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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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!!!"
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.
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.
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.
Like what? I can't afford the level of bribe that big companies can, so I have no involvement in democracy as it is practiced in the UK. 30 years of Thatcherism has really taken its toll on the concept of democratic choice here. If there's nothing in it for multi-nationals it simply doesn't happen anymore.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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
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.
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.