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George Orwell Was Right — Security Cameras Get an Upgrade
Jamie stopped to mention that Bloomberg is reporting on a recent addition of speakers to public security cameras in Middlesbrough, England. From the article: "`People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars."
Welcome our new talking camera overlord.
"People sould not fear their governments, governments should fear their people."
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
because god forbid we might think for ourselfs, or act up.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Will people who flip the bird at the cameras and keep walking be regarded as individuals or traitors to the state?
Lasers added to cameras with speakers to deal with those who don't obey
Not a bad idea, what's the difference if it was another person instead? I'd figure most would flip off the camera anyway...not like that's a crime. Doubt they'll summon the police to fine you for dropping a cup on the floor though I have to admit I'd like to see the people who do get embarrassed for doing something b/c they know better.
This 1984 comparison's much more useful for other more infuriating examples, like a national ID.
why run from Vincenzo?
I wonder how they'd react when you moon them and flip 'em the bird. Or better still, have the middle finger tattooed on your butt and moon them.
The next step is to add a "non-lethal" weapon to these cameras, something to cause pain "when neccessary". Something like Active Denial System. Yes, we need these. Just think about all the children this will save.
Is it too late for Britain to reverse its course? People get used to cameras because they provide security. Then the authorities add speakers to provide more security. In 10 years, cameras will have face recognition systems. This happens so gradually that citizens become accustomed to Big Brother's constant presence and don't question the next move.
50 years from now, I think historians will look at 9/11 (and the Madrid bombings, etc.) as the beginning of the end of privacy standards that literally took centuries to establish. We have to stop this now before it's too late.
Orwell was a man ahead of his time...
...that the only thing anybody knows about 1984 is that it's about a government that spies on its people. If that was the only thing the book was about, it would have been forgotten long ago — there are hundreds of stories like that. This particular story is interesting because it goes insides the minds of the people who make a totalitarian society work. If people actually read 1984, they might not be so quick to refer to it. Because if they did read it, they'd probably see themselves in it — and not as a brave defender of liberty, but as one of the faceless minions of Big Brother.
We should not ask ourselves what can government do with all the power they are accumulating but what will they do. A nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects something that never was and never will be.
I think there is a great oppertunity for advertising here.
If I can put billboard advertisments in areas where these cameras are pointed, I get a load of people constantly watching 24 hours a day.
The space will be really cheap too, as I could put the ad's in places where pedestrians would not see them, but the camera operators will.
Perhaps special placards could be attatched to the cameras, where I could affix full colour adverts for tasers, video recording systems and handcuffs.
There is always an oppertunity for someone to make money, and I am that man!!!
I just started feeling nauseas and it's not from eating too many Christmas cookies.
It would be one thing to use the speakers to alert others to danger, but this is just for behavoir modification.
-- taking over the world, we are.
I'm only mildly surprised that the government of a western democracy would propose such a system -- but I'm shocked that the people of any western democracy would allow it -- TFA says the camera:person ratio has reached 1:16 -- why are people putting up with this? It's time to storm parliment with flaming pitchforks. The U.K. has become an out-of-control police state -- and it is the *left* that is pushing for more cameras....
People of England, you have sold your souls.
Makes you want to just go hug Big Brother doesn't it? I love Big Brother.
The question is, to quote Milton Friedman, "how can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?"
This would be really fun to hack... "Hey you kids, get off of my lawn!!!" :)
I think this is a hoax, pure and simple... it's just too far out to be true. Anyone confirm or deny?
Anyone who wastes doubleplusgood Victory coffee is probably a Eurasian spy anyway.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/17/16 56258
- It is God!
Considered harmful.
"Sir please close the raincoat and move along, you're scaring the pidgeons."
