Slashdot Mirror
British Traffic Wardens Issued CCTV Head Cameras
Rick writes "The Surveillance Society of Great Britain has taken another turn for the worse, as
traffic wardens in Eccles, Manchester are being issued with CCTV head sets and
given the legal power to impose fines of up to £80 for littering and other anti social behavior"
I understand the littering part, but antisocial behavior...?
We came,we saw, we kicked it's ass!
Why'd it have to be gargoyles?
John
Ubiquitous remote cams on the other hand are. This is only recording what the guy is actually seeing anyway. Consider that it could even moderate overzealous law enforcement. Kind of like the cams on cop cars in the US.
"Now It Is 1984 Knock knock at your front door It's the suede denim secret police ..."
read people read!
I look forward to what will be a hugely entertaining collection of videos which I can enjoy vicariously of enraged motorists punching the wardens when they get ticketed or clamped. Please let the post the vids on youtube.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
At least they're going after litterers. It's not like they're spying on Muslims or racial profiling...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
I understand the reason why this story is on the front page, and I understand that the reader might have concerns about the privacy implications. That doesn't mean that a "news story" should contain such forcing language:
The Surveillance Society of Great Britain has taken another turn for the worse
This sentence imposes the view that this move is obviously bad, when in fact, although I really hate privacy breaches and measures that remove privacy, I like this idea. It gives some legal weight to these fines, and will hopefully do their part to stop people littering mindlessly. While anti-social behaviour is a bit ambiguous in terminology, I'm sure that if you are given a fine with evidence on camera, then the reason can't be that frivilous.
Unlike unmanned cameras, you will only be recorded here when a law enforcement agent would have seen you anything. I think this is actually a good thing, because it provides reliable evidence when a traffic warden claims he/she saw somebody commit a crime.
I thought I'd seen this somewhere before http://www.sideshowtoy.com/mas_assets/jpg/7143_pre ss03-001.jpg
Is it legal for you to wear a camera to monitor the police? I'd consider that a civil duty.
Quite apart from that, can the police be tracked by the signal from the head mounted camera and radio? Why yes, they can be. The more RF-emanating equipment the police carry, the easier it becomes to track them, know when they're coming, and evade them. RF profiling ain't that hard. Catch the litterbug, but miss the bank heist. Silly LEOs.
What privacy should we expect in public? I'd be much more concerned if Alberto Gonzalez, et. al. look at my web surfing. (yeah there's a lot of youporn.com and redtub.com)
But if I'm littering, spanking my monkey in public or other such things, should I expect privacy?
I just ask that they remove the cameras before going into the bathroom...
They're rapidly going to run out of warm bodies to man the circuits, at this rate. The downfall of the Orwellian view of the future (IMHO) is that SOMEONE has to be watching, and the more cameras they put around, the less likely they'll catch anything that happens. You can only saturate SO much ...
"The video will be permanently stored, and can be used against you many years later; your entire life can be reconstructed by a supercomputer in, say, 2020 from the images taken in 2007. They are simply gathering the raw data."
We already have that. It's called, the presidential library.*
*For those not so famous, there's the paparazzi, the unauthorized biography, and the ex.
I can get the next rodney king beating first hand... perhaps the police could even make some money for an extra violent beating...
All nice and orwellian; but actually these camera's are watching the traffic wardens. So instead of just quietly slipping into civy street wear, and drinking the afternoon away in the pub they are now part of the city wide CCTV network. No more quickly at the struck of five just ticketing the whole street outside the pub and getting your quota.
And then there is the boss screaming on the walkie-talkie -- robbers, robbers, i want visuals, get a moveable camera^H^H^H^H^H warden to stand in the middle of traffic at Charring Cross...
Takes the fun right out a job that does.
Mmmm. Tough choice. Slippery slope, or tin-foil terror? My vote's on tin-foil, because after you've needlessly scared everybody. You can wrap leftovers in it. Slippery slope just ruins the potato salad.
Stopping littering and antisocial behavior is a change for the worse? As mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani dropped crime by a significant amount through the use of his "street crime units" which targeted just these types of perps. As it turns out, those who would commit these infractions were frequently the type who would proceed to commit more heinous acts, and sometimes were even already wanted by the police.
