A Surveillance Camera On Every Chicago Street Corner?

Mike writes "Chicago Mayor Daley has stated that if his Olympic dreams come true, by 2016 there will be a surveillance camera on 'every street corner in Chicago.' Just like in London, elected officials all over America appear to be happily advancing a 'surveillance society' without regard for civil rights or privacy concerns. Ray Orozco, executive director of Chicago's Office of Emergency Management and Communications is quoted as saying, 'We're going to grow the system until we eventually cover one end of the city to the other.'" Chicago has been developing its surveillance network for some time, but it seems they plan to continue increasing the scale.

Comments

The cameras do nothing

[Lord Byron II]

Christ, they put those cameras in several years ago in the most high crime parts of Chicago. And you know what? They're still the most high crime parts of Chicago.

If you want crime to drop, give people a decent education, a decent job, and decent opportunity not to join a gang. And if you really want to increase enforcement, then stick a cop, not a camera, on every corner.

This is nothing more than "security theater" on a city-wide scale.

Re:The cameras do nothing

[Bazman]

A cop on every corner? Yeah, because cops are reliable witnesses who never lie or 'accidentally' not notice a little crime going on.

What about a cop with a camera on every corner?

Re:The cameras do nothing

[IndustrialComplex]

"A" doesn't work.
"B" doesn't work.
Oh, I know! Let's try "A+B"!

Twit.

My tires won't get me to work, and my car won't work w/o tires.

I'm actually FOR cops with cameras, and streetcorners without cameras. I've never been arrested by a camera, and wish that when I was, there was one there.

Re:The cameras do nothing

[NekoXP]

That's because "high crime" is a statistic, the more crime reported or monitored, the higher it gets.

Nobody should be worried about cameras on every corner unless they are a criminal worried about being caught in the act.

To run around ranting that cameras invade privacy and erode civil liberties is fundamentally mis-targeted - it's not the cameras that invade privacy, and it's not within the function of a mere imaging device to erode your civil liberties.

To say that a camera does this, implies that you're of the assumption that civil liberties exist to allow you to freely commit crimes, to take the risk if you will.
The topic is right; "the cameras do nothing". They are passive. Put as many up as you like, I don't mind.

What you have to be worried about is the repurposing of the data captured by the camera. This is entirely a "people problem" - people watching the cameras, people putting those images in databases, people cross-referencing that data in ways which DO invade privacy..

However I cannot think of a single instance where the presence of a camera did any harm to anyone. I can think of several instances where while it may be disconcerting but really all they capture is ordinary life, something anyone can do with a camera phone (the current popular choice for catching a cop beating on some black guy or using excessive force). And if they are capturing criminal acts, well then the people behind the cameras can do their jobs. If they are corrupt, then maybe that footage will disappear; what there needs to be is accountability for the data and procedures in place, and THAT is the important thing.

Let's stop whining about "cameras" and fix the corrupt law enforcement and data-selling practises that come with cameras.

Re:The cameras do nothing

[Man On Pink Corner]

Nobody should be worried about cameras on every corner unless they are a criminal worried about being caught in the act.

If you live in the US, you're subject to about 40,000 pages of Federal, state, and local law.

Trust me. You're a criminal, as am I.