Slashdot Mirror
Cameras Help Cops Catch a Killer
CrazedWalrus writes "Philadelphia police recently captured a serial killer with the help of a combination of Homeland Security and private surveillance cameras. Police examined video from 50 different cameras and pieced together relevant footage from 12 of them, and eventually were able to identify the murderer. Once caught, he confessed to several other murders spanning the past eight years. Without these cameras this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?"
Just because some intrusive technology was used for good at one occasion, doesn't mean that it completely turnes the tides on the discussion. it's still an intrusive technology.
Move sig!
Well, I'm going off to federal-pound-me-in-the-ass-prison!
When I get out, I hope there won't be any cameras anymore!
As long as this is the way they're used, yes. Then again, I live in the UK and these kinds of cameras are pretty prevalent.
I'm intrigued to hear from someone to explain why they don't want these cameras around. Privacy concerns is what I usually hear but as you're in a public place surrounded by the public who can watch you using their eyes, what's the difference between a policeman watching you in person and a policeman watching you by camera?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I never understand the comment "with such a good result, can we argue against X?".
The point is, you can always justify any intrusive technology by pointing to the good results. "If we lock everyone up, there would be no crime! Can you argue against that?"
We always have to look at the tradeoff between the intrusion on our freedoms and the the results that the technology brings. As for cameras, I think that in some cases/locations they make sense, but that (for example) the UK has gone way overboard. But that is just my opinion.
Without these cameras this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?
In 2005, there were 16,692 murders in the United States. (link)
In 2005, there were 43,200 deaths due to car accidents. (link)
It has been shown that cameras increase car accident rates by between 7 and 24 percent. (link).
So, you tell me. With results like these, is there really a good basis for argument FOR these cameras?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Hey, I'm sold! The government may at will monitor every call, every email, examine my credit history in minute detail, access my library lending habits and even do a physical search of my home (neither without telling me)...but if by doing so one child's life is saved then by gum -it's worth it!
The cameras that were used were a combination of private cameras and security cameras put up around a post office. This is not about a sophisticated government network of cameras used to track people (although those do exist in Philidelphia). It's about a resourceful police department. It's good to see a story about the cops doing some good.
We're loosing sight of the real question.
The superficial issue here is whether or not mass surveillance is acceptable, in that one on hand it can be used to defeat unethical crime, on the other hand, it can be used by the State to defeat ethical crime.
But the real issue, the underlying issue, is *why do people perform unethical crimes?*
I see no one asking this question or wondering how to fix it - and if this problem was fixed or largely fixed, there wouldn't be a need for cameras at all.
anecdotal evidence
With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?
With arguments like that, is there really a good opportunity for a reasoned, proportionate, discussion?
(Not saying cameras are always wrong, just not saying they're always right just because they occasionally give a benefit)
were they able to zoom in and reconstruct a recognizable face from a 9-pixel block?
Most people don't object to privately operated security cameras.
As long as the cameras (and personally identifiable data in general) are hard enough to access that they will only be used to prosecute major crimes, most people would be perfectly happy. After all, since the beginning of time, officials could interview other witnesses and find out who was doing what, and when.
The privacy concerns really come into play when the cameras are online, and easily accessible. Then it's a force multiplier for the authorities, allowing them to track hundreds and hundreds of people with only trivial effort, as well as prosecuting every trivial violation of the law the cameras see.
In other words, it's not the cameras, it's the databases.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
There were about 500 murders in Philadelphia last year, and God only knows how many attempted homicides.
Just because some multimillion dollar network of cameras was able to help nail 0.2 percent of the killers
does not mean living in a surveillance society is a great thing. Besides, the criminals will just learn
where the cameras are and move two blocks away into someone else's frontyard.
I have no problems with the police obtaining (possibly via a court order) tapes from privately operated cameras.
It's when the state and/or the police operate the cameras that the problems arise.
" Without these cameras this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today."
How can you be so sure. Did Serial Killers never were arrested before that cameras were invented?
Now, let's see the question from another angle:
As you might be aware, lots of serial killers have been proven to have perfectly normal lives, with jobs, wifes and kids. From the outside, a psycho looks, most of the time, just like your average joe: a good employee, a loving and caring husband and father.
Now, just for one moment, let's suppose your psycho joe works for law enforcement. What a wonder, isn't it? a psycho with lots of data and live footage of just about anyone he decided to chase. Over time, every psycho wannabe will pursue such kind of job. Now, add to this scenario:
Corrupt police officers watching possible informants of their misdeeds.
Blackmailers watching cheating husbands and wifes.
Corrupt elected officers using this data to watch their adversaries.
The IRS.
Isn't it too much power over our lives? are you really willing to give your freedom away for the illusion of security?
Your ad could be here!
1. Street cameras are in public places. Everyone can watch you in public place, with a camera too. A policeman on the street is doing exactly that. With camera it is even more indifferent.
2. Street cameras are not spying on a particular person. Everyone is equal.
3. In cases when cameras used in private places, they are clearly visible and are installed with the permission of the owner.
Resume: non-issue.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"Philadelphia police recently captured a serial killer with the help of a combination of rape and murder. Police raped 50 different sudpect and murdered the families of 12 of them, and eventually were able to identify the murderer. Once caught, he confessed to every other unsolved murder on their books. Without these methods this killer would probably be stalking the streets of Philadelphia today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these techniques?"
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Numbers of active serial killers, wild guesses that they are, are usually estimated so high a single one found does not make a significant difference. According to the wiki, the FBI offered the number of circa 35 at large at any given time during the eighties. Finding a single one of them is hardly impressive.
Now don't get me wrong, a serial killer found is a good thing, and I congratulate the police. But that doesn't absolve the mass use of surveillance.
Plus, they probably wouldn't have got him for the previous killings if he hadn't confessed. To get confessions for crimes in the more distant past, surveillance is not useful.
blow your mind already
And not only that, if you look at the U.S. Conviction rate for murder in the United States as compared to the United Kingdom, you'll see that the U.S. conviction rate is several times higher. Even though the U.K. has more cameras.
With results like these, again, is there really an argument for these cameras? Police seem to be doing just fine without them.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I am getting so disgusted with how people's fear, insecurity, and single-minded drive for personal safety is driving public opinion and laws toward a police state. At the rate things are going now, ten years from now we will live in a society of 0% crime and 0% fredom. Surely a state-monitored camera in every house would reduce crime? Think of the lives it would save! Lets do it!
Idiots. They don't realize what they are losing because their fredoms and rights are being nibbled away a little at a time, all in the name of personal safety.
Did you know, if you toss a live frog into a boiling pot of water he jumps right out, that's no surprise. But put him in a pot of room temperature water and he stays there, even while you are slowly turning up the burner. An hour later you have one dead frog. It's amazing how similar this is to how the sheep behave.
The proponants of things like this try to present it as a choice, you either do as we say or you deal with the consequences. You can either be safe OR you can live in a cage. They don't discuss the possibility of being safe without living in a cage. This issue is a small one, but that's how it works, your fredoms are chipped away a little at a time over a long term, and leaves you staring back at 20 years ago wondering who let it happen.
You did.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Law enforcement and politicians will use cameras(and eventually rfid) for control in the name of protecting children or antiterrorism, business will use them to make a buck.
In a truly free society new technologies must come with laws that require transparency, so the watched can watch the watchers(trust but verify).
You have a guy in prison.
He'll tell you where the bomb is if you let him fuck your daughter.
So he fucks her and the bomb doesn't go off at the Lakers game.
With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against pimping your daughter?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Way back when I was in kindergarten if a few people talked too loudly when they weren't supposed to, we would all get punished by having our heads put down. I'd like to think I've progressed beyond kindergartener status...
Hobby Robotics
Actually, if you're going to be pedantic, the exact quote is "The cameras are correlated with an increase in total injury crashes, with the increase being between 7% and 24%."
So your statement that "more accidents are reported when there are cameras present" is a nonargument, because when people are injured in an accident, the accident gets reported anyway.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Outstanding response.
It's the (in some places like the USofA) complete lack of of privacy assurances for the use of the resulting footage that are cause for strong concern.
As long as strong national legal demands are in place about the use of the pictures this system can be of benefit.