This sort of vigilance is exactly what we need if we're ever going to get serious about making city streets safe for everyone and not just gang members.
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
great opportunities to abuse it.. stm )
One council was forced to apologise for its 'litter wardens' lately after they fined a woman £80 for her son dropping *two* crisps onto the pavement - despite the mother picking the packet up.
( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/6665641
Cameras on heads is a daft idea which will similarly be abused by an already overbearing, orwellian government.
Lets see, if they imbed the camera in the old bobbies hat, elongated the roughly concial shape of the bobbies hat to stand approximately 6ft tall put wheels on it and add an electrified trucheon out the front, dont we end up with dalek V1.0?
Will this mean there will be less goths and emos on the streets? :)
When you visit the site mentioned in the article, a scary box labeled "UK Internet Monitoring Service" slowly fades in and wants you to answer a questionnaire. It supposedly comes from "Forrester Research".
Your desk should face the telescreen - "Big Brother"
Plato said that all democracies become authoritarian states through the fear of their people. Is that what we're seeing here? He also suggested that wealthy oligarchs would secretly control government, and buy huge blocks of votes when they needed power. This makes it easier for me to accept that 99% of the people out there passively accept this state of increasing surveillance and government power. We're more afraid of each other than of our governments, and so into total authoritarian dominion we go!
Anti-Globalism
Since the police are now accountable for what they do, I see this working in favor of the citizens; also, this encourages the people to clean up after themselves. Where I live, the volunteers who clean the freeway (Hwy 99) have decided to send a message to Californians by leaving a huge pile of trash on one of the freeway exits (It has been there for over 2 months now, and could remain for a few more) The British will not have to resort to such tactics, due to the strict enforcement. I could not see this as a privacy violation, as it is no more invasive than the cameras mounted on CHP cars. The video feed would be almost identical to the videos recorded by security cameras, which very few people seem to object to.
"I see your scandal, and raise you a CONSPIRACY!!!"
cops can't get away with anything now: it's all on tape
i wish people would stop thinking so stereotypically about cameras and what they actually represent
shouting "orwell" or "1984" is not a very good replacement for actual critical analysis
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not shouting Orwellian until these cameras are used to persecute people within their private homes or businesses. At this point its the government policing their own god-damned streets, which I can care less about. What was scary about 1984 and the like was the fact that rebellion became impossible with this unstoppable grid of control. Fortunately, we can still write in our homes and mail. Oh wait, the government can read our mail. Well, we can e-mai...no...uhm...pho...no...but its not like they can persecute us by labelling us some ridiculous, frivolous and nearly impossible to define...oh wait...damn there good...
You know, we can still create smoke signals in reverse binary portgeuse translated backwards in babel fish from French.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
So when do they get the frikkin laser beams added on?
I for one would be all in favour if they could vaporise Chavs on site!
...EXTERMINATE!!!!
I don't like the cameras set up to observe the public, for obvious reasons. Even if they are initially used for benign reasons it provides a tool that can be easily exploited by a police state. On the other hand, if a police officer is already observing a crime or in the process of apprehending a suspect the camera is a valuable tool. It provides evidence in court that's difficult to refute and reduces the potential for police abuse because their actions are obviously being observed.
Concerns about police states aside there's a real and serious problem with crime in the United States, and presumably the UK given what I've read and heard. One of the biggest problems I see in the city where I live is that the authorities always react, they never prevent anything. They're always showing up after something has happened. Obviously, they can't predict crime, but there are steps that can be taken to reduce the chances of crimes being committed.
The biggest problem I see is with the lack of police presence. It's not that my city has an under-staffed police department. It's that whenever I do see a police officer he's speeding past. I can't count the times I've seen an excessive number of police flock to a relatively minor incident. Then there are times where a police officer will decide they no longer feel like waiting at a traffic light and just blow through it. But like I said, these are the few times I actually see them.
