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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?"
I mean really, does anyone think that making people safer is the actual purpose of these programs? I know, I know, never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but millions of cameras, everyone photographed hundreds of times a day... Come on, who can believe that is about anything but control of society.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
FTFA:
"However, senior officers in Merseyside, who are trialling the drone, said they did not believe it was the next phase in creating a Big Brother society.
"Assistant chief constable Simon Byrne said: "People clamour for the feeling of safety which cameras give."
This is such a beautiful use of the English language that I can't help but admire it.
The people who have already been brainwashed into believing that a surveillance society is a safe society will have their warm feelings of safety reinforced by this statement, even though in no logical way can it be conceived to be a statement that it will actually make anyone safer.
The people who have not are the only ones who will read between the lines.
Thus this is a brilliant way to say something to the media without actually saying anything, and what's more, without compromising their goal of having a camera covering every square inch of the nation. The media goes away happy with a sound bite, the sheeple go away happy after listening to the sound bite, and life progresses as "normal". Which is to say, straight down the toilet.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> Is there any evidence to suggest that this increasingly Orwellian society is actually any safer?
Have you heard of any rampaging Jew attacks in London lately? No? I thought not.
Carry on.
To say... I pity you guys/gals in England. And I thought we had a police state here in the United States. At least we keep ours under differing names (TIA/ONI/DCS1000+2000+3000+4000) and flush the minds of the people with news on Bratney, Lindsay, Paris, etc. to keep them dumb. You guys get no break.
Infiltrated dot Net
What's scary is the apparent passivity among the denizens of UK regarding this. I have not read anything about a mass protest, organized groups to put in elected officials opposed to this, etc. Seems the majority of the people over there are resigned to this type of watching. Shows that it will probably happen over here too as well as we copy from the Brits.
Who claimed that these technologies have made the police better at their jobs? And who claimed that "the public" tells the police what to do?
There are several degrees of separation between the public and control of the police, and that vast gulf is no good for society, on the whole.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
Who is it making it safer for?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Any safer? Who knows! If it contributed to preventing the 7/7 train bombings would you say it was?
That's today, tomorrow its 13, then 14..
They have to start somewhere, get you used to the idea then slowly expand it as technology improves.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The obvious Ben Franklin quotation comes to mind:
"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security"
That really sums up what's happening on both sides of the ocean. While I disagree that this is (solely) a sinister plot of an overweening government to control of its populace, this seems as often as not to be the end effect in scenarios like this. People are smart individually, but in scared groups they often make terrible decisions, which is why there's a lot of sheepish head-scratching on Capitol Hill here in the States about the fervent support that was given on both sides of the aisle for the Iraq debacle. The scariest thing about the current group of leaders is that they don't seem to have read their history properly.
u-bend
Can anyone give me a real reason for NOT having cameras in public places instead of screaming "Orwellian" or "1984" all the time?
Jonathanjk.com
Britain's increased surveillance measures sure did prevent the London bombings in 2005, now didn't they? The bigger point you seem to be missing is that though the public wants their law enforcement to be effective, they wish to limit this effectiveness from intruding on their private lives.
I don't want a maximally efficient government. I like the fact that no one can push a button, and find out what I have eaten in the last two weeks.
If I'm in a Western Democracy that is reasonably well-off and free-market oriented, I like my government to be small, with little insight into what I'm doing or how I'm doing it. As a matter of fact, I'd like my government to be on permanent vacation, and only convene during emergencies. Law enforcement can be efficient and on the job, but should not make me do its surveillance job, nor should it rely on technology to do the peacekeeping (which includes rounds on foot).
That's my creed, and I'm sticking to it. I just wish there were a party for me.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
"Who claimed that these technologies have made the police better at their jobs?"
That depends which "technologies" you are talking about. Radar (anotehr ex-military technology) has certainly helped the police enforce speed limits more effectively (god darn it!). DNA / Fingerprints have certainly been used in A LOT of criminal prosecutions, as have CCTV cameras. So yes I think most people would claim they have made the police better at their jobs.
Now, doughnut shops on the other hand...
"And who claimed that "the public" tells the police what to do?"
