7 ms·

It's interesting as the only involvement I have had with CCTV was positive. On a night out in a city, myself and my friend were walking home from a club about

It's interesting as the only involvement I have had with CCTV was positive. On a night out in a city, myself and my friend were walking home from a club about 3.30am. We were joking about me being from the North and him being southern (a common UK joke), this was unfortunately overheard by someone nearby who took it personally and started punching my friend in the head, I managed to break it up and the other chaps mates pulled him away as his was rather inebriated. A girl nearby ran over after seeing this and called the police and within a minute a police officer had arrived - the most interesting and relevant part was that the officer had been dispatached by CCTV operators who had seen the whole incident. The policeman was being relayed that the perpetrator had been already arrested by a colleague down the street (after CCTV identified him), the officer with us knew it was an unprovoked attack as the CCTV operator saw at no point did we interact with the assailant, so treated us with respect and started explaining the options for prosecution. I appreciate the flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV.

simoncarter 12y ago
The flip side to your flip side is that the cameras, for a number of reasons, do not always work. I remember dealing with a case of robbery, and it turned out that the camera was not working (either itself, or the transmission of the video to the center where they are monitored). This was some 7/8 years ago though, and the technology may have improved.
- nl 12y ago
  (Genuinely curious): what do you mean that this is the flip side here? In your case the camera not working doesn't seem to have caused any further harm (which is how I'd interpret "the flip side of the flip side" in this context). It not working isn't helpful of course, and I can think of possible circumstances where it might have made things worse (removal of guards because of the camera etc), but these appear somewhat marginal (and are missing from your comment). One could equally argue that even a non-working camera provides a deterrent effect (eg, the "dummy" cameras one can buy). What am I missing?
  - simoncarter 12y ago
    In that case, the presence of the cameras gave a sense of security that was unwarranted. It didn't prevent the crime from happening, but did let the citizens think that that their presence would detract criminals, which it didn't, at least in their case, and that if there was a crime, the culprits would have a higher chance of being convicted.
    - philh 12y ago
      To be precise, it didn't prevent that crime from happening. You seem to be assuming that the law-abiding folks reacted to the non-working camera but the criminals didn't.
      - vidarh 12y ago
        As far as I remember, there is little supporting evidence that CCTV usage in the UK have much effect on crime rates.
icebraining 12y ago
But your friend still got punched, so what exactly did you gain from being surveillance? Getting a drunk guy to spend a night or two in jail?
- cones688 12y ago
  He got fined about £300, which hopefully taught him a lesson.
  - nb1981 12y ago
    lol you mean he stole a further £300. Fines are not there to teach a lesson. Poor people can't pay so steal, rich people can afford to pay so do. Who does this arrangement benefit if not the victim?
    - cones688 12y ago
      He was a soldier in the Army, so very likely he got reprimanded rather strongly by his CO. I am not sure where "poor" and "rich" people come into this?
      - nb1981 12y ago
        fixed fine, variable means to pay, interests me.
- rmc 12y ago
  The friend would have been punched anyway. The advantage was the (potential) prosecution.
- squidfood 12y ago
  The OP "managed to break it up." What if he hadn't managed?
- netcan 12y ago
  First, if you believe in policing and the justice system at all, you think it's a good thing when the right person is punished for a crime, even if it's a small punishment for a small crime. Second, it prevents the wrong person from being treated as the problem. Without immediate hard evidence that video gives police, both men could easily treated be treated the same. They could all spend a couple of nights in jail. That's a good win.
davidw 12y ago
This is covered in David Brin's book The Transparent Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society There are actually a lot of benefits to surveillance like this, but we need to be able to watch the watchers, so to speak.
- DanBC 12y ago
  In England we have The Surveillance Commissioners who should do a reasonable job of oversight. https://osc.independent.gov.uk/ https://osc.independent.gov.uk/
  - zorked 12y ago
    But how can we be sure? Maybe we need another level of oversight...
    - gfrench27 12y ago
      humans are guaranteed to drop the ball at some point in time
- badname 12y ago
  There is a book. "The Circle". Proponents of transparent societies should read it IMHO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
Of course, the CCTV only helped with the consequences of, amongst other things, excess alcohol consumption, apparent north/south hatred, and people with a violent nature apparently looking for a fight / easily provoked. I don't know if throwing money at a cultural change (i.e. drink less alcohol, love your southern neighbours, don't punch people) would've been more effective than throwing money at creating a surveillance state though.
- netcan 12y ago
  I think this is not a great line of thought. Sometimes root causes are being ignored and dealing with symptoms is stupid. At the same time, all problems are never solved. Crime exists and it demands a response from police and courts. It's very "let them eat cake" to suggest that crime in Soho next friday be addressed by dealing with drinking culture and making sure no one is allowed to leave Manchester. We can do both at the same time, but we can't not respond to a bottle attack with police.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    Also that cause and effect aren't so cut and dry on social issues. A good neighborhood doesn't need a strong police presence because it has little crime. This is very much socioeconomic. Of course, if it becomes a bad neighborhood, bow are you going to ever improve its socioeconomic status until you make a dent in the crime and gang problem so you can give a chance for your social programs to actually work?
