Slashdot Mirror
British Drivers Destroying Surveillance Cameras
miletus writes "A Wired article tells us that not everyone in Britain loves the surveillance state." The linked entry (part of Bruce Sterling's blog) quotes a story about British anti-camera groups, one of which claims its up-and-coming methods "will enable them to destroy a roadside camera in just a few seconds," and illustrates with a burned-out camera. I wonder how many Americans are similarly motivated.
It's time to build some tin-foil hats for your cars people.
That, or get some kind of cool preditor laser thing that will somehow find the camera and shine it directly into the lens causing it to go "blind" for the brief period that you are in it.
To be fair, these groups are targeting speed cameras (or "Safety Cameras" as they are laughably called by councils) rather than CCTV cameras.
Ha, we'd pull ours down and sell 'em. They'll be called American Camera Chop shops. "ACCs" for short. I can see it now, gangstas running around and selling cameras. It'll happen.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
All of these actions have me wondering if the revolution is happening, and nobody in the public mind knows it?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
A HERF (High Energy RF) gun should do the trick much more quietly.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the "surveillance state", these are drivers that resent being fined for breaking the law by speeding. These people don't give a damn about other kinds of CCTV. It's not about getting caught on camera, it's about getting caught breaking the law.
In a surveillance society, who watches the watchers?
what's a camera worth?
Firstly, the group are attacking speed cameras, not surveillance cameras And secondly the vandalising(?) of such cameras is certainly nothing new, there is one on the major road near my house which is torched weekly - the council just come and replace it the day after
http://www.222design.com/myspace/ceiling_cat.jpg
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
Not that I condone such antisocial behaviour, of course, but there's a simple technique for getting away with this: Just put on a Hijab (the Muslim full-face mask). If you're caught by CCTV in the act of sabotage, the hijab conceals your identity! Additionally, the authorities are so terrified of singling out any Asians that they would never dream of stopping/questioning/arresting "women" in hijabs. Just fling your burning tyre (hidden neatly under a burqua), then slip away and toss your mask in the nearest rubbish bin. Mission accomplished.
(And for those who would mod this flamebait, please hear me out: I'm not casting aspersions on any one group but merely pointing out a significant weakness in a survelliance society -- namely the permitting of some to wear full-face masks in public. Rather undermines the whole stated purpose of CCTV, doesn't it? But then again, the gatsos aren't doing their stated purpose, either, which is making the streets safer...)
direct link to the link referenced in the blog. http://www.speedcam.co.uk/index2.htm
Let's celebrate destruction of public property. These heroes are standing up for their right to break traffic laws and they need our support. Let the road be free of the tyranny of civility.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
There was a disgusting C4 documentary on road charging broadcast recently in the UK. It focused on one of these masked thugs in order to poison the well before proceeding to ignore any the relevant issues and staging a flawed pro-road charging example.
Myself, I don't understand (other than lending a flimsy credence to it) what criminal damage has to do with the arguments against state surveillance and control.
He's been dead for a little while now, but he would love to rock on if he could, I am sure!
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
In much of America, camera-generated tickets go to whoever registered the license plates not the driver. The logic is if you let someone drive your car too fast the city will come after you for the money and it's up to you to get it from the driver.
By the way, don't try hiding your license plate. That will just make things worse the next time a real cop sees your car.
It's typically a "civil" or "administrative" fine so you don't get the same due process rights as you would for a criminal offense.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
He creatd teh univers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There are certain to be plenty of replies saying how this is a bad thing, people should write to their lawmakers instead, etc. Let me offer a preemptive rebuttal: Fuck that. The information age has made permanent archival cheap, and improvements in pattern recognition are fast giving us the ability to rapidly search through those archives. There isn't a single government in existence today that's responsible enough to handle such data. Certainly, Britain's (and to a much greater extent, the USA's) extremely self-destructive War on Drugs is evidence enough of that.
