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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?"
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It seems most people think there is this huge government-funded network of cameras watching every move of every person in the UK - this just isn't the case. The vast majority (~80%) of this camera network are the ones in shops, on transport (buses, trains), on ATM's, etc. etc. In other words, they're privately owned and run for the benefit of the business owner, not for the police.
Of the remainder, the vast majority of them are traffic-cameras at junctions, in speed-cameras (yes, these count, for some reason), etc. What's left are the police-owned ones which watch people in high-crime areas or (usually in partnership with the businesses) high-people-traffic areas (eg: Regent St., Oxford St. in London).
I lived in London for ~15 years before moving to CA. I don't feel any less "observed" here than I did in London. I'm on-camera in CA if I get money from an ATM; if I drive across a junction (try looking up once in a while); if I get on the BART; if I get on Caltrain; if I go to a bank;
I really wish people would stop pandering to the tabloid press trying to sell copy. Sure, there are cameras. Everywhere(*). Deal.
Simon
(*)Well, every country I've been to, anyway.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Obviously if the CCTV cameras we have today only help prevent 3% of crimes, then we need about 33x more cameras!
All hail our great overseers!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
In fact, the thought that they could help if I were to be in a tight-spot is actually reassuring. People think twice about doing stupid things if they know there's an eye in the sky watching them.
I have however had one objection; I caught one blatantly checking me and one ex-girlfriend "making out" (let's say) in a park once. The dirty bastard on the end even nodded the camera at me in recognition I'd caught him watching it all.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Don't compare the opression Benjamin Franklin and our other founding fathers lived through with a few cameras in public areas. These monitor the same things that any police officer can without a warrant.
Wasn't a major point of 1984 that only a tiny amount of unusually sensitive people would recognize a totalitarian state for what it is? There was no hope in the proles in Orwell's future England because their lives were just as miserable before as after and they didn't have time to ruminate on things like Winston Smith and Julia. When Smith tried to ask an old man about former days, he couldn't seem to make any argument against the current state of things. Thanks to Smith's own work in the Ministry of Truth, the population couldn't actually read about how bad things really were.
In this instance, I agree England is not yet an Orwellian dystopia. However, dystopias have a way of establishing themselves without many noticing.
I didn't realise that I was entitled to so much privacy when I'm out in public!!
which is totally what she said
The point put forward in TFA is that the risk of being on camera is a preventive measure. The 3% figure is a meaningless figure when it comes to measuring the preventive effect in my opinion. When measuring efficiency, one would like to know the relative frequency of street robberies before and after a CCTV introduction.
I'm skeptical that the system brings benefits to outweigh the cost, but we should at least argue honestly about the system's alleged efficiency.
I don't know, do you exaggerate much?
The headline said "resembling an Orwellian dystopia". A city with government owned and monitored cameras at every corner does in fact resemble an Orwellian dystopia. Sounds like a perfectly sound comparison to me.
Perhaps if you didn't inflate "resembles" to mean "is", you would have understood.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
The introduction on CCTV (as well as new stadium improvements and regulations recommended in the Taylor Report) are credited with ending mainstream hooliganism in England. CCTV was used to find those responsible for acts of unruly and destructive behaviour associated with football matches and punish them. For me this is enough reason to support CCTV.
... after all it is in public.
But then again I don't really have a problem with being filmed while in public
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.
You seem to be operating under the notion that companies install CCTV systems to protect victims of crimes that occur on company property.
This, however, is business and not altruism. Businesses need CCTV to protect themselves from prosecution and to ease the insurance claims process. For example, they need to know that some guy in a hoodie ran up to that old lady, threw her on to the ground and ran off, not that she slipped on the wet surface left by an employee. They definitely care about that. The identity of the attacker? Not so much. So the expenses surrounding the recording and storage of high-resolution images is simply overkill for the company's needs.
Or perhaps you are basing your comment on the headline from a year or two ago that took the number of security cameras (including private ones) per mile on the busiest shopping street in the UK and multiplied it by the number of miles of roads in the UK?
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In my part of the UK, the spy cameras were installed under the pretext of protecting the people, only the idiots bought that excuse, and they've been proved to be mostly useless for that proported use.
April 2008, the law in the UK was changed by the government which now allows any official spy camera to be used for "traffic enforcement" (more easy money).
Lo and behold one week into this new scheme, in my local area a woman was attacked and sexually assaulted at a bus stop while waiting for a bus. What happened we'll never 100% know, because the camera operator was more interested in catching motorists going in a wrong lane, then to record video of tha assault and catch the guy that did the assault (what the camera was installed for in the first place).
The whole camera installation nationwide is for state surveillance of you, and it feels really uncomfortable knowing you are being filmed walking or driving around, whilst criminals remain untouchable and don't give a damn about the cameras.
Resist the cameras in your country, or suffer the surveillance fate of the UK.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Oh boy, I can see it now. My fellows will surely welcome the chance to harass their "neighbors" &c.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
1. we get an army of CCTV operators more than willing to ensure that any misdemeanour does not go unnoticed.
2. we keep the OAPs off the streets, and put them in a safe, warm environment
3. the investment in CCTVs pays off as every camera gets a dedicated viewer.
4. respect for pensioners increases as every young buck would know that to insult an OAP would have them on the lookout for him.
Obviously this would be good for society and keep the pensioners happy as they love nothing better than sitting around watching what's going on.
You'd think easy access to drugs and prostitutes would be a selling point.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
You forget the main point of any realistic dystopian society: at least initially, you have to allow a few dissidents to "prove" that dissent is allowed and that the people are "free". All the while, the people in power are concentrating their power and limiting the media's right to cover dissent by uncovering dissidents and getting them canned, limiting which press have access to key government events, planting people in editorial/analyst/writer positions, bribing commentators, and outing confidential sources, undermining the credibility of the media and endangering the lives of dissenters. I could probably go on for several pages like this.
We can get away with criticism because we are relatively unimportant and unable to create a credible threat against the power structure, whether through force, through block voting, or through running for public office. Someone important criticizes the administration, though, and bad things happen....
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Allright! If I see that hippie smoking marijuana then I can dedicate my time to help incarcerate him! I never liked that guy, his raibowy t-shirt bugged the hell out of me.
The point being that it takes sane law for this to happen. If you comandeered a camera only to catch somebody smoking pot, would you rat them out? Smoking pot is, after all, illegal here.