Slashdot Mirror
Crowdsourcing Big Brother In Lancaster, PA
sehlat writes "From the Los Angeles Times comes word that in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 165 public surveillance cameras are being set up to be monitored by a 'non profit coalition' of volunteers. The usual suspects, including 'the innocent have nothing to fear' are being trotted out to justify this, and the following quote at the end of the article deserves mention: 'But Jack Bauer, owner of the city's largest beer and soft drink distributor, calls the network "a great thing." His store hasn't been robbed, he said, since four cameras went up nearby. "There's nothing wrong with instilling fear," he said.'"
Crowdsourcing Big Brother in Lancaster, PA
Uh, I read the article and it sounds like 10 self-appointed people running the show with 12 volunteers. How in the hell is that crowdsourcing?
... one operating outside my elected official's jurisdiction would be a true horror show.
Don't even get me started on a who will watch the watchmen rant. Such a monitoring activity operating at all upsets me
My work here is dung.
'the innocent have nothing to fear'.... What the hell is that crap? When did that become the rally flag for the loss of freedoms? Next they will tell us that if they don't get these cameras, the terrorist win.... Oh wait!
"Jack Bauer Likes Surveillance Cameras." Well, duh.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
We love the nanny state when it protects us from ourselves, but we don't want them watching.
I don't know about the rest of Slashdot (I haven't really seen that rhetoric but if you do, I won't argue) but I am certainly against all meddling. I hate the fact that the state that I live in has seat belt laws now, Blue Laws, and the fact that some intersections still have cameras on the street lights (red light cameras were declared unconstitutional in Minneapolis).
If a private business wants to have cameras which only view their own private/personal property, that's fine. As soon as it's opened up to a group outside of that private business or they are viewing public property then it's not acceptable. No, I don't believe in the whole "if you can be seen by a private citizen then it's the same thing." Once that citizen can play back an exact copy of the event in his/her head at a later time without any chance of fault, then I'll consider it the same damn thing.
Why is the surveillance done only by "a private nonprofit group?" In a truly transparent society such an array of cameras would be accessible by anyone, not just a select few.
How does being watched in public spaces restrict your freedom?
So strange to see my hometown on the front page of Slashdot...
The Los Angeles Times article states:
"Perhaps most surprising, the near-saturation surveillance of a community that saw four murders last year has sparked little public debate about whether the benefits for law enforcement outweigh the loss of privacy."
I've lived in Lancaster for years and haven't heard a thing about this. I just searched our local newspaper with no results.
There's no public debate because as far as I know this is the first time it's even been mentioned. I saw the cameras go up, now I know the story behind them... thanks to a random mention on a tech news site linking an article from a newspaper on the other side of the country.
Cameras.
I LIVE in Lancaster, and I had no idea! They said 'the people didn't object' hell I didn't even KNOW! This is such a horribly bad idea... I thought Britain was Orwellian with their surveillance camera system, but to have put this in place and for most ppl to not even KNOW about it.. that by definition is a police state! Outsourcing it to some agency is monumentally wrong. I think I need a pocket jammer system just to go to the public library...
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
A chilling quote:
"Years ago, there's no way we could do this," said Keith Sadler, Lancaster's police chief. "It brings to mind Big Brother, George Orwell and '1984.' It's just funny how Americans have softened on these issues."
I am not sure "funny" is the term I would use to describe the change.
But then again, I for one welcome our new...actually I don't, screw them and the fear they rode in on!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
it's a public place where anyone can see what is going on at any point in time. there is no infringement of privacy if this is a public area, and with cameras being visible, there is no deception in the intent.
Actually, I have to agree, but I also think that the camera feeds should be made public. Absolutely public. Publish them on the Web, local cable, anywhere people can get to them. The more people watching, the better.
My blog
You're against seat belt laws? I can probably spew a little bit of 'anti seat belt rhetoric' -
Rhetoric aside, you should have a seat belt cutter in your car in case the seat belt suddenly becomes an irremovable hazard. In any case the seat belt may help, it may also become life threatening.
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Historically, the two have had high correlation. See Persians, Romans, British, American, etc.
While they weren't perfectly free nations, they each had quite progressive legal systems that provided relatively good degrees of equality and freedom to its citizens compared to other major powers of the world at the time.
How does being watched in public spaces restrict your freedom?
Because you are not free to do things that are not illegal, but may be frowned upon by your community.
Meeting your mistress. Attending AA. Organizing a protest rally. Attending a meeting of an unpopular political group. Going to a fertility clinic. Going to an abortion clinic. Not resting on the sabbath. Going to the wrong church. Going on a date with a woman of a different race. Going to a gay bar. Going to a strip club. Purchasing alcohol. Looking at a child or married woman for too long or in the wrong way. Checking the wrong book out of the library. Stopping to offer condolences to the last victim of wholesale surveillance.
See "chilling effect."
Most boring season of 24 EVER.
4 A.M. to 5 A.M.
4:01 Jack walks around the store 3 times, idly touching various merchandise along the way.
