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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."
"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
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.
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.
Too true, only it isn't a matter of guns. The plain fact is under American law, if you present what a reasonable person would interpret as a credible threat of inflicting grevious bodily harm, anyone on the scene can just plain kill you, using whatever he might have, be it a gun, a knife, or his bare hands. I live in Boston and walk through crowds of obnoxious drunks all the time, and sometimes they even go so far as to vandalize large amounts of property (Kenmore Square when the Red Sox win big - blekh). So it's not that we have fewer overgrown apes in our town centers. It's that our jerks know, even when they're dead drunk, that the moment they cross a certain line, They Can Die.
I walk through the bar districts around Boston all the time, and that line just doesn't get crossed. Wish the same could be said of Britain.
I can tell you WTF. Britain is marching full steam ahead into a big recession and the only thing that has prevented it from doing it this year was influx of cheap Polish labour. Unfortunately this only delays the inevitable as it does not change the underlying overheated housing market, phenomenal internal debt and other major economical metrics.
Blair's government knows this. It also knows what happened in the recession after the previous housing market crash under their predecessors. It is scared shitless of countrywide poll tax and "Camden" style riots organised via the Internet and mobile networks the way the fuel protesters organised themselves 6 years ago. So it is putting as much effort as it can into a massive surveilance effort to be able to squash these before they go out of control.
Genuinely stupid move which is bound to fail. Until the underlying economical conditions are fixed (even by shock therapy if necessary) the recession and the riots are bound to happen. Cameras can help in a policeable situation. They are useless when the whole population stops giving a flying fuck.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The real question our philosophers and ethicists are yet to answer, is: Is 100% effective law-enforcement desirable?
The security cameras allow us to place a (virtual) police officer on every corner and between — a single real officer can have eyes and ears of 5 or 10, while working in a comfortable environment. That's a dramatic boom to law-enforcement. Whether or not that is a good thing depends on the answer to the above question...
And before you reach for the "Reply" link to type: "It depends on the laws," — yes, thank you, I know. It depends on a number of other things too, and even the obvious dependency on the laws is not as straightforward... For example, rogue law-makers would not exist either...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So the problem is the camera operator makes a mistake or calls you nigger or whatever. A cop on the scene has a badge and knows he can be identified. The fact is that anonymous people in power invariably abuse that power. It is a trade off. Yes maybe you can lower crime, but you also VASTLY increase the power of the state to abuse, and also you train citizens to obey a "faceless" master, making it easier in the event of abuse of power to control citizens.
We in the English speaking west have some fantasy going that ONLY Nazi Germany or ONLY Russia can invoke vast state abuse.
This is not so, any of us are capable of this.
First tell me how you are contraining this systems so that they are not open to abuse and then use. Not before.
I'd be fascinated to know how a mere 500,000 people saved all 60 million of us from recession. Where are you getting this from?
Hi!
What class divisions are there here (uk) that you don't get in every other country? I'm honestly asking - it can be hard to view your own country from the inside.
What do you mean by that the middle class are insufferable? You don't like their mannerisms?
" in the UK it's the yobs and hooligans who are to blame "
I agree, but in the UK everyone aged 13-25 is seen as a hooligan. I'm 14 and in Britain (and law abiding in case you were wondering) and many people about 40+yo will cross the road to avoid me, just in case I decide to pull a knife on them. I could see cameras like these telling me (and people like me) to clear off just for walking around and seeming menacing.
Also, to add to the growing list of stupid laws in Britan, in the town where I live you can be fined for caught with hood up in the high street. In all weathers.
I could live with universal surveillance as long as the streams (and speakers) were open to *all*.
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