switch007 12y ago
IMO as this was handled by police trained for city center brawling, it would have been almost the exact same outcome without CCTV. They may have arrived slightly later, but if you were in the city center near the pubs/clubs, there's often a minimum of 10 officers hanging around
- cones688 12y ago
  Arrived slightly later and not known who the perpetrator was or have admissible evidence to that effect. The guy had already run away onto another street - it's likely he wouldn't have been caught. It also very much changed the officer handling us behaviour I would imagine, as usually in such brawls they detain everyone then get he said/she said stories. Instead he knew the guy had run across the street after we hadn't even acknowledged him, so knew my friend was the "victim".
genofon 12y ago
>I appreciate the flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV. it reminded me Benjamin Franklin's quote: "He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither." despite it's arguable that we are giving up freedom with more CCTV, but it scary what will happen if (when) Google Glasses will be more popular.
- sosborn 12y ago
  http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-ben...
Robin_Message 12y ago
I toured the council CCTV office where I live, and was impressed by the fact (well, claim) that it was operated by council employees, not police officers (seemed true), and that the police could ask them to look out for things or for footage, but any kind of operational use by the police required high-level authorisation (the reverse wasn't true; as the parent indicates, the CCTV operators can and do alert the police to crimes and direct them to the perpetrators.) That reassured me it couldn't at that point be used as a dragnet. Obviously there is a slippery slope issue involved though (the article claims congestion charge ANPR cameras are being used by the police indiscriminately because "terrorism"), so I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with it.
- nb1981 12y ago
  The people you visited probably had nothing but the best of intentions. But to expect all those other thousands with similarly elevated privileges to behave similarly as such would be..short sighted indeed.
  - Robin_Message 12y ago
    I agree, it's not easy to get right. But this is a general problem of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Two things that are protective in the CCTV case are: - Policy: having police and CCTV operated separately is protective - both have to collude for things to go badly, like any government separation of powers. - Technology: one example of this is the cameras had preprogrammed "no-dwell" zones - areas the pan/tilt/zoom of the camera is not allowed to stay in (e.g. windows of residential buildings). Although this could be overridden, there was an operational log where such overrides had to be justified, which feed back into oversight policy above. (They demoed this, then had to write into a logbook that they had done so.) In general, CCTV is a force multiplier, but not excessive - the council could pay people to stand around in the street taking notes for example. The use of unmitigated ANPR with permanent recording – that is something else.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  Police and courts are usually pretty chummy with each other, how does that not apply to council employees and local police departments funded by such councils?
8ig8 12y ago
Very recently in Baltimore, MD, USA, a woman's abduction from an empty street was caught on video. A couple days later, her bank card was used in another city to withdraw money. The video from the bank, along with the video from a nearby gas station helped identify the captor and save the woman. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/towson/bs-md-co-philly-abduction-hearing-towson-20141106-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/t... Edit: Earlier story with original street video: http://www.baltimoresun.com/la-na-nn-reward-abducted-philadelphia-woman-20141104-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/la-na-nn-reward-abducted-philade...
- mpyne 12y ago
  To go along with that, the captor was nabbed because his car had a built-in GPS tracker, installed by the dealer to deter theft. Don't worry, it was in the fine print somewhere.
  - 8ig8 12y ago
    Some details here: http://news.yahoo.com/abducted-philadelphia-woman-rescued-man-arrested-072318593.html http://news.yahoo.com/abducted-philadelphia-woman-rescued-ma... The second paragraph is apropos: > A woman snatched off the streets was rescued with the help of a GPS tracking device that had been installed on the suspect's car by the dealer in case it needed to be repossessed, authorities said Thursday. > It was just the latest arrest made possible by the surveillance technology that is seemingly everywhere nowadays. And it involved not just GPS but surveillance video, traffic-camera imagery and a left-behind cellphone. Edit: Also from the above article regarding traffic-cam: > Her rescue came after authorities spotted the used-car dealer's name on a traffic camera photo of Barnes' vehicle and recognized the dealership as one that routinely puts GPS devices on its cars, said sheriff's Capt. Jayson Crawley, of Charles City County, Virginia. > "We called the dealership, and within five minutes they had the location," he said.
- hackuser 12y ago
  An interesting story but I'm not sure of your exact point. Do you mean surveillance has some benefits? Of course. There is good and bad to everything, including asbestos, lead, authoritarian government, plastic shopping bags, and even COBOL.
tomp 12y ago
I would prefer to live in a society that was 100% supervised, if the laws of the society were sensible. Unfortunately, our society, where people can be denied tourist visas or arrested because of twitter jokes, where pregnant women can be charged with attempted murder (of the unborn baby) for falling down the stairs, where police can enter homes to remove "illegal" advertisement on your window or to arrest your 12 year old daughter who was downloading movies, is not sensible.
- LLWM 12y ago
  And it's those nonsensical laws that are the problem, not surveillance. Limiting surveillance doesn't help solve any of that, it just makes enforcement more arbitrary.
  - infinity0 12y ago