Umm, most people do, with the possible exception of Will Smith and those nutters who wear tin-foil hats. The government, i.e. the "public authority" employ and therefore command the police. At least that is the way every western democracy works, if however you are in fact Chinese or posting through a inter dimensional time-portal from 1950's USSR then your question is probably valid.
In public, you have no right to privacy.
I'd be ticked if they were putting cameras in people's homes without a warrant related to a specific investigation. But seriously, what you do in public is *public*. Hellooo.
I dunno why people feel they have an inherent right to privacy on a public street. I think that governments have every right to put cameras out in public places if they so choose.
And yes, I do think this is about making the public safer. Tracking criminals and terrorists so that they can't as easily get away from law enforcement. Providing documentary evidence of crimes committed in public spaces instead of relying on unreliable eye-witness testimony, so that prosecutions can be obtained and criminals sent to jail instead of back on the street committing more crimes.
We've already seen, in society, how putting cameras in banks and stores has helped to identify and convict criminals. It's hard to tell a court that you didn't do it when they've got you on camera shooting the clerk in the face with your gun and grabbing the money out of the cash register. This is an extension of that.
Cameras might not prevent crimes, directly. But getting an arrest and a conviction can prevent future crimes by the same person.
So why not spend the same money on fighting the *causes* of crime, instead of treating just the symptoms ? Oh I know, that would be too hard. Much easier just to spy on people, and keep sending them to the overflowing court/prison system.
I appreciate your healthy cynicism, but a stable society benefits all members. You argue, with some success, that the "rich" are somehow better protected or afforded more rights, but that is more a function of the fact that their possessions themselves often afford them a better lot in life notwithstanding specific "law" that that effect.
I think you're making connections that are a little too tenuous. If lawmakers are generally "wealthy" (in comparison with the rest of the population), then, sure, it's a true statement that the "wealthy" are implementing these policies. But it's not because they're wealthy. And this notion that there is a silent plot by the "wealthy" to constantly control the "sheep" of society via any means they can - such as drone aircraft used by law enforcement - is a little too much of a stretch for me, and for most people.
Yes, there are people with power and wealth who want to protect what they have. Society will be friendlier to the "rich" because everything is by nature "friendlier" for the rich. But it's not as direct a plot as you imagine by the ultra-rich to "control" society to their own benefit. That a stable societal structure benefits the "rich" is incidental, not causative. I won't disagree that the rich have things easier. But unless you believe in punishing the rich or in true communist/socialist ideals, wealth redistribution, and so on, I don't see how that reality will - or even should - change.
Where to next? And after that?
i would like to submit that, with surveillance technology, we are experiencing the sort of evolution of a price point where they get so cheap, people will just plaster recording devices everywhere. i mean i can go into home depot and equip ever corner of my house, inside and outside, with cameras and recording hard drives that just a decade ago would have cost 100x as much. and they are only getting cheaper
for good? for bad? who knows, but i do believe that the era of humanity where you could go about your business in cities (and soon the countryside i bet) and be anonymous except for human witnesses is fast disappearing, perhaps forever, perhaps inexorably so. and i think it's inevitable- i didn't say it was good, but i think there's no going back
this evolution will change society. but i would also like to submit that everyone always focuses on the government putting more cameras up, a la orwell, and it is the case that governments are all to happy to stick recording devices everywhere, but there is arms race going on in reverse... and in perpendicular
what i mean is, witness rodney king and other examples of citizens with cameras. that "little brother" is just as much an issue as "big brother", that citizens are watching the government just as much as governments are watching citizens. and there was a case here in new york ctiy recently of a flasher on the subway who was caught on the cellphone of one of his victims. that's what i mean by "perpendicular": forget about the government for a moment watching you, what does it mean for society where everyone has a cellphone camera and can start recording what's going on around them at a moment's notice?
so the issue with cameras is not so much that the fbi or the nypd is watching you, but also that:
1. people are watching the government right back (rodney king)
2. your fellow citizens are watching you, and you are watching them (ie, the tyranny of the crowd is just as much as an issue as the tyranny of the government.. such as with the subway flasher example)
folks, it's some interesting evolutionary dynamics in human society going on with cheaper and cheaper eavesdropping tech. and i think the way things are going to play out are not going to be like 1984 at all, but something perhaps a lot weirder. it's an arms race
so i think we need to retire the 1984 references, and lose the obsession with an intrusive government... because we can intrude right back, and it may be your fellow citizen who is more of a "tyranny" of eavesdropping than the government anyways. what's the proper way to think about this issue? i don't know, but it is weirder and more complex than the stereotypical orwellian ideas on the subject
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
1. While the claim about the total number of surveillance cameras might be close to the truth, what this kind of blanket statement doesn't tell you is where those cameras are.