4:02 Homeless man wanders in and goes into the bathroom
4:07 Teenager with long hair reeking of patchouli and weed buys entire stock of Twinkies and 3 bags of Cheetos
4:25 Jack idly flips through latest issue of Penthouse
4:28 Jack kicks homeless man out of the bathroom, sprays Lysol and reminds himself to get the new kid to clean up that mess when he gets in.
4:32 Jack dozes off behind the register
4:43 Door chime wakes Jack, man in dirty flannel and backwards baseball cap buys a pack of Marlboro Lights.
4:52 Jack holds lottery tickets up to light looking for a winner
4:59 Jack dozes off again.
Riveting stuff!
corruption.
shortening the length of the yellow light leads to more tickets and increased revenues for the camera company and for the locality.
if the goal is to reduce the number of accidents caused by people driving through red lights, then installing the cameras and lengthening the yellow would be the optimal solution.
however, the stories I've read/heard on the subject all seem to involve these cameras being installed and the yellow duration being shortened. And the camera's end up generating a good amount of money, but the number of accidents stays about the same.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Because tickets are sent to the wrong people?
Because tickets are assessed to the owner (not the driver) of the car?
Because you have no accuser to confront in court?
Because rear-end collisions increase at intersections with red-light cameras?
Because yellow lights may be shorter in duration to increase revenue?
Because government and for-profit private companies collude and share the income from what is normally law enforcement (government-only) fines?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
This seems to mirror the spiel before cameras were put up in the central city park called "the square" here in a medium city in New Zealand. The Square had problems with violence at nights, and really did become a place not to walk thru at night. It was intended cameras would be put in The Square and the police would monitor them at trouble times at night, and the city council would pay(hence it needed selling to the ratepayers).
The ratepayers fell into line very quickly and funding was given, helped by the robbery of an employee leaving working at just 6:30pm.
The first camera was installed at an intersection well away from The Square, not in it. The next camera was similar. More were installed. Then there was a headline, drunk drivers were being caught. It turns out they were turning the cameras to the streets surrounding The Square and watching up to 400m down side streets for patrons to leave taverns and pubs and directing police cars if "staggering patrons got into a car". When asked 6 months later why crime wasn't being reduced in the square the council said "oh, the ones there do not work, they havent been wired up."
A real snow job
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
I wonder about that. I really do.
Why is it that photographs and videos taken of models need copyright consent forms in order to be used, but my images can be snapped by thousands of cameras and copied about servers until doomsday without me even being informed?
Why is it that if I followed someone around every day, taking pictures and recording their movements, I would be convicted or stalking or have a restraining order put on me, yet it's OK for any old group to set up a nationwide system of cameras to track and record forever the movements of every single person in the state?
Why is it OK for them to record me, but it's not OK for me to see the footage?
I think Jack Bauer's comment really says it all. This system is not about protecting people. It's about intimidating them. It's about instilling fear. It's about the watchers gaining power over the watched. That is the systems primary purpose.
Who do you think will be manning these cameras? College students and libertarians? Not a chance. Think prudes and gossips, closet authoritarians and morality police, the perpetually offended and those who long for a society in which people know their place. And that place will be certainly be on camera instead of behind it.
Surveillance systems like this are getting implemented, everywhere, and their effect on society will be colossal. I believe it will be uniformly negative. We will move from the freedom and anonymity of urban society right back into the parochial, scrutinized and regulated mores of rural society. It's coming. In many ways, it's already here. You're only hope is that such systems have legal restrictions placed on them before they run completely rampant.
May the Maths Be with you!
When playing the odds, I'd rather bet on the seat belt being helpful. Yes, some people have been trapped and died from seat belts, but a great deal more people have been saved by them. It's like fear of flying... flying is statistically much safer than driving by any metric you care to use (per mile traveled, number of passengers, whatever). But more people fear flying than driving. A seat belt cutter is not a bad idea to have accessible in a car, but you're an idiot if you refuse to wear a seat belt because there is no cutter or justify it by saying you might get trapped.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
You can probably blame insurance companies for this one.
Actually, blame the government and car companies for it. It's actually kind of a fun story.
Way back when, the government mandated that the auto industry come up with some kind of "passive restraint system" for cars. Well, of course, the auto industry didn't like this. So the deal was made--the auto industry wouldn't have to have some kind of "passive restraint system" if the states that made up 80% passed a mandatory seatbelt law.
With that, auto industry lobbyists went to work getting all the states to pass a mandatory seatbelt law. The problem is that it actually was a pretty tough sell. The solution was to make it a "secondary enforcement"--the police cannot stop you for not wearing a seatbelt. But if they stop you for something else and notice you don't have a seatbelt on, they can give you a fine. There's usually no insurance issues, points on your license, or anything like that. So as long as you were a "good driver" (and remember that more than 50% of all Americans consider themselves 'above average drivers'), you didn't have much to fear. But it still fit the criteria of "seat belt law", so it counted.
Now the courts eventually threw out this "deal" and said the auto industry had to provide a passive restraint system anyway. Of course, the laws were already passed and it's tough to get a law repealed--especially a law that "saves lives."