Slashdot Mirror
UK Uses CCTV, Terrorism Laws, Against Pooping Dogs
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that it seems the UK is trying make up for their judicious use of surveillance cameras that, according to recent research, do not actually deter crime, by using the surveillance network to prosecute petty crimes. "Conjuring up the bogeymen of terrorists, online pedophiles and cybercriminals, the U.K. passed a comprehensive surveillance law, The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in 2000. The law allows 'the interception of communications, carrying out of surveillance, and the use of covert human intelligence sources' to help prevent crime, including terrorism. Recent reports in the U.K. media indicate that the laws are being used for everything but terrorism investigations."
NOW do you believe us?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I hate it when dogs piss and poop right in the middle of the sidewalk.
By the way, the summary is wrong - that study the other day did not say the crimes didn't deter crime... only that they don't help much in SOLVING street robberies. Big difference, that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Anyone who is surprised by this doesn't understand either the police, or politics.
I think "pervasive" is the word. "Judicious" is a word you use to imply a good thing, not the mark of a police state.
I guess it depends on where you feel public resources should be allocated. Dog poop certainly annoys me, but I do not want millions of taxpayers dollars to be used dealing with that problem. I'd rather they spend it on free breakfasts for schoolchildren or going after drunk drivers.
The point is, there are finite dollars to throw at a relatively large number of potential issues, and every dollar spent enforcing dog poop laws is one less dollar that will be spent on some other public good.
Oh, and using terrorism to justify spending any large amount of money is also annoying. But that is another issue.
Its not about dog poo. its about private citizens being spied on with the assumption they are guilty and the loss of reasonable privacy.
I bet you buy the 'its for the children' nonsence too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually I'm all for executing* people who don't clear their dog poop :-) As a dog owner I'm fed up of being tarred with the same brush..
*For those with a sense of humour failure, this is a "joke" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
I, good sir, refuse to sell my liberty for a shit-free sidewalk.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
Please send me all of your important info including passport, etc so that I might make sure that you are safe and nothing bad happens. I promise not to abuse it.
When I could sit in front of my computer and feel smug when this happened in other countries.
Hopefully when Bush and his cronies are out of office we can repair the damage and I can once again feel a smug attitude about my country.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How's the koolaid these days?
Since when is suspending habeas corpus, destroying congressional oversight, and wiretapping phones without permission from any legal authority constitute freedom?
Or is this the crazy part of American culture where abortion is murder and war is heroic?
Man, civil rights sure do go cheap these days.
I fail to see what identity theft has to do with CCTV coverage. If you are suggesting that my government can't be trusted with my info, then I can assure you that my government already knows every detail printed in my passport. If you're suggesting that the government could abuse CCTV - well, we live in a democracy and can vote them out with little effort. Sure, the government controls the army and police, but we control the government.
There seems to be this pervading Slashdot meme that British people are dumb privacy hating idiots... yes, the majority of people in Britain support the CCTV cameras. No, there have been no major abuses yet. Yes, potentially, a CCTV network with facial recognition would be quite useful to a hypothetical future fascist government. But really, if Britain has already elected a fascist government, then we have already lost...
Pavement
The submitter should familiarise themselves with (off the top of my head) three ongoing terrorist trials where CCTV evidence is important to gaining a possible conviction. One in particular, that of the prosecution of associates of the 7th of July London bombers who travelled with them to London in advance to case targets, relies heavily on CCTV to link these people to the bombers, and will help obtain convictions (should that be what the jury decides).
That is just an ongoing trial, and is publicly known, "terrorism investigations" covers a multitude of unknown (to the public) current investigations - monitoring people who have warranted the attention of the intelligence community.
But god forbid the truth should get in the way of a hyperactive slashdot submission - desperate for 500 comments of "1984", "slippery slope" and every other cliché under the sun. There may be (and indeed I would personally say, are) valid criticisms of CCTV and how people are monitored in public places - but that debate is entirely short circuited and debased with juvenile submissions like this that are not interested in facts, only hyperbole.
I got pulled over in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago for not fully stopping at a stop sign. They had two motorcycle police officers monitoring the intersection.
.. the next time you think police have something better to do, the answer is yes. And if everyone would obey the 'not important' laws, like speeding or stopping at stop signs or not letting their dogs poop on the sidewalk, maybe they would have more time to do it.
... shut up, pick up your poop, and let the police officers get back to important work instead of having to babysit your ass.
Some may think 'what a waste of tax payer money, pulling people over for not making a complete stop at the stop sign'. But I decided instead of whining to talk to the police officer. Know what I found out??
They were there BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD COMPLAINED PEOPLE WERE SPEEDING DOWN THE STREET. In other words, they were doing exactly what the citizens who pay taxes asked for. Just not the ones that were speeding down the street.
Why did I not stop fully?? Because there were several kids hanging around the street and I was paying more attention to them than the stop sign. My fault, I paid the ticket.
But the police were hoping to slow people down so that none of these kids get hit because some moron is speeding down the street.
