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Spy Drones Take to the Sky in the UK
Novotny writes to tell us The Guardian is reporting that the UK's has launched a new breed of police 'spy drone'. Originally used in military applications, these drones are being put into use as a senior police officer warns the surveillance society in the UK is eroding civil liberties. In the UK, there are an estimated 4.2 million surveillance cameras already, and you are on average photographed 300 times a day going about your business. Is there any evidence to suggest that this increasingly Orwellian society is actually any safer?"
"ENGLAND PREVAILS!" (V for Vendetta in case you're curious...)
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
everyone photographed hundreds of times a day
What they didn't mention is that with all those video cameras each frame counts as an individual photograph, so standing in view of a 30fps camera for 4 seconds counts as 120 individual photographs. Not as scary once you do the math.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Is there any evidence to suggest that this increasingly Orwellian society is actually any safer?
The UK is adding laws requiring compulsory reporting of people who might be criminals.
It really is falling into order, comrade. This is doubleplusungood.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
In a more recent study, it seemed to help deter crime. A review (Welsh & Farrington 2006) of high quality evaluations of the effectiveness of CCTV as a crime prevention measure concluded that there was an overall eight percent reduction in crime in the experimental areas where CCTV was installed compared with a nine percent increase in crime in the control areas. The review included evaluations of 19 sites in the UK and the USA. Other findings from this meta-analysis concluded that CCTV interventions were more successful in car parks than in other settings such as city centres or housing estates, and that CCTV interventions were generally more successful in the UK than in the USA.
Something I haven't seen very much of ITT and which this thread could really use: truth about the cameras they're using. I used to work for a security company - not guards and such, but implementing card/badge readers, cameras, gates, alarms, etc. Most of our customers wanted the psych benefit of having cameras everywhere, but they didn't want to shell out the huge bucks for GOOD cameras. Criminals (and employees) can't tell the difference. However, those same companies got really ticked when there was a theft and they couldn't identify the perpetrator. "Well this guy's face is just a blob and we can only tell he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans! This camera's useless!" Of course, we'd show them the job sheet where we recommended the expensive cameras and they shot them down. Just like with everything else, you get what you pay for. I would be EXTREMELY surprised if most government-purchased cameras were very good. Obviously, they'll shell out for the goods in some areas, but for the most part, I'd bet you could get away with just about anything if you were wearing oversized, drab clothes, a baseball cap pulled low, and avoided looking directly into any camera (that you could see). Now, I wouldn't personally bet on it, but I wouldn't be afraid that some cop was watching me pick my nose on the street and annotating some file on me or anything. Unless you're shelling out the giant bucks for really good cameras and facial recognition hardware/software, you're probably getting the same crappy cameras convenience stores use. I hope I don't have to explain that you can't take a small part of the image from a camera and 'enhance' it to get facial features, etc. If the camera doesn't have a high enough resolution to start with, you can't make the picture much better than it is normally.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Freakonomics actually addresses the drop in crime in a fairly rigorous fashion. It's a very interesting read and ends with some very interesting conclusions, such as a correlation between the legalization of abortion and the decrease in crime.
"The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither." ~Thomas Jefferson
Ugh. Where to begin.
First of all, you got the quote wrong. It's:
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Second, it's Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson. (Wow.)
Anyway, note essential liberty...a little temporary safety.
Not that it's somehow never right to sacrifice any liberty for any amount of safety - we do it every day. It's called the rule of law and is necessary for collectively maintaining order and stability in society.
I can't believe how much this quote is bastardized and misinterpreted as it is continually trotted out in opposition to anything the "government" does in a free society in an attempt to fulfill its obligation to its citizens.
You kind of topped them all by completely misattributing it, though. Good job.