Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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?
Or bears for that matter. In fact, in my hand I hold a rock that prevents tigers from attacking! Don't believe me? Have you seen a tiger attacking lately?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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