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London Police Equipped With 360-Degree Cams
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 21, 2006 04:09 PM
from the you-couldn't-make-it-up dept.
from the you-couldn't-make-it-up dept.
OriginalArlen writes, "In a story so surreal I had to check the primary source, the Register reports that the (London, UK) Metropolitan Police are trying out the use of eight tiny cams, mounted in the police helmet, to provide 360-degree evidence gathering in the event that an officer witnesses a crime. The press release also gives more evidence of the stealth spread of ubiquitous ANPR systems across the country as a spin-off 'benefit' to the London car congestion-charging scheme, which is likely to be rolled out across the country in the next few years. Are we already living in a Panopticon Society?" According to this report from the information commissioner for Great Britain, yep.
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UK Has Become a "Surveillance Society" 291 comments
cultrhetor writes "In a story released by the BBC, Richard Thomas, the information commissioner for Great Britain, says that fears of the nation's 'sleep-walk into a surveillance society' have become reality. Surveillance ranges from data monitoring (credit cards, mobiles, and loyalty card information), US security agencies monitoring telecommunications traffic, to key stroke logging at work. From the article, the report 'predicts that by 2016 shoppers could be scanned as they enter stores, schools could bring in cards allowing parents to monitor what their children eat, and jobs may be refused to applicants who are seen as a health risk.' The report's co-author, Dr. David Murakami-Wood, told BBC News that, compared to other Western nations, Britain was the 'most surveilled country.' He goes on to note: 'We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us.'"
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What about the cops? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't find anywhere that mentions if the cops have the ability to turn it off or not. I would be very skeptical of any police video that has been "edited" (turning the camera off at certain moments) by the police officer in question.
An example of what I mean: A cop gets called "pig" (the UK version), cop turns off video, kicks the crap out of kid, turns video back on, and then says "I was attacked! You saw him trying to provoke me!" Or whatever, you guys get the idea.
Damning more than skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)
But really I can't see this as anything but a good thing. A police officer may well be able to keep a little calmer in tense situations knowing everything he does is recorded. If someone is really causing trouble, it helps clear the officer from wrongdoing as well. It's just an extension of cameras they put in every police car for traffic stops...
Parent
Re:Damning more than skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare vids and keep everyone on the straight and narrow.
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Can I wear one too? (Score:3, Insightful)
But what if I am wearing a similar camera array?
Re:Can I wear one too? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well...
I suggest that you will have to learn from American Government approach to peacefull protest.
The standard scenario goes like this: US embassy sponsors the local Baseball League (at least several teams). It does it quietly for 2-3 years after which it gets a bunch of "democrats" (quotes on purpose) to demonstrate in front of the elected parlament on some issue. This is always done during the winter and it is done so for a reason.
Simply, the baseball teams are brought in to demonstrate as well. T
Why wear one? Put it in your pocket. (Score:4, Interesting)
More realistically though, unless you want to be like the gargoyle guy from Snow Crash, totally covered in data-capture gear, what's going to keep law enforcement and government in check are the little cameras on everyone's cellphones. The tasering incident at UCLA is just the beginning; in the next few years as video-cameraphones become more ubiquitous, and ways for sharing the resulting video (Youtube, Flickr, etc.) become totally mainstream, you'll be able to pull out your cameraphone when you see something odd going on, and post it to the web (hopefully with some sort of geotagging and time/date stamping), and suddenly the onus will be on the cops to show exactly what they were doing.
Cameraphones and YouTube are more than just ways to make porn and stupid pet videos, they could be the beginning of a whole new era in the balance of power between common people and the authorities. How the people in power attempt to regulate the use of these technologies should give you a good indication of how threatened they feel by them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The "ways of sharing" is more important. You need to be able to stream the video to a server where it is kept for at least 2 weeks before any deletion is even possible. That way, even if you're arrested, the phone is smashed, and they find out your password, they won't be *able* to delete the video without your consent.
-b.
If we aren't careful, this will happen here too (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:If we aren't careful, this will happen here too (Score:5, Informative)
No, it isn't. We have far greater problems in our country with our drunken citizens on a saturday night than with terrorism.