Speeding isn't good, but it isn't the scourge of society. The fact is, governments (and the UK government especially) have repeatedly shown a propensity to never throw away any data gathered from the public (if you are arrested in the UK for any reason, your DNA is put into a database and never deleted, even if the charges are dropped.) The speeding *obsession* is a joke anyway--the only reason why law enforcement cares so much about it is it's easy to prove and tickets are an easy source of revenue. The solution to the traffic problem is ultimately a technical one--within the next 50-75 years, we should have fully automated cars anyway (if not flying.)
Despite what the evening news tells you, law enforcement is NOT the primary problem of our times. In the quest for a peaceful society, law enforcement is a merely one tool of many and it's a very dangerous and cumbersome tool at that. If our lawmakers cannot recognize this and continue to blaze a merry path towards a privacy-less society--one where surveillance is abused to persecute the law-abiding and civil disobedience is utterly impossible because law enforcement is just too damn omniscient--then the populace at large can and should take measures into their own hands.
I'm certainly not happy *at all* about the destruction of taxpayer-funded property, but this issues involve here transcend your average political quibbling. If these Brits are willing to risk imprisonment to fight the naive Orwellians in charge, good for them. (If on the other hand they're just doing this so they can speed with impunity, shame on them.)
invalid markup! :)
George Orwell was about 25 years too early in his predictions.
My rights don't need management.
This speed camera vandalizing is nothing new. It's been going on for at least seven years now. It's usually idiots who've been caught by the camera that day who go back to destroy the evidence. Thankfully the new "digital" speed cameras that transmit pictures back to the base instantly will resolve this.
However, I think this sort of cowardly attack on public property is nothing new in the UK. Whereas citizens of other countries will attempt to use the law to defeat things, the British are typically content to moan and be passive aggressive about things rather than effect real change. One curious development in the last several years here has been the increase in attacks against firefighters and paramedics. You can't go a week without hearing about firefighters getting rocks thrown at them and their tenders by gangs of feral teens. Even paramedics rushing to people's aid have been attacked and beaten up for no reason at all. Why? The British underclass is powerless, and aggression is all they know, because our legal and political systems are so limp wristed that the ordinary man on the street cannot effect change.
In the US, cops are seen as reckless thugs who are drunk on power and out of control. And yet, given the choice between being ticketed by a cop and ticketed by a machine, the very people who hate cops most get pissed about the machine.
The problem isn't that the machine is faulty, it's because it is always on. Cops can't be everywhere, but the camera is. The people destroying these things aren't anarchists or vigilantes, they're just dumb thugs who want to live in a world without rules and want to continue to risk others' safety with impunity.
I wonder, are there groups intent on catching these people and thrashing them within inches of their lives? Lawlessness sounds like much fun.
As a regular cyclist who has almost been killed on numerous occasions by speeding, reckless, and/or irresponsible drivers, I fully support the use of any and all technology (surveillance or otherwise) to FORCE people to drive safely and within the law. I think it should be abundantly clear at this point (annual traffic fatalities in the U.S. being just one data point) that people simply cannot be relied upon to voluntarily drive safely at all times. I believe that the reason why people drive irresponsibly so often is simply that 99.9% of the time they can get away with it.
Speeding is reckless behavior that not only endangers yourself but everyone else around you (if it only endangered the driver, actually I wouldn't care about it all. I fully support the right of people to be careless with their own lives, as long as it is ONLY their own lives.) Speed limits exist for a reason. I believe governments have the right to use every tool at their disposal to enforce them.
My life is more important that your "right" to act recklessly in public without being monitored.
The easiest way of avoiding these fines and pumping the government with all your hard earned cash is to
... these are speed cameras, not surveillance cameras.
If British drivers don't want to be seen by the cameras, why can't they just engage their cloaking devices?
Signed,
Every Sci-Fi Geek in the World
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
You can create a police state and crush all anti-state activity. That has been done lots of times in the past and there is no reason to think it won't happen again. The trouble is that the loss of freedom also tends to remove the conditions that allow the economy to thrive and adapt. Communism collapsed because of that.
We have got where we are because of freedom. If we kill freedom, we kill innovation. If we kill innovation, we can't adapt to the changes with which we are faced. Ultimately, society will collapse.
