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Newark and the Future of Crime Fighting
theodp writes "Newark Mayor Cory Booker is betting that cutting-edge technology will reduce crime and spark an economic renaissance. From a newly opened Surveillance Operations Center, cops armed with joystick controllers monitor live video feeds from more than 100 donated cameras scattered across the crime-ridden city. The moves are drawing kudos from businesses like Amazon subsidiary Audible.com, which has moved its HQ to downtown Newark, where space is 50% cheaper than in Manhattan. But are citizens giving up too much privacy?"
If you put up cameras, they will crime in the shadows.
Just think about it. If everybody had access to these camera streams, everyone could watch everyone doing... er... crime. Then call the cops if needed. Would work like Wikipedia, as everybody could possibly vote on where the cops should be sent next, or which direction the camera should turn. Then make money with advertising.
"So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause"
at least that's how this summary paints it.
They've had this in london for a while, and it's been a severe invasion of privacy.
There have been several instances where the police have used cameras to follow people home and actually gaze through their windows.
One particular man was so horrified he started protesting it, dressing up in bizarre costumes and skulking the streets provoking police responses.
note to self: scratch newark off potential career location list.
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The UK has the most camera's per capita, I think. Are there any numbers available on how much crime has decreased in those areas where the camera's are? Also how much have they incread in surrounding areas where they are not.
Next what is the cost to keep them running and what was the value of goods being stolen.
Also it would be interesting to see if people feel safer because there are camera's to watch over them or if they feel unsafer to have camera's watch over them.
I can imagine that the cost is much higher and that theft has just moved and people feel less safe while it costs much more even when compared to what is stolen. So all in all good for the few companies in those areas, but bad for the community as a whole.
Only real figures will tell.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Nope, they don't reduce crime. They don't even prevent them. They don't deter and they are pretty much useless.
CCTV cameras are everywhere in the UK, but, according to a recent report by the CCTV manager of Scotland Yard... They simply don't work, despite billions of UKP invested. You can read this analysis here.
Putting real, flesh-and-blood policemen, on the beat is the way to go. Putting cameras (which hardly qualifies as high-tech anyway) don't work.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
They've had this in london for a while, and it's been a severe invasion of privacy.
And it cost billions of pounds yet doesn't help in actually fighting crime.
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Where we have probably more surveillance than anywhere else in the world, let me shed a little light on how CCTV winds up working in the real world.
Come live in england, big brother is watching....
Crime is a noun and not a verb.
Fail is a verb and not a noun.
Since when do citizens "Give up" their privacy? In this case, and in most cases, they're having it taken from them by the government...
When freedom-loving people decide to live, work, and do business in adjacent towns instead of this one, their crimes-per-square-mile rate will plummet.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Right in the centre of London there's a square mile managed not by the Metropolitan Police but by the City of London police, and it's armed to the teeth with CCTV. Unlike recent America, a few years ago London did have a real problem with terrorism: every few months the Provisional IRA would plant a bomb, so the idea initially was to identify suspicious behaviour and/or to have records of just about fucking everything, so the perp dropping the bag or whatever could be identified after the fact. Did it stop the bombings? Of course it fucking didn't. This is London, not some village in the middle of nowhere:
(1) A wig, fake moustache, make-up and (fuck me this is high-tech!) change of clothing are enough to make anyone's face completely unrecognisable by current CCTV standards, and anyone will have mingled quickly into the crowd of a million other Londonners;
(2) Over time, criminals learn where the cameras are: each time evidence comes to court, each time someone infiltrates the police. I have one family member who works in a police operations centre, and he had to go through all the security vetting bullshit - the usual crap that's easily defeated by planting someone who (oh, much like, say, those in the 9/11 attacks) has a spotless record to date.
Now the terrorism threat is over (no really, compared to London when the Troubles crossed to the mainland, it's over), what do the City of London police busy themselves with? You may have heard of them as the guys that over-zealously notified a Church of Scientology protester that they shouldn't write signs saying mean things about the organisation. And it has nothing to do with the `Church' giving junkets to high-ranking policemen, of course. They also occasionally follow those who look like they shouldn't be driving high-priced cars (remember this is around the rich financial district).