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Terrorism, antisocial behaviour, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)
And we have far greater problems still with our current government's obsession with the perceived terrorist threat. Last week there was a big thing made of the head of one of our security services, stating that they had x groups and y individual terrorist suspects under surveillance, and knew of at least z active plans to hurt us. A lot of our media was hyping how terrible things really are, and now we really know how bad the real terrorist threat really is.
Me, I thought "Is that all?" and figured we'd do better if we spent the gazillions of pounds we throw at "anti-terror" activities on cutting KSI figures for road traffic accidents, researching promising medical treatments, and raising education standards. This is not to belittle those who belong to the security services. Indeed, I've no doubt that they do some valuable work and protect us from some genuine threats, and I'm grateful to them for it. But sometimes, the price of a little extra security (you can never have 100%, nor anywhere close) is just too high. Tony Blair has talked a lot during his time in office about taking tough decisions. The tough decision on terrorism is not to take all those headline-grabbing steps that ultimately reduce overall quality of life, in a futile attempt to make the country Safe And Secure(TM).
This camera thing is just another gimmick. It used to be that children would naturally respect a police officer and the local constable would stop and say hello to them in the park while walking his beat, yet today the police feel the need to cover their backsides with all kinds of video footage. Why have the police lost the implicit moral authority they used to have? Why is antisocial behaviour one of the biggest dirty marks on today's society? What happened to policing by consent? It is left as an exercise for the reader to decide whether the answers involve the threat of terrorism, or whether they're more to do with the government stripping parents and teachers of any legal right to effectively discipline children, misunderstanding human rights to mean treating convicted criminals like the second coming, adopting the nanny state view of legislation over education, enacting an extensive series of laws that are more about ease of enforcement than outlawing genuinely harmful behaviour, and eschewing all sense of personal responsibility from senior ministers on down in favour of a litigous, CYA, spin-laden society.
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Re:Terrorism, antisocial behaviour, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anonymity. In the good old days (mostly imaginary) people knew who everyone else was. People had met the police officers before as they cycled past doing whatever it was they did back then. They knew you because they knew your mum and saw you growing up. They knew the local trouble makers, as did everyone else. Collectively troublemakers were kept in place because nobody tolerated it.
Now nobody trusts their police & knows little of them other than what they see in the media (which is largely non-flattering). Why should people trust someone they don't know to be "doing the right thing"(tm)? This doesn't just apply to police officers. Nobody knows whether that guy kicking off on the bus is just a local idiot, or likely to stab them in the face. Even though the "good" people outnumber the crazy 50:1, individually we don't know that. We don't want to be the one to move first & find ourselves without backup.
An example: I was walking through the city centre a while back & there was a large crowd of people. In the middle a police officer was attempted to arrest a woman & handcuff her. She was screaming and kicking at him to get away. Did anyone help? No. They stood and watched.
Another recent post [slashdot.org] has shown that when faced with the opposite situation, the exact same thing happened. Nobody moved. This is not about respect for police or lack of it, it is about people not being able to decide on the correct action. It's about lack of information to make an informed choice.
Yes, it would be great if the police were implicitly trusted, but nobody works like that. We trust what we know.
Incidentally, I helped the policeman with the arrest. He seemed calmer.
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Re: (Score:2)
-b.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Good idea! (Score:2)
Robocop (Score:5, Funny)
It works the other way around, too (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
My main concern is why they need a 360 degree surveillance system, at a couple of grand a go, when they c
Doesn't seem TOO bad (Score:2)
Honestly I
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
that had happened me but after the stalling by police the tape 'vanished'. The system protects itself.
Its only logical......not necessarily right but its logic.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't you think that in the end all those trips to the donut shop would get boring? The endless conversations about hemorrhoids would definetly be disturbing....
Re:Doesn't seem TOO bad (Score:5, Insightful)
The key to a "Panoptic" society is that you can be watched at any time, but not always all the time, and you don't know at any given moment whether you're being watched or not. Thus you turn everyone into paranoid little crazies, easily controlled and turned against one another.
As for just looking at the tape, consider the Brazilian guy [bbc.co.uk] the British police shot a while back. Police say he was running and leaping turnstiles, witnesses say he wasn't running and he even stopped to pay his fare. But hey, there's closed-circuit cameras everywhere. Let's go to the tapes.... oh wait, looks like all the cameras were turned off that day! Wow! what a coincidence! (the "non-existent" tapes later turned up [guardian.co.uk])
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Updated greeting (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, because a standard greeting is "Ello, ello ello" so times eight it would be
"Ello, ello ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello, ello?"
