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 can understand a lot of it... there are a few other "anti-social" behaviors that bug me... but what's your least favorite?
What's your least favorite "anti-social" behavior?
Littering
Bad Driving
Standing in Doorways or tight halls
Putting gum in places other than a trash-can (sort of littering)
Stealing
Using a Windows computer in public
And if you don't have anything to hide, why object to us installing a camera in your home....
This ain't just a slippery slope. It's a fucking teflon ski hill.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
This isn't so bad -- as long as the video footage is produced promptly in court when you invariably appeal the fine. In fact, for fines imposed by these walking cameras, if the government can't produce video of the offense, the case should be dropped instantly.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Giuliani didn't do shit.
... oh wait, I forgot - we're talking about Giuliani here.
An improving economy (remember Clinton? government surplusses? jobs? reasonable oil prices? etcetera?) coincided with Giuliani's years in office and, like improved economies always do, led to lower crime.
But Giuliani is a master at taking credit for stuff he didn't do (some of us have long memories and remember his crap even way back when when he was in the Manhattan District Attorneys office).
Maybe he should forget about the presidency and go back to repeatedly charging $12,000 a pop giving speeches telling people the lessons learned and what to do if you are a local official faced with a public crisis like 9-11.
You would think a public servant would offer such advice for free, but
heres my take on it, i was born in kent and lived there for the first 8 years of my life, it seemed pretty safe, i then moved to a small village named pucklechurch near bristol, which wasn't that clean or safe, plenty of good drugs, under age drinking (all of which i participated in), high crime rate (we always knew who it was) and then from boredom came the younger generation with even more problems. at age 15 i moved to a city in china with the population of that of Australia today. shanghai being this city is very safe as i have often stumbled back at early hours of the morning piss drunk.
now what i've seen is that migrant workers coming from poorer regions are the cause of most of the street crime, the same for england, the immigrants after a better life for themselves, where would i live today? well i'm still in china almost 10 years later.
the camera's wont deter problems, they'll only cause an uprising. social change will. better education that isn't led by an agenda and plenty of things that keep younger people interested and challenged will stop a whole lot more.
only reason i participated in most of what i did in this small village, was from boredom.
give people back the right to make their own choice, how ironic is that from someone who chooses to live in a communist country? well I've seen the best of both worlds, and I've also found myself to have more control over what i can and cant do in communist china. especially in a protected city such as shanghai, oh and i rarely get bored, but then i work for 2 companies and run 2 of my own businesses.
Like this? http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/9 52.html
This sig is intentionally blank
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.
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.
The big problem we have is that successive governments seem to think installing CCTV cameras helps, which it manifestly doesn't.
... and if you want to know why it doesn't, and also why I'm not too worried about CCTV and people shouting "Orwell! Panopticon!" then read this blog entry by a UK traffic warden. It pretty much sums up my experience of trying to use CCTV footage to identify whoever vandalised my car in a private car park.
Consider that it could even moderate overzealous law enforcement.
It could, but by an amazing coincidence, whenever anyone reports cases of overzealous law enforcement in the UK, investigation shows that for some strange reason none of the CCTV cameras that cover the area were working.
It's weird, that. You'd think with more CCTV cameras than pretty much anywhere else in the world, we'd be able to make them reasonably reliable by now.
As a resident of Eccles I can say that there is a massive problem with antisocial behaviour over this side of the city. The police have gone as far as to put a row of 30+ CCTV camera down the main road every 70ft apart. They have total blanket CCTV covereage of the area. The bad behaviour of the few nasty residents causes social problems for the rest of us, and it is about time someone did something about it.
I personally don't think that head mounted cameras are the way to go, but these cameras are more about stopping parking disputes for wrongly issued tickets. I know that the parking attendants are on a target based system, so are very likely to blanket ticket an area because there is no recource for the driver. I think these cameras will help this problem out a lot, and stop these idiots from fining a random vehicle just to make target. Believe me, a £40 ($80) parking fine for doing nothing wrong is not nice.
I am more concerned about the 100's of camera that appear over night covering the entire of the Eccles/Manchester region. There is some serious invasion of privicy going on that makes me less than comfortable. I did a small counting excercise while I travelled into work... I can see over 40 cameras during my work journey. Scary.
I say we should all ask for the footage of us on camera under the Data Protection Act and swamp the government/businesses with stupid amounts of administrative paperwork.
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
So I have no right to privacy in my garden while sunbathing? I have a large fence that blocks the view from 99% of the people, but these cameras are up on 40 foot poles. They see all. it's one thing having your neighbor squinting to see what you are doing, but having the police watch you in your garden is a different matter. Not only that, but they can pan and zoom into the windows of houses. I am not saying that they do though!
Signature v3.0, now with 42% less memory usage.
From their site:
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
So you don't accept total surveillance
My original post only railed against indiscriminate surveillance, not surveillance per se. A private business can surveil its premises all it wants (changing rooms, etc. excluded) - I have no say in that, and, well, it's their right. I can always shop somewhere else if I want. With court-approved requests, the state can surveil suspected criminal actions. I could go on.
But indiscriminate surveillance of public space is something different, not only because I cannot avoid public space, not only because it is in some small sense mine, but also because public space is not just space, it is a responsibility that concerned citizens have to one another. A surveillance society arises when the state no longer sees, or wants, its citizens assuming that responsibility.
Society benefits from an absence of total surveillance, because then its members are treated as, well, social, and will probably act as such. Having lived on a few continents, I can happily report that societies lacking pervasive video surveillance can thrive in relative safety.
In a society in which anti-social behaviour has become the norm, and evidence-gathering an obsession, cameras are at best a stop-gap measure. I guess that's the UK today.
Except that in that case, there should have been video footage. The fact that it strangely isn't available becomes far from a moot point, and instead an exacerbating one.
Ubiquitous CCTV, until the police do something illegal.
Now i don't want to bring up the legality of marijuana
Why not? Why is any money spent on marijuana enforcement? Couldn't those ten cops with the sting operation have been out patrolling somewhere?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.