Actually, the legal and political system works well for some people. In that respect they aren't limp at all. They are a stick with which the rich can beat the poor. It used to be that the political system had two parties that could be relied to look after their respecitve constituancies. That hasn't been the case lately. That will lead most people to give up on the system. They won't meekly accept their yokes though. They will adopt the maxim of communist workers everywhere: "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." In the long term, the powers-that-be are screwing themselves in the ear.
The problem is that many/most cameras are not placed to maximize safety, they're placed to maximize revenue. Placing a camera to enforce a low-speed zone at the bottom of a steep hill is a common example.
PETHW (People for the Ethical Treatment of Hardware) strongly condemns these senseless attacks on the completely innocent pieces of perfectly fine hardware.
What harm have the cameras done to these afwul people? They just take photos, that's all. They don't care what anyone does with the photos. If you have a problem with those photos PETHW suggests you either drive slower, or take it up with the local constabulary, who are, after all, ultimately responsible for taking the photos and placing the cameras where they stand.
We urge all citizens to act upon this travesty and rise against these lawless individuals. How can they sleep at night knowing what they've done???
Join PETHW in fighting hardware abuse at http://pethw.org/
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
For those who haven't seen this before, the site documents obnoxious installations of GATSO speed cameras in places where its obvious purpose is revenue generation rather than safety. The result is that someone usually hangs a tire around the camera, fills it with diesel, then adds a flare. Burns quite nicely. Peruse the site though for more creative solutions like chain saws.
WHOIS information
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Someone should let these guys know that the 'Camera Shy' achievement only exists within Portal...
After getting nailed by a redlight camera when turning right .2 seconds after the light turned red. I can totally understand the frustration here. The camera takes a picture, the officer reviews it, stamps a ticket on it and sends you your fine. No explaination, no please, no thank you for your payment. Etc.
If were and officer pulling me over, the officer would have told me why it was unsafe, the reason he pulled me over and have a good day or at least been a small conversation with a few laughs. But instead, I get a totally dry letter with no explaination of how my action was unsafe, or, the reason they put that camera there, nothing.. My emotional reaction was pure anger, and actually drove worse for a few months in that town because of it.
The way its done now, it gives the impression that they set them up to make money. Because of that, it serves more to annoy. I just feel angry about the whole thing. I'll gladly pay more taxes to put more officers on the road, because they don't just write tickets. They also set the examples, and help with other things like fires, public saftey, medical, etc. I will not pay to put more camera's on the road because it's primary achievement is annoying drivers rather than making roads safer.
Don't forget, that the camera manufactures also have rigged google so that if you search anything out about them you'll find nothing but good about them for the first 20 pages or so.
I personaly shed no tears for the destroyed cameras. They dug thier own hole with them.
Franklin also said that he who cannot obey cannot command.
Franklin is the lone Founder identified with the life and welfare, the governance, of the city:
The reform of the postal service. Fire Insurance. The first volunteer fire Department. The first public library. The first American hospital.
He would as a diplomat in France have been exposed to the recklessness and arrogance of the nobles who traveled anonymously in closed carriages and were answerable to no one.
Freedom in his mind meant something larger than freedom from responsibility for the consequences of your actions. That is why he joins in signing the Declaration of Independence, rather than take the safer course of posting it anonymously to a blog.
He was a JP in 1749. The President of Pennsylvania in 1785. He was throughout his public career a significant and powerful centralizing force in American life and politics.
..they've always been the best for fast food fries....no, I am not fat either, rather skinny in fact, but a few times a year I stop in just for the fries. Greasy salty tasty goodness. No idea why but they hit several hard coded DNA taste bud pleasure centers.
While I hesitate to use "customer" in this sense, it is what it is. I would much rather be stopped by an officer so I can chat with him and learn what he perceived was a wrong-doing rather than a machine which may not even have data regarding what happened during the whole incident. While I don't have any "red light" cameras here around my place, and I'm glad for that, I am worried that eventually I'll be getting that "Cold Letter" that only says "you did something wrong now pay", rather than explaining what it was, why it was perceived that way, and how to avoid doing it in the future.
Punishment (read: fines) should be in place for teaching "right from wrong" and needs to be done right otherwise the message is lost.
