if we didn't have the IRA, we wouldn't have hundreds of cameras in London or other major cities. If Michel Ryan didn't go on a gun touting rampage through a little village, Hungerford wouldn't have had CCTV installed. As a direct result as time has passed I feel CCTV has reduced crime or at least reduced it because the evidence from CCTV has helped catch the right people and put them away. Without CCTV we could be hunting for not 1 or 2 jack the ripper like people, but hundreds because as time has gone on, we (our lives) have become more complicated and we are less willing to tell the authority's about things we believe maybe going on about other people so kiddie fiddlers and rapists would be more common. I work on both sides of the lens and feel I have nothing to hide and feel safer with a camera operator just checking me out if I'm walking through a lonely street at 2 in the morning. I feel reassured that I know there is less crime than there could be partly because of CCTV, I just wish the government would make changes to the punishment rules like making life mean life and not parole after a few years, it's bad enough prison is a home from home and I really see it as a holiday camp with added security, not the dirty hovel it should be.
some of my pictures taken by my phone, have been used in criminal investigations, if research is being done, to improve picture quality in handheld mobile devices, then i will find it easier to produce a very good quality picture for 'wanted' posters for the company i work for. the future holds no bars.
i do agree the lens quality must be taken in to account but if the image is made up of large no. of pixels per inch, then the picture has more power for repoduction over a lower no. the possiblitys are ever more increacing as time goes on.
I'am retail, at the bottom of the ladder, i have developed a small application, to help me (and the company) keep track of fraudulent transactions, by recording transaction info (ie was the item instock at the alleged time of purchase? / how much was really paid for it?) and info on the 'customer', I did this because there is a scam conducted by theives all over the country who travel to a town, and will visit every retailer, & try to return goods without valid recipts (goods are stolen), so can capture details and stop invalid refunds before they happen. anyone who has a genuine refund need not be worried. having traveled around the country (UK) i have seen frequently the same people in stores just getting refunds, without receipts, using the same excuses.
unfortunatly the data protection act (the law to protect the goverment!) forbids me for doing this. (it wont stop me)
if this is the same thing being done by some one else then i am happy with it.
if ISP were made by law to block all (but the essental few) ports till a user required them, (by default,) the problem would be cut over night. the only requirement for the user to have a port (or ports) opened would be a reason to have the port open. i.e. the user couldn't e-mail in just in case some one spoofed his / her e-mail, requesting a port to be opened, but it would be easy to check with customer if the request was real. this would be difficult to start with, but it would cut unnessessery traffic to less than 5% over night - hell it might even put server companys out of buisness as those servers that work flat out shifting spam around lie dorment, the inital costs would be high as people would need to be told what is happening, and other countrys would need to do this too, the other costs would be staff at isp's would need to hired to handle the customer calls increase.
this would have to implimented globally and only ports used for basic access to the internet like telnet/finger/ping/shttp/ ftp/http/email/P2P allowed to start with. it would be better to do it now too, as the internet is getting bigger - fast.
Slashdot Mirror
if we didn't have the IRA, we wouldn't have hundreds of cameras in London or other major cities. If Michel Ryan didn't go on a gun touting rampage through a little village, Hungerford wouldn't have had CCTV installed. As a direct result as time has passed I feel CCTV has reduced crime or at least reduced it because the evidence from CCTV has helped catch the right people and put them away. Without CCTV we could be hunting for not 1 or 2 jack the ripper like people, but hundreds because as time has gone on, we (our lives) have become more complicated and we are less willing to tell the authority's about things we believe maybe going on about other people so kiddie fiddlers and rapists would be more common. I work on both sides of the lens and feel I have nothing to hide and feel safer with a camera operator just checking me out if I'm walking through a lonely street at 2 in the morning. I feel reassured that I know there is less crime than there could be partly because of CCTV, I just wish the government would make changes to the punishment rules like making life mean life and not parole after a few years, it's bad enough prison is a home from home and I really see it as a holiday camp with added security, not the dirty hovel it should be.
some of my pictures taken by my phone, have been used in criminal investigations, if research is being done, to improve picture quality in handheld mobile devices, then i will find it easier to produce a very good quality picture for 'wanted' posters for the company i work for. the future holds no bars. i do agree the lens quality must be taken in to account but if the image is made up of large no. of pixels per inch, then the picture has more power for repoduction over a lower no. the possiblitys are ever more increacing as time goes on.
I'am retail, at the bottom of the ladder, i have developed a small application, to help me (and the company) keep track of fraudulent transactions, by recording transaction info (ie was the item instock at the alleged time of purchase? / how much was really paid for it?) and info on the 'customer', I did this because there is a scam conducted by theives all over the country who travel to a town, and will visit every retailer, & try to return goods without valid recipts (goods are stolen), so can capture details and stop invalid refunds before they happen. anyone who has a genuine refund need not be worried. having traveled around the country (UK) i have seen frequently the same people in stores just getting refunds, without receipts, using the same excuses.
unfortunatly the data protection act (the law to protect the goverment!) forbids me for doing this. (it wont stop me)
if this is the same thing being done by some one else then i am happy with it.
if ISP were made by law to block all (but the essental few) ports till a user required them, (by default,) the problem would be cut over night. the only requirement for the user to have a port (or ports) opened would be a reason to have the port open. i.e. the user couldn't e-mail in just in case some one spoofed his / her e-mail, requesting a port to be opened, but it would be easy to check with customer if the request was real. this would be difficult to start with, but it would cut unnessessery traffic to less than 5% over night - hell it might even put server companys out of buisness as those servers that work flat out shifting spam around lie dorment, the inital costs would be high as people would need to be told what is happening, and other countrys would need to do this too, the other costs would be staff at isp's would need to hired to handle the customer calls increase. this would have to implimented globally and only ports used for basic access to the internet like telnet /finger /ping /shttp/ ftp /http /email /P2P allowed to start with. it would be better to do it now too, as the internet is getting bigger - fast.