Presently such laws are all but missing and abuse is just waiting to happen.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
.. are the problem. I live in the UK, which is one of the most heavily CCTV'd societies in the world (or so I'm told). There are several major problems with CCTV. The first of which is the 'arms race'. I have read that since the various CSI series have come up, criminals are watching them to learn the techniques to defeat forensic scientists. There will be a new generation of CCTV savvy criminals who are aware of the problem and will devise methods of defeating CCTV. There are already methods of defeating CCTV which currently exist - blind spots, changes of clothing, changes of clothing, reflective materials ' dazzle camouflage', operating at times of the day or night when CCTV are less effective, and using decoys. The other aspect is that analysing CCTV footage is time-consuming. I speak from personal experience. As a criminal defence lawyer, I am planning to use CCTV footage to help counter police testimony that my client assaulted a police officer. As far as I can tell, from the CCTV footage, no assault took place. The problem is that such footage can be misused. Potential abuses of such footage hardly need to be stated. The biggest two that come to mind for me are the enormous potential for misidentification and consequences that flow. Imagine if a guy that looked remarkably like you got caught on CCTV doing a robbery? Don't think that's possible? Consider this scenario - you walk into a petrol station (gas station for the yanks), leave two minutes later having forgotten your wallet, another guy looking like you but CCTV savvy evades the cameras and robs the store, the two of you like pretty similar (remember robbers also shop for clothes same place you do), and the footage and other circumstantial evidence, gets you nailed. Misidentification of forensic evidence. Has happened. A policewoman in Scotland was convicted for a criminal offence after the Forensic Lab got the fingerprint ID wrong. The problem with stories like this is that they assume that all CCTV footage is like HOLLYWOOD. The reality is that CCTV footage varies in quality, and the distance from camera has a major impact on the ability to identify the person on it. Mistakes happen but juries might end up being hypnotised by scientists muttering mumbo jumbo. There are plenty of stories of scientists overstating the quality of their research and the evidential material thereof. These guys usually get found out but its no comfort if you'd just had your entire life taken away because someone made a mistake. The other major problem is the potential for abuse by a paranoid state power. Anyone remember the McCarthy era? Nuff said. I guess the problem for most of us is that the potential for crime prevention is so massive that it is hard to argue against it. What scares me is that what is moral and what is legal are not the same thing, and the law is a very blunt instrument. Most of us have done a dumb thing or two in their time. No harm was done. Now there may be no hiding places whatsoever. My £0.02 worth.
s/killer/whistleblower/g
May the Maths Be with you!
We're using fear mongering to push the idea that the ends justify the means, and by accepting a confession as acceptable proof of guilt, even though a confession alone isn't grounds enough for a conviction legally (think of people confessing for attention, or forced confessions). We'll just leave that last part out. We did good, give us our cookie... er... cameras.
Besides that, this type of monitoring catches people only AFTER the crime is over. What's the saying? Something about an ounce of prevention? Maybe we could focus on detering crime in the first place, or avoiding the circumstances that drive people to crime in the first place... or does that make too much sense?
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
linux?
ummmm...imagine a beowulf cluster of the cameras!!!
*ducks*
Who cares about cameras everywhere 'in case of'.....
In case of they become a real burden for the population the population would have no problems blasting them all in a day or so....
Talk about a problem when there will be enough satellites in the sky to do the same whatever the angle....
I have more problem with weapons everywhere in the hand of dummies than harmless cameras....unless you put lasers on them...
That comment reminds me of a piece I heard on a radio show about a man who had been jailed for a crime he hadn't committed. After 16 years, he was freed and they asked him what being free was like. He said, "Being out of prison is like being in a big prison. There are cameras everywhere, watching you..."
:)
Just a thought from the left field...
This is precisely why the rights of citizens (and visitors) to any country need to be
enshrined in some written constitution and enforced by a (hopefully) impartial judiciary
Sigh. I'm English, but from Norfolk so Tom Paine is one of my heroes :-)
I've no problem with a camera monitoring me in a supermarket or at an ATM, but no way do
i think that such things should be in public places in general. Here in Athens, Greece if you
tried to do that there would be a civil war
Andy Allen.
The fact that we're even having this discussion -- meaning that there are large numbers of people who are cool with the cameras -- means that we, who believe it's better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent man go to jail, who believe it's better that a hundred guilty men go uncaught than that one innocent man be filmed every moment he's out of his home -- have lost. Yes, we have lost. You can rage, and fume, and post to Slashdot, and quote "V for Vendetta" until you're blue in the face and all the while the other side will be putting up cameras. It's over. Liberty was a cool idea but it just didn't work out. As Sallust said, most men haven't the stomach for it; they wish only for a just master.
Depressed in the wee hours...
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
You are trying to use the ends to justify the means, anyone that supports the loss of freedom is a fool.
One should never forget that in Stalin's Soviet Union or in fact on most of the former socialist countries the crime rate was relatively low compared to the crime rate in the West. Freedom inevitably brings more incidents. In socialist countries, however, one did not need prying eyes in form of ever watching cameras, but rather the task was delegated to each and every person, so that they would come forward as witnesses and most of the time they even wouldn't hasitate catching the criminal himself, making "citizen's arrest". Now, one may argue that there's a thin line between beeing a witness and beeing a spy. But what the heck, crime rate WAS low. Now, if west (and east which in the meantime abandoned police methods of the past embracing "anything-goes" attitude) is satisfied with the loss of privacy to the much greater extent then it was possible in the socialism, so be it. Why should only few critical voices "see" the dangers while others are not capable of seeins that exchanging freedom for security doesn't bring security at all, but takes freedom away nevertheless?
If there was a worldwide curfew from 19:00 to 8:00 and everybody was locked in their home by the police during it, the number of crimes in the night would drop to nearly zero. The question is: how many freedoms we can throw away to gain some security? My answer is none.
The award for "Best Troll" in 2007 is going to be a tough competition.
-Tommy
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
So you can say that cameras dont help to increase the amount of convictions
Which is exactly what I am saying: Cameras don't help to increase the amount of convictions.
I'm glad we can all agree.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Did you read the entire thread?
.010) (figure 19)."
...Which means the U.S. police are keeping up just fine. More cameras don't prevent more murders, and the police seem to be doing fine catching the murderers without them.
"the U.S. murder rate is nearly six times the English murder rate (figure 5). Correspondingly, the U.S. murder conviction rate per 1,000 population is nearly six times England's (.059 versus
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I'm confused. I thought they only needed 1 camera and some really good software. You know, "zoom in on that reflection of the lamp post and enhance contrast, removing noise and distortion based on the shadow information and weather report".
killed everyone in that particular city as a way of eliminating the killer. With such surefire results, who would argue against it?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
> But what if they aren't being abused and never will be?
What if the DMCA would have never been abused for censoring (see Scientology, etc)?
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely"
If results are all you care about, then why let people go outside to begin with? Lock them up right in their homes and watch the murder rate decline.
I'd be OK with police surveillance cameras pointed at me (in public) if I could
(a) access those same cameras on my PC or cell phone. If they're pointed at public places, why shouldn't I be able to use them to see if a particular place looks safe?
and
(b) have similar surveillance cameras pointed at the police. I don't want to thwart their undercover operations or anything like that, but I want to be sure that they're not beating up prisoners for fun in the jailhouse.
And with these cameras the police are stalking the streets of Philadelphia every day.
This is a step toward the "ubiquitous enforcement of petty laws" as it's sometimes called. Is this the type of society you really want to live in?
Finally, who is watching the watchers?
geez. Can you find a more tendentious and biased bit if media pap to sell on giving up the remaing vestiges of privacy? IMO a few dead hookers is a small price to pay for not having the feds watch me hugluglug. Come to think of it, alot of dead nobodies still seems a decent deal. I have a counterproposal - why don't we just fit out everybody with an eeg/ekg/hormone/sereotonin/dopamine level sensors coupled to a gps dongle....make firmware and software upgrades mandatory and on alternate thursdays we can all queue up for an anal laparoscopy exam.... The basic problem with proliferation of technology threatning our privacy is knowing when to stop looking after technological solutions to sociological problems.
...admit it and move on.
If there is an injury in a car accident it is always reported. Regardless of the camera.
So to lay it out:
When cameras are present, there is an increase in accidents.
We know this to be true because there are more injuries due to accidents.
Accidents with injuries always receive police attention.
Just say "Oh man, my preconceived notions don't fit the data, therefore I must find a new hypothesis"
You're welcome.
So many crimes are committed within the confines of the homes. Child/wife abuse, Pedophilia, Drug dealing... Will someone please think of the women and children and install cameras in every home?
Of course people want to hide things, it's human nature. Unfortunately, folks, what you do in public is public. Period. If you are in a public area, or where you can be seen from one, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. It seems rather silly to complain about privacy violations when one acts publicly.
I can see no reason why a camera in a public area violates anyone's rights any more than a policeman watching from the corner. As a matter of fact, the camera is less likely to bear false witness, which is the only valid concern in this case.
Confined though we are, infinity dwells within.
Being safe isn't a boolean true/false dichotomy. Safety, like security, is a matter of degrees, each degree costing us geometrically more than the last degree. At some point you are face-to-face with the Law of Diminishing Returns.
