SpuriousLogic writes "Only one crime was solved for each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: 'It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent.' He added: 'CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security. The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV.'"
Great point. While I personally don't think that they're much of a deterrent, especially as people grow used to them, it's definitely a valid angle to examine before taking action.
Don't get me wrong - I feel that the CCTVs are a huge breach of privacy and I'd have to have them where I live - but I do think it's unfair just to look at a single statistic and take action based on that.
Yes and no. I see a difference between an officer of the law - who should be able to be held accountable for his or her actions - and a recording device, which allows any number of people to monitor the behaviors of countless numbers of pedestrians. To illustrate my meaning, try thinking of an example where an officer observing something would likely not cause as big of an uproar as leaked video footage.
It doesn't seem to bother you when you do it in front of me, and I surreptitiously snap a photo with my cellphone. If you don't want these images leaking, stop picking your nose or grabbing your crotch in front of everybody.
That is the problem right there. You think that because somebody is in public, that person has no right to privacy. I think that I still have a right to privacy.
If I walk by a cop, he will see me pick my nose and the next day he will have forgotten about me. The worst that can happen is that he says 'I saw somebody pick his nose' and that will be the end of it. If I rob an old lady, the cop will see hit and arrest me if I were stupid enough to do it in front of him.
With a camera my nose picking will be for all to see for an indefinite time. Then when the camera sees me rob an old lady, they will need to try and find me and there will be a 1 in 1.000 chance that they do.
To me a police walking around is not "the enemy". In fact if they are friendly (and I knew a few of them) it is nice to talk to them and have a beer with them. To me he is not there to get me, he is there to prevent that somebody else gets me.
To me there is a huge difference between my privacy and your right to put everything you see online. The way you explain it, stalking should be legal.
Or in other words: the rights to privacy should be opt-in (I agree that you take and publish my picture) not opt-out. And if there are 10.000 people who you would need to ask, you might say? Well, that is YOUR problem, not mine and if you think that you can't fulfill those demands, then don't take the picture.
The privacy issues are actually trivial to solve: make the cameras automatically encrypt data before shipping them in protected form to an archive. No one sees the direct feed, no one is able to access that data. In order to access data, a judge has to issue an order (if the system is well designed, that should be possible to do in a few hours at most), and the order allows a group of isolated people with specific instruction as to what to look for, to view in a closed room the unencrypted feed. Then, once those have made the observations and passed them to law enforcement, the unencrypted feed is discarded.
Whenever the feed has to be used in court, it can be unencrypted permanently with a proper judicial order, for the time span that is relevant.
The chances that you are doing something you would like not to be disclosed in the same camera and at the same time a crime is being comitted is low enough to make it a non issue compared to the benefits.
The problem is that this is not being done. Recordings are being done unencrypted, ans monitored in real time by people that could be re recording for whatever purposes they have. That's unacceptable especially compared to the limited benefits.
I realize I'm a bit late but I think it needs to be said:
In a world where you don't get hunted down if you so happen to fit the newest image of absolute evil, yes, total abolishment of privacy could indeed be a good thing.
Unfortunately, in our world we prosecute people based on skin colour, sexual orientation, political stance and so on and so forth. People don't have to be guilty of a crime to get shunned. As long as this situation remains, privacy is the last bastion of freedom we have.
For the price and upkeep of 1,000 CCTV cameras I would expect that one could deploy at least one additional meat-based law inforcement unit complete with two eyes. This creature, that we'll call a 'police officer', might be expected to solve more than one crime per year.
Absolutely I would hate to see the limited government dollars allocated for police protection squandered on inefficient ways such as CCTV.
You're making a very common mistake, which is to assume that the CCTV cameras are owned by the government. The majority of CCTV cameras in London are installed privately in shops and offices.
On the other hand when a cop sees someone commit a crime he can arrest him on the spot, all a CCTV camera can do is watch, unless of course the person happens to be wearing something that obscures his face or a headband studded with IR LEDs. In which case your camera is useless. Furthermore you can put a hell of alot more then just 1 cop on the street for the price of a 1000 cameras.
I think you're either greatly over estimating the cost of a police officer or greatly underestimating the cost of installing, maintaining and monitoring videos. A thousand cameras is going to cost you a pretty substantial sum of money to keep in repair.
On top of that, criminals no where the cameras are pointed, if you spend enough time around them you can spot which way they're pointed without looking too hard. On top of that a police office can be sent to other areas of the city as needed and get information which is completely inaccessible to a camera. And an officer is already there and in these parts ready to respond to anything that might be going on, not just crimes, but medical emergencies and such as well.
One huge difference: cameras can't actually apprehend anybody. There are cases upon cases of crimes being commited directly under watch of a camera that are never solved. Whether it's because the perp is wearing a hat or they never return to the city or whatever, were there an actual officer there it could have been stopped then and there: the crime would be prevented AND the perp could be taking directly to gaol, no passing GO.
A woman being assaulted and saying "oh, we got it on camera so we/might/ be able to catch the guy" isn't going to feel any better until he's actually caught. Telling her they can't catch him because he was wearing a hat or the camera was turned 5 degrees too far to the left is just pouring salt into the wound.