Terrible crime will continue so long as terrible abridgements of liberty continue--people are always going to want grog, coke, meth and weed, and many people are ready to pay a lot of money for it. And just as many people are ready to do whatever they need to to make some money.
This is going to do is cause prices to go up, which in turn will lead to worse turf wars and drug related violence, which shakes everything else around it up. It's a white elephant, I hope this post will encourage some /.ers to look into this. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is a great place to start. We're talking $69,000,000,000/year to fight MARIJUANA. In fact, well over 800,000 in '06 went to prison solely for marijuana related charges, of these something like 70, 80% are minorities (though by a very large margin, drug users are white). If you want to get rid of crime, you need to get rid of the black market for drugs.
We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist.
It is Newark.
Keanu Reeves will (eventually) save the day.
With a little help from Ice-T and his cyber dolphin friend Jones.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You have no expectation of privacy in public. That is why we have those two words - 'public' and 'private'. Unless these concerned people scream at folks who dare look at them when they are out in the street, the problem is not that they are being watched, but something rather different.
No offense to Newark but you don't want to work there, live there or even look at Newark.
Maybe after they have cameras up for a few years you can come protest in some crazy outfit safely.
And these are going to be soooo shot out.
I give them about a week or two , now that people know about them.
..........FULL STOP.
Since when do citizens "Give up" their privacy? In this case, and in most cases, they're having it taken from them by the government...
The simple fact is that the notion anything you do IN PUBLIC is in fact private, is utterly insane.
There are lots of great reasons to not like cameras all over. Giving up some imaginary "privacy" component to your public strolls is not, nor will it ever be, one of them.
People need to get a grip and understand they cannot walk around in a protected bubble 24/7.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
1. Government starts installing cameras. 2. Regardless of whether or not the cameras actually work, the businesses see that the state/city is pouring some money into the area. 3. Companies start moving in, renovating exist properties or building new. 4. Property values go up, and the poor can no longer afford to live there. 5. The poor move away, and the crime rates go down.
Screw your privacy. This is great. It should be accessible to the public at all times. This is a way to watch the cops and the politicians, not the other way around.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
A couple of years back I used to cycle into the city to work. I used to leave my bike tied to the bike parking outside the city council offices, an area which is heavily covered by CCTV.
.
After finishing work one night, I came back to the bike park to find my bike missing. I found some 'bobbies on the beat' and reported it.
Anyway, I got a call back a couple of days later, asking if I could be any more specific about when it happened (I'd been on an 8 hour shift), as unless I could tell them the exact time my bike was stolen, they weren't going to bother checking the CCTV . .
I realise that police have more important things to do, but then what is the point of putting up security cameras overlooking a bike park if you aren't going to bother using them?
... cameras dressed up as crime-fighting ninjas in my head.
Seriously though, cameras don't fight crime. At best, they are used to convict the people who commit the crime. In a few cases, they may be used to identify a perp who is known to the police. At worst, they drive crime to other areas (and probably residential areas, since those are the people who have the least ability to lobby for similar "protection").
But ultimately they fail because this is a technical solution to a social problem.
However these instances are still pretty rare and where the cops are not tech savvy I bet they are non existent. As for the guy who dressed up in strange outfits as a protest he'd have been better off going to the PCA and asking if they had a RIPA sign off.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
The study that you linked does not indicate whether the cameras help prevent crime - only whether they were used to help in convictions. A California study that I read seems to indicate that crimes at least move out of the range of cameras. Too lazy to Google it at the moment :)
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The study that you linked does not indicate whether the cameras help prevent crime - only whether they were used to help in convictions.
The first one I mentioned in this post does. It's far from conclusive though.
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you know, one of those 'mundane details'
Ok, I am all for privacy, but when you are in public you are not in private. Period. Let me say that again, when you are in public, you are not in private. Everyone is for privacy until they are the ones who were jumped. Only then do they wish they had the cameras.
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
Here's my Axis network cam if you want to play with it:
Heh. How long did it stay up? Did it make it to the 100,000th slashdot visitor, or perish nearer the 1000 mark. Kudos for courage though...not many would dare flirt with the slashdot effect.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Wake me when Robocop starts his patrol.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Well, London (and the UK in general) is just finding out that CCTV has pretty much zero effect on crime in local areas. They never cover everywhere, and in the areas they do cover the CCTV only provides evidence. It doesn't deter much, as was previously thought, but it assists in detection and conviction. We even have these fancy "follow the person through the crowds for the surrounding mile and work out where he went" cameras - they don't work as well as you think, even with a human operator and hours of recorded footage.