Check out the DVD at your favorite linux / gpl / bit torrent / open source outlet today ! You won't be disappointed !!
when everyone signs a petition that says i can smack them in the face when they do something completely incosiderate of their community and peers, then i'll say we don't need any sort of societal controls. SOME PEOPLE NEED BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION. sorry if that's a shocker. i mean, hell, haven't i already been behaviorally modified into not smacking assholes in the face? how is it fair that i got that against me but the assholes of the world walk free?
can we go easy on the 84 melodrama. sometimes the police brings some benefit for us all (I know, *gasp*) and not every new tool that it's handed is a stepping stone to a dystopia.
Isn't this a dupe of this?
Just put on a ski mask, get some friends and some baseball bats, and go camera a-smashin'.
So, what's the speed limit for a bicycle?
I can see it being used in bar fights.
Bored cameraman: "'Ey, I've got four pounds on the bloke in the red!"
By the way: Go watch 1984. Not only is it a good movie, you'll see how much of an idiot you are for assuming it's all about oppressive police states.
So don't you think it's past time that citizens start insisting that politicians undergo psychiatric screening for "control freaks", before they can run for election, to STOP this Madness!
Anyone notice that when you click on a reply, when you get back to the main tree of posts, there's a checkmark noting you've looked at it.
"You, with the keyboard! Yes, you! Go back and mod that post up!"
Does anyone else think that implanting the elderly with microchips sounds a tad F***KED up?
Error 2101: all your sig are belong to us
we're not far behind. In my town, Downers Grove, there are now cameras at every major intersection. In Chicago, there are cameras in most high crime neighborhoods. Very few seem to care. I won't even mention the number of "private" cameras around any interesting corporate locations.
Smile! You're on Candid Camera!!!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Well, given the use of those neat little ASBOs the Brits are so fond of (which basically allow the courts to arbitrarily criminalize ANY "anti-social" behavior), it's safe to say that any flagrant display of disrespect can be grounds for imprisonment (though you'd have to do twice--once for the ASBO to be issued, and once again to be arrested as a violator of the ASBO.) It likely comes down to the whim of the camera operator as to whether or not this happens.
I'd explain in detail why this is such an obscenely bad thing, but I just don't have the energy. Seems like English-speaking countries in general are a bad place to live if you enjoy personal freedoms (and no, I'm not comforted by the fact that it's much worse in most Arabic speaking countries. This isn't a fucking playground; "they started it!" isn't a valid excuse.)
what would the McCarthy era had been like if they had this tool?
But Hey The Brits are supposed to be socialist (well Medicine any way). Power to the people right?
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
The only problem is that it does not go far enough. Put the feeds on the internet too, open up all the cameras, and install more in all government buildings (if you're a public servant the public should be able to monitor you while you're on the clock). If someone wants to track my movements with a camera I say go ahead.... but only if I get to know who's watching me and I have the ability to watch them back. An open and transparent society can make the world both safe and free. The only thing wrong with traditional surveillance is the imbalence of power between the watchers and the watched.
Actually, I just realized you *could* be arrested after only one "anti-social" sign of disrespect. Apparently, the courts issued a pre-emptive ASBO for the entire town of Skegness, allowing the police to imprison anyone (for up to six months) whom they deemed disruptive even if they haven't actually broken any laws. (Explicitly included was the power to disperse any "crowd" consisting of two or more people.)
I don't see what's stopping them from issuing a similar ASBO covering the entire camera network...
Let's think about this.
These speaker equipped cameras don't do anything that a police officer at the scene couldn't do, and in fact do quite a bit less. So if you consider posting the cameras there unethical, it seems you must be opposed to having a patrolling police force at all. And that's a pretty extreme position.
If you consider having a police force good, the size of it becomes a question of economics. You could hire a cop to stand at each street corner 24/7, but the cost would not be anywhere near the benefit, so you accept a certain level of violent crime that you can't afford to address. But with this technology, the cost goes down by several orders of magnitude, and now that service level is economical.
I'm open to the idea that this level of surveillance becomes something qualitatively different and evil than the occasional patrolling cop. But I have yet to see any arguments for that here.