Exactly right. I think the cameras in London are largely ineffective for actually preventing crime, and not always helpful when solving crimes after the fact either.
My friend has been burgled twice and each time he caught some fantastically clear 640x480 frontal and side-on shots of the goblins in the act (he leaves the webcam running and uploading captures via FTP). He was even running Adeona and got the IP addresses of the perps who stole his laptops and gear, but the police never did solve the cases.
Seems to me that the only thing you can do is set up an immediate notification service to alert you when webcam movement is detected, and then call the police or immediately run home with a baseball bat.
The problem I have with surveillance in general is that I don't trust the decision of who is labeled a "criminal" and what is labeled a "crime" to be sane. Sure, I can walk down the street today, minding my own business, and I know it's not a crime, but can I tomorrow?
I'd rather that anything involving "minding my own business" go unmonitored.
You won't object if City Hall mandates that all entrances and exits are monitored, 24/7 then? Why stop there? Great Britain is going to install cameras into some targeted homes, to see that children go to bed on time, do their homework, etc.
Personally, I object to the concept of a police state.....
It's nothing like the twisted distortion of reality that you have attempted to portray here.
If the police wish to follow my every movement then they need a court order - it's called surveillance and yes when in public if someone is following me around writing down everything I do and say that is not protecting my "human rights" that's violating them in a huge way. It's called harrasment and stalking if a police officer does it without the legal authority handed down by a judge on a case by case basis to do so.
Your pathetic attitude toward mass state surveillance is quite depressing by the way, and no a camera can't protect your "human rights"
"CCTV captures chilling moment drug-fuelled thugs beat OAP to death"
"Hells Angels Member Beaten To Death in Sydney Airport"
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
All happenened in front of or right next to CCTV cameras.
To me, it's like saying, "I'd hate to have a policemen who follows me around all day, personally policing everything I do except for inside my house (for now)."
The laws were written with an understanding that there wouldn't be 100% enforcement. The police would catch the worst cases, and let people off sometime.
If every law were enforced fully, you would be surprised how oppressive it could be. You probably break the law a dozen time a day without realizing it.
While I personally don't think that they're much of a deterrent,
Sometimes they are just an amusement.
My local Dunkin Donuts is about 60 feet by 30 feet and has, count 'em, 13 of those dark plastic ceiling bubbles. I think they should hold a contest and give out free donuts to anyone who can guess exactly how many of them actually contain a camera.
Oh, and the place has been robbed twice in the last year.
Locks only keep honest people out of your house. A hoodie + hat or other facial obfuscation = entire purpose of the camera has been defeated. Criminals know how to defeat simple measures, it's what they do. So I would say that probably 1-2% of criminals would be completely deterred from robbing somebody, stealing a car, or whatever, but the rest would just scout out the cameras and not look at them and wear a hoodie to prevent good angle/shot of the face, or simply wear other methods of obscuring their faces.
Criminals know how to defeat simple measures, it's what they do. So I would say that probably 1-2% of criminals would be completely deterred from robbing somebody, stealing a car, or whatever, but the rest would just scout out the cameras and not look at them and wear a hoodie to prevent good angle/shot of the face, or simply wear other methods of obscuring their faces.
I'd need to see actual data. Seems equally likely to me that only 1-2% of car thieves are smart enough to do avoid these measures. If you're running low on meth and see an ipod in a car at night, you may be thinking little more than smashed window = ipod = more meth, "wear a hoodie so you don't get photographed and caught" might be pretty advanced for you. After all, everyone knows the halfway intelligent criminals don't steal cars, they go to law school.
Having hung around a few serious heroin and speed addicts in the past, let me tell you that they're far more knowledgeable about crime than any arm-chair criminal here on/.
So maybe the cameras are positioned wrong or are not of high quality enough?
I would like to see a study why the cameras did not help. Too high in the ceiling so baseball cap obscures too much? Analog or low resolution so the picture is a mess? Couldn't catch license plate of run-away car?
According to one of Schneier's blog posts the cameras don't reduce crime at all. They shift it to other locations. Such a shift is an entirely different question, but perhaps still a valid goal.
If I was somebody who was aware of the failure of the cameras in terms of identification I would simply stop caring they exist.
In EVERY situation there are cameras it is a excercise in futility.
For Example:
In highschool we would do various illegal activities in the back. They put up cameras. We got scared. After about a month we stopped caring and it was business as usual, but we got more sneaky and better at our activities. We even would stage large fights right in front of the cameras with absolutely no mediation.
Moral of the story is that nothing beats an on duty cop/teacher in person patrolling. All these cameras have done for London is made them the base for 1984 jokes for the past few years.
"Detectives, who will examine CCTV footage, want to speak to a cyclist who was seen in the area. "
Do you think the sorts of crimes that CCTV cameras are supposed to "prevent" are committed by well mannered, forward thinking and highly analytical individuals?
There's a big disconnect between people on these tech sites and reality of the mindset of much of the lower class.
Nice reference. Standard boilerplate crime reporting. Now show us the follow up article where the police actually find something useful on the CCTV footage and catch the bad guys..
