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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?"
kinda kills the discussion right there
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
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
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!
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
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
1. A private camera footage, can be archived, thus enabling someone to build a pretty detailed account of your life
2. Who guarantees me the cameras are not being used to spy me? once they are there, they can do everything they want.
3. Once you have those cameras, is just a matter of time until facial recognition software gets good enough to be able to pinpoint everyone and build huge databases of personal habits of just about everyone.
4. A private camera in a private space is another thing. A private space is, by definition, private. A street is a public place, and that means it's everyone's property. Just as I can object for being watched at my home, I surely can object being watched and tracked in a place that is just as mine as it's your's place also.
5. If a policeman starts following me, I have a reasonable chance to notice that take protective measures like going to the court. With a camera, what are my chances?
6. If the government wants to unjustly incriminates me (maybe because they *need* to arrest *someone*), what will block them from using carefully selected footage to use as an "evidence" against me?
Your ad could be here!
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.
Personally, I think there is an excellent case for banning handguns, but I'm not an American, and fortunately they're already banned where I live.
So there's no handgun violence where you live?
Handguns were banned in Philly for over a decade and handgun violence still rose.
Besides, the right to arm oneself is a defense against tyranny. You can choose to inure yourself and think the government will always be there to help.
But I wonder, are you one of those countries we saved/freed in WWII?
The opposite of progress is congress
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
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
Murder rates do not correlate with the availability of handguns. For an enlightening look at the history of gun control in the UK, read Fear and Loathing in Whitehall: Bolshevism and the Firearms Act of 1920 (PDF).
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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
Quotes are nothing but inspiration for the uninspired.
- Richard Kemph
Do not underestimate the power of the dark side of famous quotes.
- Bill Austin
No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture.
- Learned Hand
I like this whole quote thing!
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.
No, it doesn't. The law defines who is a criminal. A criminal is one who breaks the law. The government and the people make the laws. If you don't like the laws, change the laws and/or the government. We are a nation of laws, not men.
The thing you keep missing is that no one has an expectation of privacy in a public place. What is the difference if the police officer is watching a monitor or is standing in location being watched by the camera attached to the monitor?
What about video cameras on the dashboards of police cars? Are they not the same as the camera mounted on poles if both cameras point to the same location?
What about cameras at ATMs?
Your argument is full of holes.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What you just proved is that the system, as implemented in the UK, has a provision for removing people who abuse their positions and that it works. Congratulations!
Scattered examples of abuse of a lawful power does not justify the removal of that power from people who actually use it lawfully for the public good.
OT, but you could easily implement it so that edits are only allowed if there have been no responses or moderation done. Even with the preview button, you're bound to make mistakes. With no edits or moderation, there's no harm done.
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)
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