Slashdot Mirror
Oxford City Council Mandates CCTV Cameras In Taxies by 2015
First time accepted submitter Beowulf878 writes "In yet another data-collection feast by the government in the UK, a local council has proposed fitting at least one CCTV camera per taxi to record every conversation. Obviously the reason given is our own safety. Thoughts?"
Obviously we can't have a discussion without the summary all but telling us how we're supposed to react.
Thoughts?
bet you're missing them now, aren't you.
is its own.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
In a society where crime isn't really "punished", the only other deterrent must be a police state where there is no sanctuary.
As societies must include anyone who wants to do anything they like and must admit anyone from anywhere regardless of their culture, keeping order becomes more challenging because the only alternative to (vanishing) SELF-discipline is IMPOSED discipline.
This sucks, but is better than the Clockwork Orange world of no order at all.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Here in Ottawa, we've had cameras in taxis for a while. I have no idea if anything has come of it, other than the added expense for each taxi owner of a possibly useless camera. Seems to me like the camera supplier is in bed with the city councillor...
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Porn companies have been doing this for years.
CCTV cameras have been fitted to taxis in Sydney for several years now at the request of the drivers. The hope is that this deters robberies. Does it work? I have never seen any figures - does anyone else know? They have also been fitted in State Transit buses with newer buses having a least three. In this case while it does not deter theft or assault it does lead to convictions. Also some entertaining reality TV on the news each night.
Are you living is the same world as I am? USA being a Free country??
Every cab/limo in NYC has a camera in it.
So this is one city in the UK as compared to -
The whole of Australia already has this.
As does New Zealand
As do Toronto and Winnipeg
NYC requirees either a camera or a partition.
Yellow Cabs in houston also have them.
This is to stop cab drivers getting robbed and murdered, not to spy on who is going where.
And they are making a video... or someone is.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
I'm from Blackpool and, back in the day, both main parties used to have their conferences here every other year. My parents operated a taxi so they always overheard lots of gossip from the MPs they were ferrying around.
Having the goings on in the back of a taxi being recorded by default would be staggering. No politician or business person could so much as have a phone conversation under those circumstances! I bet every pissant local government hack in Oxford will be trying to justify having a private driver, paid for by the council, when this comes into force.
Nick
It never ceases to amaze me just how accurate George Orwell was about where England was going.
Well you get what you paid for.... Oh that's right, you didn't pay the editors anything.
So I'm not a "Bash the editors" type at all. But . . . I certainly do pay the editors, if indirectly. This is a for-profit site. They monetize the time I spend here, the clicks on the ads etc. (And I don't ever turn off ads on slashdot just on principle to allow them to monetize me more successfully.) That said, they probably only get fractional pennies off me, so if they gave me a penny for my thoughts they're probably overpaying, which is why I feel obliged to provide my thoughts for free.
They've been compulsorily fitted to taxis in New Zealand since August. Taxi companies fitted them at their own expense. Drivers are saying they feel safer, and the industry is claiming the amount of abuse against drivers have dropped and the cameras have directly led to arrests, including for several very serious incidents. Despite the camera systems costing upwards of $1000 per vehicle, the drivers are saying it's money well-spent.
So please ignore the cynicism of the Slashdot submitter & editor - they evidently do improve driver safety.
That appears to be more of an American problem than British, AFAICT.
When someone says to you "I've got nothing to hide", ask them if they would be happy with the government putting a webcam in every room in their house. After all they have nothing to hide. Even the bedroom? Yes, the bedroom. Otherwise terrorists would just plot in their bedrooms. If they baulk, remind them of 911.
Of course if they are on Facebook they might say "Kewl! Can I stream it from my Homepage? [share]"
I bet one of the driving factors for making cameras mandatory are the drivers who want the camera and the car owners, who don't drive themselves, who do not want to spend the money on them. I drove taxi for seven years and would have welcomed a camera and panic button. The fact that this equipment exists will deter crime against cab drivers. Most of these posts have concentrated on rates of robbery. There are other crime against taxi drivers including assault, kidnapping and murder. The fact that one can no longer have a private conversation in a cab must be weighted against the right of a cab driver not to be killed.
