Talking CCTV to Scold Offenders in UK 486
linumax writes "The most monitored nation of the world is getting an interesting new service. According to a BBC News story, "Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff."
23 years off? (Score:5, Insightful)
A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Winston's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and -- one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency -- bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.
ATTN: SWITCHEURS! (Score:0, Insightful)
If you think Firefox is a decent Mac application, GTFO.
If you're still looking for the "maximize" button, GTFO.
If the name "Clarus" means nothing to you, GTFO.
Bandwagon jumpers are not welcome among real Mac users [atspace.com]. Keep your filthy PC fingers to yourself.
Re:Ready for the Daily Jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet, somehow, this has morphed into a seemingly-large group of people believe that this is a GOOD thing. A doubleplus good thing. WTF went wrong??? Don't they realize they have become the EXACT thing that George Orwell was warning about??? What happened to the 60 years of knowledge that this book brought us about what life would be like living in a society like this?
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a lot of Americans don't realize.. (Score:3, Insightful)
So when is the next step when.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:5, Insightful)
To me the concept of people being free to do whatever they like so long as it doesn't prevent anyone else from doing the same is self evident. Unfortunately, I think the majority of people think the exact opposite: there is a list of things the majority of people believe we should not be allowed to do and there should be perfect enforcement of that list. The absolute tyranny of the majority of the minority is considered by most people to be the best form of government.
As such, the only arguments you'll see the mainstream make against perfect enforcement is the posibility of corruption or misuse.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why do people in Britain put up with this? (Score:5, Insightful)
The root of the problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why are there so many people who don't know how to behave on their own? What are mothers teaching these days?
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ready for the Daily Jerks? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:3, Insightful)
In contrast Switzerland is a true tyranny of the majority and there are many many libertarians in this country that like their privacy. And privacy in Switzerland is part of the constitution (Article 13).
The problem in the UK is that nobody stands up and says, "enough is enough."
Re:What a lot of Americans don't realize.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they're getting desperate? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is sort of an epidemic -- perceived or actual, I don't know, and it hardly matters -- of obnoxious, petty crime, mostly committed by youths, in many British cities. There's the whole "happy slapping" thing, but that's just really the tip of the iceberg, it's just a lot of vandalism, shoplifting, street crime, etc. It's the kind of thing that just really gets to people, because it directly degrades the quality of life when you walk around.
In some ways, I think it sort of mirrors feelings that people in the U.S. had back around 10-15 years ago, at the height of the violent crime wave in the inner cities, except in Britain it doesn't seem to really be violent crime. (In fact it seems to be the kind of shit that would probably get you shot by one of the more serious criminals here in America -- maybe we have some sort of natural selection in the ghettos here that keeps this stuff to a minimum? Or maybe everyone with the means to in the U.S. abandoned the inner cities so long ago that we just don't notice.)
But at any rate, the people who have influence -- mostly white, middle income and up -- aren't too bothered, because they're looking rather desperately for any way to knock the "yobs," "chavs," and other varieties of scum in line. There's a sort of (and again, this is just based on the people I've talked with) "well, nothing else has worked, so what the hell" attitude.
To be honest I can't really blame them. Here in the U.S., there were a lot of Generally Bad Ideas being tossed around back in the 90s before the crime wave crested and began to recede (and I don't think even now there's a clear consensus on why that happened -- some people, the authors of Freakonomics in particular, argue that it was actually the echo of Roe v. Wade from a generation earlier reducing the number of potential criminals; feel free to posit your own theory). If the tide hadn't turned when it did, we'd probably be looking at things like this all over the place right now.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:2, Insightful)
progressing to full adulthood where they understand their relationship to other human beings and their real responsibilities
in the world. In this state all reason is by appeal to authority, real or imaginary. It's based on unresolved fear of loss and vulnerability and leads to religious beliefs, superstition and sociopathy. It is possibly a conflicting basis at the root of schizophrenia.
Very few smart pychologists and psychiatrists have the balls to come right out and say this. I don't give a damn that it's a dangerous thing to say. The people who put up these cameras, people who equate surveillance with security are mentally ill. Those sheep who merely believe that they offer security and complacently go along with it are probably just a bit stupid and incapable of any critical analysis.
