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NYC Police Comm'r: Privacy Is 'Off the Table' After Boston Bombs
An anonymous reader writes "New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly thinks that now is a great time to install even more surveillance cameras hither and yon around the Big Apple. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers were famously captured on security camera footage and thereby identified. That just may soften up Americans to the idea of the all-seeing glass eye. 'I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table,' Kelly gloats."
... drinking big gulp sugary drinks?
THL phish sticks
as long as camera's are also installed inside police department in every office and interrogation room and are completely accessible by public.
'I think the privacy issue has really been taken off the table,'
Never mind privacy, all of your rights are off the table. I imagine that fighting this is a bit like fighting windmills, but all this oppression does is it creates more negativity and more negativity will cause more violence.
You can't handle the truth.
What we learned from Boston was that there is no reason for centralized surveillance. Privately owned cameras (around businesses) provided enough coverage. And the police were then able to provide warrants to acquire the video. It worked perfectly from a privacy standpoint and in providing necessary information to law enforcement.
Since the cameras we have in place already were sufficient to identify the suspects, we obviously need more cameras.
We call this "logic".
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Kelly dismisses critics who argue that increased cameras threaten privacy rights, giving governments the ability to monitor people in public spaces.
“The people who complain about it, I would say, are a relatively small number of folks, because the genie is out of the bottle,” Kelly said. “People realize that everywhere you go now, your picture is taken.”
There's a stark difference between a store knowing I am in their store and a centralized location storing all of my visits. And then there's an even further jump when it's a government doing that. I'm fine that I go into Gamestop and Gamestop gets tapes of me looking at games. I'm fine that I go to Chipotle and there's a camera on the cash register. I'm fine that I then walk by the entrance to an electronics store and I'm on their cameras passing by. That's cool, if they want to put together the odd footage they have of me going there, I'm not really concerned about that. And that's the stuff that ended up helping catch the Boston suspects.
I'm not okay when one centralized location stores that data and my complete movements can be tracked. If a Gamestop employee got my address from a purchase and wanted to search my house, he'd have only the time I'm on camera to do it. If my whole trip is detailed, it could be done covertly quite easily.
Decentralizing the stores of this video information has its own merits and disadvantages but I think there is a very small group of people that are uneasy with being videotaped at a grocery store by the grocery store yet a large group of people (once they think about what their tax dollars are being spent on) that would be uneasy about a government system centralizing this and putting individuals in charge of it.
What worked here is that businesses realized they each had a piece of the puzzle to solve a heinous crime. This commissioner's claim that technology exists that would have prevented these attacks had it been a government controlled and centralized effort is largely horseshit and what benefits that pretends to provide are insignificant compared to the possible evils it could unleash.
By the way, if this topic interests you then you should be watching Germany closely.
My work here is dung.
Then, any cameras being placed should be openly accessible to the public in real time. I won't like the presence of cameras, but at least this is consistent with the sentiment that public places are not to be considered private.
YOU LEAVE ABBY OUT OF THIS!
What we learned from Boston was that there is no reason for centralized surveillance. Privately owned cameras (around businesses) provided enough coverage. And the police were then able to provide warrants to acquire the video. It worked perfectly from a privacy standpoint and in providing necessary information to law enforcement.
To clarify his point (yours is valid but you're not addressing his claims fully):
Could more cameras in New York City help prevent attacks like the one at the Boston Marathon? That's what Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the NYPD is looking into.
The department already uses so-called smart cameras that hone in on unattended bags, and set off alarms.
Emphasis mine. I totally agree with you but the argument here is that they could prevent attacks. I find that argument specious and foolhardy in that a bomb could be disguised as anything and a suicide bomber (as these individuals clearly had no intention of surviving a police encounter) would simply continue to wear the explosive into the crowd. I think they need to reevaluate what little benefit it would provide against the massive issues and rights violations it could cause system-wide.
My work here is dung.
When they talk about "privacy" they mean the privacy of the people who are not the police and not the politicians. They still get all the privacy they want.
Because of, you know, "national security" and "terrorists".
It's all the media's manipulation of what people pay attention to. If you talk to individuals who can process thoughts within their own mind, it isn't unlikely that they can see the rational reality that the Boston Bombings were really not That Big of a Deal in the grand scope of things. More people are killed and injured on a daily basis just driving or riding in their fabulous automobiles.
I agree. Imagine someone stalking ex-girlfriends using omnipresent publicly-accessible cameras. Or planning a robbery with a partner monitoring cameras to tip him off when the police are responding. Maybe your workplace has someone checking cameras and asking why you went out to lunch after calling in sick. The correct response to Big Brother is not to give him more siblings.
Liberty? OFF THE TABLE!
Freedom? OFF THE TABLE!
Justice? OFF THE TABLE!
You are now safe from the threat we created for you.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As far as cameras looking at police officers. We need a lot more of that. Police routinely 'beat people up' and conduct illegal searches. They need to be put on a short leash.
Pick up that can.
