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."

Comments

Yay!

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I welcome any and all pushback against monitoring of the public.
Here is related news, not quite the same implications, but a good trend none the less:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/22/states-local-governments-join-push-to-turn-off-red-light-cameras/

Re:Yay!

[cheekyjohnson]

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?

Have they been taken down?

[Anonymous Coward]

...or just "turned off"?

A Small victory.

[chr1st1anSoldier]

This is a victory for the people. I worked for a CCTV company for over a year and a half. Every move you made and conversation you had was recorded and the management did go back and listen and watch. If you didn't give 110% and say anything that could be remotely offensive to the management, you got called into the office and dealt with. A perfect picture of where we are heading as a nation and as a planet. I will say it again, the CCTV cameras getting turned off is a victory for the people and personal privacy.

Re:A Small victory.

[Frosty Piss]

WOW . . . that place sucks. Could someone post a list of common CCTV cameras with microphones?

England.

Re:A Small victory.

[Concerned Onlooker]

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.

Re:A Small victory.

[Attila the Bun]

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.

Turned off, not removed

[SternisheFan]

From the article: "The decision was made after Shoalhaven City Council was found to have breached several clauses of the Privacy and Personal Information Act.

After allegations made by a member of the public, only identified as SF, that the council had used its CCTV cameras to obtain personal information from him, the council was ordered to refrain from any conduct or action in contravention of the act.

The tribunal also ordered the council to render a written apology to SF for the breaches and advise him of any steps to be taken by council to remove the possibility of similar breaches in the future. The cameras are to remain turned off until the decision of the tribunal has been considered."

I wonder what personal info was gathered about the guy, and how.

Re:Turned off, not removed

[c0lo]

Some bits and pieces:

Looks like the City Council has spent two years and about $95,000 fighting resident Adam Bonner in tribunal after it used $150,000 in federal funding to install 18 cameras. One of the article's comments provides insight on why the opposition: CCTV cameras have shown time and time again that they do help immensely in solving crime, but the stats to determine whether they prevent crime are less clear."

An audit report has found that the council may also intend to stage its own small scale "security theater", by
* "Increase the perception of Nowra’s CBD as a safe place and reduce the fear of crime amongst business operators and the community" but
* "From the available statistics, it appears to be too early to judge if the system acts as a deterrent for potential offenders. Statistics for a longer period of time may identify a trend up or down but at present this is not observable from only a little over a year of compiling data."

Then again... stepping on the "conspiracy theory" tracks (aren't they juicy?):
* it also seems there's a new jail in town and some may want to fill it up or else the employment and stimulus money may go down.

Combatting Crime?

[iCEBaLM]

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.

Re:Combatting Crime?

[SternisheFan]

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.

One night last year I was walking down a street when a car drove past me, the passenger threw a full cup of soda at me (and just missed). A block away I see the car has turned around and is coming toward me, so I whipped out my phone and held it up to record video. Like a vampire seeing a crucifix they stop their approach, then decide to leave down a side road, like the cowards they are. Sometimes, cameras do prevent crime.

Re:Combatting Crime?

[MacTO]

I always chuckle at signs that claim the area is protected by video cameras, simply because images of the camera jumping off the wall and performing ninja moves pass through my mind.

On the other hand, they are an investigative tool for after crimes have been committed. How useful they are, I cannot say because I do not entangle myself with the law (as a good guy or a bad guy). What I can say is that they are a product of a free society. For the most part, we don't go around arresting people for suspicious behaviour or the intent to commit crimes. That means that evidence must be collected after the fact, and CCTV is one of the tools for doing so.

As for being a really easy tool for governments to spy on people, maybe you should set your paranoia aside. There is no easy way to sift through the massive quantities of data produced by CCTV cameras, at least at present. If they were interested in spying on people, it would be far easier to have human eyes on the street reporting on the behaviour of people. Even that is excessive in most nations, because the various branches of the government are only interested in select people.

Re:Combatting Crime?

[Jeremi]

Cameras don't combat crime. They don't prevent crime, they don't deter criminals, they don't allow police to stop perpetrators.

It's not unreasonable to argue that it was cameras that prevented the Tsarnaev brothers from carrying out their plan to travel on to New York and plant bombs in Times Square.