In fact the "yobs" who smash down the cameras and throw paint on them are the only sane and honorable players in the whole farce. At least
they have guts to take charge of their environment. And who can blame them for reacting to a state that treats them with contempt? That they
show contempt for such a society is as natural as the day is long. Why do so many apparently smart people just not get this?
The cameras are a there as a sign of weakness. Weakness of the state. Weakness of law and order. Weakness of morality and willpower. They demonstrate more clearly than anything that the police and society have lost control.
Why is it that 50 years ago there was less crime with no cameras? You won't find a person over the age of 40 in the UK who can answer that.
Because you won't find a person over the age of 40 in the UK who has a fucking clue. They are completely divorced from reality, unable to understand where this ridiculous social experiment is taking us and what the consequences are likely to be.
I'd hate to have stocks in the surveillance business when the tide finally turns.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Shoot me, I don't mind CCTV. In fact I frequently welcome it since it makes places considerably safer. I really don't see the problem with CCTV as it's currently implemented in the UK - it's used in public places and you can see the cameras; 1984 comparisons simply don't work.
Whatever slashdot thinks, CCTV is generally put up due to public pressure for it, not by some shadowy government group executing a long range plan to overthrow democracy.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just look a bit further (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2015, someone will say: well, but what about the crimes that are committed at homes by cruel parents? What about terrorists making their bombs? Let's have homes monitored!
There will be an outrage. People will gather in the streets, screaming "Give our rights back". The cameras in those streets will tell them in a firm voice, "Stop yelling and go away". People will stop yelling and go away. So will their freedom.
Re:People of the UK: RISE UP!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Get rid of the death penalty. It's long overdue. Join the post-medieval world.
2. GET A CONSTITUTION.
2. Get a constitution, and stick by it. Better yet, get something like the Magna Carta, which the US has no equivalent for but the UK has had for three times as ong as the US has existed
3. TAKE DOWN THE CAMERAS.
3. Get rid of the mandatory phone-tapping in the US. You might not know this, but every single call you make is monitored. While you're at it, you might want to get rid of the semi-trained armed thugs playing at policemen, too.
Re:Why do people in Britain put up with this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Near 2 million people signed a petition on the governments own website opposing per-mile road charging plans (likely enforced by satellite trackers) and the government's response was basically 'you don't understand, we have to do this, so we're going to go ahead anyway'
Labour Party MPs won a significant majority of the seats, despite having only 36% of the vote; their nearest rival had 33% of the vote, and got half the number of MPs that Labour did.
The system is broken, the government doesn't care, and protest is pointless. All we can do is hang on, and try and vote the bastards out next time. Not that the tories would be any better, they're as anti-privacy as Labour.
Re:What a lot of Americans don't realize.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You also forget the European constitution on human rights is now UK law; it is effectively a bill of rights. The UK might have a few priorities in law different, such as a few tighter limits on free speech such as libel and hate speech, but we have broadly the same rights as US citizens. We're certainly not all chattels (or slaves) of the Crown!
Out of interest, how has the vaunted US system protected habeas corpus? How much good is freedom of the press when all the presses are owned by a few barons in league with the government? A piece of paper is only as powerful as the will of the people to hold their government accountable to it.
Re:23 years off? (Score:1, Insightful)
Would it be an invasion of privacy if a policeman stood in the street and ordered you to pick up your litter?
No.
So why are we so paranoid when the policeman watching is in an office seeing you through a camera?
It is not an invasion of privacy to be watched in public.
Re:What a lot of Americans don't realize.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just look a bit further (Score:5, Insightful)
Various people have been instructed by the voices to not cross the road where they were about to cross it but to walk up to the crossing and cross it there but instead of humbly complying they ignored the voice and crossed anyway. One person says he now crosses at this place every day just to hear the voice shouting at him. These were just innocent people who weren't actually doing anything wrong, they are all perfectly capable of judging for themselves where to cross the road and they don't need some idiot in a control room telling them how to do it.
Law abiding people are the most likely sorts of people to comply with the cameras demands and the people they really want to tackle, e.g. thugs, muggers, car jackers, drunk teenagers are very quickly going to realise that the voice can shout at them all night but with 19 out every 20 British Policemen and Women tied up in the police station reading up on the latest guidelines for dealing sensitively with ethnic minorities no police are ever going to turn up to actually stop them doing whatever it is they were doing.