So
All laws have to be enforced (or eliminated), otherwise people learn very quickly which ones they can get away with. When people learn they don't get stopped for speeding, they start to go faster. When they learn they can let their dogs poop anywhere, they will do that to.
So
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
I agree. I'm not a dog owner currently but I have nothing against dogs and if I did own one I would up my dog's shit because it pisses me off to no end as well.
But I still believe in due process and privacy and small government and limiting government's power over people's lives. I'm not a doom sayer conspiracy theorist who thinks that the British or Canadian government turning into Nazi Germany in my life time is a likely scenario (sorry for the Godwin) but there are still a lot of bullshit laws that IMO do more harm than good and democracy has this one downside where the majority (some times a rather large group of people which was demonstrated in the last 2 US presidential elections) gets consistently screwed over.
Government is force even when they are democratic and are doing their job and serving the will of the people. They exist solely for the purpose of exercising force. They can take away your freedom, your property. They can send you to your death. The control and moderate and arbitrate. They are force and authority by it's very definition. So while CCTV has some positive uses I don't favour it because I don't like giving force more force. I don't like the idea of living in a world where everyone is considerate just because they're afraid. I don't like being afraid of being caught on camera walking into an adult bookstore. I don't trust the government to keep data safe and I realize the same can be said about passports and census data etc. but the way I see it the less there is to be abused or breached the better.
While you have no reasonable expectation of privacy while in public I think that you *should*. To a much lesser extent then on your private property obviously but people need to know that they're not being followed and recorded everywhere they go and having everything they do stored to some hard drive that can be accessed later and used against them.
I'm not crying Orwell or Hitler and I'm not even saying "slippery slope". I just don't want video footage of me when I'm out and going about my personal affairs. I'm a private person who doesn't even like his picture being taken in family portraits. My worst nightmare would be for me to be a celebrity. Video surveillance makes me feel like one.
We need a new word for something that's ironic because it is designed to seem ironic but really isn't.
The meta-irony here comes through in the point that terrorists aren't really a danger to normal people (statistically speaking), and in fact are probably less of a hazard than slipping on dog poop on the sidewalk. But you can get CCTVs pushed through based on the former and not the latter because almost all people have extraordinarily poor risk assessment skills.
Privacy is NOT a black and white, either you have it or you don't, sort of thing. There are many gradations of privacy - where being in your home with the lights off and no one else around is one extreme and the other extreme is having every movement you make recorded, archived and cataloged in a database for anyone with enough power, money or general sneakiness to peruse at will.
Until recently the scale never really went past a sort of middling-grey. Out in public anyone could see you and you could see them. If someone wanted a record of your movements, they had to put at least one other person on the job of tailing you. Nowadays we are about 70-80% of the way to total privacy loss - automated systems mean no more chance for you to see someone who sees you and everyone is now recorded regardless of any current interest in their movements or not.
We are rapidly approaching a 100% loss of privacy with all of your 'public' information recorded and correlated in new and fascinating ways to dig up and expose your 'private' information too - like the fact that you started buying condoms a few weeks ago being used by your health insurance to raise your rates because if you are buying condoms you are probably having sex and now have both a higher risk of STDs and of having children - both costs for a insurance company.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
>>I don't think these cameras who were installed for a loftier purpose should be used to catch them.
That's like saying, "The 20 new police officers who were hired to help reduce drunk driving should not be used to catch burglars even if they happen to be the closest officer at the time."
If your job was traffic law enforcer, and you saw a murder, would you just ignore it? What are you trying to say, that you believe that millions of taxpayer euros should be thrown away to prove some kind of point purely out of spite?
Why do you think that a crime isn't a crime anymore if it is discovered using unorthodox methods?
-b
(oh and for good measure, "Why do you hate Jesus?")
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Policeman have quotas... so do salesman.
Think about that.
Yes someone may have complained, but really if you take a close look at the criminal justice system in America it really does resemble a business.
Lawmakers = Marketing
Police = Salesman
Judges = Accounting/Invoicing
Poverty is the number one source of crime. Period. Poverty will not be able to pay for the criminal justice system. So they need to generate revenue to pay for the court houses, jails, etc... this comes from...YOU with your speeding ticket.
Taxes only pay for so much, but how do you know your money is spent effectively in combating crime? YOU DON'T. More people are going to jail and prison everyday, and the truth of the matter is that the streets are not safer, but indeed getting worse.
The individual policeman...it's not his fault he's just part of the system. But really it is the system that is messed up.
Lady Justice wears a blindfold not because justice is equal, but to conceal the tears of a failed system.
The summary is completely wrong and the blog isn't that much better. I can summarise it with:
- Complaining that CCTV is being used to witness crimes (yes, littering and fouling are crimes)
- Complaining that the crimes that CCTV is being used to witness aren't important enough
- Complaining that a law which specifically states that surveillance can be used to solve crimes is being cited when people want to use surveillance to solve crimes
Of course, the submitter takes an incident where CCTV was used to witness littering, and a case where RIPA was invoked to monitor someone suspected of fraud, and manage to blur the line to "ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS USED ON DOGSHIT".
Yawn.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien