LAPD Surveillance Cameras Go Unused 106
First time accepted submitter Ethanol-fueled writes "Most of the surveillance cameras installed downtown and operated by the LAPD have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Many of those broke and were never repaired, and six cameras allocated to the Little Tokyo section weren't even plugged into the LAPD's monitoring bank. In one case, a 53-year-old man died after being stabbed and beaten in Skid Row — right below one of the malfunctioned cameras. It probably also didn't help that the cameras themselves were prone to being coated with pigeon droppings and the system backend being stored in a room so small that overheating was frequent. One LAPD Deputy Chief compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty — 'We know the reasons it doesn't work. Now we're trying to make it work.'"
Whats new? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone is surprised no one actually gave a damn about it.
Spending, not solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Government has already made their money here. Once agan, I feel the need to point out that in the business of government -- where they spend other people's money -- there is no such thing as a loss. Even when they fail completely, they still win. Every dollar raked through the business of government increases their leverage, and their ability to exploit that cash flow for personal gain. It's no wonder that every year government costs more, both in terms of revenue and administration: that's exactly how the game is played, and that's exactly the kind of people who would desire power over others in the first place.
Re:Spending, not solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies are every bit as stupid as this, installing "new technology" because some dickhead at the top insisted on it, and omitted to make any provision for its continued operation. Everyone in IT knows this (see ./ articles passim).
And let's not have any blather about "responsibility" either: companies are just as able to cover up the stupidities of their senior execs as government offices are.
And while we're at it, let's skip the rubbish about "other people's money". Companies spend and mis-spend other people's money with impunity* every day — how the fuck do you think we got into the current recession? It sure as hell wasn't governments doing all those shady hedge fund deals with borrowed money; it was banks: those wonderful much-vaunted joint stock limited-liability business-can-do-no-wrong corporations, run by greed-raddled execs and owned by greedy or ignorant stockholders who actively or passively encouraged their activities.
* Yes, impunity. The people responsible have been rewarded for their misdeeds, just like the cretins responsible for the government mismanagement which enabled it.
This whole "let's just blame the government" nonsense is simply a blind cooked up by corporate shills trying to cover up their own ineptitude. The governments are equally to blame with the corporates for their foolishness and stupidity. Blaming just one of them alone isn't simply incorrect, it's dangerous.
Re:Spending, not solutions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Spending, not solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
The company goes out of business only to be replaced by another company run by the same crooks. To make it even more interesting, these same crooks are also being installed into various government positions where they can ligitimize their criminal activities.
My parents were swindled out of a $50k deposite on a home by a businessman who bankrupt his business three separate times, each time personally making off with large sums of money. When suit was brought against him, his government friends stept in to
Re: (Score:2)
The company goes out of business only to be replaced by another company run by the same crooks.
My parents were swindled out of a $50k deposite on a home by a businessman who bankrupt his business three separate times, each time personally making off with large sums of money. When suit was brought against him, his government friends stept in to make sure he could not be held responsible.
So you try to make a claim about serial fraud in business and shortly thereafter the involvement of government shows up. To create lasting injustice, you need someone with more power than a mere business can muster.
Re: (Score:1)
And who got called in to stop the serial fraud in the first place? The government, via the justice system. Who got called in to make that behavior illegal to begin with? The government.
To create lasting justice, you need someone with more power than a mere business can muster.
And of course, when
Re: (Score:2)
To create lasting justice, you need someone with more power than a mere business can muster.
That's right. Look in a mirror. That's one of the people who's responsible for lasting justice.
And of course, when you elect a bunch of pro-business (often operating as nominal libertarians of one kind or another) hooligans into office - especially on the local and state level - you get predictable results: lasting injustice.
Ah, a libertarian bash. Hooligans disguise themselves as plenty of ideologies. But certain ideologies such as the ones that speak of "fairness" or using the government to fix everything seem particularly susceptible to exploitation.
Re: (Score:3)
You missed an important subtlety. He said operating as nominal libertarians. That is, they call it libertarianism but it's really just putting business interests (or more likely crony) above individual rights.
As for hooligans, I find they come in all stripes and will change the ideology they espouse as necessary. They truly care for nothing but the power and money they can grab.
Re: (Score:2)
You missed an important subtlety. He said operating as nominal libertarians. That is, they call it libertarianism but it's really just putting business interests (or more likely crony) above individual rights.
I doubt Mr. AC complains as much about nominally progressive hooligans.
Re: (Score:2)
The crooked cronies relevant to this thread who want to put business interests above individual rights find it easier to use libertarianism as a smokescreen. It's the prohibitionists that use a progressive smokescreen.
Re: (Score:2)
*My parents were swindled out of a $50k deposite on a home by a businessman who bankrupt his business three separate times, each time personally making off with large sums of money.*
Of course, there's something to be said in favor of due diligence when putting down $50k deposits. Your parents should have done due diligence, but didn't. The government has no incentive to even try... after all, it's not their money.
Re: (Score:2)
Its managers get fired, and it goes through a bankruptcy process not all that dissimilar to a company, with creditors snapping up properties of value, and some debts getting written off.
Name a US government agency that has experienced this. There are some publicly owned corporations such as Amtrak and the US Postal Service that can experience bankruptcy. But the FBI, Social Security, or the US military can't.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes they do. They just do it by proxy.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This has absolutely nothing whatever to do with "government".
./ articles passim).
Companies are every bit as stupid as this, installing "new technology" because some dickhead at the top insisted on it, and omitted to make any provision for its continued operation. Everyone in IT knows this (see
The only problem with your claim is that the Los Angelos Police Department is a government agency not a company (at least, yet). So observing that companies occasionally make bad decisions is irrelevant. Second, enough failure in a business and the business goes away. The LAPD will still be kicking until Los Angelos ceases to be a going concern.
And let's not have any blather about "responsibility" either: companies are just as able to cover up the stupidities of their senior execs as government offices are.
The obvious rebuttal is that corporate executives go to jail for the sort of stuff that governments pull routinely (such as understating or not even bothering to sta
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, yes, it's the Godwin's Law of Libertarianism: As an online discussion on Libertarianism grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Somalia approaches 1.
Similarly to Godwin's Law, the person invoking the comparison loses all credibility as they are forced to resort to hyperbolic comparison rather than factual information.
Re: (Score:2)
Governments do go out of business. They lose elections, and the cronies they appoint end up working honest jobs.
That doesn't happen in the US. For example, the CIA and NASA haven't ever lost an election.
Re: (Score:2)
This whole "let's just blame the government" nonsense is simply a blind cooked up by corporate shills trying to cover up their own ineptitude. The governments are equally to blame with the corporates for their foolishness and stupidity. Blaming just one of them alone isn't simply incorrect, it's dangerous.
Some years ago, when I was preparing to leave academia for a much better-paying job in "industry", I read a rather timely bit of "advice to graduates". The author predicted that nearly everyone present would, after a few months in their first job, slowly come to realize that the company was incredibly incompetent, especially the people at the top who had little if any understanding of how their company worked but still gave orders to their underlings. Many of you will eventually ask yourself "How could t
Re: (Score:2)
When this analysis is applied to whole civilizations you get this wonderfully reassuring treatise [amazon.com].
True, but far worse for government (Score:2)
The thing is that while what you say is true, most companies have a large degree of incompetence, it's a self-correcting problem - because companies have limited funds they can only become SO incompetent and still survive at all. While it's true in large groups humans allow incompetency to thrive through inaction, people are also capable at times of working around incompetence when it matters. Companies really function more often than not because of the 3% of employees who know where and how to bend the r
Re: (Score:2)
The proof again goes back to the cameras in question. Can you really imagine ANY private company where a vast number of physical security measures simply do not work at all?
Sure. There's even a market for fake cameras or at least there used to be. Real ones may have got so cheap that it has ceased to be worthwhile. Even if we assume a flawlessly run company its entirely possible that they have broken security stuff that wasn't worth scrapping when it became obsolete or experimental stuff that turned out to be not worthwhile but was never removed.
In real companies non working gates (or gates simply left open) and broken CCTV is entirely possible (does security even have a main
Very different - they ARE working as designed (Score:2)
Sure. There's even a market for fake cameras or at least there used to be.
Putting in fake cameras is utterly different than deciding a camera is really needed somewhere and then letting it break without repair or even knowing what is broken!!
In real companies non working gates (or gates simply left open) and broken CCTV is entirely possible (does security even have a maintenance budget?)
OF COURSE physical security departments have maintenance budgets. Something like that broken is fixed in days, if not hou
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, our company has dealt with several. Normally the situation arises because the original system was installed incorrectly by the maintenance/facilities staff, ignored or actively sabotaged by IT, and covered up by managers and executives that have since moved on. Generally when the customer finds out what it's going to cost to bring things back up to the level of 'functioning adequ
Re: (Score:2)
Can you really imagine ANY private company where a vast number of physical security measures simply do not work at all?
Yep, our company has dealt with several. Normally the situation arises because the original system was installed incorrectly by the maintenance/facilities staff, ignored or actively sabotaged by IT, and covered up by managers and executives that have since moved on. ...
Heh. I held off replying to see what other responses might appear. It seems that at least a few people here don't have that "private business never does anything wrong but governments are always incompetent" belief system.
A few years back, I was one of the organizers of an evening event at an organization that I consulted for. When I got there maybe 10 minutes before it was to start, I found the place dark, and a crowd of people outside. Nobody with a key had showed up, and calls hadn't gotten throug
Re: (Score:2)
The difference (Score:2)
If in a private company you spend a lot of money on a system that totally doesn't work, eventually there are problems and people find out and things change.