    The article contained a story which directly disagrees with your last point. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2849#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2849#comic Surveillance may result in more evidence that could potentially allow for better enforcement. However, people run these systems. Centralised surveillance gives a minority of people more power. As seen in the article, this power is abused, because there is nothing else to balance this power. All these arguments talk about the benefits of surveillance without looking at the social relationships of how real-world surveillance is implemented. Like privacy tools, surveillance is just a tool. Without looking at the social relationships, one can make any argument in favour of, or against, these tools. Centralised surveillance run by security forces, by nature will overestimate what crimes are being done, and allow the people in charge the ability and incentive to overinterpret innocent acts inappropriately. CCTV rescuing you from drunken arguments is only one very small part of what CCTV can and will become.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      And then you can never foresee what that data is going to be used for in the future. Nazis used "completely innocent" records held by countries to find out where Jewish families lived so they could find them and put them in camps. The less the government knows about you the better.
badname 12y ago
If you want to get a negative one just try to fight for something that goes against the status quo. I.e. try to exersise your civil rights for what you might consider an edge-cause (which constitutes the majority of the causes civil rights are supposed to be about).
HarryHirsch 12y ago
> he flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV. Considering what British city centers are like around chuck-out time, why can't we have some police out on foot patrol around that time? It's not that the areas around the lager palaces are no-go zones, but then I'm not that comfortable around lagered-up yoof either. With CCTV cameras you have a better chance of arresting a drunk hool after he has committed an assault, but with police out they will think twice before picking an argument. Cameras might help solve crime, but proper policing is preventing crime before it occurs. Besides, I don't appreciate having my every movement stored on tape.
- mnw21cam 12y ago
  There often are police wandering around at chuck-out time. However, they are spread fairly thin on the ground, simply because there aren't that many of them. Using CCTV in this case allows the police to be directed to where they are needed, increasing their effectiveness and reducing the tax-payers' cost of policing.
- shitehawk 12y ago
  Didn't England experiment with never closing the pubs so people weren't all dumped on the street at the same time, with the idea it would reduce fighting?
- vidarh 12y ago
  I live in Croydon (for those who don't know, it's one of the largest London Boroughs; there are 30 of them), and here there's huge numbers of police around the town centre all weekend. Last Thursday I was out walking around 10pm, and passed at least a dozen in five minutes when I walked past some of the bigger clubs, as well as an ambulance on standby, and that is fairly standard for the readiness here. Most of the time they're just hanging around chatting to people, or making sure people are ok. With the added fun of making sure nobody gets run over when the clubs close and people spill into the road. Despite the jokes (Croydon has a bad reputation; mostly undeserved these days), Croydon is about average for London boroughs when it comes to crime, and far better than Westminster (which has the biggest concentration of London nightlife). Basically in boils down to whether or not the local forces choose to prioritise presence at night, since it's obviously more expensive.
LyndsySimon 12y ago
I understand where you're coming from, but I have a complete opposite view here. The idea of 24/7 monitoring by government authority is something that disturbs me a great deal - the very thing that makes you feel safer makes others under attack.
aluhut 12y ago
What a wonderful example. Never seen or heard of anything like that happen. I lost my phone two years ago on a railway station in the city of Frankfurt (Germany). Two guys forced it from me with one pointing a knife at me and ran away. Three levels up through hallways full of cameras. I waited for an additional ~20mins (collecting information from bystanders). Nobody appeared. Not even the police one of the bystanders called... The situation we have here is exactly what the CCC and all the anti-surveillance movements said when the hype for cameras all over began. They said back than that we'll have less police and security on the streets and we'll lose the control of the data recorded there. Today even the smallest bus company has cameras in their bus. Even if they can't afford to clean the bus properly. Open drug market places have been moved to shady side roads where crime rose. Videos of people being beat up in front of cameras became popular and seem to become popular until media stopped reporting and playing the videos. And so on. I don't see the whole thing work out. Cameras create a false security hole that allows to cut down money where it would have been better invested: in police officers on the streets. What happens to all the collected data, I don't even want to know anymore. Btw I've heard a polish city is recording audio also. Isn't it nice? They even prevented some crime with it... Btw. the Police was unable to get the videos from my robbery. "Technical reasons".
lobotryas 12y ago
I'm glad to hear that your situation was handled well. With that said, would you like to take your camera for a stroll by the Grosvenor Park Hotel?
hnriot 12y ago
London already is a police state, every square inch is monitored with cameras and servers equipped with licence and face detection capabilities. While there are some upsides, the down considerably outweigh them. As an aside, and being from the UK, I wouldn't say it's common to make jokes about being from the north or south. It's also not a very good "joke".
muyuu 12y ago
Imagine a police force so corrupt and dangerous that you would rather deal with criminals yourself than having them dispatched to your whereabouts. Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens. How about Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians?
  - muyuu 12y ago
    Nope.

