George Orwell Was Right — Security Cameras Get an Upgrade 499
Jamie stopped to mention that Bloomberg is reporting on a recent addition of speakers to public security cameras in Middlesbrough, England. From the article: "`People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars."
it's for your own protection (Score:2, Insightful)
The bigger question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:V says... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The bigger question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Once the barriers to surveillance are being eroded, everything else - while not besides the point - pretty much follows by matter of course.
People act differently when they're being watched. How can it be a free state if they are being watched, then?
The worst is yet to come (Score:5, Insightful)
50 years from now, I think historians will look at 9/11 (and the Madrid bombings, etc.) as the beginning of the end of privacy standards that literally took centuries to establish. We have to stop this now before it's too late.
Orwell was a man ahead of his time...
It's very tiresome... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The worst is yet to come (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Other nations capitalize on the situation and invade (war)
2) The citizens get fed up and revolt (civil war)
3) The military gets fed up (now you're really fucked)
People of England, you have sold your souls. (Score:5, Insightful)
People of England, you have sold your souls.
Pfft (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's very tiresome... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps some are reading this post now. I ask: Why do you do it? I fail to see how any professional engineer could consider deployment of such wide-scale serveilence as an ethical and appropriate use of government power, outside of the four walls of a prison.
Re:People of England, you have sold your souls. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:mod me down, please (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem comes when this process fails, and so as an adult a person behaves in ways which are socially unacceptable.
The issue is how to deal with this.
Clearly, the question has to be asked how these people failed to learn as they grew up, for that is the root of it all; but once that failure has occured, these people have to be dealt with, and that is currently achieved, as you say, behaviour modification - coercion - the threat of externally imposed penalties.
The longer term and larger problem is the risk that police become so effective, with all their monitoring and survelliance, that it begins to impede the proper learning of voluntary socially acceptable behaviour. For it seems to me if you KNOW that you will be caught and punished WHENEVER you do something wrong, you no longer have the ability to *choose* not to do something wrong, and so you will be unable to learn to *voluntarily* refrain from socially unacceptable behaviour.
Re:The worst is yet to come (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. But consider this. I grew up in the UK (been living in the US for many years). If Al Qaeda is responsible for taking away American liberties, because the government uses terrorism as a blanket excuse to invade our privacy, then in the UK it's the yobs and hooligans who are to blame for the surveillance state.
It might be difficult for Americans to understand but, whereas here in the US there's usually a reason/motive for crime (e.g. robbery), in the UK a lot of it is just plain senseless. British high streets have gotten so bad due to mindless binge drinkers and general idiots it seems to necessitate the need for constant monitoring. If the UK has become a nanny state, perhaps it's because a large portion of its citizenry are infants.
Re:pleaz (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I, For One (Score:5, Insightful)
At the lowest level, I know of one anecdotal story where couples having a quickie in a popular spot were unaware a camera had gone up; and the security guard watching was in fact recording their sex, compiling the events into tapes, and selling them.
At the higher level, we run into a problem where a society becomes ever more effective at imposing its value system upon the members of that society. As JSM said, "society executes its own mandates". What happens when these cameras are present in a area rife with racism and the viewers themselves are racist? I can imagine blacks being harshly treated, with intolerance, and whites being let off or lightly treated for the same acts.
At a higher level yet, the issue becomes that of concern about the ways in which this new capability will interact with other new capabilities - such as massive State databases. The State has always kept information on us, but in analog systems, which are inherently so slow to use that the practical uses of that data were sharply limited. When, however, access becomes effectively immediate, what you have isn't more of the same, what you have now is *new and different*. It's is a qualitative change, not a quantative change. In this vein, mixing massive video survelliance with massive databases and police monitoring, very real concerns begin to arise - in particular, that we are finally loosing *freedom*, for we are no longer free; we MUST do what society and State expects us to do.
The terrible mind-trap here is people going "well, that only means not doing things which are bad, so what's the problem?"
Speaking of tracking.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"You, with the keyboard! Yes, you! Go back and mod that post up!"
Re:It's very tiresome... (Score:3, Insightful)
B) Lose job
Which choice do you think has more short term reprecussions for Mr. Engineer?
Most people aren't so principled that they would risk their financial security to stand up for their convictions.
Re:I, For One (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My guess (Score:3, Insightful)
> arbitrarily criminalize ANY "anti-social" behavior), it's safe to say that any flagrant display of disrespect can
> be grounds for imprisonment (though you'd have to do twice--once for the ASBO to be issued, and once again to be
> arrested as a violator of the ASBO.) It likely comes down to the whim of the camera operator as to whether or not
> this happens.
