Slashdot Mirror
Councils Recruit Unpaid Volunteers To Spy On Their Neighbors
Several readers have written to tell us that a recent move in the UK has councils relying on info from "Citizen Snoopers" to report the transgressions of their neighbors. Currently only implemented as "environment volunteers" designed to keep watch on things like litter, dog habits, and improper trash sorting, there is a certain amount of trepidation that this could grow into something more sinister. "It will fuel fears that Britain is lurching towards a Big Brother society, following the revelation this week that the Home Office is extending some police powers to council staff and private security guards. Critics said the latest scheme could easily be abused and encourage a culture of bin spies and curtain twitchers. Matthew Elliott, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: 'Snooping on your neighbors to report recycling infringements sounds like something straight out of the East German Stasi's copybook.'"
Like fuck it won't.
I don't like my neighbour, the dog. Yup, the neighbour didn't clean up after their dog.
Yes, they are not sorting their recycling.
This sort of shit moves society away from an open society to a society of fear. I would have thought that getting people to work together and trust each other (and deserve that trust) would be much better then getting them to mistrust and fear their neighbours.
Same sort of shit where doctors for children and podiatrists are mistaken for "paedophiles".
I wank in the shower.
Don't worry. I have a drug house in front of mine. That means we get a lot of vandalism, theft, noise, car crashes, and a loss of sleep at night. So I bought a top of the line camera ($2500) to catch the action and turn it into the police. They like the pretty pictures of the drugs and cash trading hands, but after a few months, the drug house is still going strong:
http://rs6.risingnet.net/~dattaway/shame
Here's the Axis network webcam for you to play with (you'll quickly find out I'm in the USA where bandwidth SUCKS!)
http://www.dattaway.net/
It does seem to have become a Slashdot theme of late.
Something I've noticed though is that the vast majority of the "horrific loss of privacy in Britain" stories refer to proposed ideas, often by people low down in their government whose job it is to think up new ideas (whether good or - as is most often the case - bad) but few of which have yet shown any real signs of actually being implemented.
Here, Bush prefers doing these sort of things in secret and using every dirty trick in the book to keep it secret. I'd prefer to have my government announcing plans which will infringe on my privacy before they are implemented rather than them being uncovered by reporters several years in.
I like 'improper copper'.
Reaction to the same activity in Budapest was a major tipping point in the uprising of the late 1950's.
While it became an anti-USSR movement the initial disorder was the sometimes violent reaction to local block monitors by fed-up citizens, according to some of my friends who were there.
"I've never understood the objections to that kind of thing. How the hell are the council supposed to do their job if they can't do something as trivial as check to see if what they say is true? Should they simply believe everything they are told?"
There are many ways that people can prove where they live without spying being a necessity. For something as trivial as a school place a utility bill, bank statement, tenancy contract etc etc should suffice.
"We're not talking about bugging people's homes or rifling though their possessions while they're out - it's watching someone in public, on the street."
Not in all cases it's not, there have been cases where the camera have been used to look into people's houses. Even so I don't like that people with no special powers or training at the council can track individuals' movements over something so trivial.
Yes, I can be seen in public by anyone. OTOH, tracking me is considered stalking when anyone else does it.
I support public healthcare, but calling it "free" is disingenuous.
No, it's not - when people say free health care, they mean free to use, like your local library or an interstate highway.
It's so people don't park on their heads.