The vast majority of them will be in private spaces, like shops, bars, and restaurants, where owners are primarily concerned about minor crime like theft. Then there will be a fair proportion in public spaces where crowd control and security are an issue, like tube stations and airports. And, of course, municipal buildings, such as courts, police stations and hospitals will have a chunk of cameras, too.
I'd estimate that over 80 percent of those cameras are accounted for right there. Many of them aren't recording an image more often than once every few seconds. Many will be decoys that aren't recording at all. Many are black and white. Many are of very low quality. The overwhelming majority won't be user-operated in any way or have any archived long-term storage. None of them will be networked in any meaningful way that would let anybody track you in real-time over more than a few hundred yards.
2. The idea that you'd be photographed 300 times in an average day is complete rubbish. If you woke up, got on a bus, caught a tube train, changed at a busy station, got to work, visited several shops at lunchtime, went back to work, spent a few hours socialising in a couple of places and then went home, then, perhaps, I can see you possibly passing a camera around 100 times. The likelyhood of your picture actually being taken every time? Less than the likelyhood of you winning the lottery, I'd bet.
Don't forget, one way or another, Britain has been a victim of violent terrorism for at least two generations. First there was Irish republicans, now there's Islamic extremists. The former didn't much like having their pictures taken, so cameras were an effective deterrent before the fact, as well as a vital detective tool after it. The latter aren't so easily deterred but cameras have still been of limited use in going over their attacks.
If you want proof of how "effective" CCTV is in the UK, just look at the 7th July attacks in London a couple of years back. Although they were travelling by pulic transport and their identities were known after the fact, police were able to piece together only a few shots of the attackers, all from one camera, I believe. Their whereabouts and what they did once they reached London, even though they travelled by public transport, and virtually unknown. Bottom line: in a "pull out all the stops" exercise, four people were totally lost in the crowd.
The camera footage of the attempted attacks a fortnight later weren't much better and the perpetrators were able to escape untracked through London. If these CCTV cameras were half as effective as people want to make out, then police would have been knocking on the perps' doors hours if not minutes after they escaped. The reality of the situation is different, and anybody who thinks otherwise is, frankly, an idiot.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
What's more, not voting at all will always return one of these parties to power given the way that the voting system is rigged, so democracy is really just a figment of the imagination here in that respect.
I've got 3 words for you: Vote Lib Dem. They're committed to overhauling our electoral system and introducing proportional representation, so this cycle can be broken.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
It might make the police statistically more successful at their job of catching criminals, but the use of these technologies might actually make them worse at working when the criminals aren't caught in the act. Likewise, it might make them rely on these technologies over rapport with the community, which could likewise reduce their long-term effectiveness. It seems that crime rates haven't dropped as much as one might expect if every technological advance really increased the efficiency of the police that much.
(All of that said, my comment was in reference to the fact that the story submitter actually questioned the usefulness in police work of these advance, which was ignored in the ggpp)
I don't disagree that in most English-speaking countries the police are generally and technically responsible to publically elected officials. I just think the actual amount of democratic oversight and transparency is far less than it ought to be. Given the amount of local power the police wield, skepticism seems the only reasonable approach towards thinking about their role.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
The sheeple outnumber me. Who am I to tell them what they should want?
You're a Citizen, that's who you are.
"A democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to eat for dinner.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
If you're not willing to arm yourself against the majority and their tyranny, then you might as well throw in the towel.
Who claimed that these technologies have made the police better at their jobs?
Funnily enough, CCTV critics. Every time the subject of CCTV comes up, a critic pops up to tell everybody that the crime rate doesn't change when CCTV cameras are installed, and that they are being used as a replacement for police officers patrolling the streets. Individually, those facts might be damning, but together, they indicate that a police force with CCTV is more cost-effective than a police force without CCTV.