So what happens? I have no direct contact with these officers. And the only time I do my impression isn't always a favorable one. And I'm a law-abiding citizen who tends to be sympathetic with the sort of problems the police have to contend with. Now, compound that problem with the inner city mentality of us-versus-them. There's this attitude that the cops are out to get them. The culture perpetuates this idea, so you've got children being indoctrinated, indirectly, with the idea that the police is the enemy. Growing up I've known kids with exactly this sort of attitude.
So ultimately, what I think would go a long way to help reduce crime would be to have police officers patrolling on foot, perhaps in pairs and with a patrol car nearby to respond to emergencies. This has a few advantages. First, these officers linger in neighborhoods longer because they're walking. People are less apt to commit a crime with a police officer standing by. Secondly, because they're out in public they're a lot more likely to interact with citizens. This builds understanding and sympathy. Police officers are less likely to be arrogant and citizens will respond more favorably. As things stand right now the interaction between officers and citizens is too impersonal.
It tends to bother me when people automatically lash out at something intended to fight crime because of fears of freedoms being trampled. Apparently it's not a problem when criminals and troublemakers are trampling on people's freedoms. When I was working in Asia I could walk around at 3am without much concern. There's no way in hell I'd venture to do that in most American cities. I've had a gun pulled on me on the way home from the train station in the States. And this is in addition to the general bad attitude, disregard for public and private property I see day in and day out.
Think about it. Who really has to be concerned about these head cameras? I'd say the criminal element, because if you're going about your business doing nothing wrong then what do you have to worry about? I think there's a misplaced sense of priorities when people are more outraged about some cameras than they are by how much crime there is out there.
we can only hope so, maybe there will be less snobs on the street as well
More nihilists though. Real fucking passive ones
In one line: society would come to a halt if all rules were totally enforced.
..
Think about it
is to put all these recordings on a public (open) site with read-only permissions.
The Taser camera released a while back is intended to provide an electronic record of the device being used. Anyone heard if the video from these devices has been admitted as evidence in a court of law yet? More importantly, anyone found any good taser videos on GooTube?
The bottom line with this I believe is it's simply a way for councils to make more money. Currently they simply don't get enough money from the government, so they turn to unreasonably fining people. We've heard about people being fined over scraps of paper, councillors wanting to survey peoples homes to try and charge more council tax, and more similar stories. The councils are just getting desperate for money and it's horrible to watch.
when we really need him ?
The police actions are not being recored from the point of view of the policed.
Now, if everyone else wore a camera on their head and recorded the police, *then* the police action would be recorded. Given how many times I have seen footage of police putting their hands over TV camera lenses in order to stop the filming of what ever the police were doing, I somehow don't think the idea of all of us pointing our cameras at *them* would be popular.
The first time a camera-wearing officer tries to stop a citizen from filming the officer, *then* we will see what this is all about.
The criminal element don't have to be concerned about these head cameras as they are criminals and will ignore the traffic warden's demand that they pay an on-the-spot fine for anti-social behaviour.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
It's the chavs you wanna worry about! :-)
TheHustler
http://www.elmarko.org/ - Useless bilge
http://www.asylum-games.co.uk/ - Co-Founder
Last time I checked, GB was still deemed to be a democracy. If the majority of Britons would not agree with those measures or at least care, they would do something against them. Big Brother is not forced on them by some aliens from outer space or foreign invaders.
Then all we need to counter their over-zealous activity is another kind of robot to push them down the stairs.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
The problem is that there are so many little (trivial?) laws out there that everyone's going to violate something sometime soon. For many years, society has gotten along with very very fractional enforcement. These new surveillance technologies mean that all the laws are going to be enforced always on everyone, and everyone is going to be charged with something, pretty darn soon, harm to society or not.
See the guy w/ the WiFi.
Perhaps this is a means to encourage people to change (simplify?) the laws? Or is it more a way to get everyone to pay some fine to some government agency whenever the agency feels the need for a budget increase? Or just throw everyone in jail (up to and possibly including the prison guards)?.
When speed cameras first came out, they caught an awfully large number of police cars on no particular assignment or call wildly violating the speed limit. Now the software behind them automagically filters out 'government' license plates. Hmm. Think they won't immunize themselves from this?
