops began "crowd dispersal" by attacking us with pepper spray, clubs, and rubber bullets. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, there was no real warning of any sort. One of them said something into a bullhorn (I assume an attack order, I couldn't understand it) and then out came the pepper spray and rubber bullet guns and then the clubs started swinging and everyone ran in terror. As they chased us down the street I saw an old woman get clubbed in the back and fall face down on the sidewalk, they kicked the woman who tried to help her back and then shot both of them with rubber bullets as they laid on the sidewalk together screaming. I've never felt the same about the police or America since.
And we have far greater problems still with our current government's obsession with the perceived terrorist threat. Last week there was a big thing made of the head of one of our security services, stating that they had x groups and y individual terrorist suspects under surveillance, and knew of at least z active plans to hurt us. A lot of our media was hyping how terrible things really are, and now we really know how bad the real terrorist threat really is.
Me, I thought "Is that all?" and figured we'd do better if we spent the gazillions of pounds we throw at "anti-terror" activities on cutting KSI figures for road traffic accidents, researching promising medical treatments, and raising education standards. This is not to belittle those who belong to the security services. Indeed, I've no doubt that they do some valuable work and protect us from some genuine threats, and I'm grateful to them for it. But sometimes, the price of a little extra security (you can never have 100%, nor anywhere close) is just too high. Tony Blair has talked a lot during his time in office about taking tough decisions. The tough decision on terrorism is not to take all those headline-grabbing steps that ultimately reduce overall quality of life, in a futile attempt to make the country Safe And Secure(TM).
This camera thing is just another gimmick. It used to be that children would naturally respect a police officer and the local constable would stop and say hello to them in the park while walking his beat, yet today the police feel the need to cover their backsides with all kinds of video footage. Why have the police lost the implicit moral authority they used to have? Why is antisocial behaviour one of the biggest dirty marks on today's society? What happened to policing by consent? It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide whether the answers involve the threat of terrorism, or whether they're more to do with the government stripping parents and teachers of any legal right to effectively discipline children, misunderstanding human rights to mean treating convicted criminals like the second coming, adopting the nanny state view of legislation over education, enacting an extensive series of laws that are more about ease of enforcement than outlawing genuinely harmful behaviour, and eschewing all sense of personal responsibility from senior ministers on down in favour of a litigous, CYA, spin-laden society.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.