The problem with anything measured in degrees is that we won't always agree on when the limits are hit. Put differently, exactly how many lives must be quantifiably saved before it becomes worth it to see the government put a camera on every street corner? Everyone has a number. For me, the number is higher than that which I think this one serial killer would have killed. It's higher than the cost in lives of 9/11. It's not higher than the cost in lives of, say, WWII, however. Before I saw that many people kiled, I think I'd agree to the cameras. It's always a matter of degrees. My tolerance for risk is higher than most. I don't, for instance, see loss of our liberty worth it when traded for safety from terrorists. Perhaps it's becuase I underestimate what they are capable of. Perhaps not. Either way, the original question is a good one, but inevitably one that we can only answer for ourselves. I guess the beauty of our democracy is that in answering for ourselves we come to a jagged consensus that lets us make a communal decision and move on. It's worth noting that sometimes that consensus doesn't mesh well with our personal ethic (C.f., abortion, stem cell research, the war in Iraq, seat belt laws, and street corner government cameras). In the end, all we can do it make a personal decision and cast our vote. For my vote, I'll be pushing away from street corner cameras. If I'm on the losing side of the issue...well, it won't be the first time.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom
Children DIE in car accidents! They are a MENACE and should be BANNED. If it saves one childs life, isn't it worth it?
I appreciate the privacy concerns that usually drive these discussions. This surveillance business is much to 1984 for my taste, but the reality is elsewhere, as illustrated in a recent report by the NYLCU (see http://nyc.indymedia.org/or/2006/12/80970.html. It reports that:
The NYCLU report not only opposes the expansion of the number of police operated candidates. It proposes an "immediate moratorium on the installation of any and all new surveillance cameras in the city". I think this raises an important question. Don't I have a right to install a video surveillance camera in my window, if only so I can put a live view of the park outside my window on my computer screen? How dare these folks attack my right to bear cameras. :-)
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
You have no legal expectation of privacy on the street. It is in the public domain. If the government points a camera there, there is absolutely no invasion of privacy.
If they point the cameras inside your home, that would be an invasion of privacy and would require a warrant.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
and there is the problem. I'm lucky, I grew up late enough to see the new technology and get to grips with it, but early enough to predate it, so it wasn't much of a challenge to poison the well my staying out of databases as much as possible, and stuffing them with false and conflicting data whenever the opportunity presented itself. However, as time passes more and more of these things are going to be linked to databases. It is not, for example, about ID cards, I grew up with ID cards, what we are talking about now in the UK are ___NOT___ ID cards, but tokens called "ID cards" that are just front ends for databases, the databases are the problem, not the front ends. It has already passed to the point where poisoning the well of the database is considered a crime, this tells the enlightened citizen all they need to know, the importance of the database is paramount, the importance of the citizen is always subsumed to the database. The writing was on the wall decades ago with "corporate individuals", who despite being "individuals" under the law could argue that subdivision x did something naughty, but head office could not possibly keep track of all this and must not be punished, the human individual analogy is do not throw me in prison for pinching girls backsides, it was my fingers, specifically this finger and this thumb, and it would be wrong to imprison me in any way when the rest of my body has done no wrong. At present the bandwidth required for decent quality CCTV cameras, the storage space for the streams of data, and the processing power required all put these devices out of contact with the database, it takes human reviewers to make the connection. This is not the case with RFID of course, especially when the tags are provided for free by your local consumer goods retailer. As soon as any technology makes the leap from requiring human monitoring and control to fully electronic management it is ready to be interfaced directly to a database. As far as the databases themselves are concerned it is trivial to create a new one which interfaces to half a dozen existing ones and create a whole new set of data points about each subject or citizen. The retailers and credit card companies and banks already have frighteningly (frightening to anyone who is not a student of Freud and Bernaise and who does not understand human psychology) accurate and predictive databases on the vast majority of the population, they know what goods to promote next week in response to the weather this week, or sports news this week, or entertainment news this week. This is their holy grail, to accumulate this data, correlate it, and then mine it and thus identify swing voters, potential terrorists, political activists, paedophiles, etc. They will do this not knowing or caring about similar attempts in the past based upon the shape of the skull or ethnicity etc etc, it doesn't matter if these efforts fail, creating the infrastructure opens a slew of new pandoras boxes. = = = = = = = At the risk of saying something that will go down like a lead balloon on a predominantly US site. 9/11, if you had asked anyone anywhere on the planet what targets you would choose to strike at the symbol of america, 99.9% of them would have said "fly the planes into the statue of liberty, the white house, and the golden gate bridge" because these were the symbols of americana. I do not know ANYBODY who would have chosen the WTC, if you had suggested the WTC to me I would have said "why, they are nothing but a bunch of banks and accountants and technology companies", but that is the point, the attacks were NEVER targeting the USA of the american people, they were targeting the financial complex, and please don't be so naive as to think that they are the same thing or even related. What all this "you ARE what the databases say about you" means for us as people is the following. 1/ The instruments used to monitor you will be as fine and accurate as the programmers make them, or as loose and inaccurate. 2/ the data itself will hold more value th
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
This is just plain wrong. Spying on the American People and trating them all like criminals to capture a handful of wrong-doers is not appropriate.
Come on people, let's start acting like the tough, brave American's we are suppose to be and not the hold my hand, cry baby, spy on me so I am safe losers that we are quickly becoming.
"But why is a permanent record bad, when I'm doing nothing wrong?". You aren't doing anything wrong today, but what about under the laws of tomorrow? What about if you later become a public figure, and they have tapes of you picking your nose? Is it suddenly a privacy intrusion then?
What I hope would happen is we'd finally get accustomed to the fact that people pick noses! And that other stuff like that happens. Sure, right now we're all damn busy trying to polish our public appearance, and that's the only thing the cameras will rob from us, faked appearances.
I actually welcome our new nose-picking public figure overlords! Maybe they'd appear and even act (gasp!) a bit more like human beings then =).
Asking public leaves traces. With public cameras everywhere you can be 100% sure the footages has been also used in cases police would not like to reveal for bad reasons.
Are you an idiot beliving that police can not nothing wrong?
If you want to get support for mass deployment of CCTV cameras then talk about privacy safeguard before deployment.
Big Brother is wathing you
-- George Orwell " 1984"
There is one good reason. What if he hadn't done it? It looks like he did on those grainy films, so he must be guilty. No need to do other police work.
But what if he didn't do it?
(yes, in this case he confessed. But what if he didn't do it?)
-Patrick
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Apparently not. Look at all of the comments below.
If one killer stopped by cameras is a sufficient argument for cameras, then one killer stopped by an armed citizen is a sufficient argument for repealing all gun control laws. I'm sure the Philadelphia city government will get right on that....
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Filming in public does not go against the Fourth Amendment. Your proposal does. That is the difference.
I keep seeing this "it violates my privacy!" argument come up, and I'm not sure where it comes from. When you're out on a public street, you do _not_ have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Anyone can videotape you, legally. Hell, anyone can follow you around with a video camera until you head somewhere that's not public. I don't see why it should be different for the government.
I don't have an issue with objecting to the cameras, but "privacy" isn't the reason to do so, IMHO.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
One of the disadvantages of camera systems is that they create a false sense of security, that actually decreases security. Some people think they are safe because of the camera's, and therefore don't use their common sense and start playing hero (eg fight with a thug holding a knife, instead of just handing over your wallet) under the assumption that the police will arive shortly.
Other people will use the cameras as an excuse for not doing anything themselves. Instead of helping the victim of a robbery, or trying to memorise the face of the robber, they assume that the cameras will take care of it.
A third disadvantage is that cameras only provide evidence of crimes allready committed. They will not step forward to stop a crime, like a real cop would do. They can only help in catching the criminal, if you are lucky. The story above shows that actually getting any evidence from the cameras is not a given fact either.
Finally, if the government turns mad, or we get some kind of dictator, I don't want them to learn that I protested for freedom in the past. They might hold it against me.
I meant setting, not settomg.
I don't really have a problem with cameras in public places, because I am not a criminal. However, I would rather avoid being in the lime-light if possible, aside from being on the internet, I like to avoid paper - or video - trails strictly out of principle. I do think it is an invasion of privacy, though a minor one. But I see it as a snowball effect that will simply get bigger and more far-reaching.
., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police," (Joyce Malcolm, http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html).
Now, this may sound radical, but I think guns are the answer. Bear with me. If every citizen, crimial or not, were packing heat, I think it would make someone think twice before trying to rob, rape or murder. Consider this, "53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S.,
I echo the thoughts of the writer of that article (which is a very interesting read), In that I believe all humans do fear death or injury, and if it can be avoided it would be. Now, I'm not suggesting that arming all of society will end crime, but what I do think it will do is reduce violent crime significantly, leaving only the most violent criminals, which will slowly be phased out either through the justice system or self-defense.