I worked in a school that had CCTV in every corridor, classroom, toilets (not inside the actual cubicle but the washareas) and outside. The locally assigned police officer visited about once a month to collect various CCTV on the cases that had occurred in school and were going to court.
The ever-present, heavily-advertised, constantly-recording, 30-day picture perfect records with precise timing and location info didn't do much to help him. It didn't stop gangs of kids coming back in on the holidays and kicking doors down (the kids wore hoods, fortunately the police were able to identify them based on "teacher's guesses" and a lot of clever questioning, rather than hard-and-fast "this is definitely X" CCTV evidence, or capturing them red-handed). It didn't stop theft of laptops from inside classrooms (and locked offices) at parent's evenings. It didn't stop bullying. It didn't stop teacher's from committing various acts (pushing a kid against a wall) which got them sacked and talking to a policeman. In fact, only about 1 in 10 things did we actually have useful camera footage for and once we confiscated a mobile phone from a student because it had better footage on it.
CCTV doesn't prevent. It provides evidence. Sketchy evidence. Good policework can take an initial guess and push it through to a conviction but if someone gets stroppy it's extremely difficult to prove that blob-in-a-hood-A was actually person A unless you catch them red-handed. It doesn't matter how much you spend on recording equipment and cameras, most of this stuff isn't seen with a human-eye, so why should a computer-eye do any better? Most crimes, people don't care that they are visible. If they do care, they do it somewhere they are not visible which isn't difficult even in an enclosed school, let alone an entire city.
That said, CCTV in public spaces is fine by me so long as it's 100% that it's only recording public spaces. Hell, I record the public alleyway beside my house just in case but that's technically not allowed because of some silly rule. But relying on CCTV to do anything but provide a slightly better hint at who committed X is a waste of time, unless you can track them perfectly until a police officer can grab them. Even then, it can be hard to prove that any wrongdoing occurred, depending on the crime.
the opinions of the typical slashdot demographic:
1. middle class to upper middle class
2. suburban, or if urban, living in a low crime area
meanwhile, if you actually go to newark, and ask a sampling of residents their opinion: cameras, gunshot microphones, etc.: that's 100% welcome for them. its funny how the constant threat of violence reorients what your concepts of freedom and invasion of privacy mean. ie, to mean: freedom from street violence, and no invasion of your privacy by street thugs
i hate to say it, but a lot of what slashdotters consider to be the real debate on the concepts of freedom and privacy is actually a luxury that the poor of the world would consider alien. the hackneyed line "he who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security" is frankly, wrong. not morally wrong, logically wrong. for without security, a lot of that which you take for granted, including your entire ideological and political agenda, would not be possible. you can't educate, you can't earn a good income, you can't have peace of mind, you can't have civilization and progress without security
security is the foundation of society. societies with low crime and high security and societal stability have higher incomes and greater standards of living. please get the cause and effect here right: security makes this possible. a lot of money does not make crime go down. pushing crime down, makes standards of living go up. you simply can't build the more involved societal environments necessary for higher riches. you must have law and order, or society will break down in economically measurable ways, and in measurable quality of life ways, including respect for your rights and freedoms
how do you make poor areas of the world rich? the first thing you do, is you give them a highly secure environment. and in a society with high security, other freedoms and higher concepts of civilization can begin to be addressed. the concepts the average slashdotter concerns themselves with when thinking about freedom and privacy are impossible to address in a society without any security. the security must come first. please recognize that: security comes first, is of paramount importance. its upon that foundation of security that makes the debate, that you consider of paramount importance, even possible. the truth of course is that your entire ideological and political agenda fall secondary to the need for a high security environment
many of you disregard and belittle the concept that makes your entire mindset possible. you forget your foundation, and thereby serve to undermine your own set of concerns
now mod me into oblivion and consider me a fearmongerer and freedom destroyer. go ahead, shoot the messenger. i am merely describing common sense attributes of the realit you live in, but you don't like to hear it
i don't care if you reject this message. the average slashdotter is, frankly, out of touch with reality
meanwhile, the residents of newark know exactly what i am talking about
disregarding or belittling the concept of security for people whose daily security is a constant issue, simply makes them disregard you, as someone who doesn't know what they are talking about. and they are right about you on that point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause"
at least that's how this summary paints it.
