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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?"
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.
For that, we have Batman.
"London did have a real problem with terrorism: every few months the Provisional IRA would plant a bomb"
Mostly funded by "concerned" east coast Americans, see NORAID.
Gee thanks,
Alex
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
If you outlaw shadows then only the outlaws will have them.
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
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?
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 :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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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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.
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.
There is also precious little evidence that CCTV actually violates our privacy.
You're making a case that it is possible for them to use CCTVs this way, not that there is any evidence that they are doing so. But here is the contradiction you seem to have missed - if they were so adept at using these cameras to invade our privacy then they should certainly be able to catch common criminals.
You just can't argue both sides - i.e. that authorities can't identify a mugger, but they know exactly who you are and can even tell which page of The Catcher in the Rye you're reading.
Perhaps I've said something to offend you or you've misunderstood a previous comment I made somewhere, but in this case, I don't understand your objections here.
It doesn't offend me, but it just seems a waste of time. You keep diverting the discussion away from the simple contradiction I pointed out, rather than addressing it.
There is no paradox: it would, unfortunately, be realistic to operate an improved CCTV network in a way that supports state surveillance, yet which still isn't a cost-effective means of preventing crime.
It's possible, but is it reasonable to make that assumption? We've had many on here claim boldly "CCTVs don't work!" while providing either no evidence to support it, or scant evidence which shows that current (newly installed) CCTVs have inconclusive results (and in fact really indicate that CCTVs do work and have merely fallen short of expectations).
... to denounce those same systems.
Then at the same time you have the privacy advocates like yourself who use a completely different standard, e.g. new technology, better police work, and legal, societal and procedural changes,
I just don't find it reasonable and I don't see how anyone with reasonable perspective can.
A CCTV camera can help to track someone, and perhaps with improved technology that would make it more useful for identifying who committed a crime after the fact, but it still can't jump down off a post and help if you're being mugged.
Respectfully, I think you have blinders on and are just looking for limitations to support your viewpoint on privacy. There are a couple of easy responses to your concerns:
1) tracking and identifying criminals is a great boon in solving crime and obtaining convictions - surely that is a good thing
2) a camera combined with a speaker certainly could be used to stop a crime in progress, without a single police officer getting off his ass
3) the camera can't jump down, but it will act as a deterrent and it will greatly extend the range of actual police officers
The question remains whether it is the most cost-effective way to reduce crime. But stating outright that CCTVs can't be a useful tool is just silly and ignorant, IMO.