The privacy aspect is moot in that a cab is not a private place in which to have a private conversation. It is the mobile workplace of a vulnerable driver who has to drive stranger around. The driver is not allowed to pick his fares or destination and has no backup in the event he is attacked. Would you advocate removing CCTV cameras from convenience stores? In some cities cabs are treated like mobile ATMs where one uses a knife instead of a card.
I live in Victoria BC and all the cabs have CCTV cameras in them and stickers on the side warning of that fact.
The British don't have anything to protect them from their Government, I guess because their Government was set up to protect them from their King.
Taxi companies started installing them to help stave off a wave of robberies. Basically, a taxi driver at night is a lone guy with a wad of cash, who has to pick any company that waves a hand to them. Some people thought that was an easy wad of cash, and invented a couple of tricks to rob taxi drivers. After a rather large number of robberies that ended with anything from verbal assault to one or two murders, the companies began lobbying for cameras to protect the drivers. While there are obvious privacy issues, the issues of safety of the drivers seem quite legitimate.
we've got people protesting that bankers make too much money. those very same protesters have never counted just how much of their own money they've paid to those same bankers.
if you don't want to be on camera, stop going to the cameras.
yeah, you'll lose the benefits of those services. of course. welcome to making choices. if it's important to you, you'll make it appropriately.
so stop complaining. start noticing that you've chosen to take the taxi with the camera. you've chosen to take the subway with the camera. you've chosen to purchase the car with the limiter. you could have walked, you could have cycled, and you coudl have built your own car.
make decisions; actively.
I hope this is sarcasm.
There are thousands of cameras in public spaces to monitor pedestrians and cyclists in London. If you don't want to be recorded on CCTV, you have to make the choice to never go outside again.
This is not about secrets. It's about opinions that those with access to the footage might not like. Effectively you cannot voice any controversial thoughts anywhere, because you are always under surveillance. You always have to watch what you say because someone somewhere is recording and archiving it.
...points some people seem to be missing are:
* An ICO spokeswoman said the plans were "highly intrusive and unlikely to be justified". ...the scheme, which includes both black cabs and private-hire vehicles.
* A council spokeswoman said the "video and *audio* would run all the time within the vehicle".
*
So, it's likely that there will be a complaint from a civil liberties group to the Information Commissioner's Office, and the ICO is already regarding the plans as intrusive and unlikely to be justifiable. The plan is to include audio - which is unlike schemes in other towns and countries, which use video only. The scheme extends to black cabs, which have always (well, as long as I can remember...) partitioned the driver from the passenger(s).
This is a Slashdot post because this *is* a new idea, quite unlike CCTV in taxis in other parts of the world. It raises the bar for intrusive surveillance. It's likely that even the CCTV-friendly UK state is going to oppose the scheme.
I live in Oxford and the cab drivers hate this idea. It's going to cost them at least £460 each at time when most of them are struggling to survive. They're also convinced its about snooping on them and have all raised privacy concerns. The council has refused to say who will have access to the tapes or what protections there will be.
Most Oxford cab drivers are Asian and few can afford to live in Oxford itself and so drive in from surrounding towns. There are hordes of them demonstrating at the town hall before every council meeting but the councillors don't seem to care - whether their lack of local vote is causing that or not, I don't know. Every cab driver I've spoken to believes someone in the council is 'receiving inducements' for this - no idea if its true!
Oxford City Council is hardcore Labour / militant and seems to regard large sections of the public as the enemy. Its elected by a bunch of leftist academics who have little idea or connection about the real world. Remember it was the last Labour government that tried to introduce ID cards, 90 days detention without charge and seems to have been complicit in torture. CCTV in taxis seems like a logical development!
http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/archive/2011/11/14/Oxford+news+(om_oxfordnews)/9361537.Taxi_CCTV_breaks__rights_to_privacy_/
This would be nice in Portugal, we get lots of violence and robberies in our TAXI's, this would be a great way to defend the customer.
Yes it's the other way around here, the customer's the victim!
Wish we had these cameras for some time here, I could have gotten quite a few taxi drivers fired and even arrested for the crap they do to customers.
False.
Mostly true, despite your sarcasm.
False.
Yup, just like everyone in the US is armed, so nobody ever gets shot, right? And armed society is a polite society, right?
No need to lock your door in the USA....
But there it's the taxi drivers that are getting tired of being accused of rape, and not the government. Actually, they're arguing against it.
This is blinging
I visited the US recently, and I felt less free than at home in the UK. I've read /. too much, so I was partly expecting not to see CCTV cameras, and partly expecting lots of security. There seemed to be more government controlled CCTV cameras in the US than the UK, although perhaps fewer private ones (in shops, etc). Lots of them were outside every state and federal building, even a state museum looked like a 1984-esque fortified building. Maybe they're just more visible, but that made me more aware of being watched. On public transport, except Amtrak, there was CCTV, on vehicles and in stations. There were less cameras, but there were posters advertising this as a measure to increase safety (more or less like in the UK), so I think it just reflects the age of the vehicles. Older train carriages have none, one or two cameras, new ones manage six or eight at the same cost.
There was more overt security -- I often had my bag scanned going into museums. They seem to have stopped doing that in London, based on my experience going into two of the largest museums at the weekend to buy gifts. A couple of places inspected my ID, as if that somehow helped.
But, what I wasn't expecting was the profusion of signs proclaiming laws and ordinances, with big fines backing them up. I felt uncomfortable crossing the street -- was I jaywalking? Sometimes I wasn't sure. No drinking on the train -- does that include water? Am I allowed to give my unwanted travel pass to someone?
The value of the fines were rarely posted, but someone I asked said they would be around $200 "and a night in jail if the police don't like you". In the UK, where similar fines exist, the situation would be a verbal reprimand, and a £30 fine if the police don't like you (i.e. if you argue). But most things aren't enforced by law -- you can eat McDonalds on a bus, but it's impolite and most people wouldn't. There's no fine, you'll just be scowled at by other passengers.
When I was in LV, every taxi I took had a camera on the dash recording the passengers and the driver. It was not clear if that stream was fed to the LVPD, or if it was just for the taxi company to monitor their drivers and passengers in case something went wrong.
I'm not against the owner of a taxi recording what goes on inside his car. It's his property and he can do what he wants with it, and impose any conditions he wishes upon my use or occupation of it.
This is an action by one local council, probably trying to make some sort of political statement. Councils of this level are very low-powered in this country and frequently full of jumped up jobsworths who want to be important.
It is highly unlikely this will come to anything: notice the comment in TFA by the Information Commissioner's Office that the plans are "highly intrusive and unlikely to be justified". (For those outside the UK: The ICO is our central, national-level oversight body for things like data protection and freedom of information.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The only reason you don't rape and murder is because you'd be punished if you did, right?
No, but the only reason I don't exceed the posted speed limit when I'm late is because I would be punished. The only reason I pay my income taxes is because I would be punished if I did not. The only reason the local pub owner kicks everyone out by 2:00 AM is because he would be punished.
In some cases, fear of punishment works. This is mostly true for violating laws that do not correlate directly to moral principles, as well as victimless crimes.
Nice try - everyone knows that all the names on those counter surveillance courses go straight on the government watch list!
Don't like it, don't take a cab, use another mode of transport.
OK, let's try this in a major UK city:
Bus: Cameras on board
Tram (where applicable): Cameras on board
Train: Cameras on board
Foot: Cameras throughout city centre
Private Car: Cameras (on main roads and in car parks, plus as per foot once you've parked).
Looks like we're talking about teleportation then.
Not to say that I agree/disagree with any specific use, but suggesting you can avoid cameras by using another mode of transport is just not true in many places.
The only real way to (largely) avoid them is to move to a rural area.