Surveillance Cameras in Britain Not Effective? 434
zymurgy_cat writes "An interesting piece in The Christian Science Monitor questions whether or not the 4 million plus cameras in Britain are effective in deterring crime. It touches upon the usual issues of privacy, who has access to the tapes, and so forth. Despite this, people still seem to prefer the cameras."
Why all the concern? (Score:4, Interesting)
As it is, I lead a life that is infinitely more boring than the scenarios listed above, and I am therefore of the opinion that if people want to watch me walking to the store at 10pm to grab a bottle of milk, they are more than welcome. Why should I care who's watching me if I have nothing to hide? And aren't cameras just an extension of any authority watching me? What's next? Policeman on the streets shouldn't look at the public as it is an infringement of civil liberties?
$460 mil Wasted? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thank God (Score:3, Interesting)
Northeastern Superbowl Riot Videos (Score:4, Interesting)
As of now, Northeastern's web site only has a couple dozen photographs of vandalism in action [neu.edu]. But they do have videos from nearby video cameras... it may just be a matter of time before they post some video clips.
Clearly these rioters were both stupid and committed crimes, so there's no need to debate the criminal aspects of their activity.
But is it OK for anyone to secretly videotape activities in the street? Is it OK for Northeastern to pin their students based on video and film taken by random observers?
All the better (Score:5, Interesting)
Take speeding: when you speed, you save some journey time. When others speed, they endanger your life. Cameras on the road (as seen recently in France) tell individuals "your acts are not cost-free", and so they behave better.
Britain is a pretty sad place to live in, but this has nothing to do with cameras and a lot to do with geography and history. The explosion of cameras in public places may not have eliminated crime, but they appear to have kept it in check, despite rising drug use, increasing poverty in many areas, etc.
I have to vote in favour of the cameras: it's one of those cases where the common need for decent behaviour in public places overrides the individual's right to privacy. I've often thought that in other countries - like Belgium, where I live - surveillence cameras would be a good thing, cutting down on the petty crime: bag theft, broken car windows, men pissing in public, muggings, etc. which make the average citizen feel insecure and end up voting for right-wing parties.
Ironically, better public behaviour is probably better for democracy, not the reverse, since historically extremist governments rise from situations of uncertainty, not from stable societies. Crime waves push people to accepting extreme leaders in the name of law and order.
Re:What about the police? (Score:3, Interesting)
How common is street crime in Britain? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since then these phenomnena or at least the reporting seems to have gone down. Personal experience working and visiting New York City and Boston and extensive walking trips at night seems to have backed this up; we never even saw people we'd consider threatening, let alone getting mugged.
Is street crime (muggings, robbery, etc) a more common occurance in middle class areas of Britain?
When I was robbed last Saturday (Score:4, Interesting)
The crime happened in a shop with security cameras, within a shopping mall with security cameras, within a town centre with more security cameras.
I know when the theft occurred and I gave a description within minutes to representatives of the store, mall and police. I even visited the mall's security centre, with a duplicate of the stolen kettle in an identical bag, and spoke to the staff who watch the video feeds.
Everyone denied having any useful video information and the police representative at their call centre was friendly but dismissive.
I don't know what security cameras are really for, but they don't seem to be useful in fighting crime.
Re:Why all the concern? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't bother replying telling me how you wouldn't have a problem with this. I've actually walked up to strangers in public downtown Dayton for the express purpose of testing my theory. Out of 15 people I got 15 disturbed reactions, and 15 requests denied. I was also twice approached for questioning as to why I was disturbing people by requesting to take their photograph. After the second time I decided it best not to continue my experiment lest I end up being assaulted or thrown in jail.
The pitch line was that I was a photography student, and I needed a person with a downtown neighborhood backdrop for an assignment. It sounded quite plausable, and no one contested my intent once I explained as such. I never really took any photos, as the experiment was to simply test a theory.
What I don't understand is why people don't want their picture taken when the intent to show the beautiful side of humanity, but they don't really care when they are being video taped with the intent to capture their ugliest moments.