simoncarter 12y ago

The flip side to your flip side is that the cameras, for a number of reasons, do not always work. I remember dealing with a case of robbery, and it turned out that the camera was not working (either itself, or the transmission of the video to the center where they are monitored). This was some 7/8 years ago though, and the technology may have improved.

nl 12y ago
(Genuinely curious): what do you mean that this is the flip side here? In your case the camera not working doesn't seem to have caused any further harm (which is how I'd interpret "the flip side of the flip side" in this context). It not working isn't helpful of course, and I can think of possible circumstances where it might have made things worse (removal of guards because of the camera etc), but these appear somewhat marginal (and are missing from your comment). One could equally argue that even a non-working camera provides a deterrent effect (eg, the "dummy" cameras one can buy). What am I missing?
- simoncarter 12y ago
  In that case, the presence of the cameras gave a sense of security that was unwarranted. It didn't prevent the crime from happening, but did let the citizens think that that their presence would detract criminals, which it didn't, at least in their case, and that if there was a crime, the culprits would have a higher chance of being convicted.
  - philh 12y ago
    To be precise, it didn't prevent that crime from happening. You seem to be assuming that the law-abiding folks reacted to the non-working camera but the criminals didn't.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      As far as I remember, there is little supporting evidence that CCTV usage in the UK have much effect on crime rates.

icebraining 12y ago

But your friend still got punched, so what exactly did you gain from being surveillance? Getting a drunk guy to spend a night or two in jail?