Spot on.
It is often not a technology in isolated which causes problems, but the combination of that technology with other existing factors.
In the UK, the ASBO is basically a catch-all, where a court can decide something is "anti-social" and impose essentially arbitrary terms of punishment.
In other words, the legal system is now enforcing the mandates of society; and society, through surveilliance, is beginning to *literally* watch us all - all sixty million of us - all of the time; and if you do something the watcher disagrees with, you know he has the power to get you in front of a court, and that power alone, with all the hassle and effort associated with it for you - is enough, regardless of the chance and risk of conviction, to strongly influence your behaviour.
The problem is, those watchers are normal people - they're going to be stupid, irrational, selfish, bad-tempered, uneducated, unreasonable, bigoted, sexist. They're going to be paid minimum wage for doing a really dull job. These people are the people who are *setting and enforcing* the standards by which you will live.
Re:What's the ethical problem exactly? (Score:1, Insightful)
If the cameras did only what a police officer at the scene could do, I doubt there would be serious opposition to them. But, in fact, the cameras do MORE than what a police officer could do. For starters, a police officer on the corner cannot hide his identity. He is not anonymous, and therefore he is somewhat accountable for his actions. Unless rules are put into place to ensure otherwise, a camera is anonymous for all intents and purposes. The target of the camera does not know when he is watched, does not know when the watcher is abusing his powers, and does not know who to point the finger at when an abuse of power occurs and is somehow detected.
Re:My guess (Score:4, Insightful)
> uneducated, unreasonable, bigoted, sexist. They're going to be paid minimum wage for doing a really dull job. These
> people are the people who are *setting and enforcing* the standards by which you will live.
And the particular problem with this, to state it explicitly, is that if you give an average person power and they're not being monitored or checked for how behave, they abuse that power. People are basically shit. I've had enough problems with getting first line technical support staff to behave decently - imagine how it would be if those people were watching you and could get you in front of a court?
(And pretty soon - another five years? = you couldn't just run away from the camera, because you'd have your mobile with you, and if you'd "committed a crime" then the law enforcement agencies would access the mobile provider's data to find out which mobile was where, and figure out who you are.)
Re:The worst is yet to come (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I, For One (Score:5, Insightful)
Without addressing the main issue in your post, I have to say something about this often-heard argument. Put more bluntly, what is claimed here is that incompetence is the safeguard of freedom: if government(/society) is bumbling enough, it won't be able to enforce unfair policies.
Yet, maintaining freedom by government incompetence is a dangerous route, because (1) it may be impotent to act when it is needed, (2) incompetence as a government policy may very well lead to corruption and waste ("it's good that I'm an inefficient government clerk; I'm maintaining freedom for the populace!"), and (3) people now need to know not just what is legal, but what is 'effectively legal', i.e. not legal but what government incompetence makes legal because no-one is prosecuted for it, which can also lead to (4) selective, discriminatory enforcement by the government ("we can't prosecute all who break this law, so we do what we can" - but those that are prosecuted just 'happen' to belong to some particular group or minority - note that this is the exact same argument as appears in the quoted paragraph above, but arguing the opposite claim).
But there is indeed an intuition that an 'overly-efficient' government is a danger. I think the underlying issue is that, in some situations, there may be a disparity between what the people want and what the people they elect want (e.g. where I live at least, the majority of the population are in favor of legalizing pot, or at least indifferent; but lawmakers are strongly against it). And the simplest way to solve the problem stemming from that disparity seems to be to just make government inefficient (if the cops don't do their job and arrest potheads, then pot is effectively free, just as if it were legally free).
But the 'simplest way' is often a very poor solution. The 'right' solution would be to protest, to fight for the causes people care about, so that lawmakers are in tune with the public; perhaps also to implement a more direct democracy. Government incompetence as a way to maintain freedom is an ugly hack, in programmer's terms; problem is, people are too lazy to do things the correct way.
Re:A group needs laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Me and you. Give me half of your possession, because I declared myself a tax collector. It's been a law between us before you were born. Or I will jail you and torment you, because I am judge and enforcer before you. And do not ever tell me a society without consensus is a crime, or I'll kill you. You,
Re:The worst is yet to come (Score:1, Insightful)
Not that long??? Are we talking geological time here? How long was it from the Bolshevik revolution until the Soviet Union came apart? For the average person, that's near enough to a full lifetime. At my age (over 60), I don't relish the thought that it may be fifty years until the liberties I grew up with are restored. If then.
How long are you personally willing to wait? Remember, you're including the lives of your children as well. Ask their opinion.
