Slashdot Mirror
London Police Seek To Install CCTV In Pubs
JCWDenton writes "The Met Police got a short sharp rap over the knuckles yesterday, as the Office of the Information Commissioner questioned what looks very much like a blanket
policy to force CCTV onto public houses in certain parts of London. The story begins with a letter to the Guardian last week, from Nick Gibson. He is currently renovating Islington pub The Drapers Arms, after its previous owners allowed it to go insolvent and then disappeared. In his letter, he argues that if he had merely taken over an existing licence, the police could not have imposed any additional conditions. However, because this was now a new licence, the police were able to make specific requests, including one particular request in respect of installing CCTV."
I don't want the british police looking at my pubes!
I read this when it went up on The Register, 5 days ago. Can people please check the timestamp before submitting/approving stories? The normal 2 or 3 days old news is just about passable, but 5 days is getting silly.
Install the camera, but switch off its power-supply, or spray-paint the lense, or...
You get the idea. As long as their wording is so vague as to simply stipulate "install... a camera" it seems pretty simple to me.
'Course its trickier if they're more specific about the camera's operation, data connections, power-supply, etc.
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
We're coming George, faster than ever!
They did that to a pub in my town (UK) once. Granted it was a really dodgy pub that most people avoided.
The result though was not only did the known nasty types stop going there, no-one else wnet there either, because we knew there were cameras in it.
Its since closed and reoppened under new ownership, a gay bar I beleive, sans cameras. I suspect the change in customer focus is because even though its almost ten years later, its still remembered by most as the pub that had cctv everywhere.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Since when can police install camera on private ground or private shop ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I don't understand why people get so up in arms about this stuff.
Total times CCTV coverage in the UK has been abused in some Orwellian circle-jerk fantasy like people are always warning it is: 0
Total times CCTV coverage has put bad people away: hundreds
Seriously, what are you guys doing that means you mind being on camera?
Score:-1, Funny
He should ask them to reconsider if he promises to sell beer and not stock gin.
now we know the reason for the ban on smoking in pubs.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
and demand cameras/microphones in the houses, offices, and cars of all public officials, elected or otherwise. Actually, make them wear an ankle bracelet as well.
It seems to me they are far more dangerous and corrupted than the general populace they wish to spy upon.
Make it a mandatory law.
least of whiCh is Another cunting peop7e playing can
... I know the misleading summary helps with the old /. "ZOMG BRITAIN IS A POLICE STATE" propaganda, but if you actually *read* the article (an unpopular idea, I know) you'll see that the police were swiftly kicked into touch over it. I believe the actual phrase used was "Not now, not ever."
... a lengthy rebuttal of the hopeless summary, but then I noticed it was the UK-hating Timothy that posted.
Timothy, why do you feel the need to misrepresent every story about the UK in the worst possible light? Did you even read the article in question?
Perhaps you should. The police aren't installing CCTV cameras in pubs. One police chief is recommending to the licensing board that grants licences to pubs that they require new licensees to fit CCTV. The police would not have access to the CCTV unless they came down and requested the tapes (or more likely DVR drive, these days).
Now - here's the important bit - are you paying attention? They were told that they couldn't do that. Let's just say that again to make sure you've got it - the police were told that they could not ask the licensing board to make installing CCTV a condition of the licence.
So, in fact, the police are *not* installing CCTV in pubs, for several different reasons.
It's called literacy, Timothy. You should try it.
We are under constant surveillance in our Masaajid (Mosques), so I guess it's now your turn. They want to watch us praying and talking Jihaad, now they want to watch you drinking and talking Friday Night game.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Well-behaved people have nothing to fear from being seen sitting and drinking.
I piss off bigots.
The row comes a week after a House of Lords report stated that the steady expansion of the "surveillance society" risked undermining fundamental freedoms including the right to privacy.
Peers said that Britain, with an estimated 4m CCTV cameras in use, had constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world in the name of combating terrorism and crime and improving administrative efficiency.
However, the cross-party committee warned that "pervasive and routine" electronic surveillance was almost taken for granted adding that privacy is an "essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom".
Lord Goodlad, the former Conservative chief whip and committee chairman, said that there could be no justification for this gradual but incessant creep towards every detail about an individual being recorded and pored over by the state.
"The huge rise in surveillance and data collection by the state and other organisations risks undermining the long-standing traditions of privacy and individual freedom which are vital for democracy," he said.