Oh, and the cherry on top? They were all being watched by an obvious nearby surveilance camera when they declined my request.
Westminster Council (Score:4, Interesting)
It's mainly used to better target the limited number of police available - it's not just about deterrence and after-the-fact clear up , it's well enough integrated and implemented that they can spot pickpockets and muggers as they move in to commit a crime and direct nearby police to arrest them.
Consider how CCTV is actually used (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that a lot of people who don't live with CCTV (and haven't seen all the British fly on the wall docus about its use) misunderstand the practice.
Typically, CCTV takes one of two forms:
In either sense, it's not really surveillance in the way the one usually thinks of it. The cameras are there, but practically all of the footage never gets watched. Your movements aren't tracked. As for voyeurism, if you do something in a public place then it's probably pretty public anyway. I'm not a proponent of the "But if you've got nothing to hide" point of view, I just don't think that CCTV as it's mostly used in the UK is an invasion of privacy. There is a difference between being watched and being monitored/tracked. British citizens in public places may be almost constantly watched, but they're certainly not monitored.
Now, a massive face-tracking database, that would be different. But that's not an issue of direct surveillance, that's a question of how data is linked together and used by powerful organisations. In reality, most of those cameras are not linked together in some kind of all-powerful network across the country. A very significant proportion are in fact operated by private companies on their own premises: not by Big Brother at all.
Re:How common is street crime in Britain? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Privacy vs living in the real world. (Score:3, Interesting)
You missing something important about the speed camera debate; speeding does not cause accidents in any great way. The vast majority of accidents are caused by bad or agressive driving, driver error or road conditions.
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing agaisnt 30-limit cameras, as speed matters when hitting a pedestrian. But on the motorway and main roads, it's a revenue generator.
It's also counter-productive. I'd rather have less cameras and more police cars (marked and unmarked), as the humans can pull drivers over for the afore mentioned bad driving, which a camera cannot. So you drive like a bitch provided you know where to slow down for the cameras.
PS I have nothing against them at accident hotspots. The only thing cameras do is slow drivers down for 100 meters. In the right place, that can be useful.
Solution: Let everyone watch everyone else (Score:3, Interesting)
I too hate surveillance and consider it an invasion of privacy, but I would relent on one condition - that instead of having only a minority do the surveillance, allow everyone to have full access to all public camera footage, in real time. Open it all up to public scrutiny, and you're bound to have a thousand times as many eyes watching, plus you get the added benefit of knowing that since everyone is watching everyone else, corruption is less likely to occur in the system. This scenario also prevents any future totalitarian government from usurping the system for its own ends, because the system will be in the hands of everyone, not just a privileged few. How many current politicians do you think would support such a system? I'd wager not many, precisely because then THEY would be put in the spotlight.
Any politician who supports surveillance camera technology should be mandated to be under surveillance themselves, at all times, and I say this from a perspective of running for politics this year myself (www.neteffect.org.au). And no, I don't advocate surveillance cameras, because I think the right to privacy and anonymity outweighs any benefit in cutting down crime.
not really effective at solving crimes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why all the concern? (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll be too late to "get upset" by then. Give 'em an inch, and they'll take a yard. The overwhelming force of conformity will move the baseline of what is tolerable and what is not. Like most social forces, a moving baseline happens to be quite invisible. By the time the baseline has moved, and if you haven't conformed to the newer era of lesser privacy, you'll wake up to your complacency in shock. But, by then you'll be in the minority. And, while in the minority, you'll be without influence to take the yard back. Though if the people in power are still accessible (assuming no other shifts in the baseline), you might regain the inch you so willingly gave up.
It's been a long time since I've read 1984 [amazon.com] as a kid, and I admit not getting its significance at such a young age. What's appalling is that so many adults don't get it in their "maturity". If there's a fault in the book (or in my memory), it may be that it did not emphasize enough the fact that the loss of freedoms were not immediate, they were gradual, like slow poison.