Re:V says... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the World-Wide Web, where not everyone is American. Your "founding fathers" aren't mine.
Re:I, For One (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I, For One (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying there shouldn't be punishments for breaking the laws... Of course you should do that, but the mark of a free, moral person is to do the RIGHT THING when nobody is looking, BECAUSE nobody but themselves will ever be disappointed by it!!!! IF you don't have a society that breeds that kind of self-respect and TRUST, your society's already collapsing!!!!
Re:Big Brother, good. Little Brother, better! (Score:3, Insightful)
our society is based on the lie that laws are actually made thoughtfully... they're not. It's really a small number of people of similar religious beliefs doing things their way.. when faced with the fact that society doesn't care about old beliefs, they will openly subvert democracy at any chance they get! Combine with things like Absolute monitoring it is truly scary...
Re:I, For One (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that's not all there is (Score:5, Insightful)
Liberty is dying to the sound of a billion people watching TV.
(Watching - oh, the irony - watching Big Brother.)
Re:V says... (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:I, For One (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as government is competent enough to lock you up, give you a lethal injection, start a war or tap a phone, we have to be ever-diligent.
In fact, sometimes the leaders who appear the most incompetent, like this (and I mean this with all due respect) piece of shit currently in the White House, are the ones you have to watch the closest.
Don't take it from me, read the writings of those famous liberals who started this great nation. And take a look at On Liberty and The Rights of Man.
Re:V says... (Score:2, Insightful)
How much law is too much? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawlessness should never be tolerated. Or will you let someone kill one of your family members, since (as you say) "a free society must tolerate some lawnessness or it is no longer free"? Come on: sacrifice a loved one for the good of the nation, I dare you.
Well since we are taking things to extremes, lets follow your path to its logical end: a society of ants marching in lockstep from the cradle to the grave, a place for everything and everything in its place. The diametrical opposite, what you seem to fear, is of course a barbaric anarchy, every man for himself - do what you will shall be the whole of the law. Neither is practical, neither is representative of humanity.
We are a young race, really in biological and evolutionary terms we are just down from the trees. We are still floundering around trying to determine exactly what is "good" and "evil", the characteristics of right and wrong. Some are convinced we are simply meat machines, our whole lives determined by our genes, excusing and condemning failures in equal measure, others seek to put every foible into a neat box to be repaired or removed, like most of the psychology industry, while yet others make the sight of our own bodies an abomination, along with certain arbitrary words, generally to do with the pleasurable act of copulation. Our instinctive natures and animal passions come into conflict with our intellectual and social structures. The question really is, are those structures right or wrong, did we achieve all we have in spite of or because of our passions?
I'd say that we do not have enough facts to make any definitive decisions on that question yet. Worship of the rule of law is as dangerous as not caring about law at all; law is and always has been a sanctioned instrument of vengeance, from the earliest days to the present. Thats why prisons are not places of rehabilitation (PMITA is even a commonly understood acronym!), they are places of punishment, and that is not likely to change any time soon.
And yet by adjusting the laws to compensate for our inherently passionate nature, you begin a game of brinkmanship, where people with less regard for their fellow man try to keep criminal acts to the grey areas where they might be excused their actions. Structure is not neccesarily the best way to go; neither is a lack of structure. How and where the best compromise is to be found is a question yet to be answered.
Re:that's not all there is (Score:5, Insightful)
Huxley was right; we're laughing, and we've forgotton why.
Re:The worst is yet to come (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost all our gun crime in US is drug dealers and gang bangers shooting each other. Rarely does just random innocent person get shot. When it happens, media makes it out like random hooligans are running around with AKs.
I'm convinced your "chav" problem is reached it's boiling point because average citizen can't do anything about it. Self Defense (even without guns) is forbidden and only answer seems to be "call the police" which is obviously not working. We have similar subcultures here in the US but I've never heard of them engaging of such things as happy slapping. Randomly attacking people? Here in US in certain states, that's a good way to end up face full of pepper spray or depending on severity of the attack, a bullet hole or two. Police will end up hauling chav away for starting it in the first place.
Jefferson and V are both wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Liberty doesn't arise when the government fears its people. The vast majority of genocidal incidents, from Stalin to Mao to Hitler and so on, arose in an atmosphere where the average citizen was fanatically in support of the dictator, but the dictator had a paranoid and irrational fear of the people.
A tyranny where the people are conscious enough of their oppression to feel *fear* of the government is one that will very soon collapse, likely into liberty. One where the fear goes the other way is one that is very liable to commit horrific crimes - and get away with it.
Re:I, For One (Score:3, Insightful)