Well, undeniably the UK has slowly let itself become dominated by the mentality that maintaining a grid of CCTV cameras is the answer to reducing 'crime' and 'terrorism', and constantly stoking those fears in the public to allow for this 'creep' against personal privacy.
Funny when one looks at the statistics, but being that so many, many more people die of preventable car accidents and of heart attacks from eating too much junk food, why is it that the same expenditures aren't lavished on those areas?
Simple.
Arguably, there are many who sense that it has little to do with protecting the lives of citizens, but rather far more to do with the government jealously guarding its symbol of 'authority' and not wanting to lose face... If the goverment's mission was to truly protect the constituency (rather than its own authority), I imagine a lot of things would be done differently.
There is such a thing as the amount of acceptable risk one takes by doing everyday things like going to a pub, walking in the street and such. It is very telling, however, that these sorts of ideas are constantly being floated by the police, as in the example of some UK clubs having to submit an application form in advance listing the names and addresses of the artists and performers scheduled to appear, as well as style of music, in order to be allowed to have dance music event without being shut down.
Death by a thousand paper cuts of bureaucracy, which in the end doesn't truly prevent anything, but most certainly sets an aura of hysteria around every aspect of everyday life.
Z.
Yeah, those islands. That's where Great Britain used to be. A shame, really.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Maybe it would be nice if Timothy did read the story and did some fact checking or whatever, but that's not what Slashdot "editors" are paid to do.
Perhaps it's time they did actually RTFA, and verify the summary was accurate, or "edit" them to be accurate.
IIRC, in the old days of Slashdot, Summaries were more accurate, and stories were not chosen based on how many page hits they might generate.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
someone got drunk and made a wager to out-do the Americans? Seriously, as many times as I ask myself what's going on in my own country, I find myself looking at bizarre stories like this that my own countries weird puritanical/mega-business playbook fails to explain.
Our countries agenda seems to mostly be simple, business at all cost, with a good dose of racism (terrorists!), protectivism (teh fearz!) and homophobia, masqueraded naturally as Gods will (OMG! they wantz deh pinux!).
It's almost like you're over there trying to make me feel better, but I know enough to know you're as intelligent and concerned about your rights as we are.
Quack, quack.
As opposed to an optional law?
It seems to be a common misconception that authoritarian, fascist methods to prevent crime don't work. They do. They always worked, they always will. The problem is that it takes away the citizens' privacy as well. If the only argument needed for increased surveillance is to deter crime, then we've essentially doomed ourselves into a society of surveillance, because it always works. Lack of privacy, even in public houses, needs to be seen as problem, not as something that can endlessly be given up in the name of security. Freedom and democracy always were and always will be unpredictable, that's what's so cool about them. To hell with the CCTV cameras. Of course they work to deter crime, the problem is that they also work to control the population, and that's a real problem that needs to be considered as well, not simply ignored.
I'm telling you, people should just start moving out of London - and England altogether. Let them spend millions of their taxpayer's money putting up cameras to spy on their taxpayers, but then there won't be anyone left on the screens.
"1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale NOT an instruction manual!"
1984 was a cautionary tale about the true nature of power. Most people don't seek power, so its a cautionary tale for most people. But for the minority of people who are so driven to seek power over other people; they don't need an instruction manual. Their core psychological behavior defines why they behave the way the do. People who seek power over others, almost by definition seek to control other people, so they seek to remove choices from the people they gain power over. They tell us its for our own good to help us. But its not, its to help them. They personally gain at the expense of others as they gain ever more control.
The people who seek power are seeking to become the political elite ruling over all others. Their goal is power and all that power brings them. But what they tell us is very different. The never ending myth and sales pitch of the political elite is that we can vote out anyone we don't like. Which on the surface appears true but it hides a problem. While we can remove anyone we feel is treating others unfairly, the problem is everyone who seeks political power is seeking power over others, so seeking to remove power from others for their own gain and so they are all behaving the same. All driven by the same underlying psychological behavior.
The 1984 book takes this underlying psychological behavior and shows how bad it can get, if no one stands in opposition to the desires of the people who seek power over other people. That is exactly what is happening now. The desire to seek power over others undermines Democracy. That is why every generation has to defend the ideals of Democracy otherwise we loose true democracy as the personal gain of the minority in power reduces the majority they rule over into a subjugated way of life. Which is exactly what is happening now.