There was an article posted here on this a couple months ago...
listening to one of his radio shows (podcast available) I heard an interesting take on cameras that I find compelling.
he's a self-proclaimed libertarian nut and suggested that cameras should be everywhere (in public, not private) but that the feeds should be freely available to everyone.
this would be great. you have no right or expectation of privacy in public anyway, so it's just information that is available anyway. so why not let everyone have access. reduces the risk of misuse by government and makes it a resource for the people who pay for them.
I can imagine it almost being as big as the internet and have a massive reduction on crime.
it would be even bettter if there was a server where you could request footage for a certain time period e.g. your car was damaged while you were at the shop so you get the car park footage and see who it was for either the police or insurance company. hit and run accidents would be so difficult to get away with.
Personal "diary" cameras that log everything we do, from our point of view. Everything is written to a bio-encoded storage device. The data on that device is considered to be part of ones person, and can NOT be taken or used against the owner under ANY circumstances unless it is surrendered by someone of sound mind.
Now we all record everything. And it's up to us if OUR data is used against us or someone else. If no one will turn over their video, then you have no case.
An added benefit of this model is it removes the known bias of witnesses. Now you have digital data.
In the book, Small Gods, the head of the Quisition (gathering up heretics and "purifying" them) has the secret key to making it work: That there is no depravity committed by a pychotic serial killer that cannot be replicated by a man just doing his job.
Paraphrasing is mine, but the idea is pretty much on point.
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
> The other terrible mind-trap is to fall down the rabbit hole and proclaim the world is ending every time something
> new happens.
What, like global warming?
Sometimes you know there really is a threat that would end our world; and it's happening now, and hasn't really happened before, because we, as a species, have through our numbers and technology vastly more influence and impact upon ourselves and our environment than we have ever had before.
You guys are only focusing on the negative aspects. Think of all the hilarious moments when people couldn't record, now the Government can just put them on youtube
who is watching the watchers? Man at every level is fallible. Unless you somehow have a system built on algorithms that can police based on an agreed standard, there will always be people abusing the power to watch/control others. Then if you do have such an 'autopilot' system in place, guess what? "I for one welcome...."
A suitable magnetron device is to be found in your microwave oven. Excess pressure calls for resistance, that's way of the history goes.
There you are, staring at me again.
Even if the group is as small as two individuals, there still need to be laws. Would you really feel safe driving 120 kilometers per hour in thick fog on the highway if you weren't reasonably sure other drivers respected the law about wich side of the road to drive on? Would you take a train if you knew drivers just picked the track they liked?
One of the huge differences between england and holland is seen in public transport. It was even a subject of a recent study by a dutch university in an effort to see if trains could be designed in such a way as to make stops at stations faster.
Brits (and japanese for that matter) will form lines and stand to the side as the passengers inside the buss/train get out before they get in. In holland it is a free for all. The effect is simple, a stop takes longer in holland then it does in england.
The most extreme example is from a few years ago when I was backpacking in england somewhere north of london. I was sitting on my backpack waiting for my bus, I am early and the first to arrive at the stop. Other people arive as well when a bus pulls up. I have already seen that it is not my line so remain seated. The other people waiting indicate that I should go in first! Talk about forming an orderly line when you even line up behind a person sitting down!
Compare this to a frequent scene at the dutch tram/train station Lelylaan. The moment the door opens two groups push their way through, one desperate to get in, one desperate to get out. It is often so bad that smarter people like me avoid the hassle and just get into the tram behind the one in the middle of a war. While there should be a few minutes between the stop can take so long because of the unorganized mess that the next tram will already have arrived.
Anyway, the study showed that simply by exiting and entering a train in an orderly fashion could shorten the stop considerably without having to do anything with the train or station itself.
It is similar to the simple rule of keeping to one side on an escelator if you stand still and leave the other side open for people who walk. Very simple and it works wonders in most areas in London. You can almost set your clock by the fact that someone will mention it in the newspaper columns of one the free newspapers and then you can count on a heated discussion taking place.
BUT does it matter?
Well, no not really. All this means that dutch public transport is just a little bit slower then it could be. But I sorta like it since related to this is the fact that the middle of a car will be empty even if it at the entrance people are packed. Just push through it and have all the space you need because nobody else has the discipline to walk the crowded spot and use all the space available.