Granted, those were mainly private cameras, but public cameras would have done the job too.

My feeling (which I expect to be roundly flamed for, so go ahead if you must) is that camera surveillance in one form or another is pretty much inevitable in public places; and therefore the best way to ensure privacy and civil liberties is not to simply dig in one's heels and demand that the cameras be removed, but rather to figure out how to design cameras that are effective at recording crimes and also as resistant as possible to Big Brother-style abuse.

For example, imagine a law that allows government CCTV cameras, but only if they meet the following design criteria something like the following:

1. The camera must store video data to a local storage device only -- it's not allowed to transmit video over any network
2. The camera may not store any video for longer than 14 days. In fact, it is only allowed to contain enough storage space for 14 days' worth of video.
3. The camera should store the video in an encrypted format. The keys necessary to decrypt the video should be kept by an independent agency and made available to the police only after a judge determines that a crime has been committed that justifies access to the camera's video feed
4. The camera may not have a network data link faster than 2400 baud. That gives the government the ability to verify that the camera is operating, but no practical ability to access the camera's video stream remotely. If the government wants to review a camera's video, they will have to send someone physically out to the camera to collect its flash storage device. This makes centralized mass-monitoring and mass-data-collection impractical, while still allowing the government to collect specific video evidence after a crime has been committed.

Now I'm sure there are plenty of holes in the above design -- cleverer people than I can come up with something better -- but my point is that civil liberties will be better protected in the long run if we design them into the hardware and into the laws governing the design of said hardware, than if we simply stamp our feet and demand that the government not use a technology which many people perceive (correctly or incorrectly) to be an obvious way to identify and catch criminals.

Re:Combatting Crime?

[Jherek Carnelian]

As for being a really easy tool for governments to spy on people, maybe you should set your paranoia aside. There is no easy way to sift through the massive quantities of data produced by CCTV cameras, at least at present.

It isn't necessarily about spying on "people" it is about spying on specific persons of interest. You pick somebody of interest and follow them around. Even worse, CCTV enables retroactive spying on someone - so someone becomes a person of interest and now the people in power can go back through months or even years of camera footage and see everything that person did - great for digging up dirt to blackmail them with.

This scenario works even though the footage is not categorized by the names of the people in the recording, all it takes is a known starting point for the person being retroactively stalked and then you can follow them around from that point onward.

Don't get excited -- an exception, not the rule

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Don't get your hopes up. This isn't a trend, this is a statistical outlier. Government monitoring is an easy-to-sell way of politicians "being serious" about solving your problems without actually getting knee-deep in the sludge. Plus this what government wants to do. They do want to monitor you and will use any excuse to increase it.

Don't be fooled or led to believe otherwise.

Re:Don't get excited -- an exception, not the rule

[KGIII]

Unfortunately it looks like a review of a bunch of studies indicates that CCTV usage actually has a positive impact on crime with it being markedly so in the case of car parks it seems. It appears that they're able to legitimately pull out numbers to prove the efficacy so I think the argument must be that the decrease in crime isn't worth the decrease in privacy. Some exceptions could be made, for instance, as it shows a 50% decrease in crime when used in car parks it seems. I imagine that compromises will need to be made and I'd personally rather the increased freedom over the increased safety though I'm aware that other people will not think the same and that it is, ideally, a democracy where I live.

Re:Don't get excited -- an exception, not the rule

[TrollstonButterbeans]

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.

Re:Don't get excited -- an exception, not the rule

[KGIII]

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.

Getting too easy

[EmperorOfCanada]

Technology is only going to make it easier and easier for governments and corporations to spy on us to an ever higher degree. There will always be those governments who are "doing it for our own good" and corporations that just do it for money. So I don't think that we should have to fight our governments and corporations every time that a new idea or abuse of technology pops into their heads. We don't just need laws but an actual constitutional amendment enshrining our Right to privacy. The 4th amendment is pretty good and often interpreted but I think that governments should be extremely limited in their data gathering ability. I don't want license plate readers noting where I am, and I really don't want video recognition systems starting to note where I am and who I'm with. I don't want visa selling information about what I buy.

