Slashdot Mirror
Chicago Links School Cameras To Police
Farakin brings us a story about how cameras in roughly 200 Chicago schools are being connected to police headquarters and the city's 911 emergency center. The goal of the effort is to "consolidate video surveillance," and it will involve both routine monitoring and real-time updates to officers on their way to a crisis. According the the Chicago Tribune, "The mayor acknowledged the cameras provide only limited security, citing a spate of shootings in recent days that have claimed young victims during after-school hours." The story also contains a video in which Mayor Daley indicated that he expects the cameras to serve as a deterrent now that people know they're under the eye of the police.
How about taking some of the Homeland Security money and putting it into alternate crime prevention programs, instead of trying to deal with situations where kids have already been turned into criminals?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
How many reading teachers could have been hired for the price of those cameras? This is sad, just sad.
Where would we be if big brother wasn't here to protect us from our selves? --- a lot more free thats for sure.
I think the intresting bit is at the end of the story, 50 police officers were to be hired, but budget reasons (cuts?) led to a delay of a full month before they could start training. Meanwhile a program to get cops on the beat and civilians to do the paper work was also delayed, again seemingly because of budget reasons.
Note that it is purely MY speculation that the budget reasons were cuts, but it is hard to imagine how for instance an increase in budget would cause a delay.
There is actually a rather neat trick that you can pull with this. I announce a new plan to hire 50 cops. Nice headline, people feel good about it. Delays are caused and the program is scaled back. Sometime later I announce that 40 cops have been hired. Nice headline, people feel good about it, 90 new cops on the beat... AHA! You spotted it eh?
If I am really good I also silenty get rid of 60 cops and score another headline NOT with the firing but with the budget savings I have been managing. Ain't I good, can you guess how the next election will go?
The problem is simple, you need to follow the news in depth and keep on a story and anything that might relate to it. For instance the increased budget for the DHS from which this camera system is payed, where does that money come from? Could it even be that the reason the budget office did not have the money for civilian office workers and the new cops was because the money went to the DHS instead?
But people hate in depth reporting, note how many people here scream bloody murder when a new development in SCO is reported or shout DUPE when an article is really an update. For many people news is what is happening now, but for a crafty politician that leads to an easy way to pull the wool over everyone's eye.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So, slippery slopes don't exist and only tinfoil hatters believe in them? Right?
Morons. Giving your rights and freedoms away like it was candy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What once was unthinkable will become commonplace. The first few years, kids will rebel, maybe even take down a camera or two, obscure its picture, that sort of thing. Given enough time, the kids are sufficiently inured to the cameras, and they wont even see them anymore.
Kids that dont notice cameras will grow to be adults that dont notice cameras. Thats the whole point of this exercise. Get em while their young.
It can be go tiem now plees?
I predict that nothing will happen to the cameras. The surveillance and the tie-in will be mutely accepted by a population conditioned and resigned to live in fear.
Maybe I'm one of those grumpy people you mentioned...
They're not tackling the root cause of why they're having to do this. The fact is that an awful lot of kids in school in the US can get very easy access to weapons that allow them to kill people very easily. As long as the US at large is OK with accepting that kind of risk, and public anxiety quickly dies down after every shooting, then trying to half-heartedly try and film everything that people do is quite simply pointless.
It's also no deterrent at all. We've seen from the vast majority of shootings that those involved are quite willing to shoot first, and then shoot themselves so that there are no consequences. The notion that cameras are going to be a deterrent is well wide of the mark.
He wasn't implying it's odd. He's implying it's bad.
And it potentially is. Instead of a small set of local security officers monitoring activity, a much larger set of people, further from the scene, can watch everything. That opens up much more potential abuse and misinterpretations.
Developers: We can use your help.
Once again school kids without rights are being exposed and desensitized to horrible human rights abuses they will learn to accept as "normal" when they become adults. The sickening jackbooted dehumanization of America marches on.
+0 Meh
Why are you blaming this on the teachers when all of the problems you mentioned are the result of policies set by the school board and inflexibly enforced by the administration. A fair number of teachers do overlook the stupid rules, and even if they don't it's not their fault that the punishment for them is ridiculously out of proportion.
I doubt too many people will be buying these, so... way to make yourself easy to track as you move around from camera to camera.
It's the callous disregard for human life, stupid!
The Chicago police and video cameras don't prevent crime, they commit crime. And then do it again. And again.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I've heard it said before, and see it already coming true: "What one generation tolerates, the next generation embraces". Kinda scary....pretty soon, no one will still be around that even remembers what it was like to NOT have cameras everywhere, and every move and purchase saved somewhere and potentially tracked.
*SIGH*
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Friend of mine said in Ohio that the crazy drug users would get the police officers to chase them on foot while their buds would steal the shotguns from their cars to sell.
These cameras will give a false sense of security to some, and total useless to victims other than to maybe prove something after the fact. "Ya he got the S*** beat out of him for sure" or "ya he got stabbed, and we cant tell who it is in that hoodie" There is no replacement for having security where its needed, and not where its not.
It would get them expelled for "terroristic threats/acts" and probably for some bizarre version of obstruction of justice.
School systems suck for the kids in them, especially public...ESPECIALLY PUBLIC...(especially Chicago)
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
If you treat kids like criminals, don't be surprised when they start acting like criminals.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager