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CCTVs Don't Work in the UK
ShakaUVM writes "People who give up a little bit of liberty for a little bit of security deserve neither, the saying goes. But what happens when people give up so much liberty their entire country resembles an Orweillean dystopia — but the pervasive monitoring doesn't help to solve any crimes? That's what is happening in the United Kingdom today. While the Guardian tries to put a good spin on the entire fiasco, the fact remains that CCTVs only help with 3% of all street robberies, the very crimes they were supposed to be best at protecting.
Should England finally move to eliminate its troubling state surveillance program?"
Orwell was an optimist.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Actually I was being extremely sarcastic with the above response (Normally I wouldn't bother saying, but you can never be sure with some people around here...).
Anyway, I grew up in Belfast. For those of you who are unaware, we've had a spot of trouble there over the last few decades. It's not as bad these days as it has been, but still to this day there are certain areas you simply don't go near in case something happens.
One of these "flash points" was just down the road from me, it was at a bridge that linked a Protestant estate with a Catholic one. Naturally, people who tried to cross this bridge were usually targeted by those waiting at the other side.
Unfortunately, there wasn't really an alternative route to get from one side to the other, that was less than 90mins in the opposite direction.
Naturally, there was always fighting and/or rioting on this bloody bridge (which went over a motorway - I'm sure you can imagine the potential risks of falling bricks and bottles there) and more than a couple of people got seriously injured on it - some even died.
Then one day they put a CCTV camera there. Actually, they put a big post there for the CCTV camera to be attached to and it IMMEDIATELY stopped nearly all violence on and around this bridge. Even before the camera was attached, it was enough to scare the little shits that started all of this away and now it's relatively safe to walk by there.
That alone is enough for me to have faith in the CCTV systems. They may not help in solving crimes, but they definitely do help PREVENT them, which I think is much more important.
This is just my experience, though, yours may differ.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
It's the same reason to be happy about RIAA strategy. They fail so badly their tactics will be much harder to use anywhere else.
No, their main use is evidence gathering. Deterrence is secondary. If someone goes bat-shit-crazy and attacks someone, no amount of cameras (or guns or death penalties or dolphins or whatever) will stop that. If, though, a CCTV operator (or witness on the street) sees it, then the cops can pick the person up and charge them. CCTV is just a way to get more evidence. They're also used to covertly follow suspects as they move through a city. I saw CCTV with loud speakers stop a guy who was running from the cops. He kept on running, and the same guy kept on talking to him from all the CCTV cameras he passed - "I can still see you - you can't get away". He didn't. The CCTV operator guided the cops to him, and he was arrested.
If it weren't for the cameras, the pigs would've denied everything.
The debate, once again, should not be around a particular method of law-enforcement, but whether 100% effective law-enforcement is desirable...
It means, you can not exceed speed-limit by 1 mile/h, nor drop a candy-wrap on the street, nor ask for money on subway. You will also not be beaten by a cop, nor will they be able to treat fire-hydrants as special parking spots reserved for "the force". Etcaetera...
Do we want the laws obeyed and enforced 100%, or do we want to live some "wriggle-room" for the dystopian future, when it will be needed to fight some kind of oppression?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
At Heathrow, my laptop needed re-charging. So, I found a power socket, and sat down and started inserting my power converter/adapter into it. The thing looks like an ordinary wall-mounted brick adapter.
Within 5 minutes, I was surrounded by three guys in uniform asking me what I was doing.
I said I am just trying to charge my laptop.
They looked at the adapter, then at the laptop, then at my face. They just stood there looking confused not saying anything. I picked up my stuff, said thanks and just walked away. They didnt follow me or anything.
Weird.
Having surveillance is fine but having smarter people who know how to analyze what they see is even more important.
I'd like to see those cameras made available to the public to scrutinize at their leisure. They would be effective if they were.
I envision a system where every person has a personal recorder that they carry around, and all the output of public cameras is mirrored and shared in a fashion that made it difficult to tamper with. Something along the lines of Freenet, except simplified by the fact that you don't have to anonymize the sources.
Any time there was a contested event, it would be possible to examine the footage from the CCTVs and from the personal data recorders of both parties. Barring a sophisticated attack, this would give you the facts right away. And, if someone tried to tamper with the public record and there were any anomilies, then you could start looking at where they came from with lots of forensic data available.
This would have all sorts of rewards... we would be able to watch the watchers, and we would be able to clearly see those ill conceived laws that are being casually broken all over the place so we could remove them from the books. This would protect us from selective enforcement of laws that aren't meant to be obeyed, but only grant power to the rulers.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Actually, it's closer to 1 in 33. Incidentally, I don't go for the "if it saves just ONE person" meme; I throw it into the rubbish heap with "think of the children" and "if you aren't a criminal, you have nothing to worry about."
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Ironically it was so popular its viewing beat those of the last Big Brother series at some times of the day.
It is a good plan. It works. My father established himself as a police liaison, cleared the prostitutes and drug dealers out of his neighbourhood with a low-tech implementation of such as this, and tripled the value of his house before he sold it. When the cops can do nothing, a retired military man with a German Shepard, a baseball bat and some good intel can make the next pasture over look awfully green.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Maybe not. I live in the USA and I'm from Britain. It's MUCH safer in Britain than the USA, deal with it. Would they have caught the July bombers without the CCTV ? I doubt it. My relatives in the UK don't care about the CCTV, the speed cameras are much more of a subject. The USA has the same big brother issues, except here it is more covert. At least in the UK you know you are being watched - in the USA who knows...