This is relevant because "This report offers key findings from the 20 top studies/articles in the field and offers practical recommendations on how to optimize the use of public CCTV systems."
Key Findings Summary
* The expectation that CCTV systems should be deployed to reduce crime rather than solve crime has created huge problems.
* While the studies show serious doubt on CCTV's ability to reduce crime generally, a strong consensus exists in CCTV's ability to reduce premeditative/property crime
* CCTV is consistently treated as a singular, stable technology, obscuring radical technological changes that have occurred in the last 10 years
* Differences in per camera costs are largely ignored, preventing policy makers from finding ways to reduce costs
* Routine comparison of police vs cameras is counterproductive
Practical Recommendations Summary
* Stop claiming that CCTV can generally reduce crime
* Optimize future public CCTV projects around crime solving rather than crime reduction
* Optimize future public CCTV projects around material and premeditative crimes
* Target technologies that support crime solving and material/premeditative crimes
* Focus on minimizing cost per camera
and "CCTV in Glasgow" [u-net.com] Main Findings - In the 12 months after installation of the cameras there were 3,156 fewer crimes and offences than the average for the 24 months preceding installation. - Once the crime and offence figures were adjusted to take account of the general downward trend in crimes and offences, reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre. - The cameras appeared to have little effect on clear up rates for crimes and offences. - 33% of people questioned in the city centre were aware of the cameras 3 months after installation and 41% 15 months after installation. - Installation of the CCTV cameras did not reduce the proportion of those who said they would sometimes avoid a certain part of the city but there was a slight reduction in those who said they were anxious about becoming a victim of crime in the city centre. - 72% of all those interviewed believed CCTV cameras would prevent crime and disorder; 81% thought they would be effective in catching perpetrators; and 79% thought they would make people feel less likely that they would become victims of crime. - 67% of those interviewed 'did not mind' being observed by street cameras.
Personally, I think the cost is the only way we can argue back our privacy. Say you are not willing to pay for costly, ineffective measures.
According to the British government, there has been a 48% decrease in recorded crime since the peak in 1995, which seems to argue that the proliferation of cameras and draconian gun control have been effective in protecting the safety of Britons.
That's what the Armenians thought, until their government slaughtered them. That's what the Kulaks thought, until their government slaughtered them. That's what the Jews thought, until their government slaughtered them, that's what the Hutus though, until the Tutsis slaughtered them. This goes on and on.
Every great genocide in the 19th century was preceded by a government decree either that citizens couldn't own guns, or that a targeted minority could not own guns.
An armed society is a polite society. Your streets are now ruled by hooligans. You are afraid to go outside at night. You are more likely to be mugged. If you are mugged, you are more likely to be injured or killed in the attack. Enjoy your rule by thugs, both in government and on the streets.
While its fine to have 1000's of camera's, you need humans to view the output. Sure the camera can be recorded for later viewing, but, someone still needs to look at the recording. Digital lets you run the video relatively fast scanning for "events", however, there are limits (around 10..25X) At some point, the hard disk (I assume, not a tape) gets near to full, and the video data ends up being deleted. Assuming the camera is coded in MPEG4, there is around 1 gigabytes per hour to store (yes, I know, you can do better than 1 gig/hour. ) so you might be able to store approx 10 days on a 250 gig HDD. So, unless something has been found in less than 10 days, and copied to a less volatile medium, it is probably lost for evermore!
I personally suspect that not all camera's are even permanently connected to a recorder.
i would really hate to have my privacy intruded upon while walking around in public;p
of course it is a waste of funds, all the money spent on those camera would probably pay for an extra dozen police cars or hire several more police officers to patrol the higher crime infested areas...
i would really hate to have my privacy intruded upon while walking around in public;p
Solid point. However, there is a difference between:
- Your actions going unrecorded in public
- Your actions being recorded as a matter of chance (someone random taking your picture or accidentally including you in one)
- Your actions always being recorded.
The Greater London Assembly is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to "predict" if a crime is about to take place [today.com] and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.
Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. "Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence," said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. ("Consumer confidence" is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)
"Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object," said councillor Jason Fazackarley. "Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays."
The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible cliches copied from other papers.
However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: "++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol."
CCTV cameras are a one-time installation cost (with a minor amount of maintenance). Regular police forces are a continuous cost.
A million cameras capture 1 per 1000 = 1,000 criminals caught per year. The following years should catch an equivalent number - for little additional cost. This is one of the basic problems with news reporting - if the BBC had splashed a big story headlined "CCTV Cameras Catch 1,000 Per Year", there would be an entirely different public reaction.
The cameras are mostly a one-time cost. However, to have people monitoring them is a continuous expense. Given the relative costs of technology vs. labor, I suspect that's a large part of the cost.
We need more cameras with better quality. HD quality with multiple lenses to also read in different spectrums such as infrared and ultraviolet and of course these should have sensitive shotgun microphones. If we deploy ten times the number of cameras that are currently out there we can stop these dirty crooks and rid he world of crime once and for all!