They've had this in london for a while, and it's been a severe invasion of privacy.
[Citation needed]
Sorry, but it is. I don't know of any cases where a CCTV video of a celebrity (for instance) has been leaked.
Most people don't give a moment's notice to the cameras -- almost all of which are privately owned or on the transport system, and most of which aren't monitored but are just recorded and referred to if needed.
Liberty is ending not because of the CCTV cameras, but by the rules about protesting and the police applying "terrorism" laws to others (e.g. environmental protesters).
There have been several instances where the police have used cameras to follow people home and actually gaze through their windows.
[Citation needed]
Mostly to know why they were following them home (because she was attractive, or because she was seen running from the scene of a crime?).
I'm not sure I care anyway, Joe Anybody can follow me home and look through my windows.
Each officer should have a camera, linked live to the station (like the video feeds on the Marines in "Aliens"). The dash camera on cop cars should also be fed live to the station.
This would a) provide evidence for conviction of criminals apprehended by cops and b) provide evidence against dirty cops.
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So what makes you think you are entitled to privacy there? If you want privacy, stay in private places.
Next we'll have people at the ballpark suing the network because they showed up on TV when a foul ball went into the stands.
I piss off bigots.
There is precious little evidence that CCTV actually helps in fighting crime overall. Privacy International's FAQ has a few comments and sources.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that despite high profile CCTV being installed here in Cambridge (hardly the crime capital of the UK), it did not help a woman I personally saw being seriously assaulted: there was no coverage in the alley where it happened, so the police came only when I called them. Nor did it help when a substantial sum of money was stolen from a community group's storage at a local church hall: despite reporting the incident within 24 hours and knowing within a fairly small window when it must have happened, there was no evidence that the police even looked at the CCTV camera footage covering the only main road access to the premises. Nor did it help on either of the two occasions when I have been called on to give serious first aid in recent years, despite both areas being covered by CCTV cameras and the casualty obviously being hurt each time. It doesn't even seem to help with traffic, where there are cameras overlooking busy road junctions that get clogged up for everyone when a few selfish drivers don't follow the rules.
They did have a good story in the local press about cameras mounted on buildings on one of the main shopping streets being turned to look into students' bedroom windows on the opposite side of the street a little while back, though.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Except that whenever the CCTV evidence could be used to help with that sort of thing, the cameras are mysteriously switched off. This has been infamously been the case both for London protests, where large numbers of peaceful protesters (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) were detained under very dubious authority for several hours by the police, and in the case of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, where not a single camera on the London Underground managed to catch any of the events beyond his initial entry into the station. There has been no shortage of reports from campaign groups either, each with basically the same story: while police now seem to routinely film peaceful protests with camcorders, protesters attempting to film the police behaviour similarly have been threatened and forced to stop.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Often [officers] do not want to find CCTV images "because it's hard work". Sometimes the police did not bother inquiring beyond local councils to find out whether CCTV cameras monitored a particular street incident.
In short: they put up a lot of cameras in the hope it would prevent crime. It turns out it didn't. This, however, does not prove crime won't reduce if you actually start using the camera's.
My guess is that if you could properly digitise all the footage so a computer could automatically track a list of suspects from with the time they left their house to the crime locations you would catch a lot more.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
Well, I seriously doubt that you are the type of person that would have set foot in newark prior to the cameras. I work there now and they have a camera on the street which I work.
The purpose of government is to provide a sense of security; to provide an environment in which you can flourish. Newark was nowhere near that setup. if walking down the street was taking a risk - I assure you that you would give up freedoms. The level of freedoms you will give up will be directly proportional to the level of threat you feel.
At a baseline, we have given up community property rights, the right to drive at will, along with hundreds of other petty infringements of our freedom just to make sure people don't run us over on the streets, or so car accidents are minimized. Cameras in PUBLIC areas allowing officers to see a broader area is hardly an infringement of our liberty. One, this provides more substantive evidence that a crime is being committed than the word of one officer. It forces ethical responses from the officers. It provides a real sense of security for the people there.