Re:23 years off? (Score:5, Insightful)
You talk about big brother? Talking CCTV cameras are more pointedly "big brother" than any other initiative proposed by this illiberal, dishonest government. After all, what does it mean? Big brother is not someone who stops you congregating in groups for legitimate protest, nor does he lock up foreigners without trial, sentence or judgement. No. This is Big Brother in all his attentive, caring, protective, advising, paternal, loving, Orwellian glory. Why vote anyone else citizen? Why go anywhere else citizen? We love you citizen. Now, stop slacking and get back to work. It's for your own good, you know.
Re:Ready for the Daily Jerks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:23 years off? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not an invasion of privacy to be watched in public.
In just the past ten years or so, there's been a huge increase in the ability of police to monitor you and your movements in public spaces. This results in an increase in power of government over your life. I don't think it's much of a stretch (perhaps another ten or twenty years) to have your every movement in public in most of the UK monitored and evaluated by some sort of AI. Perhaps even stored indefinitely. But before widespread monitoring, perhaps only 1% or so of your life in public was spent in view of a law enforcement officer. In other words, unless you were doing something suspicious, you had no reason to expect to be watched like a five year old child. I believe that's on the verge of changing and IMHO it is a huge drop in your actual privacy.Re:Just look a bit further (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:23 years off? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't this be some kind of digital police-state?
Liberal Labour? (Score:2, Insightful)
I just had to comment on this. It really bothers me people being what to say, ignorant towards this whole surveillance trend that has been ongoing the past years in Britain.
The consensus that "if I'm a law abiding citizen, that means I've got nothing to fear" generally works well for a lot of people; those who have forgotten how easily democracies are overthrown and that their idealistic society might not exist forever. I mean, creating the perfect infrastructure for a totalistic government by placing cameras and loudspeakers everywhere just doesn't seem right for a presumably liberal government lead by Labour. It is my hopes that people will soon begin realizing that this is not the right way we're going.
In Denmark (neighbor to Great Britain) the government has just introduced an "Anti-Terror Act" giving the intelligence services and police exorbitant privileges in terms of tapping every phone in some general area without an approval of a judge. Also presumably all internet communication between privates (including email and such) are to be logged (someone must have a lot of storage to use on this one since this is a LOT of data).
My main point is, that the surveillance trend is not just something we see in Britain and that this is something I fear will not stop by itself when we're adequately watched.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:1, Insightful)
Well here is one UK citizen over 40 who can answer. But I have no need to, because you gave the correct answer yourself. By 50 years of Socialist and neo-Socialist indoctrination (ie since the end of the last war), the majority of this population now have no moral foundation for their lives. They willingly fall for the line that it is the Government's job to look after them "from the cradle to the grave". And so they don't even try to do it right, and object vociferously when (if) told that what they have done is wrong. They happily consider reality to be what their favourite pop stars and the inhabitants of the Big Brother House get up to. So long as no-one interferes with that version of "reality", the majority of the population will not even notice the continuing onset of a draconian, dictatorial system.
We will have to fight for our liberties, and fairly soon.
Another Anonymous Coward
Law of unintended consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
What worries me isn't so much the invasion of privacy by CCTV, or being patronised by being told to pick up litter, but rather that this technology threatens to render CCTV ineffective.
CCTV is pervasive in British cities, but there are too many cameras and too few operatives for every camera to be monitored all the time. Criminals are deterred by the uncertainty of whether they are being watched. However, once CCTV becomes reactive, the absence of a verbal warning could be taken as confirmation that you are not being watched.
Suppose you're a would-be mugger in the centre of Midlesborough. You drop some litter and mess about with traffic cones, and if there's no verbal warning then you know there's a good chance that you're invisible to surveillance for the time being. Knowing you're relatively safe from being caught, you can now select your victim with impunity.
Re:Because they're getting desperate? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:23 years off? (Score:3, Insightful)
Criminals, especially the nuisance level ones hanging around on street corners, selling drugs, burgling houses and mugging people have no real fear of the police. Ok so they may get caught and arrested but after that they're back out on the street able to take up exactly where they left off.
These people have no fear of the law so in a confrontation with a member of the public asking them to keep the noise down, not litter the streets or whatever they will immediately become aggressive and be quite prepared to beat the crap out of the member of the public whilst the member of the public will be naturally hesitant and not want to find himself before the law for kicking seven kinds of crap out of the scumbag so the best plan is simply not to get involved which obviously leaves the streets free for the scumbags who quite rightly believe they can do what they like and get away with it because in fact this has been proved to them in every single run with the police or people telling them to mend their behaviour.