cones688 12y ago
He got fined about £300, which hopefully taught him a lesson.
- nb1981 12y ago
  lol you mean he stole a further £300. Fines are not there to teach a lesson. Poor people can't pay so steal, rich people can afford to pay so do. Who does this arrangement benefit if not the victim?
  - cones688 12y ago
    He was a soldier in the Army, so very likely he got reprimanded rather strongly by his CO. I am not sure where "poor" and "rich" people come into this?
    - nb1981 12y ago
      fixed fine, variable means to pay, interests me.
rmc 12y ago
The friend would have been punched anyway. The advantage was the (potential) prosecution.
squidfood 12y ago
The OP "managed to break it up." What if he hadn't managed?
netcan 12y ago
First, if you believe in policing and the justice system at all, you think it's a good thing when the right person is punished for a crime, even if it's a small punishment for a small crime. Second, it prevents the wrong person from being treated as the problem. Without immediate hard evidence that video gives police, both men could easily treated be treated the same. They could all spend a couple of nights in jail. That's a good win.

davidw 12y ago

This is covered in David Brin's book The Transparent Society: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society There are actually a lot of benefits to surveillance like this, but we need to be able to watch the watchers, so to speak.

DanBC 12y ago
In England we have The Surveillance Commissioners who should do a reasonable job of oversight. https://osc.independent.gov.uk/ https://osc.independent.gov.uk/
- zorked 12y ago
  But how can we be sure? Maybe we need another level of oversight...
  - gfrench27 12y ago
    humans are guaranteed to drop the ball at some point in time
badname 12y ago
There is a book. "The Circle". Proponents of transparent societies should read it IMHO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

Of course, the CCTV only helped with the consequences of, amongst other things, excess alcohol consumption, apparent north/south hatred, and people with a violent nature apparently looking for a fight / easily provoked. I don't know if throwing money at a cultural change (i.e. drink less alcohol, love your southern neighbours, don't punch people) would've been more effective than throwing money at creating a surveillance state though.

netcan 12y ago
I think this is not a great line of thought. Sometimes root causes are being ignored and dealing with symptoms is stupid. At the same time, all problems are never solved. Crime exists and it demands a response from police and courts. It's very "let them eat cake" to suggest that crime in Soho next friday be addressed by dealing with drinking culture and making sure no one is allowed to leave Manchester. We can do both at the same time, but we can't not respond to a bottle attack with police.
- XorNot 12y ago
  Also that cause and effect aren't so cut and dry on social issues. A good neighborhood doesn't need a strong police presence because it has little crime. This is very much socioeconomic. Of course, if it becomes a bad neighborhood, bow are you going to ever improve its socioeconomic status until you make a dent in the crime and gang problem so you can give a chance for your social programs to actually work?

switch007 12y ago

IMO as this was handled by police trained for city center brawling, it would have been almost the exact same outcome without CCTV. They may have arrived slightly later, but if you were in the city center near the pubs/clubs, there's often a minimum of 10 officers hanging around

cones688 12y ago
Arrived slightly later and not known who the perpetrator was or have admissible evidence to that effect. The guy had already run away onto another street - it's likely he wouldn't have been caught. It also very much changed the officer handling us behaviour I would imagine, as usually in such brawls they detain everyone then get he said/she said stories. Instead he knew the guy had run across the street after we hadn't even acknowledged him, so knew my friend was the "victim".

genofon 12y ago

>I appreciate the flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV. it reminded me Benjamin Franklin's quote: "He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither." despite it's arguable that we are giving up freedom with more CCTV, but it scary what will happen if (when) Google Glasses will be more popular.

sosborn 12y ago
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-ben...

Robin_Message 12y ago

I toured the council CCTV office where I live, and was impressed by the fact (well, claim) that it was operated by council employees, not police officers (seemed true), and that the police could ask them to look out for things or for footage, but any kind of operational use by the police required high-level authorisation (the reverse wasn't true; as the parent indicates, the CCTV operators can and do alert the police to crimes and direct them to the perpetrators.) That reassured me it couldn't at that point be used as a dragnet. Obviously there is a slippery slope issue involved though (the article claims congestion charge ANPR cameras are being used by the police indiscriminately because "terrorism"), so I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with it.