When you end up in an environment where robbery is as daily occurrence and murder isn't out of the ordinary, I would love to see you continue to insist that police officers not be aggressive and that the areas you are in be unmonitored. Most people will demand a more aggressive stand by law enforcement and honestly this sounds a lot better than road blocks and car searches.
When all else fails, try.
I live, teach and observe Newark daily. From my window I can witness a decay and despair that Booker and his team can only imagine. Whenever I travel abroad, I am perplexed as to why Newark, and other US cities, are in such awful conditions.
I also think the majority of Newark citizens are good, but have been worn down into behaving as if there were no rule of law.
The crime will move indoors until they put cameras inside every building. Drugs can be sold inside a building and prostitution does not have to occur on the street. The only crimes that could see a reduction are random acts of violence (muggings and the like) and theft (physical theft of oranges jewelery and the like) which police in the street could prevent. Just hire more cops.
This quote... ...seems to directly contradict a quote from another article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1):
And CCTV pictures mean there has been an enormous increase in guilty verdicts.
Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It's been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV.
I guess what you hear depends on whether or not the person you're speaking to is a stakeholder.
That quote comes from someone of the Home Office (the people responding for this senseless spending spree), so yes, that's not really an impartial source.
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I was born and raised in Newark, as were both of my parents. Places like Springfield Ave, 18th. Ave, Lilly Street, were mine to deal with. I attended public school there. Also a county operated vocational & technical high school in the bordering town of Irvington, a short walk from the Newark border. After 54 years, I've only left the area for good, as of January, of this year. Putting aside issues like privacy & rights just briefly (though they are important to me), I Want to remind you all that there is a deeply entrenched inter-generational culture of crime, fraud, and, corruption in some of our many demographic groups. My perceptions concerning this culture are that it's driven by a belief that there will never be a realistic chance for prosperity or equality, is enhanced by the feeling that there's nothing much to lose, rewarded (even when convicted and jailed) by the sense of having earned "street-cred", and, hopelessly complicated by the relatively accurate but woefully incomplete historical accounts of slavery and oppression that many people hold. There are parents here that actually teach their children the ways of the criminal and on a fairly advanced level. More commonly however, these skills are learned on the street and fill a cultural void left by broken and dysfunctional homes and families. Many of the people these cameras are to monitor welcome the chase and the gunfight. They are further educated in their trade within the very prison walls we use to "correct" them. When they are killed, they are remembered and the "taggers" spray-paint their praises... They could care less about being on camera. If it is determined that we will tolerate such intervention at all, (and I guess we are...) then maybe the camera should be on parent and child from birth through adolescence? ...oh...WAIT...deep packet sniffing...$10. dial up
accounts that work fine with bittorrent...massive AI based archiving and tracking...reports of back doors in the leading P.C. operating system...We're part-way there already, aren't we?
(OK people, rip me up, this be Slashdot and I'll love it, not leave it!)
If you knew what Newark was like you'd be applauding this too.
People will yell at you from their stoops offering crack and heroin to passerby's it's pretty much a free for all in the drug trade. I'm pretty sure the violent crime rate isn't as high as Camden, but that doesn't say much.
Other cities being Detroit? I really can't think of any that are as bad an Newark except for that one.
The article admits that Newark is crime ridden and that rents are 50% less due to the high crime rate. Then the question is posed as to whether too much privacy may be lost in new crime fighting efforts. This is an admission that privacy is causal to crime. Some folks may consider privacy to be a basic liberty but how much privacy does one have when one is dead from a drug crazed junky seeking to steal for a fix? All civil liberties go in the dumpster when crime exists. Loss of privacy is a small price to clean out crime in a crime infested area.
the purpose of the government is to protect me from people and corporations trampling my liberty, not to provide "security".
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Now that is much more interesting than discussions about privacy rights. How would you go about protecting the public against such occurrences?
I've been thinking that you would need a wireless mesh network and some sort of system that would automatically replicate all the recorded footage across the mesh. Like a pared down Freenet, simplified by not requiring anonymity be provided. You would also want secure personal recorders as a norm.
