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?"
Read anything by Theodore Dalrymple - he's published in "City Journal", and has a number of books out (e.g., "Life at the Bottom").
His observation is that dysfunction grows to consume all the money made available to combat it. Filming people isn't going to fix anything. Holding them accountable will.
Oh and also, the last time I was in the UK, I was struck by all the kids wearing hoodies.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The police have even learnt a good trick to assault you based on these cameras. I had one WPC ask me what was going on after a disturbance that I was not part of. I explained. She said 'pardon?'. So, naturally, I lean in a bit closer so she can hear. Wham ! She lays into me. On camera, it looks like I'm about to attack her by leaning in. *sigh*.
Cameras are solely in the UK to allow police to avoid doing real police work and provide a deterring presence, and to allow them to employ nefarious tactics against the criminal public. Don't ever be under the illusion that they are there for you, the taxpayer.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
In the 7 minute walk from home to the tube station down the road, I've counted about 20 cameras that I walk through. So thats already 40 caputures a day accounted for in just 14 minutes of my daily life.
I live in London, where there are probably more cameras than most cities, but I certainly find the number of camera alarming and unsettling - it's never clear who runs the cameras, for what purpose and where the data ends up and for how long. 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.
Whoa, who modded me informative, I was just being sarcastic and trying to spark some debate into how the number of photographs or times a camera sees you can be accurately quantified. What does "300 photographs" mean? Walk past 300 individual running video cameras or actually get your photo snapped 300 times? Can you be accurately identified from each of these "photographs"?
It's ok though, all the moderaters have to do is mod my last comment up +5 funny, and then this one +5 informative. Yes I get oodles of karma but it's the integrity of the discussion on slashdot that matters.
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
In order to back up that statement you have to prove to me that they are indeed being used to perform the jobs that they are charged with as opposed to engaging in their own forms of spying, and that they are more effective.
In the former case I would point out that the jobs of governments and police officers is to serve the citizens in their community. All too often however that has been twisted to the point where said individuals are, in fact, using their powers to pursue private agendas against the very citizens they claim to protect. Here in the U.S. for example during World War I laws were passed making it a crime to criticize the president "for our protection". During World War II the massive information compiled as part of the Census was used to hunt down American Citizens of Japanese descent and throw them into prison "for their own protection". During the Kennedy years the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover used the powers of his office to spy on politicians he disproved of and to subvert both the anti-war and civil rights movements including the well-documented blackmailing of Martin Luther King. During the 60's Nixon used the tools available to spy on his political rivals. In more recent years 'anti-terror' tools have been used to spy on anti-war groups (because how dare we oppose the Iraq war) and execute increasingly harsh surveillance of "problem communities" (aka black neighborhoods) in the War On Drugs.
In each case the claim was that they were serving their constituents. Nixon himself said that he "thought it would be bad for the country if the president lost an election". And despite claims that it "won't happen again" we can see even modern U.S. Congressmen claiming that it is a good idea:
Similar comments have been made about the recent attempts to spy on American's internet use and telephone traffic "for our own good".
Which brings me to my second point. There is, indeed little to no evidence that the modern tools (e.g. large scale databases or CCTV networks) actually help prevent crime which is, after all the goal. With repsect to "big name" items like the terror suspect lists and the internet surveillance their effectiveness is difficult to judge as they are largely secretive (too secretive) and the evidence that they obtain will never be used in a court of law. While the Justice department likes to point to high-name cases like Jose Padilla and the rest of us like to point out that Padilla is a) being charged in a carefully rigged situation, b) being charged for a small fraction of what they claimed they could prove but did not, and c) is himself surrounded by many many cases which seem likely to never reach trial because nothing at all really happened.
If you want a better arguing point we should look at the large-scale sweeps that were done in New York shortly after 9/11. While these netted a few illegal aliens (at least one of whom died under highly questionable circumstances) and pissed off a large segment of an otherwise legitimate population it failed to net anything useful. But this too might be considered "exceptional".
So let us turn to the daily street crime scenario. While some noise has been made about Chicago's heavy use of surveillance cameras and databases there is little scientific evidence that the cameras "did the trick". While Chicago's rate of cri
"...In public, you have no right to privacy..."
Largely true, but remember that this was established in an age when in order to be observed or be subject to surveillance, an actual person had to be located in your sight and pretty close to you.
This of course meant that you, in turn, could observe them right back and if you felt like it, go up to them and ask them what their fucking problem was.
With the onset of the ubiquitous camera, you may or may not be under observation, but probably best to act as though you are, all the time, too. With the cameras, the balance of power has shifted completely - you may be watched by no-one or you may be being watched by dozens, and being recorded to boot - you simply don't know.
Political language
Bob Shaw had an interesting take on the surveillance society back in 1972.
Basically, a scientist creates 'slow glass' - glass through which light passes much more slowly than regular glass. Many of the inter-connected short stories are about specific applications - a detective waits for the image to come through on a piece of 5-year glass to prove that the man who'd been executed for murder was the right one; a murderer uses a piece of slow glass in his car windscreen to make it appear another man is driving his truck.
The end of the book is the scientist who created slow glass (Retardite TM) realising that the governments of the world are using it for espionage and worse, dusting the entire world with microscopic crystals that will capture images of everything, everywhere.
"From now on, came the silent scream inside his head, anybody, any agency, with the right equipment can find out anything about ANYBODY! This planet is one huge unblinking eye watching everything that moves on its surface. We're all encased in glass, asphyxiating, like bugs dropped into a entomologist's killing bottle."
But less than a page from this realisation comes a short epilogue which contains this sentence:
"In later decades, men were to come to accept the universal presence of Retardite eyes, and they learned to live without subterfuge or shame as they had done in a distant past when it was known that the eyes of God could see everywhere."
Maybe universal surveillance is a good thing, as long as it's genuinely universal. Maybe if the politicians and lawmen knew they were being watched 24/7 along with everyone else, they'd have to behave properly as well.