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday August 24, @08:08PM (#29180627)
The rate of alcohol consumption per capita in the UK is double that of the 50s. (sorry, was reading that the other day but I didn't bookmark it, some UK paper)Crime goes up the more drunks you have. Just human reality. Drunks don't care about *anything*, they lose the ability to think straight, cameras or no cameras. They'll act out aggressively without a second thought, or do other stupid stuff like pull street crime. Drunks or druggies, an easy wallet or purse grab plus a bit of sport making people hurt, they dig it.
That's not all the reasons for increased crime, but it is a big part of it.
Anyway, those cameras....this is my real point. Bull SHIT it was to reduce normal street crime, it is conditioning to get people there to accept full big brother action, and they have for the most part. One step at a time. First in public, now they are going to be putting them in "problem family homes". After that is accepted, they will expand the list so more fall under the "problem" category (like the US has that totally illegal and should have caused regime change by now big brother "no fly" list that all the cowering "flying public" herd animal peons accept, so it is no better there).
Once they have enough cameras installed under the "problem family" category, they'll go all the way to every place, every home, every business, every building and all over outside. And if you refuse, well there you go, you are now a "problem", you are a "resister" so they have a precedent to do it that YOU accepted before without revolt as long as it wasn't "all that bad".
If you wait until it "gets that bad", well gee, it IS that bad then and you blew your chance to stop it and now are stuck in some hideous north korean styled society, just with better tech, and you WON'T be able to revolt or stop things then. They already disarmed the population there, fed them that crap about "reducing crime". What a crock. Have to retreat inside your own home..and they get people to accept that insanity...I mean..damn
You change things before they "get that bad", or accept your shackles and keep your eyes lowered and mind your masters. There is NO middle ground there, and you won't be negotiating with your owners either, nor their armed bully boys.
ALL societies eventually reach that stage, no exceptions. Tech keeps getting better as history marches on, but despotism is ALWAYS the end game with societies that let government have more power than the people, and it turns into an "us versus them" deal and the ones with the most weapons and power and authority win, or there is a revolution and everyone loses because they waited too long to keep things sane.
So keep drinking heavy, blitzed into perpetual stupidity. They *want* you that way, "solving street crime" is NOT their main priority.
That's one of the ways they keep their herds under control. Petty crime, or even a rise in serious crime, is a trivial expense for them to have their populations dumbed down and compliant and accepting all sorts of crap like surveillance cameras, no fly lists, data bases, more and more regulations and "permits" needed for this or that. Drunkeness, drugged, illegal and "doctors prescription" drugs, bread and circuses plus disarm the serfs and peons and heavily arm the state's bully boys=controlled populations. That's the formula they always use.
1% masters controlling 99% of the people, and it is apparently easy to do, it keeps happening over and over again.
Ahhh... but local councils have turned it into a prodigious cash cow by catching motorists making minor traffic infractions and fining them... as my father found out last week.
Way to go SpuriousLogic. You take today's top prize for selectively snipping text from a news article to spin a point you want to push. This was actually an article about how ineffective the current use of CCTV image data has been, with an emotive tag line to snag the eyeballs. The article concludes by saying:
"The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV." Nationwide, the government has spent £500m on CCTV cameras. But Det Sup Michael Michael McNally, who commissioned the report, conceded more needed to be done to make the most of the investment. He said: "CCTV, we recognise, is a really important part of investigation and prevention of crime, so how we retrieve that from the individual CCTV pods is really quite important. "There are some concerns, and that's why we have a number of projects on-going at the moment." Among those projects is a pilot scheme by the Met to improve the way CCTV images are used. A spokesman for the Met said: "We estimate more than 70% of murder investigations have been solved with the help of CCTV retrievals and most serious crime investigations have a CCTV investigation strategy." Officers from 11 boroughs have formed a new unit which collects and labels footage centrally before distributing them across the force and media. It has led to more than 1,000 identifications out of 5,260 images processed so far.
Quite different from the spin on this slashdot story huh. But then you knew that didn't you, and you knew the much of the Slashdot crowd would just lap it up.
"Bill the Copper" didn't used to follow everyone around writing down their every action while in public and storing it to be retrieved at will by the current or future government.
On the other hand "Ivan the KGB Agent" and "Wilhelm the Stasi Agent" did.
Bill the copper is meant to be an approachable person of the community that everyone knows. You may or may not realize this, but in some countries the Police are still looked at as very strong role models. As someone going into law enforcement(Canadian), I feel kinda ashamed that the UK has gone this far(Yes police reflect on the actions of other police a lot. Don't think they don't), and the police aren't looked as someone you can feel safe around but as someone to fear.
Regardless of this, going from organic to electronic is huge. Not only is there no "person", when you need a person that nearest dispatch may be 10-45mins away. Tell that to some women that's just been raped. GOOD JOB! I hate CCTV and everything it stands for, I realize the original intention and it was sound. It's currently bad, it will remain bad. Want to ensure crimes get solved, ensure public trust, and ensure that you don't seem like you're out of touch with people?
Hire good cops that have empathy, understand the public, and understand they're not there for the quick fix to a problem. But that a problem, may require a long haul, and that as a cop. Your job is to fix them.
I agree with you that it isn't usually happening now (tho I sat in a traffic class with someone busted for 1mph over the speed limit about 5 years ago).