Companies often can overspend or get people who get kickbacks from suppliers, yes. But in the end even though they may have overpaid they get a system that roughly at least works.
In government as we can see from this story there is NO limit to the scope or size of failure that is simply accepted with a shrug, and there is no responsibility whatsoever -
Re: (Score:2)
Or someone dug out that UK report (where there is really a lot of experience with CCTV) that concluded the things were pretty useless for both crime prevention and detection.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1 [guardian.co.uk]
Re: (Score:1)
Actually, this article signals people to complain "you need to spend more money and be more serious about surveilling us!"
Ethanol-fueled (Score:2, Insightful)
First time accepted submitter Ethanol-fueled writes
Really? I am quite sure there have been stories by him before. He's a known long-time Slashdotter, after all.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
he is user 1125189.. he is not a "long time slashdotter" with a 7 digit UID.
Re: (Score:2)
To me, a low UID is proof that a member created an account a long time ago*, but doesn't mean they are a long time slashdotter, since they could well have signed up years ago, forgot all about the site until recently and been able to log in using that old account.
Similarly, a high UID to me is pro
Re:Ethanol-fueled (Score:4, Insightful)
But seriously, guys. Not only did I live in Los Angeles for 3 years, but I wanted to address the "theater" part of the security theater as it relates to the trend of installing municipal cameras. Criminals will realize that they're bullshit and continue to, well, be criminals. The cop(s) assigned to watching the cameras could have instead walked the beat, arrested criminals, and got real work done.
Re:Police Work (Score:3)
Historically, a beat cop's job was to go around and black-jack the thugs into the shadows and make the street safer for the tax-payers. Somehow a confluence of enforcing numerous new laws and civil-rights lawyers for the unlicensed thugs has made actual public service a lower priority; A pretext now, actually- if crime rates continue to fall, expect new laws to criminalize more of the tax-payer class as they are much safer and more convenient to arrest and incarcerate than professional felons.
Big Bro (Score:1)
Big Brother is lazy.
wear and tear (Score:3, Informative)
I've worked with cops and I'm not terribly surprised - "excessive" wear and tear was always a problem. This isn't the first expensive system I've heard of being kept in a closet. Give it a few years and the dust might have been a factor too.
(I'm not sure if it's actually a surveillance state if nobody's looking through the broken cameras.)
Re:wear and tear (Score:5, Informative)
(I'm not sure if it's actually a surveillance state if nobody's looking through the broken cameras.)
The purpose of a surveillance state is to encourage fear and intimidation and conformity and servility. You don't need to actually use the cameras to infect society with those values... just install them. Its to intimidate the permanently downwardly mobile middle class and the 60's radicals now turned grandparents, not to scare the lower class criminals.
Re: (Score:3)
You don't even need to install them.
If you look at your local store, there are domes EVERYWHERE in the ceiling for camera's, but only a few have a camera in them..
The very thought that you MIGHT be watched makes most of us behave better.
Re: (Score:2)
I went to school in a pretty bad neighbourhood, and trust me criminals knew perfectly well that those cameras were there just for show. People got robbed in front of them every other day. Luckily a law was passed that required the police to have at least one policeman watching the cameras all the time, and there were cops close enough so they could come when needed, which made it a little better. But cameras are just tools, they won't solve the problem just by themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
I've worked with cops and I'm not terribly surprised - "excessive" wear and tear was always a problem. This isn't the first expensive system I've heard of being kept in a closet. Give it a few years and the dust might have been a factor too.
(I'm not sure if it's actually a surveillance state if nobody's looking through the broken cameras.)
Wait for courtroom commentary on some preventable crime, and they will hire tube watchers from the gaming industry.
Volunteer Watchers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
WTF??? The moron installers didn't even use a $1.50 chunk of bird spike to keep the housings clear?
Like the cameras, installing "bird spike" isn't always as effective as its sellers might tell you. A few years ago, a local historic church had a bird problem. The main doors opened onto a large covered walkway, the width of the build, which had the usual decorative ledges and decorations that were excellent bird perches, and they decided to Do Something About It. They installed bird spike on top of the ledges.
The local sparrows, starlings and pigeons understood just what this was for. They started b
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:wear and tear (Score:5, Insightful)
Like when cop car cams were starting out and they were getting "broken" a lot? Yup, I remember those days in the 90's right after rodney king. the VCR in the trunk would get bashed, or the tapes would get magnetized a lot... (big honking magnet on the casing will screw it up badly)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wha? (Score:2)
"compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty "
No, more like buying a new car and leaving it at the dealership, taking the keys. At best, it gets vandalized. At worst, it gets hotwired, joyridden, used for a few drivebys, and then stripped and vandalized. Oh, and you're still taking the bus.