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
In the US, we call this a thirty-aught-six, among other things. Perhaps these Brits are borrowing something from Russia? Molotov Cocktails would be ironically appropriate.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
- the injured man take 3 times the care of a dead one -
if these "groups" wanted to be most effective, they would cut the lines to the camera and smear lens with a 2 part epoxy. something that is not easily removed, but leaves the innards of the camera functional
Thus: defeating the camera methods, but leaving the object just functional enough that someone has to do more work to make it functional again instead of simply replacing it.
Also, a non destructive way to address the issue would be to place warning signs uproad of the existing cameras, and build out an online notification system of where the camera are. If the police are lazy enough to rely on static cameras to enforce speed limits, people will pay for access to know exactly where they are.
Personally, I'm in favor of static camera that photograph socially harmful behaviors that occur in public. Only, however, when you know there is said harmful behavior happening. We need rules to live together, and those rule must be enforced on those who break them. I am very much CCTV and other broad surv. systems in public when there is no immediate or verifiable reason to think someone is doing something harmful.
A lot of these things are just there to reap money from fines, they aren't there to provide safety.
"The proportion of injury crashes involving any speeding vehicle nationally was only 5%"
What are the effects of putting a speed camera on a road? How do you know it makes the road safer?
Deleted
Traffic cameras were tried about 35 years ago in South Africa. There, a large part of the population is armed, with the result that the cameras were taken out almost as fast as they were put up and the fad literally went up in smoke and blew over rather quickly. I'm surprised that it took so long for people to revolt against automated government spying in the UK.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I do not understand this ire against speed cameras (and red light cameras to some extent) rather than CCTV cameras. CCTV cameras is Big Brother, surveillance state, intrusion in your life, you privacy, and so on. It is someone watching you. A speed camera only takes a single still if you are speeding. Hence, you only get observed by the speed camera, if you are breaking the speed limit. As such, I find it hard to be violently opposed to speed cameras, whereas CCTV cameras are an altogether different matter...
- Frans.
Was the world a dangerous bad place 40 years ago? No cameras or radar guns, everyone was happy, people still sped.
What you fail to realize is that people are pissed of that the error margin is so small, doing 5% over the limit is hardly justified. 60km to 63km is easy
to do if for various reasons a speedo might be 1km out (analogue is so not accurate), different tires, and subconciously keeping up with the car ahead.
Sure, doing 75 in a 60 zone is over the top, but 63, get real.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
that regardless of the actions of either the activists or the authorities, The topic of protest is ignored: corruption.
Speeding cameras as a concept are sold under the idea that being reliable and fair at catching actual law breaking, that it justifies setting up an arrangement between law enforcement, govenments, businesses and individuals for creating and sharing a source of revinue.
In some scenarios, cameras may provably act as a deterrent to crime. This is not relavant to the issue, merely related to it.
And in this specific instance, appears that speeding cameras are not a deterrent.
The issue is that while law enforcement and govenments would like to simply solve the problems that it is their job to solve, ie. crime prevention and managing the demands of their constituants respectively, businesses and indiviuals would also like to simply solve their problem which it is their job to solve, which is put simply as profit.
The problem is public sector/private sector relationships that simply can not be adequately policed, regulated, surpervised or evaluated, let alone protested or changed by the people who foot the bill.
These cameras would appear to be such a relationship where all parties but the public benefit, and as such should be protested.
I dont really see any viable alternatives to direct action in this specific case.
I live in Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA) where for a short time we had some automatic red-light cameras. I'm generally a pretty safe driver (1 accident in about the last 10 years, maybe 2 speeding tickets). I'm in my late 30s so I feel like I have a good deal of driving experince and I may take calculated risks at times (i.e. I speed on the freeway to/from work, I go 60-65 mph instead of the posted 55. But there are plenty of people driving 70 mph on the same freeway).
One of the automatic red-light cameras was on my way home from work. I had read about them, even looked at a map of thier locations and didn't realize that one was right on my route. These cameras are in big metal/plexiglass-looking boxes. When I figured out that one was on my route, I seriously considered spray painting the window on the box or something more nefarious. These cameras were ruled unconstitutional in Minnesota before I was ever ticketed, but I'm surprised noone took any action against the cameras.