By which time you've finished mugging the kid and done a runner.
Re: (Score:2)
'What's all this then?', 'What's all this then?', 'What's all this then?'
Not 360 (Score:5, Informative)
Article with picture [daelnet.co.uk]
Re:Not 360 (Score:5, Informative)
The submitter probably assumed that all eight cameras were on one helmet, covering 360 degrees. It's like that party game where you tell a "secret" and wait to see how badly it gets mangled by the time it reaches the original source.
Nowhere in the original story or in the Register posting does it say anything about 360 degree coverage. Sure, it's 360 degrees--if the bobby wearing it does a little twirl.
Submitter doesn't read the submission, editors don't read the submission...just another day on
Parent
Re:Not 360 (Score:4, Interesting)
I assume that means the cameras can be deactivated by the aformentioned switch on the belt.
Parent
don't forget the executed brazilian (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh (Score:2, Interesting)
Now it just... I'm just really dissapointed is all.
Where did I get such a silly notion that public surveillance is 100% wrong, regardless of benefit?
Next on COPS... (Score:2)
As I remember from Clarke's 3000 A Space Odessy (Score:3, Interesting)
As a side note.. (Score:4, Informative)
ingsoc (Score:2)
communication and information control (Score:4, Insightful)
surveillence is one kind of communication. the problems that happen is when the information gathered by surveillence is not shared or accessible broadly
in an ideal world, there would be lots and lots of surveillence, including all the interactions and discussions by the public, elected officials, and all the feeds could be viewed by the public
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the best way to the future is not to protect privacy/anonymity, but to destroy all of it, and adapt to the new, level playing field.
accountability (Score:2)
"It is clear from this video that the police officer said 'You're under arrest,' instead of 'You are under arrest' as required by law. Because of this violation of procedure, none of the evidence collected is admissible and the state has no choice but to acquit."
What's really scary... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just (Score:2)
Why not just one camera? (Score:2, Insightful)
The technology - worth £15,550 !!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, the cop version has more memory and a screen but...???
Why 8? (Score:2)
I find that a little odd.
I would have expected 2 or max 3 cameras, but 8 is a little too much.
Meanwhile in the U.S... (Score:3, Funny)
When will citizens be wearing these? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hats and CCTV (Score:2)
Now they need.... (Score:2)
Public Eyes (Score:4, Insightful)
Cops could file most reports by voiceover annotations of what they videoed. Most of their court and other official testimony could be submitted as sworn video/narration. That would save hours of time doing what they do worst, paperwork, and keeping them engaged in the scene. Offering "eyewitness evidence" with an interpreter. Returning the "word" of the cop to the more reliable status cops want it to be. Offering juries firsthand experience of how cops might have made an honest mistake. And creating a library of suspects useable by the entire justice system, once accepted as evidence on probable cause.
And keeping cops honest. Which protects the good ones, which accounts for 99% of the hours cops work. This system would also capture, or deter, the other 1% that does so much harm. While increasing productivity on the street and on the case, cutting costs and corroborating credibility.
We have to keep in mind that technology will continue to make the distinctions between public and private more operational. So we should exploit our systems for improving the public behavior we expect. While also protecting the privacy we expect, which allows the public to function. So these records should be private, stored for limited durations unless court ordered, and never shared except within explicitly court ordered transactions.
Britain doesn't even have a Constitution, so I don't know how they'll protect that privacy. But after they'd played around with this tech and these rights for a while, we in the US will have even more reason to add a Privacy Amendment to our Constitution to protect ourselves. Combined with improved police protection, we can be more secure. Or, without protections on both sides of the public/private boundry, we'll all be made criminals.
Re: (Score:2)
If Internal Affairs is involved, the crackhead is/is working for another cop, and not likely to attack a cop in a manner allowing easy (or any) photo identification!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Glorified strip malls? Depends on what city, I guess, but NYC, Boston, Philly, and DC certainly don't really fit that definition. As far as paying tolls, many Interstate highways are toll-free since the stipulation is that in order to get Federal funding for the construction of a *new* Interstate highway, the road must be toll-free. This has been tru
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