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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
I'm pretty sure the biggest question has already been asked, namely: "WTF is up with Britain becoming a surveillance state?"
Once the barriers to surveillance are being eroded, everything else - while not besides the point - pretty much follows by matter of course.
People act differently when they're being watched. How can it be a free state if they are being watched, then?
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...
"Sir please close the raincoat and move along, you're scaring the pidgeons."
The problem isn't so much the use you describe, but the potential misuses of the system.
At the lowest level, I know of one anecdotal story where couples having a quickie in a popular spot were unaware a camera had gone up; and the security guard watching was in fact recording their sex, compiling the events into tapes, and selling them.
At the higher level, we run into a problem where a society becomes ever more effective at imposing its value system upon the members of that society. As JSM said, "society executes its own mandates". What happens when these cameras are present in a area rife with racism and the viewers themselves are racist? I can imagine blacks being harshly treated, with intolerance, and whites being let off or lightly treated for the same acts.
At a higher level yet, the issue becomes that of concern about the ways in which this new capability will interact with other new capabilities - such as massive State databases. The State has always kept information on us, but in analog systems, which are inherently so slow to use that the practical uses of that data were sharply limited. When, however, access becomes effectively immediate, what you have isn't more of the same, what you have now is *new and different*. It's is a qualitative change, not a quantative change. In this vein, mixing massive video survelliance with massive databases and police monitoring, very real concerns begin to arise - in particular, that we are finally loosing *freedom*, for we are no longer free; we MUST do what society and State expects us to do.
The terrible mind-trap here is people going "well, that only means not doing things which are bad, so what's the problem?"
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.
At the higher level, we run into a problem where a society becomes ever more effective at imposing its value system upon the members of that society. [...] What happens when these cameras are present in a area rife with racism and the viewers themselves are racist? I can imagine blacks being harshly treated, with intolerance, and whites being let off or lightly treated for the same acts.
Without addressing the main issue in your post, I have to say something about this often-heard argument. Put more bluntly, what is claimed here is that incompetence is the safeguard of freedom: if government(/society) is bumbling enough, it won't be able to enforce unfair policies.
Yet, maintaining freedom by government incompetence is a dangerous route, because (1) it may be impotent to act when it is needed, (2) incompetence as a government policy may very well lead to corruption and waste ("it's good that I'm an inefficient government clerk; I'm maintaining freedom for the populace!"), and (3) people now need to know not just what is legal, but what is 'effectively legal', i.e. not legal but what government incompetence makes legal because no-one is prosecuted for it, which can also lead to (4) selective, discriminatory enforcement by the government ("we can't prosecute all who break this law, so we do what we can" - but those that are prosecuted just 'happen' to belong to some particular group or minority - note that this is the exact same argument as appears in the quoted paragraph above, but arguing the opposite claim).
But there is indeed an intuition that an 'overly-efficient' government is a danger. I think the underlying issue is that, in some situations, there may be a disparity between what the people want and what the people they elect want (e.g. where I live at least, the majority of the population are in favor of legalizing pot, or at least indifferent; but lawmakers are strongly against it). And the simplest way to solve the problem stemming from that disparity seems to be to just make government inefficient (if the cops don't do their job and arrest potheads, then pot is effectively free, just as if it were legally free).
But the 'simplest way' is often a very poor solution. The 'right' solution would be to protest, to fight for the causes people care about, so that lawmakers are in tune with the public; perhaps also to implement a more direct democracy. Government incompetence as a way to maintain freedom is an ugly hack, in programmer's terms; problem is, people are too lazy to do things the correct way.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be punishments for breaking the laws... Of course you should do that, but the mark of a free, moral person is to do the RIGHT THING when nobody is looking, BECAUSE nobody but themselves will ever be disappointed by it!!!! IF you don't have a society that breeds that kind of self-respect and TRUST, your society's already collapsing!!!!
Right now, if the law enforcement agencies were so inclined they could find charges for everyone of us. There are so many laws, we are all criminals.
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?
> 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.)
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.