But these examples don't matter, not even the one about driving on the same side of the road. To avoid accidents you would simply have to drive a lot slower or make sure your car can handle loads of head on collisions.
In short I think an awfull lot of our laws are about convenience. The law in holland that tells me to drive on the right side of the road is there purely to make it more convenient to drive and be able to do that more efficiently then if we just let everyone decide on their own.
It is similar with right of way laws. If we didn't have them every single time you were at a crossing with someone else you would have to figure something out. You may curse traffic lights but would you really want to cross town with other traffic without them? Sure, if you were driving a hummer and could just force your way through, well unless someone else is driving a main battle tank.
And that is the other part of our laws. They are an equalizer. It don't matter how big your car is, or even if you are walking, because of traffic lights everyone gets their turn to cross the street.
People preaching anarchy should be shot in the knees and then told to cross a busy intersection on cru
If the camera operators get to watch and yell at us, then we should get a cameras with speakers so we can watch and yell at them.
:::::sounds of scuffling and heavily muffled yelling:::::
*THATS* fair.
Next think you know, they'll be indoctrinating kids to narq on all the adults:
"Teacher, I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus!"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Orwell was an optimist !!!
I will fuck you dead -God
Read "The Transparent Society" by David Brin. He makes several good points about why a society needs to inevitably go in that sort of direction or end up as a tyranny of "those with privacy" versus "those without".
yours,
kbs
We now have all these cameras instead of the police, who mainly rush up and down running people over.
They no longer see any role as 'guardians of the peace' that's the role of the cameras.
The problem with this picture is that the cameras are intrusive (I don't want to be watched by morons all the time) and worse reactive (trouble develops and has to be supressed rather than being prevented).
Most minor crime is not reported in the UK because a) the police can't be bothered b) if bothered they have very low clear up rates anyway (in spite of a huge budget, dna databases, helicopters etc. etc.)
It's time for something different but not this.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
And society is more likely to lose it's freedoms inch by inch then through one fell swoop.
So, what you expecting ? Control freaks are everywhere...
Western Civilization creates that industr revolution then information revolution now ?
Control freaking...
Bah, this is isint going any where. People becoming lambs.
I do not want to see the goverments enfoces to implant some kind of control chips into humans...
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
I dunno though, I thought liberty would only die to the sound of thunderous applause.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I worked for a corporation that DID in fact fire a security guard for such an action. A couple was in their car in the parking garage engaged in the oldest pastime, the guard made a copy of the video and it found its' way back inside the company. Note: the garage was a corporate property but was required to admit a certain number of public auto's due to agreements with the local city government. The guard was terminated, NOT for the act of filming the intercourse, but for removing the contents of the tape from company property without permission. As for the couple, they were told to stuff it, in public they ZERO EXPECTATION of privacy.
To my knowledge there was no attempt at sales or publishing the segment, the word got around because the guard was showing to other guards and a female security dispatcher overheard and reported it to us...
I KNOW this to be fact, because at the time I was working as corporate security and was involved in the initial interviews of all three indiviuals.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I don't think a camera and speaker is the way to do it. Britain's problem comes from the collapse in social cohesion. People don't know their neighbours anymore, they're frightened to go out at night.
I blame, Crimewatch, the television program that scared the shit out of people. Then there's single moms, the housing right given to single mothers, so get pregnant means get a house automatically. Then there was the child support agency, get pregnant get money for life.
So we had a rise in single parent families, a rise in out of control yobbos, and a rise in television programs making you scared of the outside world. Be afraid to confront the yobbo in the street because he'll stab you, better to let the cameras and speakers do it for you.
> I dunno though, I thought liberty would only die to the sound of thunderous applause.
Liberty is dying to the sound of a billion people watching TV.
(Watching - oh, the irony - watching Big Brother.)
People should not be afraid of cookies, cookies should be afraid of people.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
and has been for long enough that even the Wiki for "non lethal force" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-lethal_force/ uses it.