Dumbass. He can't even illustrate the fail properly. Who gets fired for this? Oh, let's guess...
Yep, right again.
Re: (Score:3)
At least we know where BadAnalogyGuy works now.
It was designed to fail (Score:2, Insightful)
Bet you $100 that it was designed to fail from day 1. it was under funded, someone that has NO education at all in tech was in charge of it, and everyone involved that had a clue was ignored when they voiced their concerns.
This is typical of ANY local government project. some idiot in finance believe he can cut corners to bring the costs down.
Re: (Score:3)
I doubt it was designed to fail, it was designed to make money. Unfortunately it needed to be designed to work. Even more unfortunately unless you have already done a job that has taught you all the lessons you need to have learned before implementing a project like this, you can't really hope to do it without some studies (at least product testing.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be somewhat fair to "IT"...
I had a customer I was sole support for business IT. They had a processing facility with an old analog camera system dating from the early 1980s. They needed to replace it as components were failing and the video quality was pretty poor. It got done, but the vendor was a hack and the equipment super low budget whitebox PC stuff.
Anyway, the lesson I've learned is that "video surveillance" may use IT technology, but a lot of the people doing it really aren't skilled at IT, the
Re: (Score:2)
The chief is a moron. (Score:2)
""compared the situation to buying a used car without an extended warranty ""
it seems that the Chief is an idiot, as 90% of the time the extended warranty is a waste of money and you come out ahead if you did not buy it and banked the cash. Consumer reports and tons of other places have this well documented...
The chief must not read much.
No, perfect analogy (Score:2)
it seems that the Chief is an idiot, as 90% of the time the extended warranty is a waste of money and you come out ahead if you did not buy it and banked the cash.
The chief was just saying that he wished he could have funneled even more money to his friends in companies back then, since there is no money now and thus fewer opportunities for kickbacks.
So it really is like an extended warranty since he wanted to spend even more money at time of purchase for no reason.
A bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
are cameras really the answer?
The answer to what? Are cameras the answer to muggings and murder? No, not at all -- muggers will just do their "business" faster and learn where the blind spots are.
Are cameras the answer to convincing the public that the police are doing something, while simultaneously convincing them that something needs to be done? Absolutely.
Re: (Score:2)
A single well trained cop could monitor a dozen of cameras simultanously, so yes, they are effective when used properly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because the guy needs to be trusted, needs to be able to determine when he sees a crime and when the police should intervene, and if it does with what force, needs to be able to communicate with policemen already there and act as a recon etc. It's not just sitting on your ass all day long.
no one ever gets caught in the act because they were seen doing something on camera.
Which is not the fault of the cameras, but how they are used. They are not a replacement of cops, just tools.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
There are two kind of criminals. The ones that are in it because they are lazy.
I actually mis-read this, and want to point it out: "The ones that are in IT because they are lazy." I've worked with many of them. (Agreed that the bankers are the scourge; what best to do about it, though?)
Re: (Score:1)
No surveillance (Score:5, Interesting)
Cops (Score:1)
Ah, well, think of it like this. If the cops beat random citizens for recording them on cell phones...do you really think they want a city wide camera system that actually works? Of course not. They would probably be caught doing more illegal stuff than normal people, like beating random citizens.
whacky parse (Score:4, Insightful)
I had to read the headline a couple of times before I realized it wasn't "LDAP cameras".
Security Costs (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Mo Money! (Score:1)
What is needed is more money, much more money. Only money can solve this problem. They need a new tax on all cell phones like the e911 tax. Once we have collected a few tens of billions of dollars will they be able to address this issue.
Do not worry about the cost though as I am certain right around election time a graph will show up explaining how this system will have saved us money due to the reduction in crime.
Money well spent!
Of course they will never have enough money so maybe more taxes and people wi
Surveillance society (Score:1, Insightful)
Other people's solution (Score:1)
Surveillance of a high crime area is a good idea. But collecting data and saving it is not a police skill, it is an IT skill.
The issue is that many govt ideas (pushed by voters as much as contractors) entail new skill sets or new directions that a business might think twice about before pursuing but that any govt org gets no chance at all even for input once the voters/politici
Tax Dollars At Work! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
A city overrun... by dumbshit Mexicans.
Now be fair. The cameras wouldn't have worked any better in a city overrun by dumbshit Niggers, Muzzies, Paddies, or Dagos either.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget the dumbshit Crackers, or Wops, or Wogs, or Abbies, or ABCD's, or Beaners, or Camel Jockeys, or Ching Chongs, or Chugs, or Coonasses, or Dinks, or Flips, or Frogs, or Gaijin, or Golliwogs, or... hey did I miss anyone else?
Re: (Score:2)
hey did I miss anyone else?
The Martians.
Re: (Score:2)
or... hey did I miss anyone else?
Yeah, apparently H through Z, minus W?