What's a fair level of wealth? What is unfair? Who gets to decide?
The power and connections that come along with wealth are unavoidable, and the saying, "It takes money to make money", is as true as ever.
Your conclusion that "most" wealthy are rich due to luck and don't actually contribute anything tangible to society is only correct if you are perhaps considering the super-wealthy, which constitute such a small number of people that they're not even worth discussing. And they aren't the ones controlling the world - it's a much, much larger group of people. To say that one is in the "wealthiest 1%", which has been a sound bite in many previous discussions on this topic, doesn't take a lot of income. As of 2000, it was just over $200,000/year. Is that what you consider "wealthy"? There are millions of these people, and most of them are wealthy because of their own hard work and contributions to society, including the business they often run which employ so many others. We're not talking about faceless megacorporations, here. We're talking about the millions of businesses that make economies run.
The bottom 50% of wage-earners in the US pay less than 3% of the tax burden (with many at the bottom paying nothing). The top 5% pay over 60% - the top 1% almost half themselves. What if we made the bottom pay nothing, and put all the tax burden, on, say the top 5% or 1%. Would that be fair? The rich would still have so much more than the poor. Should we maybe take some away from them and, you know, spread it around? How do you limit wealth you consider "unfair"? Why is it "unfair"? Who decides how much is too much?
If you're concerned about limiting freedoms, that would be one of the more egregious affronts to "freedom" I could think of.
>I was in London a while back, and the cameras in the underground stations did make me feel safer.
Which is what they are there to do and why they are a problem.
They make you FEEL safer.
They do not make you safer.
+----------------- | What is the question!
"It seems that crime rates haven't dropped as much as one might expect if every technological advance really increased the efficiency of the police that much."
The flaw with this very commonly held view is that crimes are far more widely reported now than previously, especially violent and sexual crimes which use to often go unreported. Most studies which have tried to normalize the differences in reporting rates from today and yesteryear (although this is difficult and subjective task) have shown pretty much all major crimes that existed say 50 years ago have decreased dramatically, per capita. Increased population makes the total figures higher though.
You are for example far less likely to be robbed or murdered now than 50 years ago in the vast majority of Western countries. Of course it has also been empirically proven that news programmes can attract far larger audiences when they "scare" people on the "dangers of modern life", so such statistics are often covered up.
Considering the increased amount of wealth disparity these days (particularly in the USA) then it becomes obvious that if it weren't for the technological advances (or some other as yet unidentified factor) then crime rates would be significantly higher.
Well, that's just the thing. They haven't become more effective at fulfilling their civil duties - the jobs they've been charged with, whether it's as a bureaucrat or a law enforcement officer. While all these intrusive technologies have been spreading throughout the very fiber of the UK, the impact has not resulted in a [i]decrease[/i] in crime. It didn't necessarily result in an increase, either, but the crime rate - muggings, burglaries, assault, etc. - has gone up substantially.
Not even the near-total ban on firearms has resulted in a decrease in crimes perpetrated with firearms. Amazingly enough, even though the place is a bloody island (or series of), firearms are being used more often in crimes: the only people they've disarmed are those who might use them in self defence.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
The issue is really morality.
If the police would ignore moral issues and only enforce them when they rise to the level that police personally observe them, then most people would not mind a very orwellian society.
What gives us the creeps is when they start finding out we have deviant sexual practice "17". Society gets by pretending that most people are very vanilla when in reality probably 85% of us do something deviant that we would be ashamed of if it were broadcast nation wide. And we would feel smothered if unable to do whatever that echo of childhood we felt compelled towards.
But the ideal police force that really did ignor moral crimes and focused hard on murder, robbery, etc. would probably be given carte blanche. Unfortunately, once it was, then it has power that someone wants to use to enforce their morality (the small govt. republicans just can't resist growing the government to enforce their particular morality). The latest here in the states is not being allowed to sell plastic in some eastern state if it happens to be shaped too much like a body part. So a realistic vibrator is forbidden while a "soothing massage wand" that is 7" long and 1.5" thick is okay. Classic freedom of speech issue.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'd like to take things back to the good old days of 90% tax rates and a booming economy where the middle class could actually look forward to their children having a better life then they did. Wealth is a positive freedom: the freedom to make money. Survival is a negative freedom, the freedom from having the means of survival taken away from you. Extreme wealth means extreme imbalance of wealth, and thus extreme poverty, meaning that many will be denied access to the means of survival. This is a greater restriction on freedom than any restrictions on wealth.