I don't see cameras in public spaces as intrusive. They're not in our homes! I have the privacy of my kitchen for dancing naked, but if I were to dance naked in the street I shouldn't be outraged that people see me. When you are in *public*, the street or the park, you are in a space shared by society and you expect to be observed and accountable to those around you. Is the camera different?
Sorry, we've already established that saying "1984" is not an argument, nor is it a good point. I can only assume that all the people who say '1984' have never taken the time to actually read the book, as they would be more frugal as to where they throw the reference.
To switch your indirectly insulting, loaded and poorly written question about on it's face: Are you an idiot that believes the police do nothing right?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I also heard that if everyone was put in a cage there would be absolutely no crime at all. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cages?
God Be Gone
You're asking the wrong question. There is almost no difference between a policeman watching you
by camera and one watching you in person. The real question is why can't we watch them?
Here's an experiment for you:
1. Install video camera in car
2. Get pulled over
3. Tell officer he's being recorded
4. Watch fireworks
5. Post results from jail for all to read
It is stupefying that you don't have a problem with this.
That's my route walking home from work.
I can't count on a crowd of hands how many times in the last 3 years I've walked just that exact stretch of block at just that exact hour after some ridiculous upgrade failure or hardware failure or computer-room flood or worm infestation or theft or patch or luser cluelessness or what-the-frig-ever because We Have To Be Up, and that trip at that time gets me home in time to shower, shave, and be back to shovel more. (Understand here that I knew nothing of these cameras before this event, and that this was simply the least scary pedestrian route between several choices - well lit, no blind alleys, no undesirable lowlife honeypots, etc.)
For several days after this event here in Philly, there was no clue that this was anything except a random act between strangers on a bus - and the guy wasn't caught. It also emerged on every TV news broadcast and newspaper alert (as you can see from RTFA) that the place was filmed to within an inch of its life.
Knowing now what I didn't know then, I'm pretty sure the Feds have much humorous footage of me alone on that stretch, going to/from work, playing air guitar to whatever was on my iPod at 5 in the morning. So yeah, it would sting a little if my moves showed up on YouTube, but I was very happy for the fact that the whole city now knew it would be a really dumb idea to kill somebody at 9th and Market.
Just looking at that tiny pic still freaks me out.
Just my $.02
FTA: They are not only sensitive to light, but also emit infrared rays that can make night look virtually like day.
So there are cameras that actually send out infrared rays, like radar/sonar?
Of course there's a good basis for the argument against. However, that's not going to help those of us who retain a tenuous hold on rationality; the vast mass of the population will of course believe when they're told that this proves ubiquitous CCTV is essential. The only other things that could be used to market the scheme would be someone getting arrested for a terrorist offence (cos let's face it, being arrested for terrorism makes you guilty in the US) or the dreaded paedophiles. Check out the tenor of the public debate in UK tabloid newspapers over the last decade or two for a sneak preview of what's coming. Complain that CCTV infringes your right to privacy? Get your name and photo published in a national newspaper as a "paedophile sympathiser"! (Rebecca Whatsername who edits the News of the Screws at the moment deserves a special circle in hell to herself, IMO. She's the absolute scum of the earth.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?
Cameras don't stop crime, cops on the street do. Who's to say that had they taken the money spent on cameras and video handling systems and used it to put more police on the street that the killer wouldn't have been apprehended sooner? Or a host of other, less serious crimes prevented?
Kind of reminds me of the "if it saves one life it's worth it" line of argument. I don't agree. Sometimes the overall cost to society has to be weighed against that one life. If we banned automobiles we'd save almost 500 lives the first weekend. Does that make it worth it? If we made everyone endure a strip search before getting on an airplane...not that we're not close as it is...we would probably, somewhere down the road, save one life. Is it worth it?
So if we spent the money to put surveillance cameras on every corner we'd probably stop a crime here or there and, like in this story, catch a killer somewhere along the line. Is it worth it? I'm not at all sure it is.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Nope. Still not a good enought reason to have a survaliance society. Next question?
One other problem one could think of is that with evidence in general, you have the right to inspect all of the evidence against you, if you are indicted. In the case of police operated cameras the problem is that the police decide what is evidence against you and what is not (do you really believe you would be allowed full access to all video footage?). Technically, there is no reason for the police to allow you to use the system to prove that you were actually at home when the crime was committed, and I'm sure you wouldn't be allowed to check. This heavily skews the burden of evidence in favor of the prosecution. Now, this could be the same if they got info out of one of their other databases (driving license, social security, etc), but the problem only gets worse using this. Arguing that the problem already exists does not justify making it significantly worse.
I have read the book. If you stubornly insist I can read it once more. Have YOU read it?
You assumption is wrong even if my interpretation of the book is not the only sensible one.
Good police does not too much wrong things. If you belive you it deserves unlimited trust then history have taught you nothing and you must be blind and deaf.
You own goverment is always in the best position to take away your freedoms. Unlimited trust does not pay. For me mass deployment of CCTV crosses the reasonable trust line.
No one has denied that creating a police state makes things easy for the police. The problem is that you can't trust the police all the time with all information. Maybe if the police still had to do police work instead of sitting on their hands watching TV the serial killer would have been caught a long time ago. In a free society, police work isn't supposed to be easy.
This country was founded with most of its rules (excluding the bill of rights just for simplicity) placed so that we, the people, can more easily conquer a government that represses our liberties. When a government begins placing us in a situation in which plotting against them in case they become tyrannical becomes impossible, they have removed our most precious liberty (the liberty to choose our leaders).
Personally I blame the mass media and several other industries/foundations for making us so lazy that I doubt anyone would really rebel...but eih.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
The question is, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Since all the cameras were in public areas, and since there is a lot of precedent supporting the idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, I'm not sure what the legal objection could be...
Sure a camera network could be used by an oppressive government to help control a civilian populace...but so could a police force, and no one argues against the police on the grounds that they take away your right to privacy.
Regardless of our feelings about the subject, cameras are getting better, cheaper, and smaller. This sort of thing is only going to get more common, and it's hard to form a cogent argument against it since the privacy you lose is intangible, whereas serial killers being caught based on camera data is pretty tangible.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Given all the qualifiers in that classic statement, it's nearly meaningless. But it sounds good, and I guess that's what matters in the end, soundbite-wise.
"essential liberties" vs. "a little temporary safety" - heh.
How about "essential safety" vs. "a little temporary liberty"? Or "a little essential temporary liberty" vs... oh, never mind...
In the UK I see signs every day explaining how I am being recorded for my safety. But how often do you hear of a crime being STOPPED by someone monitoring the CCTV systems? All you ever hear about is the use of CCTV after the crime to identify the participants.
Sure, arrests and convictions are up because of cameras, no arguing there. But are deaths down? Are rapes down? Are assaults down? I've not seen any statistics showing a decline in violent crime that coincides with the number of cameras monitoring an area.
So great, you'll be able to avenge my death. Thanks, but I'd prefer more officers on patrol which might put me in a position where I can get help and not need avenging!
From the CDC:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm
"Suicide took the lives of 30,622 people in 2001 (CDC 2004)."
"In 2001, 55% of suicides were committed with a firearm (Anderson and Smith 2003)."
30622x55%=16842 deaths
It's not so much 'how many cameras' as 'who are using them'
If I'm being an 'unpopular' person, due to being critical of say the government and the police, then what's the keep them from using all the camera footage they have to find something I might conceivable have done wrong. (Or just make something up, or make a correlation to something I've never done, or change some of the footage, or make sure that bits and pieces show up in different order, or...)
If you give people the power to potentially abuse something like this, then they will do it. If you manage to make people insensitive to this problem with 'privacy', then they won't really mind.
1984 isn't going to be built in 1 year, it needs time. (We're 22/23 years further now, and we're almost there! George Orwell eat your heart out!)
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
"Why think about the actual issue brought up by the parent post, when you can just taunt Slashdot like that's relevant"
MicrosoftRepresentit (1002310)
Maybe you need more explanation than that elegant quote provides and you couldn't follow it, so here goes.
I'm not saying we definitely shouldn't have the cameras - in fact, in most cases I'm pro public-cameras but anti-wiretapping. But I am saying that anyone who thinks the topic doesn't deserve continued discussion or doesn't think that quote is relevant doesn't understand the issue.
Liberty:
In some hypothetical selfish dictatorship you might decide to execute 100 people if it's guaranteed to stop that serial killer, because your goal is not weighed against the good for the people.
In some hypothetical benevolent dictatorship you might decide to execute* 2 people even though only one of them is the serial killer - if you think the killer will kill more than 1 more person, the benefit DOES outweigh the cost when viewed across all people.