nb1981 12y ago
The people you visited probably had nothing but the best of intentions. But to expect all those other thousands with similarly elevated privileges to behave similarly as such would be..short sighted indeed.
- Robin_Message 12y ago
  I agree, it's not easy to get right. But this is a general problem of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Two things that are protective in the CCTV case are: - Policy: having police and CCTV operated separately is protective - both have to collude for things to go badly, like any government separation of powers. - Technology: one example of this is the cameras had preprogrammed "no-dwell" zones - areas the pan/tilt/zoom of the camera is not allowed to stay in (e.g. windows of residential buildings). Although this could be overridden, there was an operational log where such overrides had to be justified, which feed back into oversight policy above. (They demoed this, then had to write into a logbook that they had done so.) In general, CCTV is a force multiplier, but not excessive - the council could pay people to stand around in the street taking notes for example. The use of unmitigated ANPR with permanent recording – that is something else.
mahyarm 12y ago
Police and courts are usually pretty chummy with each other, how does that not apply to council employees and local police departments funded by such councils?

8ig8 12y ago

Very recently in Baltimore, MD, USA, a woman's abduction from an empty street was caught on video. A couple days later, her bank card was used in another city to withdraw money. The video from the bank, along with the video from a nearby gas station helped identify the captor and save the woman. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/towson/bs-md-co-philly-abduction-hearing-towson-20141106-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/t... Edit: Earlier story with original street video: http://www.baltimoresun.com/la-na-nn-reward-abducted-philadelphia-woman-20141104-story.html http://www.baltimoresun.com/la-na-nn-reward-abducted-philade...

mpyne 12y ago
To go along with that, the captor was nabbed because his car had a built-in GPS tracker, installed by the dealer to deter theft. Don't worry, it was in the fine print somewhere.
- 8ig8 12y ago
  Some details here: http://news.yahoo.com/abducted-philadelphia-woman-rescued-man-arrested-072318593.html http://news.yahoo.com/abducted-philadelphia-woman-rescued-ma... The second paragraph is apropos: > A woman snatched off the streets was rescued with the help of a GPS tracking device that had been installed on the suspect's car by the dealer in case it needed to be repossessed, authorities said Thursday. > It was just the latest arrest made possible by the surveillance technology that is seemingly everywhere nowadays. And it involved not just GPS but surveillance video, traffic-camera imagery and a left-behind cellphone. Edit: Also from the above article regarding traffic-cam: > Her rescue came after authorities spotted the used-car dealer's name on a traffic camera photo of Barnes' vehicle and recognized the dealership as one that routinely puts GPS devices on its cars, said sheriff's Capt. Jayson Crawley, of Charles City County, Virginia. > "We called the dealership, and within five minutes they had the location," he said.
hackuser 12y ago
An interesting story but I'm not sure of your exact point. Do you mean surveillance has some benefits? Of course. There is good and bad to everything, including asbestos, lead, authoritarian government, plastic shopping bags, and even COBOL.

tomp 12y ago

I would prefer to live in a society that was 100% supervised, if the laws of the society were sensible. Unfortunately, our society, where people can be denied tourist visas or arrested because of twitter jokes, where pregnant women can be charged with attempted murder (of the unborn baby) for falling down the stairs, where police can enter homes to remove "illegal" advertisement on your window or to arrest your 12 year old daughter who was downloading movies, is not sensible.

LLWM 12y ago
And it's those nonsensical laws that are the problem, not surveillance. Limiting surveillance doesn't help solve any of that, it just makes enforcement more arbitrary.
- infinity0 12y ago
  The article contained a story which directly disagrees with your last point. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2849#comic http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2849#comic Surveillance may result in more evidence that could potentially allow for better enforcement. However, people run these systems. Centralised surveillance gives a minority of people more power. As seen in the article, this power is abused, because there is nothing else to balance this power. All these arguments talk about the benefits of surveillance without looking at the social relationships of how real-world surveillance is implemented. Like privacy tools, surveillance is just a tool. Without looking at the social relationships, one can make any argument in favour of, or against, these tools. Centralised surveillance run by security forces, by nature will overestimate what crimes are being done, and allow the people in charge the ability and incentive to overinterpret innocent acts inappropriately. CCTV rescuing you from drunken arguments is only one very small part of what CCTV can and will become.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    And then you can never foresee what that data is going to be used for in the future. Nazis used "completely innocent" records held by countries to find out where Jewish families lived so they could find them and put them in camps. The less the government knows about you the better.

badname 12y ago

If you want to get a negative one just try to fight for something that goes against the status quo. I.e. try to exersise your civil rights for what you might consider an edge-cause (which constitutes the majority of the causes civil rights are supposed to be about).