Seriously, this country is fast turning into a giant open-air penitentiary where the gov and police are the wardens and guards and all the citizens are considered the same as inmates.
It's easy to understand now why the gov is so ravenously desperate for gun control and elimination of our 2nd Amendment RKBA. When that's gone, then they can finish eliminating the 1st, the 4th, the 5th, etc.
I used to think the right wing gun nuts were all paranoid delusional whacko's but more and more I begin to see that perhaps they may have been correct all along.
That's most definitely the truth, but it's hard to convince people to understand that their expectations of life are simply wrong. In a car or crossing the street, we all know, at some level, there is a certain amount of risk and possibility that something "bad" could happen... and when it's an accident, we can forgive and move on. When it's something else, we want to blame, punish and all manner of other things.
Here's the thing though -- none of the things the government will do can make anyone "safer." It just makes it easier for them to do other things and to inhibit and limit others while permitting themselves and their friends added privilege, freedom and protection from public knowledge.
Culturally, we have got to get a better grip on and perspective of reality. There was a time and a place where we could let our children run around free to play and learn and grow. We can't do that any more because we've been cultured into fear of everything. And this all happened in my life time as I recall as a 5 to 10 year old being all over the neighborhood without a thought of checking in at home or any such thing. I was always home in time to eat or go to bed... I did what was expected of me and my parents had no cause for worry. I'm 45 years old this year. PEOPLE have not changed. They have not. It is our fears which have changed everything.
If strangers have the right to "see" me with their eyes as I walk the street and walk in to a store, is it so different if that "seeing" is recorded?
Yes, obviously. There would then be permanent documentation of every move everyone makes while in public which can be accessed now or at any time in the future for reasons which will not be made clear and will be subject to change at any time.
I think what the "privacy" crowd wants is a right to "anonymity". And I'm not sure we have a right to "anonymity".
No, what they want is their right to not be harassed upheld. Their right to not have every moment of their public activities stored as part of a permanent record. It is not unreasonable.
I really hope they don't put up ever more cameras. We don't need them. Crime has been falling since 1988 and the US murder rate is around 5.4 / 100,000 people. And that is close to its all time low. And terrorism is rare and unlikely to kill or hurt anyone. When can we start rolling out policy based on data and evidence not on fear?
As far as cameras looking at police officers. We need a lot more of that. Police routinely 'beat people up' and conduct illegal searches. They need to be put on a short leash.
You provided the per-capita murder rate. Can you also provide the per-capita for people beat up by police and for illegal searches?
Well that's the point isn't it. We can't collect data because police lack effective oversight. If there was an an agency whose job it was to only oversee the police, who could not arrest civilians, and who had access to cameras, microphones and general surveillance of the police - then we could get an idea what kind of stuff goes down.
You only have to look at the cases coming out of the Innocence project to see the incredible abuses by the criminal justice system.
You are a good example of someone who is 80% down the slippery slope. Anonymity is one type of privacy. It is an important type of privacy. It may very well be the most important type of privacy. It is the type of privacy that you get when you mark a box on a ballot.
I have read several different science fiction stories based on real technology, where face recognition tracks individuals and stores it in a database, along woth car tracking.
One story even did a Google Earth kind of things and tracked you inside buildings as well. Type in a name, boom! Exactly where you are, and were, is known and logged.
We do not want to give government this power.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actually, it would be a third right: The right to have data destroyed.
Right now, it is almost a mandate for businesses to keep as much data as possible indefinitely.
What is needed is a discard date, just like with HIPAA patient records. For example:
Camera footage has to be chucked after 30 days unless there is an active investigation (civil/criminal) in progress.
Browsing records also get chucked after 30 days. This is long enough for a party to do a motion of discovery.
These dates do not reset when the info is rented or sold, so an ad company with browser data has to purge it or else.
Finally, information should have a copyright belonging to the person it is about. That copyright begins the day after the info expires. This way, if someone has expired camera footage, a simple DMCA takedown request will purge it.
Primus promulgatione!
First post!
Malo periculosam libertatem quam quietum servitium.
This is a latin maxim which Wikipedia renders that as "I prefer liberty with danger to peace with slavery"
Another rendering might be "I'd choose dangerous liberty over peaceful servitude."
Quiescite. Non vult ad comment in quibusdam legitur stultus senex valde, verborum usus, nemo amplius. Recentiores linguae experiri scribere volutpat.
This is this guy's own latin. It is loosely translated "Shut up. I want to comment to people who read a very stupid, old language used by no one anyway. Newer languages have people who actually write in them."
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
What you're talking about isn't in the public domain. It's in the hands of multiple private individuals who present the evidence of their own volition.
The problem with a single party having all control of information is that they only use it to protect themselves, and indict others. For instance, police officers have dash cams installed in their vehicles. Often when the officer is accused of doing something wrong, well gee we couldn't find that recording, or it's been overwritten, etc. But if you did something wrong on dashcam, well you can be guaranteed that it'll be retained intact.
If many individuals maintain the information, then things come out on principle. This happened both in the Boston case and yours.