You can thank the sue-happy lawyers in the USA for having created an environment where anybody except sworn police officers is so scared of being personally sued that no camera operator is willing to push the button to use a less-than-lethal response option when they see some punk mugging an old lady or even raping a girl.
Lawlessness should never be tolerated. Or will you let someone kill one of your family members, since (as you say) "a free society must tolerate some lawnessness or it is no longer free"? Come on: sacrifice a loved one for the good of the nation, I dare you.
Well since we are taking things to extremes, lets follow your path to its logical end: a society of ants marching in lockstep from the cradle to the grave, a place for everything and everything in its place. The diametrical opposite, what you seem to fear, is of course a barbaric anarchy, every man for himself - do what you will shall be the whole of the law. Neither is practical, neither is representative of humanity.
We are a young race, really in biological and evolutionary terms we are just down from the trees. We are still floundering around trying to determine exactly what is "good" and "evil", the characteristics of right and wrong. Some are convinced we are simply meat machines, our whole lives determined by our genes, excusing and condemning failures in equal measure, others seek to put every foible into a neat box to be repaired or removed, like most of the psychology industry, while yet others make the sight of our own bodies an abomination, along with certain arbitrary words, generally to do with the pleasurable act of copulation. Our instinctive natures and animal passions come into conflict with our intellectual and social structures. The question really is, are those structures right or wrong, did we achieve all we have in spite of or because of our passions?
I'd say that we do not have enough facts to make any definitive decisions on that question yet. Worship of the rule of law is as dangerous as not caring about law at all; law is and always has been a sanctioned instrument of vengeance, from the earliest days to the present. Thats why prisons are not places of rehabilitation (PMITA is even a commonly understood acronym!), they are places of punishment, and that is not likely to change any time soon.
And yet by adjusting the laws to compensate for our inherently passionate nature, you begin a game of brinkmanship, where people with less regard for their fellow man try to keep criminal acts to the grey areas where they might be excused their actions. Structure is not neccesarily the best way to go; neither is a lack of structure. How and where the best compromise is to be found is a question yet to be answered.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Can anyone shed any light on this concept of "riding bicycles too fast"?
In my extremely large amount of experience riding bicycles as my primary form of transportation, I find it is quite rare that I can exceed the posted speed limit without a great deal of exertion. In the case that I travel at 30mph in a 25mph zone (the speed of the traffic nonetheless), how is some talking camera going to notice me and talk to me before I've gone past. Remember, I'm going 30mph.
Does England have 15kmph bicycle lands? 10?
What a bizarre concept.
-josh
...considering how Orwell went through the trouble of writing them that manuel.
John Spartan; you are fined one credit for breach of the verbal morality code
I lived in Middlesbrough last year and its rough. The only thing stopping you getting mugged half the time was the cctv camera's the uni put everywhere. (Even then I was the only one in my house not to be mugged and two students where stabbed while I was there) So my point is that even though its a bit big brother-ish, Middlesbrough really does need things like this.
Also I don't think you have to worry about them using it to heckle people who drop cofee cups, there is so much crime there that the police have their hands way too full to go after people dropping litter on the street.
In fact, you can read more about the subject here.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Check out the movie called 'The final cut', it tells of a technology similar to the one you described (though it employs no encryption and is used for a different purpose).
I am afraid that this won't do, since it will be possible that people will be abducted and then forced to give up their video-logs, just like they are now forced to give up their passwords.
THey might come up with a law that prohibits you from NOT sharing your log when you do have something to show (ex: somebody saw that you saw something happen, they say that you saw that - therefore you MUST cooperate).
Then there's plenty of space for a backdoor in there, so the government could use the logs without your consent.
Finally, if all the public cameras were replaced with these individual cameras, it would mean that justice is always in the hands of the 'witnesses'. Some of them may be afraid to testify; some obscure/distant places that don't have many visitors will become more likely to 'host' a crime, etc.
The saddest poem
The irony grows ever deeper - my post has been modded +1 Funny.
Huxley was right; we're laughing, and we've forgotton why.
