A Balancing Force to Mass Surveilance?

moerty asks: "The advent and application of video surveillance by governments on its peoples has been a worrying trend in western society. The recent incident with the use of tasers on a UCLA student has highlighted a shift of power where surveillance in the hands of civilians can be used as an equalizing tool against government oppression. What are the best optic/sound capture devices for such a situation? A plus is having a device that is inconspicuous, since photographers are usually targeted due to the visibility of their cameras. What about off-site storage and the hosting of such videos? As a follow-up, what organizations exist that encourage the use of the camera as an equalizing tool?"

Comments

You can't offset systematic surveillance with luck

[hey!]

There is some virtue in the idea of a totally "transparent" society. The problem with most disclosures of private information is that they put you at a disadvantage; either they are out of context, or they fall disproportionately on you but not others around you.

However, nobody who argues that we should chuck privacy argues that we should chuck it for everyone. They're really more interested in turning privacy from a right into a commodity, that some people can buy and others have to go without.

Sure, sometimes you can catch a bad cop in the act. Good. But you can't catch the people you really need to watch; the people who control the surveillance network.

Re:I support cameras.

[GypC]

If only all good people were like you, then us bad guys could take over the world...

*sigh*

Someday... someday...

No, people stop for two reasons:

[blueZ3]

One, because the law says to stop at a Stop sign. There are a good number of folks out there who stop because obeying traffic laws is the right thing to do. Let's just skip right over the obligatory /. moral relativism--there are people in the real world who don't feel a juvenile compulsion to break any and every law to prove they are somehow fighting "the violence inherent in the system." There are nonsensical laws, even laws that deserve to be ignored, but generally traffic laws don't fall into that category.

Secondly, they stop because they're aware of their fallibility. Just because it's three o'clock in the morning and they didn't notice any headlights on the cross street while they were approaching the intersection doesn't mean that there's no oncoming traffic.

I've been surprised by supposedly intelligent people I ride with who don't use their signals when changing lanes. The rationale is frequently "I already looked and there's nobody there, so I don't need to signal." My response is invariably the same "Haven't you ever started to change lanes and then seen someone you didn't realize was in your blind spot? That person has no way of knowing you're about to clobber them if you don't signal." The response is usually a non sequitur.