In light of this article, I don't believe it's coincidental that 1984 is set in London. Afterall, George Orwell was an Englishman, and knew the frailties of his society. The U.S. is also undergoing a similar change. However, with a paper contract, such as the Constitution, to help keep track of what baselines may be changing, sudden reductions of freedom like those immediately following 9/11 don't occur too often. But, the creeping losses that deteriorate the paper contract like so many termites nibbling at the edges, continue due to one single factor. Our inability to hold our "representatives" to their promises when they are still candidates. We allow these breaches of contracts (written and oral speeches) with impunity. What are we, suckers? Until there's a way [justiceplus.org] to hold contract-violators to their promises with punitive damages, our rights will continue to slide.
It would be an interesting experiment if /. kept a forum tracking promises made and broken by our "representatives". They could be graded, not based on qualitative subjective issues, but on actual objectively quantitative performances on a variety of actions (or lack of), or contrary actions that could be mapped back to their promises. Examples would be actions such as pushing promised legislature and voting on the legislature of others who help achieve the goal of the politician's promises(I think most people would be shocked by the number of our "representatives" who don't actually even show up to vote on major issues). Contrary actions are actions which work directly against the promises (i.e. a lie) such as the recurrent lie of "no new taxes". In addition, if the promised legislation doesn't meet the requirements of the contract stated, the politician will get a poor rating by /. if nowhere else. Bar charts could help immediately identify the losers from the winners. Some people may even approach the ratings as an RPG game (i.e. characteristics such as womanizer, excessive imbiber, right-wing nut, left-wing tree-hugger), with a bar chart for each significant property of the politician.
= 9J =
Re:Liberty of circulation ? (Score:3, Interesting)
a) A private corporation who don't go through the same level of security vetting that even a minor civil servant does.
and b) A bunch of foreigners who we might well have a disagreement with tomorrow. I don't trust the civil service 100%, but (having worked within that organisation once) I trust them 100% more than some random for profit stinky (especialy in EDS's case) corporation.
Don't know if EDS still have that contract - doesn't matter, if they don't, some other untrustworthy bunch will.
Re:Deterrence is not the only factor (Score:2, Interesting)
Note how many wrongly imprisoned people have been freed by DNA evidence. Tech works both ways.
Re:Secure beneath the watchful eyes.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Deterrence is not the only factor (Score:2, Interesting)
Utilitarianism has as its goal the maximization of wealth for the society as a whole. That's not just monetary wealth, but well-being in general. Under this theory, punishment is not related as much to the moral culpability of the criminal as under other theories -- it would justify punishing someone wrongly in order to pacify society as a whole.
Economic theorists believe in deterrence, but there's not a lot of evidence out there to show that harsher crimes actually deter well.
Retributive theorists see punishment as somehow correcting an imbalance between the criminal and the victim... not just revenge, but taking away a 'benefit' gained by the criminal by punishing him. There are a lot of arguments against this sort of theory... but it may be how many people intuitively see criminal justice.
There is also the idea of simple incapacitation as a rationale for punishment, when it's imprisonment, for instance. Some people believe that the drop in crime rates over the last 20-30 years has been mostly due to the increased use of prisons and the simple incapacitative effect it has on crime.
All of these factors enter into criminal justice, and people argue about which rationales are more important than the others, but one thing is pretty clear -- we don't believe so strongly in deterrence that we're willing to forgo the requirement of moral culpability in the criminal, and punish him anyway for deterrence. In most cases, we require that he actually know he did something wrong in order to justify punishment.
Of course, this is just talking about punishment, not about ex ante modes of deterrence like cameras...
Re:Why all the concern? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wrong. A state trooper was caught by the entire town panning a traffic camera to watch teenage girls and nothing happened to him. [mikehealan.com] All that happened was the Department of Transportation forbade state troopers from controlling the cameras in the future.
Re:Liberty of circulation ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Rule #1 -- NEVER trust an American company to do the "Right Thing(TM)". Even when they do, it for the wrong reasons.
Rule #2 -- See Rule #1.
I an American and I love my country. That doesn't mean I've got to love the corporate mindset.