AC
I can only laugh that the Brittish people are paying for this.
I suspect they will only be willing to pay for this for a very limited time.
I give this whole experiment at most 10 years before they start tearing it down under the flag of "scaling it back and reducing costs," at which point another period will pass and they'll scrap the whole thing.
This isn't really about anti-social behaviour, littering and so on - that's the sugar coating on the pill so to speak. What this is really about is giving local authorities evidence of the situation when a parking ticket is issued. They're so keen on this because it's becoming increasingly common for people to dispute parking tickets, which is relatively expensive for the local authorities to deal with - many disputes are fraudulent (everyone I know who has disputed a ticket has done so knowing that they were illegally parked for example). I do like the idea of police being given such cameras, to help control abuses by police officers and in turn to help them deal with baseless complaints... shame it's just traffic wardens really ;)
This should be fun, more material for those Police Camera Action type shows, they could even setup a website for the best clips, www.youdidntgetawaywithittube.com
But on a serious note, in the UK you can pay £10 for CCTV footage you appear in, so does this mean you could also pay to get the footage of you from the headcams, or won't the headcams be classed as CCTV?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
It sounds like the best defence against cameras could be to carry one yourself. There have been many cases of police being caught beating people up on CCTV, but more importantly it might stop some of the sillyness that has been happening of late.
For example, a man was arrested for being in possession of an egg with intent to throw. A pregnant woman was fined for being 1cm over a parking bay line, and a mother was fined for not seeing a single crisp (potato chip) that her child dropped. Strangely, there was no CCTV evidence available in these cases.
My mother was on a jury who convicted a man of assult. She didn't think he was guilty, but vital CCTV evidence was "lost". Citizens need to gather evidence against the police in order to protect themselves now. Post it on the internet so they can't "loose" it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Are they not hated enough already? Talking about making a persons job even more thankless...I wonder if they just go home at the end of the night and cry? Are they afraid of becoming the the very first Cybermen?
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Dropped litter is also hard on ancient backs when it blows into your yard, but even worse when you are out in some otherwise pseudo-natural area and it disrupts the scenery.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
The camera will be operated by an official person who has a face and can clearly be identified. We can watch him watching us.
But those £80 fines are a big problem. The evidence required to issue them is small, the reasons are vague and challenging them is a lot of hassle. We've had on the spot fines for callign a police horse gay, dropping two crisps, and calling a metal detector a "piece of shit".
Well, that explains it really. Anyone from Manchester would tell you that eccles is a dump, so I can imagine them dishing out plenty of on the spot fines = Profit!!! More so at night after last orders at the pub. I hope it works though to be honest. You have to be slightly mad to walk around eccles town center after say 11pm.
The US model was rooted in a very different society. In the UK, the lawyers are behaving like US lawyers, challenging everything, while in general the magistrates and the judges have been more tolerant than they would be in the US. This has caused low level criminals to believe that they can always get off, and leads to the need to have several police involved in even the most minor cases because lawyers will challenge the evidence of a single policeman. In the past they would not, and, while this led to the occasional miscarriage of justice, it did mean that the integrity of the police was very important because bad evidence by one would taint all police.
The headcams are basically a way of circumventing challenges from bad lawyers. As such they are not evidence of a surveillance society, they are evidence of a society where the justice system has been tilted too far in favour of criminals.
Pining for the fjords
I was in Birmingham UK yesterday and saw a street warden with a head mounted camera. So this is already happening. Additionally, many police jurisdictions in the US already use similar technology like a camera with a wide angle lens attached to their vest.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
No one objects to littering fines, but some of the anti-social stuff is nonsense.
I mean fines for loitering... doing nothing. How can there be a law against doing nothing.
Foriegners may degenerate into efficient but rather unpleasent police states, but,
we British are evolving towards a Traffic Warden State.
Awfully sorry to bother you but is this the right queue for confessing thought crimes?