I don't agree with you that it won't happen in the future. Every day we read about a way they have found to automate camera monitoring.
As someone basically 50 years old, it astounds me the things young people take for advantage and freedoms do not even know they have lost.
Even in my life time, people could commit a crime- go elsewhere and live a normal life. Things that might have been a stupid error by a 20 year old or sometimes more serious things. Now they are much more likely to go to jail. The law is much more unforgiving. Make the mistake and basically, your chance at a normal life is over.
The percentage of people in jail has increased to levels that would have been considered totalitarian when I was a boy.
Laws, like the RICO laws have been corrupted to be used for purposes never imagined.
Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but how many crimes did it prevent? I always considered cameras more of a prevention, i.e. only idiots commit crimes in front of cameras.
Obviously, another question is how many crimes simply moved to areas without cameras.
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong - I feel that the CCTVs are a huge breach of privacy and I'd have to have them where I live - but I do think it's unfair just to look at a single statistic and take action based on that.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, I'd *hate* to have them where I live. The paranoia is getting to me.
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
So?
It doesn't seem to bother you when you do it in front of me, and I surreptitiously snap a photo with my cellphone. If you don't want these images leaking, stop picking your nose or grabbing your crotch in front of everybody.
Or just be like Michael J, and don't care.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the problem right there. You think that because somebody is in public, that person has no right to privacy. I think that I still have a right to privacy.
If I walk by a cop, he will see me pick my nose and the next day he will have forgotten about me. The worst that can happen is that he says 'I saw somebody pick his nose' and that will be the end of it. If I rob an old lady, the cop will see hit and arrest me if I were stupid enough to do it in front of him.
With a camera my nose picking will be for all to see for an indefinite time. Then when the camera sees me rob an old lady, they will need to try and find me and there will be a 1 in 1.000 chance that they do.
To me a police walking around is not "the enemy". In fact if they are friendly (and I knew a few of them) it is nice to talk to them and have a beer with them. To me he is not there to get me, he is there to prevent that somebody else gets me.
To me there is a huge difference between my privacy and your right to put everything you see online. The way you explain it, stalking should be legal.
Or in other words: the rights to privacy should be opt-in (I agree that you take and publish my picture) not opt-out. And if there are 10.000 people who you would need to ask, you might say? Well, that is YOUR problem, not mine and if you think that you can't fulfill those demands, then don't take the picture.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize I'm a bit late but I think it needs to be said:
In a world where you don't get hunted down if you so happen to fit the newest image of absolute evil, yes, total abolishment of privacy could indeed be a good thing.
Unfortunately, in our world we prosecute people based on skin colour, sexual orientation, political stance and so on and so forth. People don't have to be guilty of a crime to get shunned. As long as this situation remains, privacy is the last bastion of freedom we have.
Parent
The trade-off (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely I would hate to see the limited government dollars allocated for police protection squandered on inefficient ways such as CCTV.
Parent
Re:The trade-off (Score:5, Informative)
You're making a very common mistake, which is to assume that the CCTV cameras are owned by the government. The majority of CCTV cameras in London are installed privately in shops and offices.
Parent
Re:The trade-off (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand when a cop sees someone commit a crime he can arrest him on the spot, all a CCTV camera can do is watch, unless of course the person happens to be wearing something that obscures his face or a headband studded with IR LEDs. In which case your camera is useless. Furthermore you can put a hell of alot more then just 1 cop on the street for the price of a 1000 cameras.
Parent
Re:The trade-off (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, criminals no where the cameras are pointed, if you spend enough time around them you can spot which way they're pointed without looking too hard. On top of that a police office can be sent to other areas of the city as needed and get information which is completely inaccessible to a camera. And an officer is already there and in these parts ready to respond to anything that might be going on, not just crimes, but medical emergencies and such as well.
Parent
Prevention vs. Action (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Prevention vs. Action (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly right. I think the cameras in London are largely ineffective for actually preventing crime, and not always helpful when solving crimes after the fact either.
My friend has been burgled twice and each time he caught some fantastically clear 640x480 frontal and side-on shots of the goblins in the act (he leaves the webcam running and uploading captures via FTP). He was even running Adeona and got the IP addresses of the perps who stole his laptops and gear, but the police never did solve the cases.
Seems to me that the only thing you can do is set up an immediate notification service to alert you when webcam movement is detected, and then call the police or immediately run home with a baseball bat.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem I have with surveillance in general is that I don't trust the decision of who is labeled a "criminal" and what is labeled a "crime" to be sane. Sure, I can walk down the street today, minding my own business, and I know it's not a crime, but can I tomorrow?
I'd rather that anything involving "minding my own business" go unmonitored.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
You won't object if City Hall mandates that all entrances and exits are monitored, 24/7 then? Why stop there? Great Britain is going to install cameras into some targeted homes, to see that children go to bed on time, do their homework, etc.
Personally, I object to the concept of a police state.....
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nothing like the twisted distortion of reality that you have attempted to portray here.
If the police wish to follow my every movement then they need a court order - it's called surveillance and yes when in public if someone is following me around writing down everything I do and say that is not protecting my "human rights" that's violating them in a huge way. It's called harrasment and stalking if a police officer does it without the legal authority handed down by a judge on a case by case basis to do so.