As to who decides, the majority decides. If the minority of wealthy don't like it, tough. They would not be wealthy without society. If they don't like it, they can leave and go live by themselves on a deserted island some place. Which is more of a choice than most of them propose to give most of us, that choice amounting to: make money for us as "consumers" or die in a gutter.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"proportional representation, so this cycle can be broken."
From the US, which has had proportional representation in 1/2 of the legislative branch for over 200 years, all I can say is "BWAAAhahahahaha"
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Yes! You're so right! The police should stop using radios and police cars immediately, just for starters! Think of the children! Etc., etc. If you're scared the cops might be corrupt and use this technology against the people, then you should be scared of the cops and not the technology. Asking the police to be less efficient is simply stupid. And these technologies DO help the cops immensely. Getting eye-witness accounts of fights and vandalism on the streets is massively useful, as is being able to follow offenders around until cops show up to arrest them. Instant identity parades performed on the street also saves a lot of money and heart-ache for the wrongly-accused (or simply those in the wrong place at the wrong time). As is having evidence on film to be shown to a court of law. As is being able to find stolen cars within minutes of them being stolen. As does being able to identify criminals at large (such as that bomber in London in the late 90s who was identified from CCTV footage). It boggles my mind to think why people have such a knee-jerk reaction to this. We never had a right to privacy in public, and as long as the cameras stay out of our homes, this bullshit 1984 cliche is grossly inaccurate, and nothing more than emotional blackmail. The cops have a legal mandate to do whatever they can to uphold the law and to make society safer. In the UK the public DOES tell the cops what to do. There are bodies like the IPCC who regularly tell the cops they fuck up and need to change their policies, not to mention the fact the home secretary is an elected member of parliament, and the scores of advisory groups regularly breathing down the necks of the cops.
You were watching propaganda designed to sell you a bad bill of goods.
The best way to sell a bad bill of goods to somebody is to mix in a few good nuts with all the poison pills you want people to consume.
Interestingly, even with the cameras in place, the crime you describe still took place, so it didn't make things any safer for the victim. Further, jokers who attack people generally find their way to prison regardless. That's just how it works. So since the crime took place even with cameras in place, and since these guys were headed for prison anyway, how does that validate a surveillance state?
-FL
Surely having your curtains closed in broad daylight on a large number of occasions when *public* surveylance shows you were clearly in the house along with certain other undesirables will then construed in court to suggest to the jury that you were clearly up to something.
Maybe not conclusive evidence either way but one stroke of the brush towards painting you as a terrorist.
See, for example, current terrorism trials in the UK pointing out that someone occasioanally attended a certain mosque where a certain preacher sometimes delivered anti-western speeches. Exactly what that has to do with the actual evidence about wether the person in question physically constructed a bomb is beyond me.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
"I've also seen some pretty bad behaviour in front of CCTV cameras; I always think that if I were attacked, the grainy CCTV pictures shown on Crime Watch or in the paper would be of little comfort."
I actually WAS attacked right in front of a working CCTV camera. A fella tried to mug me right outside the front door of the building I worked at. The CCTV camera was mounted in front of the door, looking down the steps.
After I fought off the guy (a series of swift kicks to the nuts deters even the most determined attacker) he backed off, hurling abuse. It was at this point I pointed to the camera and said "Smile dickhead".
After calling the police, we tracked down the video and played it back. The quality was so poor you couldn't make out anyones features and the camera was on his face for a good 3 mins while he hurled abuse, at a distance of about 10 feet.
I'd always been suspicious of the effectiveness of CCTV footage, but after being asked by the Police Officer to drop it, as they had nothing to go on, I've never looked at CCTV cameras in the same way. The quality is poor for a reason. It's enough to identify a person from one camera location to another, but not of enough quality to identify someone perfectly. I'm almost certain that CCTV is purely for survelance and tracking, not fighting crime.