Political parties move and behave like slime molds where the members of the slime mold don't know the actions of all the others members, but they all share something in common, which makes them move together. They move in a mass towards anything they desire. A slime mold desires food but what feeds political parties is any way that gives them more power.
>Except that we have really strong cannabis here. >Someone high on that can be very dangerous.
Some idiot with a computer can also be as dangerous. And stupid.
And I know UK weed, trust me its crap and its week. You might as well suck on Prince Chuck's tube socks to catch a buzz.
The effects of marijuana and alcohol are different but they do enhance the natural 'assholeness' of people just like /. enhances the one of geeks online.
Funny when one looks at the statistics, but being that so many, many more people die of preventable car accidents and of heart attacks from eating too much junk food, why is it that the same expenditures aren't lavished on those areas?
You go on to say that it's based around the government's desire for "authority" but I don't think this is true - the government is not incompetent or evil enough for this.
I think people are genuinely more fearful of being knifed in the street, intimidated by threatening teenagers, and suffering burglaries, etc, than they are of dying of being obese or in a car crash. You're more likely to die of a heart attack or a car crash than getting knifed by an unruly mob, but it's the fears and desires of the populace that drives policies, not logic or statistics.
I am a big fan of CCTV and the like, but I have more immediate fear for the security of my family on the streets than I do for their health thirty years down the line (sure, I care about that too, but it's not such an immediate "we must do something" type threat).
A few years ago (2002) I was cycling home in Hackney, East London, when a group of teenagers dragged me off my bike, kicked me in and stole my bike. Luckily a woman in a flat opposite heard the noise and called the police. Also I managed to get to my feet and flag down a passing biker who helped me chase down the kids and get my bike back.
Met. police investigated the case and told me they couldn't use the CCTV footage- the event was all captured on CCTV - as the quality was too low to be of any use.
Great bloody use of my council tax that was, putting in all those CCTV cameras if they don't actually work well enough to do what they are supposed to do.
So even beyond all the ethical discussions of whether CCTV cameras should be around to film people, and if it's a worthwhile use of public money, they don't even work!
True, even if they get caught and locked up (or put under curfew, or fined enough that they can't afford to drink) it isn't preventing anything.
Because as we all know, getting drunk and being violent is something everybody does once, and nobody ever repeats it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Folk who get caned on dope do drive. I've been to a fair few parties where people have been smoking then drive home, on roads where you'll be driving between 30 to 60mph.
Problem with driving stoned is it's like driving drunk - your reaction times will be badly impaired. Like booze, there's not so much a problem with people who are completely out of their head at a party -they aren't going anywhere but to sleep in the corner of the room - it's the folk who've only had a couple and think they are fine enough to drive.
Don't drive if you've been smoking dope. I don't give a toss if you smash yourself up but don't kill or maim passengers or other innocent people on the road.
sorry, typo, I meant don't smoke and drive! but don't smoke and drink and drive either...! :-)
Even if it's true that you're more likely to die of bad nutrition than getting knifed by hoodies, people's perception of risk isn't rational. Just look at how many nervous flyers there are, even though it's safer than driving.
Fear of crime is a big quality of life issue.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If someone named Ford walks in claiming the world is about to end, we can snag him before he leaves us all to die.
Fucking wanker.
I hadn't seen this story, it's an interesting Big Brother Gone Wild story and I'm glad it came back up if it was even up in the first place. And rather than whine about 'old' stories just go on to the next story or find something else to bitch about.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The important thing here is "to be made available to them upon request".
Recommending the pub install CCTV is sensible advice from the police. Many pubs here use CCTV for their own (valid) reasons, including protecting staff. To some extent literally, as a deterrent, but also to be able to prove what happened in the event of legal dispute - who punched first, the customer or the doorman?
However doing this via the licensing application is not a method of giving advice. It is where formal requirements go. Licensing boards are extremely powerful, it is extremely difficult to fight them, and for a sole proprietor rejection can lead to bankruptcy.
But still, requiring the premises to use CCTV isn't that terrible. It is reasonable to require a security policy and while the policy should be considered as a whole, if you're going to take shortcuts, CCTV is a very common component of a security policy.
But what is disturbing is adding the requirement that the CCTV be made available to the police on request, effectively creating a contractual obligation that bypasses the legal protections such as requiring a warrant. It would be interesting to consider what the situation is regarding this kind of information: is the need for a warrant a restriction placed on police (i.e. they can ONLY demand it with a warrant, hence trying to contract the obligation on the landlord is an illegal term and hence void) or is the warrant worded as a police power (in which case any contractual obligation would be valid and binding).