Your pathetic attitude toward mass state surveillance is quite depressing by the way, and no a camera can't protect your "human rights"
"CCTV captures chilling moment drug-fuelled thugs beat OAP to death"
"Hells Angels Member Beaten To Death in Sydney Airport"
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
All happenened in front of or right next to CCTV cameras.
Time to grow up ey?
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
To me, it's like saying, "I'd hate to have a policemen who follows me around all day, personally policing everything I do except for inside my house (for now)."
The laws were written with an understanding that there wouldn't be 100% enforcement. The police would catch the worst cases, and let people off sometime.
If every law were enforced fully, you would be surprised how oppressive it could be. You probably break the law a dozen time a day without realizing it.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Funny)
While I personally don't think that they're much of a deterrent,
Sometimes they are just an amusement.
My local Dunkin Donuts is about 60 feet by 30 feet and has, count 'em, 13 of those dark plastic ceiling bubbles. I think they should hold a contest and give out free donuts to anyone who can guess exactly how many of them actually contain a camera.
Oh, and the place has been robbed twice in the last year.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A lot less now that criminals know they have a 1 in 1000 chance of getting caught.
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a mod point would have been wasted here as your comment already seems buried.
It's exactly what I was going to say. I know of plenty of local businesses that get ripped off and surveillance pics are usually worthless.
Fake cams are almost as good as real ones.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Criminals know how to defeat simple measures, it's what they do. So I would say that probably 1-2% of criminals would be completely deterred from robbing somebody, stealing a car, or whatever, but the rest would just scout out the cameras and not look at them and wear a hoodie to prevent good angle/shot of the face, or simply wear other methods of obscuring their faces.
I'd need to see actual data. Seems equally likely to me that only 1-2% of car thieves are smart enough to do avoid these measures. If you're running low on meth and see an ipod in a car at night, you may be thinking little more than smashed window = ipod = more meth, "wear a hoodie so you don't get photographed and caught" might be pretty advanced for you. After all, everyone knows the halfway intelligent criminals don't steal cars, they go to law school.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
So maybe the cameras are positioned wrong or are not of high quality enough?
I would like to see a study why the cameras did not help. Too high in the ceiling so baseball cap obscures too much? Analog or low resolution so the picture is a mess? Couldn't catch license plate of run-away car?
I have no clue what such a study would reveal.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
According to one of Schneier's blog posts the cameras don't reduce crime at all. They shift it to other locations. Such a shift is an entirely different question, but perhaps still a valid goal.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How many people care in light of this information (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sure, but how many crimes did it prevent?"
If I was somebody who was aware of the failure of the cameras in terms of identification I would simply stop caring they exist.
In EVERY situation there are cameras it is a excercise in futility.
For Example:
In highschool we would do various illegal activities in the back. They put up cameras. We got scared. After about a month we stopped caring and it was business as usual, but we got more sneaky and better at our activities. We even would stage large fights right in front of the cameras with absolutely no mediation.
Moral of the story is that nothing beats an on duty cop/teacher in person patrolling. All these cameras have done for London is made them the base for 1984 jokes for the past few years.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
"The attack is believed to have been recorded by two nearby CCTV cameras. Police are currently studying the footage. "
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20061015/ai_n16785042/ [findarticles.com]
"Student beaten to death yards from home"
"Detectives, who will examine CCTV footage, want to speak to a cyclist who was seen in the area. "
Do you think the sorts of crimes that CCTV cameras are supposed to "prevent" are committed by well mannered, forward thinking and highly analytical individuals?
There's a big disconnect between people on these tech sites and reality of the mindset of much of the lower class.
Parent
Re:Sure, but, but, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Some relevant links:
"Is Public CCTV Effective?" [ipvideomarket.info]
This is relevant because "This report offers key findings from the 20 top studies/articles in the field and offers practical recommendations on how to optimize the use of public CCTV systems."
Key Findings Summary
* The expectation that CCTV systems should be deployed to reduce crime rather than solve crime has created huge problems.
* While the studies show serious doubt on CCTV's ability to reduce crime generally, a strong consensus exists in CCTV's ability to reduce premeditative/property crime
* CCTV is consistently treated as a singular, stable technology, obscuring radical technological changes that have occurred in the last 10 years
* Differences in per camera costs are largely ignored, preventing policy makers from finding ways to reduce costs
* Routine comparison of police vs cameras is counterproductive
Practical Recommendations Summary
* Stop claiming that CCTV can generally reduce crime
* Optimize future public CCTV projects around crime solving rather than crime reduction
* Optimize future public CCTV projects around material and premeditative crimes
* Target technologies that support crime solving and material/premeditative crimes
* Focus on minimizing cost per camera
and "CCTV in Glasgow" [u-net.com]
Main Findings
- In the 12 months after installation of the cameras there were 3,156 fewer crimes and offences than the average for the 24 months preceding installation.
- Once the crime and offence figures were adjusted to take account of the general downward trend in crimes and offences, reductions were noted in certain categories but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall in the city centre.