The other advantage to a speaker next to the camera. When it talks, people look at where the noise is coming from.
The camera then gets a good look at them. These cameras have a terrible track record for identifing people. This is because they don't get a good shot at them. Add in some harsh words and the camera gets a better shot.
Now you could be recorded as being in a place for all time, even if it was a cousin that looks a lot like you.
Merry Christmas!
It's a dumb statement either way.
Liberty doesn't arise when the government fears its people. The vast majority of genocidal incidents, from Stalin to Mao to Hitler and so on, arose in an atmosphere where the average citizen was fanatically in support of the dictator, but the dictator had a paranoid and irrational fear of the people.
A tyranny where the people are conscious enough of their oppression to feel *fear* of the government is one that will very soon collapse, likely into liberty. One where the fear goes the other way is one that is very liable to commit horrific crimes - and get away with it.
I think a new fashion soon, wearing hat :)
And some new reflex:do not react when people talk to you....
Cause camera won't be at your height so kids dont smash them, another pricey system will become innefficient....till they banish hats...
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I for one welcome our -1 flamebait moderator overlords. I think everyone should bear in mind this is Slashdot - there is one correct way to think, and that is to think the government is after you. To suggest that a local council installing CCTV to stop fights is a good thing is flamebait and clearly not a genuine argument. Such arguments must be stamped out on Slashdot, so please, let fly with your mod points.
Sorry for not RTFA ;)
But what exactly is "to fast" on a bicycle?
I've heard us humans can't travel beyond 26mph
Wasnt the beginning of the end, it was just a big push in that direction.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
then you have nothing to worry about. The only reason why anyone should worry is they are most likely doing something illegal or they know isn't right.
So you're saying that having a cop spaced out every 10 feet wouldn't have a chilling effect on many freedoms?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I would take my crowbar on my next trip to England
Another great bit of SciFi in the form of a movie. Puts the "I just work here" angle in perspective.
-peace
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Systems like this depersonalize the citizens to the officers. That's just how people work.
As cops go from spending their day walking the beat, to spending their day in a police cruiser, to spending their day cam-surfing from their desk, policing becomes less and less about maintaining order through person-to-person interactions, and more about authoritarian gotcha-style law enforcement. Society as a whole suffers.
Stalin would have liked it.
I can't wait until we do this in the US. Maybe that way they could catch the three sets of bastards who have hit my parked car and taken off. I've hit a parked car before. I owned up.
It'd be a shame if this technology was used to ensure that every last law was obeyed 100% of the time, but sweet fucking Jesus on a pogo stick -- STOP DOING HIT AND RUNS!
We all remember when in class, at a specific time, the students would organize a textbook drop. Everyone knows how loud a textbook is when it hits the ground. Imagine when 30 hit the ground at the same time. It's deafening.
Similarly, why don't people find out where all these talking cameras are and organize a coffee cup drop... often.
Drop a cup of coffee. If the "man behind the curtain" starts talking, flip the bird and walk away. Also, optionally but recommended, hand out something that explains what you're doing.
Civil disobedience still has its place in the world.
The cameras-everywhere concept is one I like for private citizens (who, after all, have a State to contend with), but the State should be watched very closely as a matter of course, including (natch) when it's trying to watch its employers.
I wonder whenever I see them: What would happen to such cameras if a laser pointer (or a few at once) were to be aimed straight into its lens for a little while? Anything? Nothing? Not much? Are they sufficiently intelligent to block light that's more than the sensors want to deal with, and can they do it fast enough to matter?
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
A physically present cop can beat you up, arrest you, and even kill you. I'd say that worse potential for abuse than the anonymous rudeness that can occur over the speaker system, however unpleasant that might be.
I'm not clear on what the "powers" a camera operator has. It seems to be little more than the those of a disembodied spirit. He can see what is happening, and also say words. Unless there is some law in place mandating that people obey these voices, I don't see what "power" they have, to abuse or not.
If there is such a law, things are more interesting. It seems that law is the interesting part in this, in that case, more than the cameras themselves.