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
In a public place, even on a street, they put up signs "we are using CCTV to help insure your safety". Yeh Yeh, at least it's said though. I'm guessing it's not just because they are nice, something legal, in the UK you can't record a conversation without notifying the other person, now I'm sure the police can get around it as part of an investigation, but traffic wardens aren't police and actually, quite often work for private firms, so do they wear a sign?
True that.
I think chavs, goths and emo kids would make great biofuel.
The criminal element will mug them for the cameras, which will then turn up at car boot sales all over the country (" 'Ands free video cameras, on'y fifty nicker, as used by officious bastards, first five customer get a free traffic warden's 'ead").
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Hell, if so then I'm ALL for it!
Aren't traffic wardens exmples of anti-social behaviour!
Bunch of no-marks with authority fetishes!
One thing nobody's commented on, and which I think is far more ominous than the camera headsets, is that these traffic wardens are employees of a private company (NCP... only one letter away from OCP ;) and yet have the ability to issue fixed penalty £80 fines for things like littering. This seems to be the first (very small) step towards having private security firms enforcing law and order in the UK.
Traffic wardens are nowadays a lower lifeform employed by local councils. They are not police officers and do not have powers of arrest, etc. Their sole purpose is in revenue gathering, hence the insistence on ticketing the maximum number of motorists. Traffic Wardens are already issued with digital cameras to record the details of vehicles ticketed; this is just a logical extension to allow them to go about their extortionate duties without the fear of being reprimanded by irate victims.
Inequality goes up in Britain, crime goes up.
When everyone's pretty much equally off, there's no unfair privilege on the basis of being born into a richer family / born with more intelligence than your neighbour, so you have no desire to fix that inequality by stealing or letting out your frustration at the injustice by vandalising.
And before I hear crap about rich gangsters having way more than they need to survive - the issue is that they don't have as much as the richest people, when nature brings in so many variables that there is really little reason for them to deserve more/less.
So, all you rich Britons, this is your fault, and I look forward to your being the victims of non-violent crime, until you give away your money such that you are not holding back more than the minimum wage.
This is the natural course of events in history, repeated again and again. And when the rich/poor gap becomes too wide, there is some sort of revolution to arrest its causes.
Actually we're not. I guess it's because our law enforcement acts in a different way. The primary role is to serve the public whereas in the US it is to uphold the law. It ends up in a completely different style of law enforcement.
When we look at how your Police work, they seem to overreact to every minor misdemeanour. Take for example, being caught with a joint. In the UK, a bobby will take that joint, destroy it and issue you with a street verbal warning. Likewise drinking beer in a public place where bylaws prohibit. It'll be poured down the drain and you sent on your way. If you're drunk and incapable, providing you're not causing any trouble, they'll either get you a taxi or give you a ride home.
In the USA, no matter how compliant you are, you'll have four officers (half the Dept. if one of them is filming COPS) with guns drawn wrestle you to the ground, handcuff you and put you in jail overnight.
Personally I know which I'd rather have.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
We're not talking about wiretaps or x-ray vision glasses. In fact, I'm surprised that many in the slashdot community have a problem with these webcams. How often has an article gone up about some university student that had the idea of strapping a webcam to his head to document his life. Same idea. These traffic wardens aren't spying, they only out in public areas trying to keep things clean. The webcam is recording what anyone else in the public also has the ability to record with their cellphones. How many times have you gone through a park and seen all the litter and dog crap that hasn't been picked up? If it was clean, it's probably because the city had to use your tax money to pay people to maintain the park. This helps to make the litter bugs pay for the cleanup themselves. (Don't forget to ask your local politicians for a tax cut now) While the fines might seem high, that because it's supposed to be a deterrent. If you don't want a fine, then throw your garbage in the proper trash bin, or pick up after your dog. At least this way you can't get a ticket for something you didn't do, because if one of these traffic wardens tries to make up a false ticket, you have as much right to ask for proof.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
My mother was on a jury who convicted a man of assult. She didn't think he was guilty, but vital CCTV evidence was "lost"
She didn't think he was guilty but convicted him of assault anyway? Nice. Apparently actual proof is optional there too.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"n the UK, a bobby will take that joint, destroy it and issue you with a street verbal warning"
Actually , having met some of the latest wastes of space they've hired in the Met he's more likely to keep it and use it himself later.