In the United States as envisioned by our forefathers we value PERSONAL liberties. So the benefits must not merely outweigh the costs but must _massively_ outweigh the costs to the individual. Under their model, the government wouldn't execute 2 people unless it would save not merely 2 but at least tens of other people, or more... This is the principle upon which we have the freedom of one person to speak when no one else wants it and one person to practice a religion everyone else might hate.
Taking away the ability for someone to walk from one house to another without being recorded is definitely a liberty that has largely been removed. Perhaps the benefits do massively outweigh the costs, but that calculation depends on factors such as how much oversight is placed on the camera operators.
Murder:
The only other point I want to note is that some people have said that since death is more or less the ultimate penalty, 1 death = infinite anything less than death. That's simply not the way the world works. If you want to know how much death is worth, perhaps calculate how much it would cost to reduce the average number of traffic deaths by one by improving cars - or more effectively by improving driver's education classes. Even better, simply strengthen the currently idiot-proof tests to get your license. That would cost the governments very little and put the responsibility on the driver to learn how to drive better. (Naturally a nationwide program would cost a lot and reduce deaths by alot - you'd need to divide to find a unit cost.)
Or the costs for better medical accountability to reduce needless deaths during medical procedures. Or the costs to stop someone in the US from dying of hunger. (Not to mention the much-lower costs to reduce some kinds of death in other parts of the world.) Or the costs for meat-safety inspections that are more independent of the meat-packing industry that cause deaths through foodborne illnesses. Or the economic impact of improving the health quality of foods and dividing by the reduced number of deaths from heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer.
The numbers will vary, but they're all lower than you'd think.
*Obviously if you can actually arrest them you could put both of them in jail and hope it sorts itself out - and there are a zillion other tricky police things to do, like letting them go and watching both of them really carefully. That's why this is a hypothetical. Maybe the killer is flying away in a little stealth plane with a hostage and you only have this opportunity to reliably shoot him down.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
People watch people.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"Crime does not disappear, it just moves to where there are no camera's "
True of some crime (drug dealing), much less true of other kinds of crime (bar room brawls, club queues, theft, robbery, etc) that is location-dependent.
"But the real issue, the underlying issue, is *why do people perform unethical crimes?*"
I'll have a few whacks:
Because of greed
Because of pride
Because of stupidity
Because of rage
Because of sex
Because of pleasure
Because of a will to power
Just because...
I'm sure you all have things to add to the list.
You obviously took something away from that book which I didn't, then. What I saw was a government obsessed with propaganda and control, not with surveillance. Surveillance was merely the way they enforced their propaganda on the inhabitants. Surveillance in the hands of the well-meaning is an entirely different kettle of fish.
Also, accusing me of having unlimited trust in the government is a complete fallacy. I can only assume you have Two-Tone Perception disorder: the inability to see anything except as one thing or another. Not everything is black and white.
Read what I said, and what you asked, and start again. Try it without the stupid this time.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
...on what brand of "ethical" you are loyal to at the moment...
we really need to think about what we want to make crimes.
If 25% of the population is doing it but has been getting away with it because everyone ignores the law, then the law needs to go.
Otherwise it is going to be very oppressive and ridiculously expensive.
So we have to ask our selves what laws are currently making criminals out of huge numbers of otherwise productive members of society?
Mostly vices come to mind.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Yep. Lotsa stories about how a pursesnatcher got caught. Whatever. A steady stream of them, I predict. If cameras are placed on every piece of masonry, you'll find a whole lot of criminals.
Where are the stories about how an executive was caught using cameras? Doubt there will be many, because cameras will be scarce in executive board rooms. About how many anti-Bush protesters lost their jobs because of the copcams? It'll always be little people caught, not the big thieves and killers.A lot of little crimes, marginal ones, will be found, pumping up the safety meme. Kill one man, big story, kill hundreds of thousands, and they cover your state dinner.
And finally, when will we hear the stories about how some innocent person was arrested and imprisoned using circumstantial evidence from Complete Surveillance, USA? I don't think the American Secret Police will be publicizing those stories. I don't think we'll ever hear about those.
Americans. So terrified of crime, so sold on their helplessness. The safest country in the world, and the most terrified through the agency of their own government and a news media turned into the Nancy Grace Anger Hour.
The cameras are not worth the cost. They will be used against those who protest the mounting abuses of the same cameras. It's what police states always do; turn against the very people they insisted they were protecting.
No, I was asking the right question.
What you meant was "You didn't ask the question I wanted you to ask", then you made some dramatic assumptions about what I do or do not find acceptable.
Want to try again?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin Smart man.
Well it's not like it was obvious that quote was coming out, no matter how misapplied.
I've got a message for you Harry Potter - you do not have the "liberty" to walk down the street in front of my house with a Franklin Cloak of Invisibility to be unseen and unrecorded by all!
Even Wonder Woman could be seen in her jet.
I think we need a common sense motto to apply to cameras proliferating everywhere, to halt such thinking as yours in its tracks: "Public Means Public". Just like "No Means No", it send a clear message it is not OK to expect privacy in places that, well, are not!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"...police recently killed a serial killer with the help of a combination of Homeland Security and private gunmen. Police fired at 50 different potential suspects and passers-by and pieced together relevant remaining body parts from 12 of them, and eventually were able to verify that one of them was the murderer. Once discovered, further investigation uncovered that he also committed several other murders spanning the past eight years. Without this police shooting spree this killer would probably be stalking the streets of today. With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against this mass shooting?"
"They've canceled the show but we're still here. What does that make us?" "Big Damn Junkies, Sir!" "Ain't we just"
If you are on public streets you have no expectation of privacy. That's why they call it "public". A person with a camera or a camera operated by the government is no more intrusive than having someone with a really good memory watch you kill that person.
57% of all gun deaths were accidental in 2001
should read
57% of all gun deaths were suicides in 2001
PS. (in all caps for emphasis)
GET A DAMN EDIT FUNCTION SLASHDOT - this is the year 2007 for...
DS.
After reading the story, all I can say is this looked like good, solid police work using surveillance cameras from private businesses and the Post Office.
The only thing that concerned me was the mention of a "pilot" program installing police surveillance cameras in high-crime areas, and the comment by the DA at the end, which seems to foreshadow that before long, Philadelphia will be like London in terms of having government-run cameras in public watching everyone's every move.
...and I'm writing as an AC, so only the most compulsive readers will see it, but here is my opinion: A camera can go wherever a cop can go without a warrant.
In other words, street corners and public areas are fine, but places where a reasonable expectation of privacy (restrooms, private homes) are off limits, unless of course there is a warrant. I feel this is a reasonable balance between public safety and privacy, and if you feel the need to extend the right of privacy to currently public areas, just make it against the law for a cop to be there as well.
I'm all about privacy, but its not like police cameras on every corner were used in this arrest. They used a multitude of different cameras... 1. Cameras outside of Federal Buildings - Does anyone really have a problem with the gov't placing cameras outside of their offices? 2. Cameras inside of private businesses - Even the most self-righteous hippie has no problem with someone placing a camera inside their PRIVATELY owned business 3. Cameras at ATM machines - There is nothing wrong with this. Basically, I don't think this is a bad thing.
The "good basis" is that it may make the cops here as lazy and indifferent as the cops are in the UK, where putting these cameras everywhere is about the only area where the cops are "fighting" crime. There citizens have been stripped of the right of self-defense and the police seem more interested in intimidating them not to report crimes (which makes them look bad), than in doing the hard work required to catch, prosecute and sentence criminals.
So, yes there is a reason. It's likely to turn cops, who ought to be on the streets, into couch potatoes.
It is a very emotional and touching story, yet the article underscores the fact that technology is already being abused in this quote, "The cameras are high above the street to catch possible truck bombs, not individual faces." To be sure, in this case the cameras were abused for Good, however it is irresponsible to use this single case to justify the potential for Evil abuse in other cases. Surveillance cameras don't even prevent crime or even terrorist attacks for that matter.
Guess where the American government was founded?
Yes, Philadelphia.
Which is the poorest city in the United States?
Philadelphia.
Crime and poverty are related, so guess who also has the highest murder per capita rate of a large city?
No, not D.C. anymore... it's Philadelphia.
I live in Center City Philadelphia, and this area is virtually "landlocked" by 4 different notorious regions of the city which are so fierce with crime that two aren't even safe to drive through in the daytime! We do have gentrification occurring here, but that isn't enough to drop the crime rate down.
Also, our city school system was annexed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and taken out of City control, and the improvement in things like the truancy rate have still yet to be seen... one of the larger contributors to shootings other than drug turf disputes.