Which in turn has conditioned people to believe that being watched 24 hours a day is NORMAL. :/
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Wrong.
On slashdot, there are two ways to think. The first is to think *new idea A* is a bad idea (and as nerds, we are usually prone to disliking just about everything we haven't seen before. We hate later seasons of shows because they're not previous seasons, we hate new games because they're not older games we loved, etc. =p ). The second is to think that everyone hates *New Idea A* because they are clearly *Insert overgeneralized demographic, such as Republican/Democrat/liberal/conservative/naive fool/cynical fool/foolish fool/cowboy neal/NOT cowboy neal*.
It's entirely possible for two people to support the same idea for entirely different reasons. In this case, maybe some of us think a better solution to this is not to add annoying features to cameras, but to simply step up our own personal responsibility. If you see someone litter in public, please, chew him out. If this happens enough, hey, people might just stop out of the sake of avoiding being hassled. Or not. (If they're driving, why not report their license plate number to the police? Fines tend to be quite common for this sort of thing)
And for the record, I'd call the GP's post flamebait not because he disagreed with my opinion, but because he did so in an extremely harsh, and disrespectful manner. Insulting your opponents, no matter how "right" your beliefs may be, is a bad way to give your viewpoint.
Or, in the GP's example, maybe it's time we accept the sad fact that people, as a whole, are essentially lazy slobs who don't care about any mess they don't personally have to clean up. (Both working and shopping in retail stores, I see plenty of people just drop items anywhere they feel like it, instead of returning it to its rightful shelf-space. This causes plenty of inventory and cleaning problems, but hey, it's not my problem, right?)
If occasional insults of the citizenry is the biggest problem emanating from this "VAST increase of the power of the state", I'll have to say it does not fall in the same league as Nazi Germany or Russia.
(Both working and shopping in retail stores, I see plenty of people just drop items anywhere they feel like it, instead of returning it to its rightful shelf-space. This causes plenty of inventory and cleaning problems, but hey, it's not my problem, right?)
That helps create jobs. Acting in that manner is so morally right, you're pretty much required to do it if you're a decent person.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I can even tell that you're reading this post right now.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
But to make this a discussion on "George Orwell was right" is missing the point of Orwell's work and missing the point of what is happening. Perhaps because slashdot is a tech forum a lot of people seem to have read 1984 and saw it as a book warning people that technology can enslave people. But Orwell's preface to Animal Farm and his other writings suggest he was concerned less about how technology was used, and more concerned about freedom of press, freedom of opinion and expression. In this sense, modding even "harsh" statements to be flamebait is a far greater action of big-brotherness than installing a talking camera.
...and I found that one particularly peculiar all right.
here it suggests that it was someone riding their bike in a pedestrian-only zone, not "too fast" as such.
There is a solution to all the surveillance: everybody should wear a Spiderman mask when out. Then the cameras will record millions of Spidermen going around every day, and then they will be deemed useless.
Come on mates! it would be fun!
> I think everyone should bear in mind this is Slashdot - there is one correct way to think, and that is to
> think the government is after you. To suggest that a local council installing CCTV to stop fights is a good
> thing is flamebait and clearly not a genuine argument.
You are completely correct.
The problem is that true even-handedness, true open-mindedness, true seeking for the truth, is something very rare. Most people have beliefs and defend those beliefs. They do not *question* those beliefs. Present views or suggestions which run counter to such a held belief system results in a suppressive response.
This behaviour - which is endemic - is the real, underlying cause of the problems in our society. We do not possess, as a culture, the ability to think. We only possess the ability to react on an emotional level.
This state of affairs has come about due to television. Television is the medium through which our culture communicates with itself. Television presents a continual stream of fragmentary, disconnected, disassociated, contextless images and emotional textures. Contrast this, for example, to a book, which requires the reader to sit down for some hours at a time and consider the authors view and arguments. Television has rendered recent generations unable to think. In particular, this means that there is no longer a meaningul public discourse, and that recent generations have lacked the ability to detect crap when they come across it.
