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Talking CCTV to Scold Offenders in UK
linumax writes "The most monitored nation of the world is getting an interesting new service. According to a BBC News story, "Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff."
Unfortunatly, there has grown up a culture of yobbish behaviour amoung a small but significant minority of manily young people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to express their anti-social anti-establisment feelings at every opportunity. There is a TV program in the UK called "police Camera action" which is a little like America's 'worlds wildest police videos' (or whatever). This has led to an increace of car theft and speeding, wreckess driving etc. also the UK courts award "Anti-social behaviour" (ASBO) notices to yobs who wander the streets drunk or stoned carring out vandalism and other petty thefts. This has led to an increase in crime and the offenders wear these ASBOs as "badges of honour". The types of people whom the talking cameras are targeted at will react with a similar negativity. These yobs will deliberatly act anti-socially so that they can promp a response. Why is all this so? Well in the UK the law gives insufficient protection to the state and the law-abiding masses and too much to the criminals. Crazy eh?
Anyone with any sense got out ages ago.
Heh. As an Australian I was particularly surprised to discover that I can be arrested for "brawling" in public in the UK even if the person I'm fighting has given me his consent. In Australia, the law is clear, if someone hits you, you can hit them back or you can have them arrested for assault, but not both. If someone invites you to hit them, "go on then, hit me!", you are free to do so. I believe this is the case in the US too. I don't really know.
What's more strange, I found, was that I never got into a fight in all my adult life until I went to the UK. There I got into a bunch of them. One caused by annoying people who wouldn't turn down their music while I was trying to sleep. (I politely asked them to turn down their music, one of them hit me). One caused by men at McDonalds rudely describing a female patron. (I politely asked them to watch their language, one of them hit me). One which I started after listening to a white guy call a guy I knew "niger" a bunch of times. My friend didn't want to get in trouble with the nearby security people.. but where I come from, that kind of talk earns you a broken nose.
Of course, a bunch of you reading this probably think this is terribly uncouth and that I am clearly an anti-social person. Call me Quentin Tarantino if you like, but I think there's a place for violence in our society.. it's a regulating force which every person has the power to exercise. Just look at how impolite some forums without violence can be.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Wow. You frighten me.
It's one thing to use "hey, it's in public" as an excuse for a lot of things, but it's another thing entirely to use it to justify eavesdropping from a remote location, videotaping people and even remotely telling them how to behave and not to be anti-social.
You might as well justify people getting upskirt material in public. What's the difference? How is it different if you use high tech equipment to listen in on people from eighty feet away and recording everything they do in public versus some crazy perv with mirrors on his shoes and a small video camera?
Why not stick video camers and audio capturing devices and loudspeakers on every lightpole and aim them directly into everyone's homes. After all, the cameras are in public places and if Joe Public could potentially see and listen to something from the road, what's the big deal about a video camera with 14x optical zoom and high quality devices that pick up audio from far away doing the same thing?
I for one love the idea of being monitored, watched and told how to behave by some minimum wage monkey in a remote location every second I am outside of my home. Yay!
There is sort of an epidemic -- perceived or actual, I don't know, and it hardly matters -- of obnoxious, petty crime
So, after installing all those cameras, there is an epidemic of exactly the sort of crime that they are supposed to prevent? And the solution is to install more, and more expensive, cameras? It's working well, isn't it?
It certainly matters whether the epidemic is perceived or actual: no amount of law enforcement is going to reduce crime if the crime is not "actual", but just in the minds of the right-wing press.