The crime cameras are located on major city intersections, and in very high crime areas where the number of "SHOTS FIRED" incidents occur more than 100x a year [citywide, we have about 1,900 shootings reported annually, with 2006's murder total at 406 people, NYC only has 100 more murders, but it has 8 times the population we do].
City residents were jumping for joy, rich and poor, when this plan was announced. Life is different in Philly than in your little suburb and corporate office park. CCTV in public areas has been challenged in court numerous times, by the ACLU and others, and each time the litigants lost up front or lost in the appellate circuits.
Center City is safe only because there are hundreds of thousands of eyes on the streets, it looks like Manhattan, and a lot of the nation's most historic objects are located here. The other parts of Philadelphia which are spread out... very few eyeballs are on the street.
The program is working for us. We want to keep it.
Surely the US generally didn't require its troops in WWII to use their own guns from home when serving in the military. So whether or not they had guns at home is largely irrelevant.
Actually untrue; it's quite relevant, just not in the way you're thinking. While it's been a while since the U.S. has told its soldiers to bring their own weapons, the skill of using those weapons is easily transferable from the civilian world to the military. You can't make someone a good marksman in just a few weeks, which is all the time you have to devote to the subject in basic training. At best you can make a mediocre marksman out of most people. Having a large pool of civilians skilled in the operation of firearms is a valuable military asset, and it's been so for a long time. Hence the U.S. Government's Civilian Marksmanship Program, and the original impetus for the National Rifle Association. (The NRA was originally founded by retired Army officers who were so disappointed by the deplorable shooting skills of their incoming troops that they wanted to do something about it.)
And think a bit more about the handgun ban in Philly: do you think it would have been more or less effective if such guns had been banned across the entire country?
I think it's ridiculous that as regional bans have proved to be complete and utter failures -- in some cases actually harmful -- and laws which permit lawful gun ownership successful, the anti-gunners want to go for a national ban? It's like Communism: if it fails, then obviously you didn't try hard enough. Better luck next time -- but don't you dare question the theory! Regional gun bans didn't work, and a national gun ban wouldn't either: the U.S. can't even stop the flow of people across it's borders, or inspect every cargo container coming in and out, and a handgun is a lot easier to smuggle than a person (who have to eat and breathe and can't be disassembled into small parts and put back together, etc.). I mean, we've banned most illegal drugs for the better part of a century, and yet they still seem to be around. A national gun ban would be just as ridiculous as the war on drugs; probably less successful, since it's a lot easier to manufacture a firearm in a machine shop than it is to grow a field of cocoa plants and refine cocaine here in the U.S. (Not to mention the tens of millions of guns already in circulation.)
If you really want to look at why the crime rate is higher here than it is in most of Europe, you have to look a lot of factors besides gun laws. Looking at the crime rate here, and the rate there, and attributing it to gun control is ridiculous; there's nothing that implies causation in that relationship. The root causes of crime are probably much more subtle, and have to do with things that no politician wants to deal with directly: issues like wealth distribution, education, job availability, single versus two-parent households, teen pregnancy, etc. But guns are a good bogeyman to haul out at campaign time, and are useful for taking attention away from the tough questions that nobody wants to answer. It's just sad that so many people fall for it so readily.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Could "the party" in 1984 book achieve full control without full surveillance?
If you think that full surveillance will never be missused or that it will not create strong temptation to be abused then you are unfit to live in the world of "before voting day promices".
Are you brave enough to state that only communism is capable to surveillance abuses?
Yes, then by all means, let us all give up every semblance of privacy and put cameras everywhere!
"With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?"
indeed there is.
A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.
I'm mounting a 30" telescreen in my living room to help the government enforce the law in my house at all times.
In case a serial killer breaks in.
This means nothing. It was never up for debate that security cameras aid law enforcement - clearly they do.
Catching one serial killer is nothing compared to the grotesque infrastructure of spying and social control that is being set up.
If citizens should not expect privacy the minute they step outside their house, then politicians should not either. They should all be fitted with personal always-on-when-not-home cameras and microphones, with always-on feeds to public streaming sites on the internet, so that also they can be properly surveyed. Tampering with or disabling this equipment should carry harsh punishments.
After all, given the missing billions of dollars of the pentagon, the constant lying from the white house, and the ever-present corruption schemes and racketeering going on in the higher echelons, I have a strong suspicion we could catch MUCH bigger fish than the occasional serial killer this way.
Sam has one liberty, which he sacrifices for one security. Can you tell me what Sam has now?
Now everybody always goes on and on about the civil liberties issues of cameras in public, talking of 1984 etc. To me, that really isnt the issue here. The issue to me is that the government is spending my money on surveiling me, an upstanding citizen. Seriously, why does the taxpayer even let the government spend US dollars on something so frivalous. The fact is we are paying people who dont trust us. It has gone from paying people who have to rely on the public to know about criminals, to paying people to surveil me 24/7. That buffer between me, the rest of the people, and the government is a nessesity. I dont need to pay the government to be my buffer with the rest of society.
Is the guy they caught really guilty, or did they just grab some guy and beat him until he signed whatever they wanted him to sign? People sign false confessions every day.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Do yourselves a favor - go to Amazon.com and grab a copy of _The Transparent Society_ by David Brin. He provides a lot of fantastic arguments - both for and against - a more transparent society.
I am cool with having cameras in all public places.
However, lets do it right. First we need cameras on all police cruisers and even on the police themselves (I believe the UK is starting this). We also need cameras mounted in the police stations, holding cells, and interrogation cells. These videos need to be made available in their entirety and in a timely manner to the public over the Internet (bluetube.com maybe?). Obviously some videos would be important to investigations to the police can petition a judge (after reviewing it) to hold it from publication for a specific period of time (renewed until the investigation is over and releasing it would no longer compromise anything). There needs to be absolutely NO time ever when a citizen is in contact with a police officer where it is not filmed and kept for record, any "missing time" should be cause for severe punishment. I don't want to hear anything about the privacy of the police, they have no privacy on the job. They are public servants who are given powers and authority above other citizens and need to be held to a much higher standard.
Now that we can watch the watchers, let's roll out the public cameras. I have nothing to hide about how I go through my daily life in public, but first I want to ensure that those in power who request this do not either.
(one can only dream about a day when elected public officials have to be similarly accountable in their public life)
Finkployd
The Panopticon was the ideal -prison-. Turn all of society into the panopticon, and people will develop the mentality of prisoners, and not that of free men (which has already been classified as a disorder -- defiant disorder)
The public schools already work hard to develop subjects, not citizens, quiescent to such a totalitarian, all-seeing, big brother society.
I read an analysis in Technology Review(?) about a decade ago the proper way to balance security, privacy, and abuse is to put all video accessible online to everyone. Then the "watchers are watched" by the public. In the 1990s this was technically impossible. In the 2000s were see piecemeal versions of this with UTube-like services and ubiquitous personal and public cameras. In the 2010s this could be a reality.
All those TV shows where a crime was solved by analyzing surveilance camera tapes were lies? Apart from them zooming in to see the make of watch the murderer wore, reflected in a window of a car driving by, I mean.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
There will always be serial killers. It's part of human nature. Not every human, of course, but with so many of us, there will always be a tiny fraction of a percent, either by nature or nurture (or lack thereof) who will be inclined to this passtime.
Dumb serial killers, of course, will be caught.
Smart serial killers will realize that these "security" cameras aren't really that prevalent in poor areas, where lower-income people live. So where do you think the serial killers will go for their activities? (where most of them already go).
Of course, this will be reflected in violent crime statistics, which will be cited by "authorities" like Rush Limbaugh as evidence of the inherent immorality of poor people.
As a result, housing market values will climb in "safe" areas, and decline in "unsafe" areas, making it even harder for low-income people to move, further entrapping them. Given the rather uncivilized things that happen to such people, there will be a tendency towards uncivility on their part. Provoking even further violence, crime, and hatred.
And it will serve them right, because they keep voting for the politicians backed by big money, against their own interests.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
and don't be ashamed of anything you do.
Just get used to the fact that the whole world is ending up like a small village where everybody knows everything you do.
Privacy is a luxury that we can no longer afford outside the walls of places we own (and even there its by the grace of keeping stuff legal.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
True the cameras aren't in your home, but the government is instead tapping your phone, reading your emails, checking up on your credit card/debit purchases, so in effect filtering every conceivable way that you can interact with the outside world. They don't 'see' you masturbating, but they know that you have a subscription to 'play nerds', that you spend 9:30 to 9:45 every night looking at hot pr0n on the internet, and that you like the 3-ply extra smooth tissue. In effect they already have a much more malleable system in place for catching you doing 'something'.