"with guns drawn wrestle you to the ground, handcuff you and put you in jail overnight"
Half of american cops are just ex-jocks on steroids so its not surprising they aggressively overreact at any misdemeanor.
cops can't get away with anything now: it's all on tape
If you actually bothered to look around the world how these kinds of cameras are being used, you'd see that this is not at all the case. Many jurisdictions where cops use cameras allow cops to control them. Even if they aren't allowed to control them, they still effectively can, through turning them off, tampering, blocking the view, etc. After video capture, the video can also be selected and edited to let defendants appear in the worst possible light. And many jurisdictions where the police tape you, you are explicitly not permitted to tape the police.
Cameras could, in principle, ensure that police behave properly, but whether they actually are depends very much on where you are. The article doesn't give us enough information to tell.
Furthermore, even if cameras are used like that, does Britain have such a serious police brutality problem that it is necessary to introduce cameras? And are cameras the best way of preventing it?
Do some critical thinking yourself!
From their site:
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Bang on, in ( most of ) my dealings with the UK police they've always been really pleasant and demonstrated an lot of common sense and discretion.
The one exception was where I was innocently walking down the road with some friends around midnight and 3 or 4 cop cars swooped down on us because they were looking for similar sized group of lads. All but 1 of them were pleasant people except 1 who did a lot of shouting and threatening until another officer took him to the side and sent him away from the scene.
I don't know if COPS is a good general indication of American policing but if it's even anywhere near close it's absolutely dreadful, I would not want one of those cops anywhere near me.
In previous threads on /. regarding CCTV coverage of public space(s) in Britain, there have been observational comments (here's one http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=229567&cid=186 18653) about street level nuisance behaviour - broken windows, drunks hassling people, etc. I don't live in Britain, so I have no experience of my own to comment on WRT this topic.
However, in my world of values, proceeding through one's normal daily activities without an expectation of surveillance is one of the hallmarks of a free society. Removing or impinging upon this characteristic is a direct step in the direction of what I call a police state.
The output of this surveillance will inevitably be used for purposes beyond the original stated intent. People will keep coming back to that well until they get what they want in some relative circumstance. You may shut them down once, twice or one hundred times, but they will prevail.
If indeed a culture of hooliganism (or whatever you want to call it) is growing in the U.K., then the reasons behind this trend need to be examined and addressed.
I know this sounds idealistic and not particularly practical to those who are living the problem, but this is Big Shit that will define your culture in the mid- to long-term. So if this burns karma on me, so be it.
BTW, I'm a Canadian social democrat, not a /. libertarian. Believing in collective social values does not map onto embracing a culture and government that enages in daily surveillance of Joe and Joan Citizen.
On a pessimistic day, it seems to me that we've already lost the war for privacy on a global level. But fuck it, I'm not giving up on fighting against cameras in my town's downtown core. Our local downtown business association has been lobbying to install just such a system for three or four years now, offering to pay the upfront capital cost if the municipality takes on the maintenance and upkeep. Every time it comes up, I write to and phone my city council representative, and write the downtown biz association telling them I fall right in their target demographic and have too much disposable income for my own good, and that their membership will never see another penny of my money if they push this initiative. The chickenshits have *never* responded.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
First person to get caught on camera with "Golden Palace" tattooed to their forehead gets £10000!
What does an "on the spot" fine mean? Do you have to pay it immediately, otherwise you're taken to jail and booked? Sounds like a bad opportunity for bribery and extortion if this is true. Also, can you fight those fines in court, or are they solely at police discretion?
-b.
It means that when a litter warden confronts someone who just threw a Big Mac Wrapper / 20 Major Packet on the floor - the litterbug no longer has the following options
1) The good old "It wasn't me - you can't prove it."
2) Not giving his/her address and just walking off.
3) Smacking the warden around. (Yep - it happens)
I asked some guys not to smoke on the bus a while back - it's illegal here. The reply was "shut up or you'll get a black eye". Since litter wardens are not police, they often get the same sort of reply.