You put that together with a social expectation that monitoring and recording by the state must be open and transparent, and you're looking at enough layers of redundancy that it would make it very difficult to destroy evidence.
It would be interesting to design such an infrastructure and make it easy enough for non-technically inclined group of protesters to use it. Neighborhood watch programs might also find utility in such a system.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
A better idea. Instead of police using donated cameras to watch stuff, citizens should be buying guns to defend themselves. It has been observed time and time again that in places where more citizens own guns, there tends to be less crime. Because if you're a crook, where will you commit your crimes? In a place where your victims will blow your head off? Or in a place where the victims are helpless and the police are too busy watching surveillance cameras to do anything about it? But then again, this is /. so God forbid if I should say that guns are not the problem, crooks are the problem, and when would-be victims have guns, the crooks' guns are less useful, and conversely when guns are illegal for everyone, victims have no way to defend themselves and crooks will have guns anyway. (Illegal? What do the crooks care? By definition, they don't obey the law.)
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
or should we develop x-ray vision cams that can see everything you are carrying ?
Have there been any lawsuits about this yet?
I think it is premature to to say that people have been "giving up" their privacy. I have no doubt that there will be some loud noises and lawsuits over this.
As another poster mentioned, this was also done in various parts of the UK, also in the name of "security" and "crime fighting". It has been miserable and abominable, and NOBODY likes it, "security" or not.
The purpose of government is to provide a sense of security; to provide an environment in which you can flourish.
Some might say that the purpose of government is to provide actual security, which can often be very different than some useless (and sometimes dangerous) sense of security.
I would love to see you continue to insist that police officers not be aggressive and that the areas you are in be unmonitored. Most people will demand a more aggressive stand by law enforcement
This line of reasoning makes me realize that we should resurrect Maria Montessori and make her the head of the DHS. I'm not a crime fighting expert, but am pretty sure that most effective way to be safer is to live among people who are aware of what's going on, and people who care for each other. Waiting for The Justice League to physically block you from danger seems naive. The Guardian Angel's strategy also seems wise: simply creating a presence of aware and brave people can make a difference.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
note to self: scratch newark off potential career location list.
If Newark was on your list of potential career locations, you might want to think about going to school and getting a degree.
The statements aren't necessarily contradictory. While only 3% of crimes are solved using the cameras, they may be an aid in obtaining guilty verdicts in a far higher number of cases. Solving != convicting.
There is also precious little evidence that CCTV actually violates our privacy.
No, the purpose of government is to provide *actual* security while maintaining civil liberties. There is no evidence that these cameras will reduce crime, as they've been used elsewhere with negligible results, and they definitely are at conflict with civil liberties.
What Newark needs is better education, increased economic opportunity, and more and better-trained policemen *on the streets*, not sitting on their asses miles away. If the social problems of poverty and crime were solved by sticking cameras on street corners, every country in the world would do it and we wouldn't see any more violent crime.
Try again.
I agree with your sentiment that cameras may not provide security, but I think its too early to say The difference between cameras in public and other forms of intrusion is the knowledge that the camera is present. People don't have expectations of privacy in public areas. If there was a cop standing on the street corner, would you take offense? How about a cop on every street corner? Its one thing to bitch about a camera in public and another to provide a means to resecure an area that is so run down that even the best of people start to feel obeying the law isn't necessary. Personally, I would love to see these cameras opened up, so anyone is free to view - keeps politicians and law enforcement honest... Google street view Ultimate edition Going back to the first point, I don't feel these cameras negatively impact liberty, so don't find them to be a burden. What is burdensome is a system of random security checks at an airport with selective "random" invasion of privacy that leads to countless delays. What is burdensome is being on a government watch list for flights. What is burdensome is a civil court system that can destroy a persons life without the level of proof required for criminal defense. There are plenty of issues that undermine freedom in real ways. I support the city in this goal of cleaning up the city. The liberties lost are those that infringe on the rights of others. If I am not mistaken, its "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" that people drone on about. Unsafe streets interfere with the first and third enough to impose a little on the second. A vigilant public and a demand of transparency should be maintained.
When all else fails, try.
Why do you assume it's the poor causing crime? Poverty doesn't cause crime; crime causes poverty.
Yes, Detroit is number one, but Newark's only 16, right behind our nations capitol.
