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In Australian Town, Public CCTV Off Over Privacy Concerns
freddienumber13 writes "The CCTV cameras operated by the local government in the country town of Nowra, NSW (Australia) have been turned off following an order by the Administrative Decisions Tribunal. The local government is crying because it believes that it is losing an effective method in combating crime in public. Locals however are rejoicing that they are no longer being recorded whilst walking down the street."
Cameras don't combat crime. They don't prevent crime, they don't deter criminals, they don't allow police to stop perpetrators.
They are evidence after the fact, and a really easy way for the government to spy on you.
The cops sure hate it when they are prevented from thuggery by inane laws.
Or when someone records their actions with a camera. This is what bothers me. If the cops can monitor our every move the reciprocal should be true also. Why do they resist being photographed?
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
I wonder how many of the people who argue against surveillance cameras would be so principled if they were ever to be the victims of violent crime. It's my bet that they'd be the first ones screaming for the footage.
Even if your bet that that is true about an entire group of people were correct, what exactly is your point? That everyone who isn't a victim of a crime can't have a valid opinion on the subject of surveillance cameras?
"I wonder how many of the people who argue against government surveillance cameras in people's bedrooms would be so principled if they were ever to be the victims of violent crime. It's my bet that they'd be the first ones screaming for the footage."
You might have just been wondering how many of them would be quick to change their tune, but the rest of your comment leads me to believe that that's unlikely.
There really is no use for it other than catching criminals.
Selective harassment is always nice, too. As long as you're not the one affected, who cares?
but I do know that they're not a totalitarian regime.
They do not have to be a totalitarian regime in order for abuse to happen.
As long as the cameras contribute to the crime clearance rates, I'm fine with it. /Australian
Is safety your only concern?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Wrong, public is public
And 1 is equal to 1. Who cares? The fact that you're in the public doesn't mean that ubiquitous government surveillance is a good thing or that it's intelligent to desire it.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Do you know how England got to be that way? Trying to make themselves safe from IRA terrorism. Look for more and more cameras in the US, in other words. Just look how quickly the Boston Marathon bomber idiots were caught thanks to public surveillance. Just as most people thought that porno-scanners in airports were a fine idea because "it made them safe" they'll be fine with more and more cameras.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Government surveillance isn't about the relationship to surveillance to an increase or decrease in crime, it is about control. It can have a positive or negative correlation. The end goal isn't solving a problem, the end goal is surveillance.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
That is an interesting line of thought but without further evidence I am going to conclude that the goal is the stated goal. It may make me a "sheeple" but I find that, by law of probability, I'm usually right about such things when I do it this way.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Your argument for total police surveillance of public space is flawed on two points:
1) Your comparison between yours or your neighbour's private recording, and blanket systematic surveillance is not valid. It is not valid because of the difference in scale. When you commit a crime, or a good deed, scale always matters. Kill a person, vs. a million, and you will see very different reactions. Same thing if you give a homeless person a coffee, or feed million hungry.
If we were to allow blanket police surveillance of all public space, with automatic face-detection, and what not of other technologies they deem useful, we'd end up in a 1984 / Kafka world of tyranny. Only from the false positives alone, there would be a prison population dwarfing the US' current for-profit "correctional" facilities.
2) Secondly, you seem to believe that the police can be trusted and uphold the law and code of conduct to the letter. Spend any time searching (YouTube or Google) for police brutality and mistakes, and you will find that the opposite is true. And no, this is not that case of "a few bad apples", it is a natural effect from the abuse and corruption of power.
Any power or privilege will be abused by a not insignificant number of people it is given to. It is unfortunately human nature. The police force is no different, and that is why there is thousands on thousands of videos showing the police acting like thugs all over the place. They cannot be trusted, and we must seek to limit their power, not expand it.
So coming back to the original problem of camera surveillance, the case in the article was a typical example of abuse of power by those who were entrusted with it. Give out more power, and this effect will only multiply. Nor are technological solutions to this social problem adequate or possible; they never are. Instead, we must simply avoid putting up cameras everywhere.
To summarize: All power will be abused. Therefore, we must grant only as little power as possible to any system or person in control, lest they abuse it. That's a basic property of any modern democracy, and the police force is no different.
I know people aren't going to see this, and it'll never be modded up, but whatever.
I live in a country that has a high number of CCTV cameras (actually, mostly traffic cameras and webcams and security cameras that the police are allowed to access). I feel they are nothing but good.
Every day the news is full of crimes being shown on camera, and the criminals apprehended. While there isn't a lot of serious violent crime, there is plenty of petty theft and the like here, and the cameras help a lot in catching the perpetrators.
Do I worry about being spied on? No, why would I? The cameras are only in public places, somewhere anyone could film me without my knowledge anyway. I live in a fairly large city, why would anyone be interested in me specifically unless I commit a crime? Even if they were, what could they really find out about me by watching some cameras? The places I visit? That I pick my nose and scratch my balls while walking down the street? All of this is obtainable in other ways.
People, it's PUBLIC. You should have no expectation of privacy in public. The government isn't installing cameras in your shower. They aren't bugging your house. They are putting up cameras to record crimes and help catch criminals. All in public areas where you don't have any privacy anyway.
Time for a quote: They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Franklin
This pithy quote comes up a lot in connection with civil liberties. The trouble is Benjamin Franklin wasn't talking about civil liberties, he was talking about self governance. A moment's thought would show that his words make no sense as a slogan for individual freedoms.
Since the beginning of civilisation we have had laws and people to enforce them: we have given up certain carefully chosen liberties in exchange for the much greater liberty of safety. The idea that safety and liberty of the individual are separate concepts is just wrong. They are both part of the same scale. Our task as citizens of a democracy is to find the most suitable balance.