The real solution is not talking cameras, it's a two pronged approach. First we need more trained policemen on the streets walking around. They know who the scum are and can actually do a lot more than a voice from a camera to enforce correct behaviour.
Secondly the law needs to changed whereby persistant offenders get actual prison sentances, long ones and where the public are allowed to defend themselves without fear of prosecution by the scumbags.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:2, Insightful)
When you have a policeman on the beat, you can see your accuser. When you have a faceless camera you can't see who's watching. When the police are out, they have to make an effort to record you, via a notebook, camera, etc, when they suspect you of a crime. You see this happen, it's a face to face communication. When a CCTV is watching it's constantly recorded, in case you have committed a crime, or will commit a crime, or will be talking to someone that will, or are in the wrong time wrong place.
Say that a plod arrests you for taking a picture of the Houses of Parliament. They then take your DNA and fingerprints to be held permamently. They look at a recording of a speech you gave at Speakers Corner saying how bad extended CCTV is, they then note that you've recently diverted from your normal route of Highgate -> Canary Wharf between 8 and 9AM weekdays, and are spending tuesday afternoons at Westminster. They put two and two together and then you're banged up for terrorism.
It's all part of the extended surveilence network. As facial recognition progresses, soon your face (combined with your mobile, oyster, number plate) will be able to be automatically tracked across the country. People would complain if the police were stalking them when they are innocent.
Re:Just look a bit further (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just look a bit further (Score:1, Insightful)
Excuse for saying this, but you're all a bunch of retards
Re:Just look a bit further (Score:3, Insightful)
If I lived where a voice on high told me what to do I would quickly start a Monty Python style dialogue with the "Controller"
Voice: "Don't cross there"
Me (falling to knees): "Blessed be ! A miracle ! God is speaking to me !"
Voice: "Stop that now, get up and go the crossing"
Me (not moving): "And how shall I go to the crossing oh Lord ?"
Voice: "Stop that now... We'll call the poilce"
Me (now prostrate): "Oh vengeful Lord, smite me not with your mighty polices"
etc. etc.
This sort of thing would catch on pretty fast in the U.K. Before you knew it you'd have flocks of folk in fancy dress being "guided by voices" and the control room staff would either be joining in or banging their heads on their desks.
Never underestimate the power of idiocy or the ability of UK citizens not to join in with the schemes of twits
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:4, Insightful)
For one thing, the police wouldn't be standing around, filming you for 15 minutes, as you got beat/stabbed to death in the street...
For another, human beings don't remember every detail, of everything going on, every second of every day... So actual police aren't going to send out tickets for every trivial little infraction, like jaywalking in the middle of the night... Police aren't going to remember exactly who you were associating with, on every single day, for years.
There's an overwhelming difference between human and electronic surveillance, and I can't understand in the slightly why so many people play dumb, or even worse, actually believe it's remotely the same.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference between having a bunch of police doing the same is:
- police are single units and hard to network, and therefore some effort must be made to track a person by a number of individual officers. This means opportunistic tracking of everyone just because you can won't happen.
- police can react to violent crime and stop the crime from occurring, a CCTV camera cannot intevene in a fight to break it up
You can bet that as soon as it's possible to automatically track everyone (and the already installed all pervasive CCTV network makes this easy), they will do it. Incidentally, there is some level of privacy in a public place: privacy of the thoughts in my mind, privacy of where I'm going from and to (random people in public can't tell unless they stalk you), privacy of a conversation with a friend.
Re:Where did the UK go wrong??? (Score:4, Insightful)
The other major difference is that this is a new level of monitoring. A policeman on the beat does not generally follow people or investigate them if they are not doing anything suspicious. CCTV is always recording, and with new technology is now following people all the time. Every car or tube journey in London can be followed easily. A person's movements on foot can easily be tracked. Yet, these are innocent people who in the past would not have been monitored.
If you examine a persons life in close enough detail, everyone looks like a criminal. Why should the government first assume that everyone is by default a ciminal and must be monitored, and why should I then be required to prove my innocence? CCTV is gathering evidence against everyone, all the time.
Re:Just look a bit further (Score:3, Insightful)
Having actual police officers on the other hand would actually prevent the attack.
The cameras are just feel good. They won't make you any safer at all.