1. Detroit, MI
2. Atlanta, GA
3. Camden, NJ
4. Baltimore, MD
5. St. Louis, MO
6. Gary, IN
7. Flint, MI
8. West Palm Beach, FL
9. Miami, FL
10. New Orleans, LA
11. Tampa, FL
12. Kansas City, MO
13. Jackson, MS
14. Richmond, VA
15. Youngstown, OH
16. Newark, NJ
17. Washington, DC
I almost got mugged in Newark, near the train station, I managed to outsmart the guy by getting into the bus while the doors were closing (hey, they do the same to snag a chain before the subway closes door). I do not think that it will not work, and how people are extremely PO'ed with Corzine and all the spending all over the state, I think that this is helping who knows who's pocket rather than fighting crime. The city of Cayey, Puerto Rico put a lot of cameras all over town. Two weeks ago the FBI nabbed 70 people living in public housing that were selling drugs for the past 16 years. Did it help? No, people in Cayey do not feel any safer, and complain downtown has become a shooting gallery. I doubt that will help...
Vi havas e-poston.
Since when has there ever been an expectation of privacy in a public place?
In a culture where data collection, storage and mining is as easy as it is fast becoming, we need to reevaluate what we mean by "privacy" and what reasonable expectations are. It is normal that if you walk down the street, others walking down the street see you, momentarily. It is not normal that every time you leave your home, you are tracked everywhere you go and your every movement is recorded for future examination by unidentified, unaccountable parties with the power to destroy your life.
Don't think it could happen? CCTV provides a mechanism for the authorities to track anyone they want covertly, with effectively no accountability at all. Combine that with the rapid advances in technology for facial recognition and even recognition through the way someone moves, the trend to store everything ever known by the government in databases for future reference, the increasing dependence on so-called intelligence-led policing that is itself often based on profiling techniques driven by those databases, an increasing yet still misplaced trust in the reliability of such measures by the front-line grunts who are increasingly employing paramilitary tactics, an everyone-is-a-suspect culture in the police and security forces, and a complete and utter disdain for the basic rights and freedoms of the average citizen exhibited publicly and overtly by numerous senior government, police and security service representatives, and you find CCTV at the centre of a police state where quite literally no-one is safe from The System.
If you think they are smarter than this, try looking, in detail, at the reports on what happened at Stockwell tube station in London on 22 July 2005, as a direct consequence of a catastrophic failure of communication and of numerous separate processes by authorities conducting covert surveillance who panicked in a climate of fear.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This is great. It should be accessible to the public at all times.
That's a nice fantasy. Unfortunately this is the real world, and if you think the government and law enforcement are going to just hand over their leverage against the public than you're very naive. You run the chance of jail time for trying anything of the sort.
"So this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause"
at least that's how this summary paints it.
They've had this in london for a while, and it's been a severe invasion of privacy.
There have been several instances where the police have used cameras to follow people home and actually gaze through their windows.
On the streets there is no real expectation of privacy. But using the camera system to follow a person to their home and peer through their windows that's not only an invasion of privacy that's abuse of power. Cameras do not detour crime they do; however, make it easier to prosecute the criminals. Any public camera system like this one should be pointed on the streets and on the streets only. But since we can't trust the powers that be to do the right thing we must assume that they will abuse their power and go where no camera should go. But if we had someone to watch the watchers then may be it will be ok.
http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Councillors-spy-camera-anger.4425535.jp
Politician approves of CCTV - until they put one outside his own house.
This sounds like a waste time and money. The crime will just move to another part of town.
Work smarter, not harder, with gps tracking
From the post you replied to:
They did have a good story in the local press about cameras mounted on buildings on one of the main shopping streets being turned to look into students' bedroom windows on the opposite side of the street a little while back, though.
I'm guessing that wasn't part of a research project examining study habits.
And while I'm sure there are many other individual cases that are similar, there is certainly far more anecdotal evidence of CCTVs working to identify and convict individual criminals.
So we're back to the hypocrisy of claiming that CCTV's don't (in fact can't) work, while denouncing them as a tool that is systematically undermining our privacy.
Police states are more *efficient*, not more *innovative*. But I'm pretty sure that large corporations can't really tell the difference.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.