In a world where 12 year old kids have mobiles with video cameras built in, any notion that you have privacy in a public space it pure fantasy.
More on and find a better battle to fight.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
And don't waste ministry time and paper!
This will just make people hate traffic wardens even more... soon they will be hated more than Will Wheaton.
A camera remembers clearly. A camera can't be bribed, tricked, or forced to say something other than what it saw. A camera isn't prejudiced against blacks, gays, Muslims, and women. A camera doesn't get tired or have a bad day or a fight with its spouse or a hangover.
I have no problems with cameras all over the place, but then, I don't do things I'm not supposed to.
I piss off bigots.
You can't convict "because I don't like him", you have to convict on "the evidence shows he did it". When it comes to aquittal, you can't aquit because you don;'t *think* they did it. You are instructed to convict on the evidence. If the only evidence he didn't do it is "lost" then the instruction means "jail him".
Sure, by and large we are concerned about privacy and surveillance. But what does this have to do with people's rights ONLINE?
Small gripe.
I don't know if COPS is a good general indication of American policing
It isn't. No more than East Enders is a portrayal of typical life in the whole of England.
Sounds like we will need to change the topic icon to Bill's borg image, at least when talking about the UK
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You would describe that as democracy?
Deleted
The solution is really very simple. Make all the cameras accessible to anyone on the Web. Now you've eliminated the state-run "Surveillance Society". Of course, you've just created the "Voyeur / Stalker Society".
[Insert pithy quote here]
Read David Brin's "Earth".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wouldn't you loved to have had CCD footage from the cops point of view to see exactly what happened there?
Even eye witnessness might misunderstand something, based on context of what they did or didn't see. A fixed cam on a cop would also let us know what context there was for what the COP saw as well. That seems rather important to judge actions.
Just as sure as I am that there are cops who have gotten away with some bad things, I'm just as sure there have been police unfairly punished for what were actually reasonable actions. Fixed video from a police point of view would help us discern the difference to a mcuh greater degree (though of course even video isn't foolproof).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The obvious answer to the lack of mass uprising is because it's less offensive than you and others seem to think.
We'll let you know IF something real comes along that's bad enough to get excited over.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It used to be that the 'Bobbys' were completely unarmed, and rather friendly.
These cops actually were your friends, and they honestly tried to assist you, helping in any way they could. The old phrase "What's all this then?" did not just come from the movies - you heard it in real life too.
Kind chaps. Friendly. Not semi-military as in the USA, or completely bureaucratic as in Germany.
This also meant that nobody would attack a Bobby. "Attacking an unarmed chap!" - no way. Even if you came from pretty nasty neighbourhoods, your would loose a *lot* of respect from your peers if you ever did something like this.
Obviously, all this has now changed. The friendly Bobby has gone. And never, ever, will any official with a camera on their head be trusted. By anybody.
Bah. Fools.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 you are entitled to a copy of the information collected on you.
This means that for a MAXIMUM sum of £10 (funny how you never get a refund from it) you can ask them to trawl through the tapes to provide you with the bits where you star.
Consider:
(1) They have to find you in hours of footage
(2) They will have to duplicate that data
(3) They may have to blank out everyone else in the vicinity to avoid violating their privacy
Imaging this request being filed by 40 or 50 people. However, IANAL, and there's one question I haven't seen answered: what privacy do you have if you walk on the street? I have no idea..
Insert
What does an "on the spot" fine mean?
Not toally sure. There's some details from Northamptonshire police. Looks like you get an on the spot ticket and 28 days to pay. Yes, you can fight them in court. Like a lot of modern "justice", that's a gamble since you may end up with a criminal record.
Messed up the URL Here it is again
..they just keep passing more laws! heh heh heh
Actually since the 60's it is still way higher, like 3 times. There's been a temporary drop in *some* crime in *some* areas because of population demographics, ie, less young males in their teens and 20s in some areas, which is the closest corollary to crime in general terms. There's also been an increase in really violent crimes since a lot of states passed 2-3 strikes and you are out laws. Habitual violators find it more convenient to not leave witnesses in other words.
with that said, the purpose of the police state and all the new cameras and whatnot we talk about is to protect the rulers and their rule. It has nothing to do with fighting street crime. They sell the police state idea that way, they are going to "get tough on crime" and "terrorism", etc, but really it is to protect the elite as we transition back to a feudalistic two class society model, "technofeudalism", which is the globalists' long range plan.