There is certain information that certain parts of government genuinely need. Say driver's license information. But I think that it should be a jailable offense for any other government or non government person to access that information for any reason outside of checking if I am legally allowed to drive or not. If my power company has my billing information and address then they should only be allowed to access the information for the purpose of billing me or turning my power on. Even if their own marketing department wants a list of customers to send "educational information" they should not have access to that information. Certainly the government or a corporation should not be ever able to sell my information to "trusted third parties." Not only do I not trust those third parties but I Hate them.

One tiny trick I do is to use slight variations of my address with different organizations that I have to deal with Suite 30, Apt 33b, Unit 30 Upper to see who sells my information. Basically they all do. With extended information gathering do you think they won't sell that information.

I am in the grocery store and they are watching me (as in their facial recognition knows its me) and they see me look at Crapios a new cereal that is 110% Sugar. I examine the box to laugh at how crappy it is. Then I get a text with a coupon for crapios, I get home and there are flyers for crapios, And Visa makes a note that I am less credit worthy because people who eat crapios are generally stupid. On my drive home I get 3 speeding tickets and 4 stop sign tickets because the drones and nearly infinite traffic cameras get you each time you go 1mile over the speed limit or don't come to an absolute halt at a stop sign. Having lost my driver's license I decide to leave this stupid country for one with personal privacy protection and print my boarding pass and see another ad for crapios. Then I log into the internet and get no ads for crapios because I have ad-blocking software.

Re:Law Violation

[gmanterry]

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?

Re:Wrong, public is public

[cheekyjohnson]

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.

Re:Wrong, public is public

[grumpy_old_grandpa]

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.

Be consistent

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Are there CCTV cameras in City Hall so the public can make sure there are no crimes happening with their money?

Paranoia People

[Rangelus]

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.

Re:Paranoia People

[Rangelus]

Fair point.

Put it this way: When I say there is plenty of petty theft, I mean there is plenty of petty theft that is caught. Sure, maybe only 1% of all the crime committed is actually solved by the cameras, but that is still 1% more than would be if there were no cameras.

I agree with you that cameras do not prevent crime, or at least, there doesn't seem to be any reliable statistics to support that it does. I can tell you, though, that it certain does help solve crimes, and catch criminals. That's better than nothing, isn't it? Especially when the only downside is maybe your government decides to know where you buy your coffee.

locals?

[pbjones]

a single person complained and took the action. Not a popular decision.

Here on the UK however

[Gonoff]

We are unlikely to do such a stupid thing.

I have first hand experience of seeing criminals caught because of CCTV and I have actually been the responder to an injury spotted by cameras,

At the hospital where I work, car theft and vandalism has almost disappeared since cameras were introduced in the car parks. I have also heard drunks warn each other to behave because there were cameras in A&E. I have also seen where someone was given a watertight alibi where they had been accused of a major crime. Yes, they also catch criminals. That does not worry me either.

I don't know if they have much effect on gun crime. This is the UK and we don't have your problems with that. The last time I heard gunfire not on TV, I was in army uniform and carrying one myself.

a small thought exercise

[http]

There's a difference between being observed and being recorded. Given:

• Constable Alice is earnest, honest, and clever, but a little bit lazy.
• Captain Bob is not so lazy, believes in delegating where ever possible, and will listen to a good argument for something - but only if it's short.
• Carol met some nice ladies at the country club last month, two of whom have sons of suitable age for her daughter to date. They're all kinds of fun to hang with!
• Detective Dave sees Carol (previously unknown) hanging out a lot recently with some probable high-end fences he's been investigating, and asks Captain Bob to get someone to put Carol under surveillance.

What is the minimum amount of work and paperwork required by Alice before Dave can say (without perjury) on the stand, "We put Carol under surveillance", and Bob can say, "I can't fire her, she did her job exactly as I put to her"?

You'll note that I didn't specify the kind or depth of surveillance. This is deliberate and not an attempt to be vague. I believe you'll figure out for yourself that the bar for Constable Alice can be very very low, and folk more imaginative than you or I could make it lower. Alice, having an actual incentive, might make it much lower than that. This might be the most important legal question society can discuss at the moment; being in a public place and able to be seen by the police doesn't mean you should be recorded by the police. Oddly, applying the same question and reasoning to "Automatic Number Plate Recognition" devices makes them look exceptionally intrusive. Oh, wait...