I'm fine with everyone getting to watch me and have recordings but ONLY if I get to watch _everyone_ else too and have access to the recordings. AND you should only have access to a recording if you are also being recorded and logged while accessing it ;).
;).
And that includes the politicians, the judges and the cops. Everyone gets to watch everyone else the same way, no more, no less.
If the politicians don't want to allow anyone and everyone to see the inside of their homes, then same goes for my home and everyone else.
If Mr Prime Minister/President doesn't want his journey through public areas recorded by cameras and viewable by everyone and anyone, then same for me and everyone else.
If you get to post embarassing videos of me on the internet, I get to do that too. Lets see if you never do anything embarassing or shameful or illegal or sinful in your life. I definitely won't be the first to "cast the stone" but here's to Mutually Assured Embarassment...
If you get to see me typing my passwords, then everyone should be able to see you watching me type my passwords
Not that most people would or should care. But if people think cams everywhere are such a great idea, this my opinion on how they should do them.
Of course it does, you do realise it's the first time ever they caught a serial killer. Or a criminal for that matter. It's a major progress !
They'd caught a number of serial murderers without any cameras like this. Ted Bundy, who murdered more than 30 people was caught using foot work detective investigations.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In West Philadelphia born and raised,
Shooting random victims is how I spent most of my days,
Chilling out, maxing, and people watching outside the EL.
Until a couple of cameras, up to no good, started recording in my neighborhood.
It recorded me in one little homicide and Lynn Abraham got scared
She said, DHS and V&.
Why should we wait for it in small chunks? We should all go down now and have microchips implanted. They should be able to transmit location, sound and video 24/7.
There are a few bedrooms I wouldn't mind logging onto. I wonder if it would be like that mirror echo effect in pictures. I'm logged on and watching a chip, someone is logged onto me; someone is logged onto them and so on and so on. I for one would think this would be a hellava lota fun.
Sarcasm and fantasies aside... We've lost it. I'm glad the human race isn't going to survive. We don't deserve life.
-[d]-
An intrusive technology is one that violates the privacy of an individual without his or her consent. Having security cameras in public areas means that individuals are now being filmed in an area which should be considered safe from intrusion. I am not opposing surveillance on private property; however, in this case, the property is the domain of the citizenry.
While I oppose surveillence techonologies as well, cameras in public are not an intrusion of privacy. Nobody has the right to expect privacy in public. As a photographer I've taken a bunch of shots of people in public, most of my photography takes place outdoors, and the only tyme I need permission from the people who's in my photos is if the person or people are clearly identifiable and it is used commercially, ie I use it in an ad for instance. But I can legally use these photos personally or for news without needing permission.
A case on this came up a several years ago when a photographer took some photos of bare breasted women during Marti Gras in New Orleans. He published them on the web, and some of the women found out. So they sued and the judge ruled that since the photos weren't used commercially, the photographer didn't charge to see the photos, it was legal and not a liable issue.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Many people here are pointing out that nobody has an expectation of privacy in public. This is certainly true in American law.
However, once there's a sophisticated / ubquitious-enough network of cameras covering public places, that means that anyone's movements can be retroactively reconstructed.
Once that happens, people are going to lose the anonymity of their sexual partners. For example, today, if you hook up with someone at a bar, and you're not spotted by people who know you, it can be reasonably assumed that only you and your partner know you hooked up (unless one of you tells people). Once the two of you can be tracked leaving the bar together and making your way to (wherever), then anyone who cares to look (and has access) can find this out (possibly making a public disclosure).
This may not sound like a big threat, but there are a lot of people (including politicians) who would prefer not to live in a society where they could never cheat. Also, what if adultery, pre-marital sex, or gay sex becomes a crime? (Gay sex was a crime until recently, in some places in the USA. Unmarried opposite-sex cohabitation is still a crime in my home state of NC). Does anyone want to try to make sure that their present-day sex lives can pass the scrutiny of future legal and moral climates?
We might be able to get regular people to care about this by bringing up the "no more incognito sex" angle.
Suggesting that invasive surveillance could be justified because it can, on occasion, help catch a serial killer is akin to saying that conducting medical experiments on unwilling victims are justifiable because they'll save lives down the line. The ends simply don't justify the means. Just because something has the capacity to create a desirable result, it does not imply the said thing is any less repugnant as a result.
Guess what? Speeding is a real crime. Speeders kill more people every year than serial killers do. I'm glad the cops are cracking down on your selfish, speeding ass.
Speed doesn't kill, it's careless drivers many of whom speed that kills. A person driving too slow can kill as well, and so can people who instead of paying attention to the roads talk on thier cellphones or eat.
FalconShould there be a Law?
were shooting the 9/11 attack on Pentagon? And yet, to date we've only seen great balls of wire filmed on the 9/12!
Or... could we pleas see Muslim fundamentalists BOARDING the plane? I'm sure there are MANY cameras at the airport.
On the other hand... If we saw it on the television, it must be the truth, right. Beware, MEDIA CREATE REALITY, they don't report crude facts.
It's like the Matrix... only worse.
I feel for you and your shitty situation, but stop blaming the camera. The real problem was a legal system that lets a jumped-up secretary tie you up in legal knots like she has.
Remove the camera from the situation, and substitute a single bystander who IDs you when shown a picture. Would the situation be signifigantly different? No. She'd still tie your ass up in court in similar fashion.
But I guess it's easier to blame the camera than fix your American "lawsuit culture".
Ironically, the anti-spammer scramble graphic word is "misuse".
And how does having cameras in public places sacrifice liberties? Which liberties, exactly?
Cameras in public don't violate civil liberties but what can be done with those cameras can, and eventually will, violate them. These cameras can be used to monitor free speech and free assembly which can later be made illegal.
Power corrupts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I can't believe some of you people actually support the idea of Big Brother. If you don't mind cameras taping and archiving your every move then why not just implant RFID tags (or similar tech... GPS, etc...) in everyone's bodies? Then everywhere there is a camera you have some sort of RFID scanner. Then not only can you be taped the goverments will can know instantly where everyone is at all times. Just imagine how safe we will all be then! If someone gets mugged all the goverment would have to do is see whose tag was next the victim and, BAM!, crime solved. Jaywalker? Busted in the act! Then they can sell the logs off to the big corporations (you know, to help pay for all the technology) who can then analyze your daily routines for marketing purposes. Who wouldn't want to live in such an utopia?
Homer: Yup, those new anti-bear patrols sure are working.
Lisa: That's pretty spurious reasoning, dad.
Homer: Thanks, honey.
Lisa: No dad, it's like saying this rock *picks up rock* keeps tigers away
Homer: hhmmmm, how does this rock work?
Lisa: It doesn't.
Homer: I see.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers round here, do you?
Homer: [pause] Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
If they had cameras and credit cards in the 1700's a certain group of people could have been tracked and detained for treason and probably tax evasion.
Statistically speaking, decriminalization (not legalization) of recreational drugs is much more likely to decrease violent crime than any gun ban.
I think that I probably agree with you here, but I just question the difference between "decriminalization" and "legalization." It sounds a lot like the kind of hair-splitting a politician might engage in to avoid the word 'legalization.'
Either something is verboten or it's not. If it's illegal but the prohibition simply isn't enforced, then it's effectively legal (e.g. sodomy in many U.S. states). When many people talk of 'decriminalization' or 'toleration' of narcotics, what they're really describing is making it generally legal, except in specific circumstances which are at the discretion of the authorities to prosecute. This seems like a dangerous game to play, because it makes the difference between what is OK and what will get you punished hazy. (Not to mention the opportunities it creates for abuse: e.g., possession of a joint is ignored, but possession of a joint by a Black/gay/tattooed/longhaired person is a crime due to selective and arbitrary enforcement.) Intentionally creating a disconnect between the law that's written in the statues and the law that's enforced on the street doesn't seem like a great plan.
That said, I think it's time to admit that the War on Drugs has been an abject failure, and isn't doing anything but furthering a cycle of criminality that's far worse than the social plague (drug use by itself) that it was supposed to prevent. Rather than hair-splitting on 'decriminalization' versus 'legalization,' I'd rather go for 'regulation,' at least of soft (physically non-addicting) drugs, similar to tobacco, and avoid creating a legal gray area.
But my greater point was that if you think that banning narcotics was a failure, and created crime where it didn't exist before (particularly organized crime and street gangs), then banning firearms would almost certainly be just as bad or worse. Not only would you (as you mentioned) increase crime by removing the deterrent effect of legitimately-owned firearms, but the entire concept of a 'national ban' is inherently flawed and unworkable. When we tried to ban alcohol, the drinks still flowed freely; when we tried to ban drugs, you could still buy an 8-Ball on any urban streetcorner; if people try to ban handguns, they'll still be used to hold up gas stations. It's not even worth talking about, because it could never work. However, you'll never convince a die-hard gun banner of this; it's like arguing with a die-hard Marxist: every failure is due not to inherent flaws in the workability of the theory, but just due to people who lacked the willpower to see it through. E.g. if regional bans fail, then obviously a national ban is necessary; if a national ban fails, obviously a world ban is necessary; etc. (No idea what they'd do after the world ban fails -- I suspect it would involve increasingly oppressive attempts at 'enforcement.')