- The cameras appeared to have little effect on clear up rates for crimes and offences.
- 33% of people questioned in the city centre were aware of the cameras 3 months after installation and 41% 15 months after installation.
- Installation of the CCTV cameras did not reduce the proportion of those who said they would sometimes avoid a certain part of the city but there was a slight reduction in those who said they were anxious about becoming a victim of crime in the city centre.
- 72% of all those interviewed believed CCTV cameras would prevent crime and disorder; 81% thought they would be effective in catching perpetrators; and 79% thought they would make people feel less likely that they would become victims of crime.
- 67% of those interviewed 'did not mind' being observed by street cameras.
Personally, I think the cost is the only way we can argue back our privacy. Say you are not willing to pay for costly, ineffective measures.
Parent
Any 'crime prevention' is theoretical at best. (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the British government, there has been a 48% decrease in recorded crime since the peak in 1995, which seems to argue that the proliferation of cameras and draconian gun control have been effective in protecting the safety of Britons.
Unfortunately, recorded violent crimes have approximately doubled since the current record-keeping system was implemented in 1998, and there are compelling reasons to believe that most other categories of crime are now being massively underreported [city-journal.org], suggesting that crime problems in Britain are getting much worse despite a near-total ban on guns and the installation of millions of surveillance cameras.
I'd say something isn't working...
Parent
Re:Any 'crime prevention' is theoretical at best. (Score:4, Insightful)
Every great genocide in the 19th century was preceded by a government decree either that citizens couldn't own guns, or that a targeted minority could not own guns.
An armed society is a polite society. Your streets are now ruled by hooligans. You are afraid to go outside at night. You are more likely to be mugged. If you are mugged, you are more likely to be injured or killed in the attack. Enjoy your rule by thugs, both in government and on the streets.
Parent
Re:Sure, but... (Score:4, Informative)
I personally suspect that not all camera's are even permanently connected to a recorder.
Parent
RE: huge intrusion on privacy? (Score:4, Insightful)
of course it is a waste of funds, all the money spent on those camera would probably pay for an extra dozen police cars or hire several more police officers to patrol the higher crime infested areas...
Re: huge intrusion on privacy? (Score:5, Insightful)
i would really hate to have my privacy intruded upon while walking around in public ;p
Solid point. However, there is a difference between:
- Your actions going unrecorded in public
- Your actions being recorded as a matter of chance (someone random taking your picture or accidentally including you in one)
- Your actions always being recorded.
Parent
It was never about crime. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all about intimidating law-abiding citizens.
-jcr
Thats some dangerous thinking there SpuriouisLogic (Score:4, Funny)
London gets future-crime predicting CCTV cameras (Score:5, Funny)
The Greater London Assembly is introducing CCTV cameras claimed to "predict" if a crime is about to take place [today.com] and alert operators to suspicious behaviour, such as loitering, apparent thought in public, walking while brown or not spending money fast enough.
Anyone spotted may then have to explain their behaviour to a police officer. "Tough on lack of consumer confidence, tough on the causes of lack of consumer confidence," said Nick Hewitson of EDS Capita Goatse SmartCCTV. ("Consumer confidence" is a technical economics jargon term measuring willingness to casually spend ridiculous sums of cash on idiotic rubbish, particularly while drunk.)
"Only a criminal terrorist paedophile with something to hide could possibly object," said councillor Jason Fazackarley. "Criminals will pay much better attention to their dress and grooming with cameras there. Channel 4 has tentatively offered us a reality TV show. And Channel 5 would quite like the tapes of drunken shagging in shop delivery bays."
The project has been compared to the Tom Cruise science-fiction film Minority Report, in which psychic journalists are arrested on CCTV before they commit the crime of not peppering articles with the most obvious possible cliches copied from other papers.
However, Stephen Fry has delivered a crushing blow to the project with an unfortunately-timed negative review on his Twitter feed: "++ungood crimethink brb txtspk lol."
Re:London gets future-crime predicting CCTV camera (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
One-time versus continuous cost (Score:5, Insightful)
A million cameras capture 1 per 1000 = 1,000 criminals caught per year. The following years should catch an equivalent number - for little additional cost. This is one of the basic problems with news reporting - if the BBC had splashed a big story headlined "CCTV Cameras Catch 1,000 Per Year", there would be an entirely different public reaction.
Re:One-time versus continuous cost (Score:5, Insightful)
The cameras are mostly a one-time cost. However, to have people monitoring them is a continuous expense. Given the relative costs of technology vs. labor, I suspect that's a large part of the cost.
Parent
Wrong conclusion. This is about saving LIVES jack (Score:3, Informative)
We need more cameras with better quality. HD quality with multiple lenses to also read in different spectrums such as infrared and ultraviolet and of course these should have sensitive shotgun microphones. If we deploy ten times the number of cameras that are currently out there we can stop these dirty crooks and rid he world of crime once and for all!
more drunkeness, more assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
The rate of alcohol consumption per capita in the UK is double that of the 50s. (sorry, was reading that the other day but I didn't bookmark it, some UK paper)Crime goes up the more drunks you have. Just human reality. Drunks don't care about *anything*, they lose the ability to think straight, cameras or no cameras. They'll act out aggressively without a second thought, or do other stupid stuff like pull street crime. Drunks or druggies, an easy wallet or purse grab plus a bit of sport making people hurt, they dig it.