Television is our doom, because it has rendered us, as a species, unconscious. We only react emotionally; and I think this will not be enough to survive the impact we have upon our environment and upon ourselves.
Hey you! Stop fighting. Seriously, I said stop it now. Are you listening to me? Put down that knife. What would your mother think? And those shoes with those pants. Sweet jesus! Who dressed you this morning? Stop hitting him I said! This will all end in tears you know. I try and I try but you just won't listen. Well go ahead and fight, see if I care.
i never been outside of the usa.. if i did want i would be forceably anal probed, cotton swobed, blood tested, finger printed, have my picture taken, a tracking device implanted, and give full biography of my life.. well that may sound farfedched but at this rate it's a possibility. feels like i'm in a giant science fiction movie..
Regarding the police and driving badly, sometimes it is the police. Once a car stopped on train tracks that were being used, and when my friend pointed it out to the driver, the fellow just flashed his badge and drove off.
You're right about chewing people out. Unfortunately, it's tough to get it going because we need that critical mass to push it past that tipping point. Also, it can get worse, because if we don't use people skills, then we can make a new enemy out of that person.
It's tough.
testing out my trending skills
Regarding television, I find it quite ironic that it is probably talk shows like Oprah that have caused the most damage to society, because the show doesn't model good talk.
testing out my trending skills
From TFA:
``Nowhere else in the free world is this happening,'' said Helena Kennedy, a human rights lawyer who also is a member of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. ``The American public would find such inroads into civil liberties wholly unacceptable.''
Yeah . . . right.
Of course we'll accept it, and gladly, too. Hell, as long as it's a "right" that some individual doesn't personally exercise and find valuable, then he may even help them, and campaign for them while they strip him of it.
Drugs, guns, even junk food . . . it is a story repeated with one "freedom" after another.
Rebuilding those factories won't happen without capital to fund the rebuilding of them. If America's dollar depletes to near nothingness in value when the government decides to start printing money Argentinian style, then there will be no capital available to do anything.
When there is no useful currency for establishing value for the products and services the populace creates, then trade stops completely and you revert back to a bartering type economy.
People (as well as foreign investors) need to have faith in a currency for them to use it, and if the government can basically tax your money through inflation as it sees fit, then nobody will have any confidence in that currency.
The currency of the United States is basically a fiat currency (I say "basically" because our currency is really backed by oil and the resources we can collect from around the world courtesy of our military), so if people want to cash in their dollars for hard assets once the dollar starts tanking, they will soon realize they are just holding a bunch of useless pieces of paper (or virtual money in the form of bank accounts).
The thunderous applause is merely a canned track...!
Not only have we forgotten why, but enough never knew in the first place...
Sig broken, watch for
I agree 100% with you. It takes tact, people skills, and a lot of people.
...Nah.
The cynic in me says "That's never going to happen." The optimist in me... wait... wait... nope, he's still dead. (It was a tragic suicide years ago)
But seriously, as much as I detest littering, jerks who leave stuff around for others to clean, and people who just, in general, make messes and expect others to clean them up... to me, that rings out as more of a social problem. There's something seriously wrong with people now, and making someone on camera go "hey, cut that out!" isn't really getting to the root of the problem.
I guess I just hate doing what I call "treating the symptoms, not the disease." Especially when, in this case, the treatment can be so easily abused. And, heck, maybe someday, people will start to improve!
Or any other European public, for that matter. I live in a town in northwhestern Spain and there was much outrage when the city council decided to put cameras in the surroundings of the city hall. Of course, they had to put signs all over the fucking place stating that there are surveillance cameras beyond that point. The way things are going in anglo-saxon countries I wouldn't be surprised if I read on the BBC News online that for the sake of security there would be body cavity searches for everyone passing through Heathrow
Get a rope! ;-)
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Too bad there seem to be no microphones used in the system. This way people could use the surveillance system as a service rather than for the pure exertion of power. Would be nice for people getting easily lost and might reduce the boredom of the guards ...
This would've been a hilarious segment on "Candid Camera".