HarryHirsch 12y ago

> he flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV. Considering what British city centers are like around chuck-out time, why can't we have some police out on foot patrol around that time? It's not that the areas around the lager palaces are no-go zones, but then I'm not that comfortable around lagered-up yoof either. With CCTV cameras you have a better chance of arresting a drunk hool after he has committed an assault, but with police out they will think twice before picking an argument. Cameras might help solve crime, but proper policing is preventing crime before it occurs. Besides, I don't appreciate having my every movement stored on tape.

mnw21cam 12y ago
There often are police wandering around at chuck-out time. However, they are spread fairly thin on the ground, simply because there aren't that many of them. Using CCTV in this case allows the police to be directed to where they are needed, increasing their effectiveness and reducing the tax-payers' cost of policing.
shitehawk 12y ago
Didn't England experiment with never closing the pubs so people weren't all dumped on the street at the same time, with the idea it would reduce fighting?
vidarh 12y ago
I live in Croydon (for those who don't know, it's one of the largest London Boroughs; there are 30 of them), and here there's huge numbers of police around the town centre all weekend. Last Thursday I was out walking around 10pm, and passed at least a dozen in five minutes when I walked past some of the bigger clubs, as well as an ambulance on standby, and that is fairly standard for the readiness here. Most of the time they're just hanging around chatting to people, or making sure people are ok. With the added fun of making sure nobody gets run over when the clubs close and people spill into the road. Despite the jokes (Croydon has a bad reputation; mostly undeserved these days), Croydon is about average for London boroughs when it comes to crime, and far better than Westminster (which has the biggest concentration of London nightlife). Basically in boils down to whether or not the local forces choose to prioritise presence at night, since it's obviously more expensive.

LyndsySimon 12y ago

I understand where you're coming from, but I have a complete opposite view here. The idea of 24/7 monitoring by government authority is something that disturbs me a great deal - the very thing that makes you feel safer makes others under attack.

aluhut 12y ago

What a wonderful example. Never seen or heard of anything like that happen. I lost my phone two years ago on a railway station in the city of Frankfurt (Germany). Two guys forced it from me with one pointing a knife at me and ran away. Three levels up through hallways full of cameras. I waited for an additional ~20mins (collecting information from bystanders). Nobody appeared. Not even the police one of the bystanders called... The situation we have here is exactly what the CCC and all the anti-surveillance movements said when the hype for cameras all over began. They said back than that we'll have less police and security on the streets and we'll lose the control of the data recorded there. Today even the smallest bus company has cameras in their bus. Even if they can't afford to clean the bus properly. Open drug market places have been moved to shady side roads where crime rose. Videos of people being beat up in front of cameras became popular and seem to become popular until media stopped reporting and playing the videos. And so on. I don't see the whole thing work out. Cameras create a false security hole that allows to cut down money where it would have been better invested: in police officers on the streets. What happens to all the collected data, I don't even want to know anymore. Btw I've heard a polish city is recording audio also. Isn't it nice? They even prevented some crime with it... Btw. the Police was unable to get the videos from my robbery. "Technical reasons".

lobotryas 12y ago

I'm glad to hear that your situation was handled well. With that said, would you like to take your camera for a stroll by the Grosvenor Park Hotel?

hnriot 12y ago

London already is a police state, every square inch is monitored with cameras and servers equipped with licence and face detection capabilities. While there are some upsides, the down considerably outweigh them. As an aside, and being from the UK, I wouldn't say it's common to make jokes about being from the north or south. It's also not a very good "joke".

muyuu 12y ago

Imagine a police force so corrupt and dangerous that you would rather deal with criminals yourself than having them dispatched to your whereabouts. Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens.

hackuser 12y ago
> Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens. How about Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians?
- muyuu 12y ago
  Nope.