The problem with "gun crime" isn't the guns, it's the crime. As long as people allow politicians to take the easy and intellectually dishonest way out, and vilify guns, they're never going to go after the real problem.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Sure there is, it's called freedom. Freedom requires the acceptance of a certain amount of risk, but it has great rewards.
We've never had the right to privacy on public streets. To the extent the government can abuse the power to monitor people, you can use the same safeguards we have for home searches (which is far more intrusive): warrants. If someone gets mugged at 9:00 on Main Street, you get the recordings of the area for a couple hours before and hour by showing a crime was committed there. Other posters seem more concerned with the fact that they might get caught smoking marijuana. If you think smoking marijuana in public places should be legal in public places, argue that, but don't argue against one particular method of enforcement.
I'm really pulling at the memory here, but the value of a Life was calculated around 2.6 million dollars. This was based upon a traffic study and the number of vehicular accidents over a time frame and what it would cost, in productivity hours, to reduce the speed.
It was a very fascinating study and, despite my best efforts to locate the exact figure, I can't find it.
It was about 8 years ago that I read this, so this would be in ~2000 dollars.
What if a private satellite company photos me doing something suspicious like hunting on my property? What if a police helicopter takes an infrared photo of my house to see if I am using too much electricity for 'normal' people? Should I be expected to have some measure of privacy?
Within the past two months or so I read about how some law enforcemnet officals did something like this. In two different cases officers used equipment to take a "picture" of electrical usage in private homes to see if the owners were using growing lights to grow marijuana. They both ended up in court where one judged ruled it was an invasion of privacy but another judge ruled the opposite, that is wasn't an invasion.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Is that skinny wusses cannot defend themselves from big thugs, or a group of skinny thugs, and think this is a good thing. The idea that people should have to participate in some "law of the jungle" combat to defend themselves is absurd. Tools are available for the job, and here in most of the US we are allowed to carry them.
Is privacy in a public place considered an "essential liberty?" I don't think your quote applies here.
A Supreme Court in the early 1800s disagreed with you. I wish I had the link to it, I'd share it if I did. Basically the USSC Justices ruled that in a democracy anonymity was crucial for political speech. If a speaker couldn't remain anonymous thier freedom to speak was severely abridged. As witnessed by the number of published anonymous tracts supporting the colonies during the American Revolution, War of Independence, many fighting for independence also thought so.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I am having my parents copyright my face so they can then use anyone who uses images of it without consent. I would do it myself, but I am their creation after all.
Instrusive? Why do you expect privacy on a *public* street, or in public areas of a public store, where any other person in the area can eyeball you? Now public bathrooms, public changing rooms, are a different story. They "flunk" the eyeball test.
I'd go along with "creepy", but that is merely because it is something new, one-way versus the two-way that I am used to. So, asymetrical, yes. Instrusuve, no, you never had privacy on the street.
I'm in favor of cameras watching public places, so long as they're strictly regulated. Something along the lines of, "Only law enforcement officers can see the video. If the video is recorded the video and all backups must be deleted within 14 days. The only except to the deletion is if the video is being actively used in a crime investigation, and then only the relevant sections of the video may be retained. The video can be used as evidence in criminal cases, but the sections admitted to evidence must be carefully trimmed to the minimal parts possible. Violations are subject to harsh penalties (say, several thousand dollar fine and 18+ months in prison?). "
Why? In short, because I don't want to be justifying my activities out of context five years ago.
The video is going to be recorded; if you're looking for crimes you're going to want to document those crimes. And once it's recorded, it's going end up in the hands of people with other intents. If we don't make a clear stand against it now, some cities are going to think, "well, people have no right to privacy in public anyway, and Bob's Private Investigation is offering us a bucket of money each month for copies, so let's give him a copy." Or the deal might be in the form, "Bob's Surveillence is offering us free cameras, installation, and maintenance. Zero cost, but they keep a copy of everything." If it's illegal, eventually the data will slip out anyway; Bob might bribe an officer, or perhaps the police department's IT guy to make the copies. An officer might decide to access the records himself, maybe to snoop on an ex-lover.
Sound impossible? Law enforcement has been caught doing exactly that. Here a Canadian cop tried to frame a journalist critical of the police. Or this collection of gems, including an officer who helped a man stalk his ex-girlfriend and an FBI agent who sold data to the mob.
So, the data's out. What's the harm? Today, not much. Scanning lots of video trying to track someone is expensive. Simply transfering that much data is non-trivial. But costs are dropping and the computer technology to automate scanner video is getting better and better. Eventually it will be cost effective to scan that data. It will start out seemingly harmless. A business might pay to get a list of addresses of people who stopped to look at the store's front window display, but didn't enter. Or everyone who entered. Or everyone who shopped at a competitor. Now send these people some coupons to try and win them over.
It's the next few obvious steps that start creating real problems. A small business owner might notice his company's health insurance rates are going up. Pay a video searching company to found out which employees are visiting doctor's offices or pharmacies the most often, then fire them. Or similarly, worried about hiring a female employee for a highly skilled job because she might get pregnant, leaving you without an employee for a window? Surely someone will offer to generate monthly reports on who is visiting infant clothing and supply stores, allowing you to fire such an employee prior to her showing or potentially even being pregnant, making it harder to prove why you fired her. (Of course, thanks to "right to work" laws which are actually "right of employers to fire you" laws, it's extremely difficult to challenge being fired.)
Maybe you're part of a religion that your employer is rabidly against; you might be trapped in the job by a bad job market. Your employer might get it in his head to pay to find out who attempts the local church/temple/synogogue/mosque/shrine to weed out undesirables.
Maybe you're part of a group that is harassed because of you religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or politics. You're in a location where harassment is entirely possible b
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Assuming 16 hour workdays, each surveyor could watch 5.3 people for 3 hours/day. That means that you'd need 19% of your population to be watching the other 81%.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Can we do a poll on this matter ?
Regards, Tenth anniversary of my code - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1_LTKqzHDc
"With results like that, is there really a good basis for argument against these cameras?" Maybe. A good argument for them does not negate the existence of arguments against them...
"There is no expectation of privacy in a public place."
Try putting a recording camera in the stall of a public restroom, and watch what the government does to you.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
To me, it is creepy to know that I am always being watched. So what??...if I am not doing anything wrong why do I care? I care because I don't want the U.S. to become like the U.K., another Western "democracy" (layman's term for republic(an)-style gov't) that overcame Hitler, Stalin, the entire U.S.S.R., and other atrocities only to adapt their former adversary's' governing ideology. So the West overcame fascist governments only to assimilate their tenancies later on? Come on...!!
Free societies have crime just like controlled societies. Free societies are far from perfect, however freedom inspires good citizens to watch out and help their gov't catch the criminals. In return, the gov't recognizes that their power is derived from and is created to assist these free people. Controlled societies are watched by their gov't and are automatic potential suspects/targets by the authorities. The citizens are not comfortable in their environment, rather they are constantly paranoid. They have no feeling of control, to the contrary they most likely feel helpless, and they certainly don't consider their gov't to have derived power from them for their own good.
This all comes down to philosophy and principle. This is why I consider myself a pseudo-libertarian, and I firmly believe that the U.S. is operating a rouge gov't outside the definitions of the founding constitution. I am no Reaganite, but bring on devolution! Or don't, it has to happen regardless. The U.S. is digging itself into an economic hole policy-side, and giving up all that it has built internationally. All hail the new king, Red China! It is beyond turning back now, let's just hope that China actually reforms and begins to respect human life!! (Much less democratic principles...)
Careful, the people you describe aren't all people but rather just the psychopathic subset of people. It's not just a nasty label; it's a researched and well-studied psychiatric disorder. The essential feature is that they are so self-centered that they literally don't care at all if they hurt someone in the process of gratifying their desires.
The guy mentioned in the article attempted to defend himself as suffering from a delusion at the time of the killing, but in all likelihood, that was a lie intended to minimize his punishment. The similarity of the words psychosis and psychopathy along with psychopaths' attempts to manipulate the justice and medical systems for leniency are the reason why people believe mentally ill people are dangerous (few really are) and that psychopaths are mentally ill (they're not except insofar as their disregard of the rights of others could be considered mentally ill; they do not suffer from depression, anxiety, hallucinations, or delusions generally).
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.