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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?"
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.
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!
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
Put a camera on the helmet of every policeman and you have the best of both worlds :)
liqbase
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.
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
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
What if the cameras are only there to watch for criminal activity? What if all other activity is disregarded? Does it make you pause to think that maybe you're a tad paranoid?
The kind of slippery slope argument you're using here works both ways. Yes, cameras can be abused. But what if they aren't being abused and never will be?
Because in the end we are dealing with humans. In the netherlands we have a policy that if there hasn't happened anything within X time then all the material needs to be destroyed.
The material can only be accessed by police officers.
I would say there is little to no corruption in the netherlands but after investigating 30 cities it turned out that the above 2 rules in most of them were not followed.
Next to that there are some more disadvantages:
* Crime does not disappear, it just moves to where there are no camera's
* When there are camera's everywhere, why should you care about crime, somebody else is taking care of it.
* What about the future with face recognition, etc. You are standing too long in one place, etc.
* Also new laws/city ordanances are introduced like you are not allowed to wear a mask, else the camera system will not work, i.e. you cannot be recognised. However since you have done nothing wrong why do you have to identified? In the netherlands we are required to carry identification but we only have to show it when we are suspect of something with a clear reason!!!
>You can't be tried for a law that doesn't exist. IANAL, but if it wasn't against the law when you did it, you can't be arrested for i
Correrct, but to continue the silly example... if they passed a law against picking your nose in public, and folks later saw video of you doing it, even though it was before the law went went into effect, there might easily still be consequences. You might not be arrested, but you rneighbors might watch you more closely now, and now that you're known to be "bad", that time you accidentally tripped into their Azaleas now looks like an intentional act. With just one largely irrelevant piece of info, alot of local damage can happen.
> These cameras aren't there to catch public figures picking their noses. Straw man, anyone?
Just because it's not intended to catch the nosepicker now, doesn't mean it won't come in handy later.
The poster's point is that while it is a privacy intrusion now, it doesn't feel like it; though it very well might feel like one in a later circumstance in a different light, so it will feel more like one later if you are the "lucky" one.
And yes, nosepicking isn't the greatest example, but it really doesn't matter. You can pick any action that could be looked upon poorly in some light at some point in the future.
> How does having better computers provide the manpower to watch more cameras?
The computer could recognize the person on film, and learn to recognize certain sorts of questionable activities. Now the computer only brings up a screen when something potentially fishy is going on. You've greatly amplified the usefulness of one human with the power of computing.
> What if the cameras are only there to watch for criminal activity? What if all other activity is disregarded? Does it make you pause to think that maybe you're a tad paranoid?
I ended up spending over $50k defending myself against a lawsuit whose only reason for fingering me was that I showed up on a nearby camera. Since judges often give wide latitude when deciding whether a plaintiff's case is frivolous, it was decided that I had to pay my own defense bills. Even if I was awarded the costs it wouldn't have mattered since the plaintiff couldn't afford it. (She's a paralegal, and thinks herself an attorney so she just filed and filed and delayed and delayed and demanded and demanded, etc.)
Had that camera not been there, or had she not have been able to illegally obtain the evidence (which turned out not to be used officially, but she used my location and time to find people who had seen me there and got them to say I was around... so throwing out the evidence didn't matter), I might still have some savings, and not have as much debt at the moment.
Was the camera setup to catch me? no
Was the camera setup to to allow her to watch surroundings? no
After the fact, she found out I might have been in the area, she was harmed in that area (and I am friends with her ex), so therefore I must have caused that harm. Did I do it? no
Did it cost me greatly? yes
Was law enforcemnt involved? no
Would existing laws preventing law enforcement from using these cameras for any purpose have protected me? no
It even cost my dad around $5k to defend a suit against him, since someone called her office within a few days that remotely sounded like him. (and since the camera "proved" that I harmed her, he must have been in on it)
And it cost my friend(roommate at the time) over $10k to keep custody of his kid, because since he was still friends with me, he must have orchestrated the whole thing, and therefore the child was in danger.
And neither of them even appeared on the recording... they were tagged just because they knew me.
Am I a little paranoid? Hell yes!
Does that mean someone's not out to get me? Hell no!
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
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.
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
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.