These guys can hand out Penalty Charge Notices if they see you parked where you shouldn't, failing to pick up dog mess or see you litter. The camera iss there to make sure you:
1) Don't abuse them or don't get away with abusing them (they're not armed police, there just guys in yellow jackets)
2) Don't get away with it.
I don't really consider that surveillance or Orwellian. It seems like common bloody sense to me, these people shouldn't be doing this in the first place and they deserve to get filmed so they can't get away with it.
J1M.
That's got to be one of the dumber photos I've seen in a long time. I'm reminded of this hands-free headset.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I went through a political crisis about a decade back, the result of which was that I became a Libertarian, because they had a no-holds-barred personal freedoms platform and a don't-strike-first foreign policy platform. But it has become apparent to me that the everything-should-be-private portion of Libertarianism outweighs the positive aspects.
There are several facets of human endeavor that cannot function effectively as businesses because their primary function is not the generation of profit. But we call these "industries", nonetheless.
None of those listed above are properly industries - each is intended primarily to produce the noun listed before the word "industry", not profits. Additionally, those are some of the key measures of a civilization - how healthy, well educated, and secure are you? How do you treat those who break society's rules?
My current political crisis started a couple of years ago, and I'm still adrift.
Not all England, you'd need to watch Emmerdale, Hollyoaks and Coronation St to get a fuller picture but I'm sure Eastenders is a pretty accurate depiction of life dahn the east end, isn't it ?
Actually, when the issue of cops abusing power in the US came up, my suggestion was that they should have some form of continuous camera (though I had thought more of on on-belt).
That way, if somebody alleges police violence, you can show footage. If something happened, it will be there. If the cop turned off the camera, then it will become apparent pretty quickly that there was a likely ulterior motive in doing so. Part of procedure should be to flip on the cam upon exiting the police vehicle, so no turning it on after the action is over, either.
The footage wouldn't have to be used all the time, but surveillance might make people think twice about taking a swing at the cops, and likewise for cops who like to abuse power.
Can't remember the last time I heard the word "chap" - except when someone is taking the piss.
You mean you have a special name just for the moment in time when you hand the nurse at your urologist's office the vial with the sample? Wow, you English really are persnickety.
Electronic counter measures. (ECM)
"One of the biggest issues on people's minds is the disrespect that some are showing to our environment."
Interesting perspective. I would've said crime. I just hope these guys are armed...then again, they can run for cover in their range rovers.
If, like me you love watching those TV programmes where they have a helicopter following a suspect being chased by the police, here's a fun thing to look out for. Recently I've noticed that as soon as the subject is arrested/stopped, 90% of the time the camera will pan away from the suspect. To me it looks like an unofficial deal with the police and cameramen. We'll let you film and help us if you don't show us kicking the shit out of the suspect when we catch them. Or am I just paranoid?
LITIGATE! LITIGATE! LITIGATE!
Ice Cream has no bones.
Part D'ua; Manchester!
Looks like Gilliam was prescient as Orwell. Who knew?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I must have missed that part.
We are the dead.
We are the dead.
You are the dead.
Remain exactly where you are.
Make no move until you are ordered.
Now they can see us.
Now we can see you.
Clasp your hands behind your heads.
Stand out in the middle of the room. Stand back-to-back.
Do not touch one another.
The house is surrounded.
The house is surrounded.
I suppose we may as well say goodbye.
You may as well say goodbye.
You know, as I read this I can't get the image of the "on location" reporter character Al Franken played on Saturday Night Live. You know, the one with the 40 pound satelite dish on his head and the huge battery pack in a back-pack. That skit always cracked me up...now I picture these cops looking like he did.
Reality is for people that can't handle drugs. So do your part, just say no to reality!