That's not all the reasons for increased crime, but it is a big part of it.
Anyway, those cameras....this is my real point. Bull SHIT it was to reduce normal street crime, it is conditioning to get people there to accept full big brother action, and they have for the most part. One step at a time. First in public, now they are going to be putting them in "problem family homes". After that is accepted, they will expand the list so more fall under the "problem" category (like the US has that totally illegal and should have caused regime change by now big brother "no fly" list that all the cowering "flying public" herd animal peons accept, so it is no better there).
Once they have enough cameras installed under the "problem family" category, they'll go all the way to every place, every home, every business, every building and all over outside. And if you refuse, well there you go, you are now a "problem", you are a "resister" so they have a precedent to do it that YOU accepted before without revolt as long as it wasn't "all that bad".
If you wait until it "gets that bad", well gee, it IS that bad then and you blew your chance to stop it and now are stuck in some hideous north korean styled society, just with better tech, and you WON'T be able to revolt or stop things then. They already disarmed the population there, fed them that crap about "reducing crime". What a crock. Have to retreat inside your own home..and they get people to accept that insanity...I mean..damn
You change things before they "get that bad", or accept your shackles and keep your eyes lowered and mind your masters. There is NO middle ground there, and you won't be negotiating with your owners either, nor their armed bully boys.
ALL societies eventually reach that stage, no exceptions. Tech keeps getting better as history marches on, but despotism is ALWAYS the end game with societies that let government have more power than the people, and it turns into an "us versus them" deal and the ones with the most weapons and power and authority win, or there is a revolution and everyone loses because they waited too long to keep things sane.
So keep drinking heavy, blitzed into perpetual stupidity. They *want* you that way, "solving street crime" is NOT their main priority.
That's one of the ways they keep their herds under control. Petty crime, or even a rise in serious crime, is a trivial expense for them to have their populations dumbed down and compliant and accepting all sorts of crap like surveillance cameras, no fly lists, data bases, more and more regulations and "permits" needed for this or that. Drunkeness, drugged, illegal and "doctors prescription" drugs, bread and circuses plus disarm the serfs and peons and heavily arm the state's bully boys=controlled populations. That's the formula they always use.
1% masters controlling 99% of the people, and it is apparently easy to do, it keeps happening over and over again.
Scope Creep has turned the cameras into a revenue (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahhh... but local councils have turned it into a prodigious cash cow by catching motorists making minor traffic infractions and fining them... as my father found out last week.
But think of the Children/Terrorists/Drugs....
Stirring up a hornets nest (Score:5, Interesting)
Way to go SpuriousLogic. You take today's top prize for selectively snipping text from a news article to spin a point you want to push. This was actually an article about how ineffective the current use of CCTV image data has been, with an emotive tag line to snag the eyeballs. The article concludes by saying:
Quite different from the spin on this slashdot story huh. But then you knew that didn't you, and you knew the much of the Slashdot crowd would just lap it up.
Re:Not about solving crimes (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
"Bill the Copper" didn't used to follow everyone around writing down their every action while in public and storing it to be retrieved at will by the current or future government.
On the other hand "Ivan the KGB Agent" and "Wilhelm the Stasi Agent" did.
See the difference?
Parent
Re:Not about solving crimes (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill the copper is meant to be an approachable person of the community that everyone knows. You may or may not realize this, but in some countries the Police are still looked at as very strong role models. As someone going into law enforcement(Canadian), I feel kinda ashamed that the UK has gone this far(Yes police reflect on the actions of other police a lot. Don't think they don't), and the police aren't looked as someone you can feel safe around but as someone to fear.
Regardless of this, going from organic to electronic is huge. Not only is there no "person", when you need a person that nearest dispatch may be 10-45mins away. Tell that to some women that's just been raped. GOOD JOB! I hate CCTV and everything it stands for, I realize the original intention and it was sound. It's currently bad, it will remain bad. Want to ensure crimes get solved, ensure public trust, and ensure that you don't seem like you're out of touch with people?
Hire good cops that have empathy, understand the public, and understand they're not there for the quick fix to a problem. But that a problem, may require a long haul, and that as a cop. Your job is to fix them.
Parent
Re:ONE THOUSAND?! (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with you that it isn't usually happening now (tho I sat in a traffic class with someone busted for 1mph over the speed limit about 5 years ago).
I don't agree with you that it won't happen in the future. Every day we read about a way they have found to automate camera monitoring.
As someone basically 50 years old, it astounds me the things young people take for advantage and freedoms do not even know they have lost.
Even in my life time, people could commit a crime- go elsewhere and live a normal life. Things that might have been a stupid error by a 20 year old or sometimes more serious things. Now they are much more likely to go to jail. The law is much more unforgiving. Make the mistake and basically, your chance at a normal life is over.
The percentage of people in jail has increased to levels that would have been considered totalitarian when I was a boy.
Laws, like the RICO laws have been corrupted to be used for purposes never imagined.
Parent