The situation is entirely different depending on whether the police are able to demand the information, or whether they require the approval of another person of trust to that information (i.e. the landlord or judge).
The Information Commissioner makes some good comments in the article however I think he should spend more of his time emphasising that anyone collecting information is a custodian of that information and hence responsible for it. If some company loses my credit card details, why are they not sued for negligence when my card is abused? Why should the store suffer when they were presented with perfectly valid information by a criminal, so had no reason to suspect foul play?
I know this was in a book or movie I saw - It may have been 1984, the TV in everyone's house monitored them...I can see it now, every TV will be required to have a little cam behind the glass or right at the top like a lot of laptops do now.
What will it take for people to stand up and say "no?!?!
Where is the line? Or are they just going to continue to implement this stuff so incrementally that people get upset, but not enough to stand up - and before you know it everything you do, say or think is monitored.....
As its name says, it's a private property that's open to the public.
And you clearly could gain something from reading more history and less Orwell. The origin of oppressive states has never followed the law. Dictatorships, like Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Maoist China, Franco in Spain, etc, are born from a period of economic chaos and extreme poverty, often caused by war.
I don't know of any dictatorship in recent centuries that was created from a gradual erosion of people's rights by legislation. However, a legislative culture that allows anarchy to form, by creating weak or illogic laws, will eventually degrade into a dictatorship.
Don't smoke and post on /. ether... :-D
Summary is fucking terrible, I had to check for a second that it wasn't kdawson so I could at least ignore it and move on.
FROM TFA: The CCTV would capture "the head and shoulders of everyone coming into the pub". In central London, this is sheer common sense. I've had people stroll into my pub before and just go insane at the nearest person (one particular incident in the middle of the day) and because of the shortcomings of our CCTV, we had no idea who the bastard was, so we could't bar him.
Now the "on request" part would only be as part of an ongoing criminal investigation (likely into the conduct of someone in that particular pub, so again it's in your best interests), and if they asked for a blanket request of all the footage of, say, the last 6 months, you would have every right to deny them access.
I figured closed captioning on pubs in TVs would make it a lot easier to understand programs over the din of the beer-swilling masses.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
...don't count for shit.
Furthermore - the name says it all. Cowards. Shouting from the crowd they are hiding behind.
Chickens. Pussies. Fraidy-cats. Jellyfish. Yellow-bellies. One who shows ignoble fear in the face of danger or pain.
Ain't generalizations grand?
Vasaline on the lense. Worked for the pr0n industry to blur out unsightly blemishes, and enough would probably blur faces well enough too....
They're attempting to push through a law to put cameras in anywhere you buy booze. Just small steps, small itty bitty steps. Sure makes me wonder when the UK is going to wake up, one time many years ago I considered it a nice place to maybe want to travel and live in.
Om, nomnomnom...
Sometimes, when I'm a little groggy, my mind plays tricks on me when I'm reading. The results are sometimes humorous mash-ups. (well, funny to me)
This one became:
"London Police Seek To Install CCTV In Pubes"
A very interesting picture came to my mind. I had to share.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I am a big fan of CCTV and the like
/. volunteers will be round soon to install...
In which case you presumably wouldn't mind it installed in your living room. Care to post your address and I'm sure some
The good thing about installing CCTVs in every pub is that, if I'm a cop, and I get videos of some politician going into a gay bar, my career is secure.
Or suppose I'm a legitimate investment advisor and broker and some politician http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=eliot+spitzer&btnG=Google+Search is getting after me because my investment strategies don't meet his old-style accounting standards. If I get a video of him going into a bar with an escort, I can go on with my business unmolested.
FOR THE GREATER GOOD!
Is is article a joke?
Why should british consumers have to China Central Television broadcasts?
The UK needs to just go ahead and get it over with already. It's obvious the government won't be happy until they've shoved an electronic leash up the ass of every citizen.
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
England is becoming like 1984, which was a novel. The USA is approaching the Wild West, with everyone packing a gun. Mostly a fiction crated by Hollywood.
Once you leave your HOME everything is PUBLIC property.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
That is a false choice - just because a certain amount of privacy is not important does not mean that all privacy is unimportant.
edinburgh city council have a better Idea, put up a cctv camera and point it at the pub 99% of the time.
THIS MEANS REVOLUTION!