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!
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.
A real policeman watching the criminals with his eyes can also grab hold of said criminal and stop them from doing the misdeed.
A policeman watching over camera is just a reviewr for britains worst police movies 74.
I would rather the money be spent on real policemen doing a real job at policing.
liqbase
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
The difference is one of quantity and duration. The "policeman watching you in person" will quickly forget if you aren't doing anything out of the ordinary. The camera (potentially) results in a permanent record.
"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?
Also, with better and better computer processing, ALL of the cameras can be watched ALL of the time. This is a quantum leap above what "the policeman on the corner" is capable of. What if the police had officers on every corner, and were taking notes 24 hours a day of everything that happened, everyone who passed by, etc. Would that make you pause to think? That is where we are headed...
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.
Unless you've invented some sort of magic camera that frisks you as you walk through the park, this isn't the same thing at all.
If a police officer sees you commit a crime, he can arrest you. If a camera, installed in public, aimed at public places, records your commission of a crime, it can be used as evidence to issue a warrant.
Why are you claiming a right not to be observed in public? It doesn't exist.
So, how about if I decide instead of just looking at you for a short period I decide to watch you and follow you around everywhere you are in public? I mean, you are in a Public space, so I have the right to follow you around everywhere you go. And heck, why look at you from a distance, instead I'll just follow you one step behind you so I can watch every detail of what you are doing. Do you not think you would be able to file some sort of harassment suit against me even though all I was doing was simply following you around everywhere you went in public, or get some sort of restraining order to prevent me from being so near you? There is certainly differences between casual observations and direct watching, recording, archiving of everything you do.
Some are lower, some are higher. I cringe whenever I hear the statement, "If this saves just one life, it will all be worth it." The trouble with those statements is that it often deals with numbers large enough that it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine if the program did save just one life.
There are plenty of ways to go about inexpensively dealing with many problems. Kidnapping used to be considered an expensive, manpower-intensive investigation. However, the advent of the Amber Alert has resulted in an inexpensive way of getting critical information to the public, allowing thousands more eyes on the roads looking for the vehicle and limiting the avenues of escape for the kidnapper. It doesn't work in all cases, of course, but I expect that when studies are done, it will be shown to be one of the more cost-effective methods of reducing at least the harm from kidnapping as well as the interception time, if not the kidnapping crime rate itself.
Similarly, there are ways in hospitals that (when carefully done to protect patient privacy) can allow barcode readers and wireless devices to help ensure patients are prescribed and treated with the correct medications. These are becoming more common and have been shown to help save lives at a per-patient cost of only a few dollars over the life of the equipment.
However, there are ways that look inexpensive and effective at first, and yet end up costing far more than expected. I don't think most people (even the skeptics) thought that the TSA would turn out to be such a bureaucratic nightmare draining off billions for security theater. However, it turns out that the least-expensive and most effective security measure thus far is simply passengers not wanting to be idle participants in another disaster.
Even the simple solutions need to be examined carefully, because they can easily balloon into something unexpected.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.