What bothered me about the camera is that even though I'm a pretty informed person, it wasn't until I was sitting at a red light one evening that I happened to look up and see the cameras. There are signs, but I never saw them because of the right turn I always took onto the street where the cameras are (hard to explain this without showing you). So, it seemed *especially* deceptive and sneaky to place one there AND put the signs in such a way that most people will NOT see them.
This situation seemed unjust to me, and I would have felt like some sort of folk hero when acting against the cameras.
Paint is obvious. Tar may be better.
You could scrape the top of the arm with a file. Scrape very near the pole, but not right above the little brace. Go deep enough to get through any galvanization or other rust-resistant coating. Optionally, wrap some salty gauze around it, or apply a gel that collects water. Such gel can be found in feminine napkins and disposable diapers.
HERF stuff need not be a gun. Walk right by, hold up a coil, and discharge away.
A cattle prod should do nicely.
Get a buddy. Put on reflective vests. Go out during working hours with a dremmel tool and just take the thing down! For bonus points, place cones on the road.
A tow chain might do nicely. Just don't get the thing yanked up into the air and landing in your rear window.
Here in the USA of course we haven't been disarmed. A regular old shotgun or hunting rifle would do nicely. Rifled slugs are fun.
sandpaper the lens
Use an automotive jack. Place it on the arm to lift off the box.
Speed cameras are an example of police brutality.
you are bound to get there sooner going the speed limit than if you stop to vandalize every speed camera on the way.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Speed cameras in the U.S. typically contain a top-of-the-line Nikon digital SLR. Screw destroying them; I want to steal them!
It's speed cameras, not surveillance cameras. And while I don't agree with obeying the rules just because they are 'the law', I do agree with obeying the rules that make sense; and the speed limits do make sense in most cases. Driving safely is not only about being able to control your car even when you drive fast, it is also about being able to get out of difficult situations alive, and preferably without accidents.
The low speed limits are certainly important - as they say, at 30 mph 80% survive (being hit by a car), at 40 mph it is 20%. I'm not sure it makes all that much difference whether people drive 70 or 80, though, but the percentage of people who can't drive safely at high speeds gets bigger the higher the speed - so perhaps the 70 mph limit is sensible on motorways. On the other hand there is quite a large number that drive far too slowly, which causes a lot of frustration in other road users and leads to irrational behaviours, like dangerous overtaking and probably dangerous speeding too.
IMO there should be minimum as well as maximum speed limits; if you can't drive safely at 90% of the speed limit, you shouldn't be on a public road driving a motorised vehicle. I'm sure a lot of those who tend to drive too fast would be more willing to accept that they have to respect the limit, if you could be reasonably sure that you didn't always up behind some plonker that insisted on plodding along at half the legal limit.
Have another look at your post (case), then read this.
1. I have said for years that people should obey the speed limit. I do!
2. If you want to do another speed on any given road then you have a simple course of action:
a. Form a local action group to convince the elected officials to require the appointed officials to set the speed on that road that you wish. (Note: I said it was simple, not easy; or quick!)
b. If the elected officials will not do as you wish, then get your action group REALLY motivated and elect officials (probably a majority) who WILL do what you wish. (Note: This may require you to become one of the majority, or significant minority, of elected officials that it will take to achieve the desired result.)
As I say to people, until and unless you take some legally sanctioned action along these lines, then obey the law AND/OR don't become angry when caught speeding.
By the way, this will apply equally well in any country where elected officials govern the actions of appointed officials. Please fit the model to your situation. For instance, in Australia where I live, we have elected State and Territory governments that make the road rules; they have 'appointed' bureaucracies that decide the speed limits and enforce them; the 'local government' (read, town and shire councils) do not have these powers.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Bright infared sources tend to wash out CCD used in cameras. What about simply ringing your liscense plates with wide angle IR LEDs. Or if you had powerful enough/wide angle enough, your entire car. Would be completely invisible to the human eye and unreadable by any camera.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."