London 2006, Meet London 1984

Draape writes "Shoreditch TV is an experiment TV channel beaming live footage from the street into people's homes. According to the Telegraph U.K. television will broadcast from 400 surveillance cameras on the streets, into people's homes. For now they are only showing it to 22,000 homes, but next year they plan on going national with the 'show'. They fly under the flag 'fighting crime from the sofa'."

It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

And its not 1984 if the government can't see into your private space.

Remember - expectation to privacy and expectation to privacy in a public space are very different things.

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

There's a threshold though. If I do something stupid and 8 people see, I might shrug it off. If I do something stupid and 80 people see, I might not hang around that part of town. But if I do something stupid and 80,000 people see, then I might be scarred for life. It's just not meant to work that way.

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

But if I do something stupid and 80,000 people see, then I might be scarred for life. It's just not meant to work that way.

80,000? If you do something that's both stupid & funny - it will spread via email / youtube / etc and be seen by 80 million!

Please note, that I wasn't particularly endorsing this 'public' CCTV (note the "closed" part of that acronymn is getting less accurate all the time) program. Just saying that the comparisons to 1984 are sensationalist.

Oh - and cameras do appear to work to some extent - I don' think US readers are aware of the sort of casual violence that used to surround many English pubs around closing time. The introduction of CCTV really did change that alot.

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

As far as I am informed: The violence dropped just after the relaxing of the police enforced closing time of the pubs (which is only several years after the introduction of heavy surveilance of the general public). Main reason is probably that less drunks are the same place at the same time since they go home over a 2h period instead of a 5m period.

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

If I do something stupid and 8 people see, I might shrug it off. If I do something stupid and 80 people see, I might not hang around that part of town. But if I do something stupid and 80,000 people see, then I might be scarred for life. It's just not meant to work that way.

Hey, you're not alone, especially not on slashdot. The same thought goes through every Open Source coders mind when they submit code to the repository.

:-)

Eh?

What do you mean with something stupid. Stumble over a loose paving stone? Drop your icecream? Walk with your fly open?

In that case who the fuck cares, yeah you look stupid and some extra person watching tv saw it as well. So what.

If by something stupid you mean, knock in a window, spray graffity, rob someone then guess what. I don't give a damn if your scarred for life by being caught.

There is a lot to talk about on this subject but people being caught on camera during a blooper moment ain't one of them. Do you want to ban people taking photograps on the street because they might catch you picking your nose?

Re:Eh?

As a previous poster pointed out, a rape victim would also be visible to all who tuned in to this channel, adding to the humiliation and degradation of the crime. Here in the UK, there is something called 'happy slapping', which is basically a person or group of people attacking someone for no apparent reason, sometimes filming the atack on their mobile phone video cameras. This has extended to rape, which made the situation worse for the innocent party - are you advocating this on an even more extensive scale, with the perpetrators wearing hoodies and scarves round their faces to make them unrecognisable while the survivor is clearly identifiable to all those who want to see?

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

I wonder if advertisers will pay people to carry large signs as they walk through town?

Flash mob justice?

Knowing how stretched the police is here in the UK, why not introduce amature law enforcement? Anyone who sees crime taking place on TV should be allowed to get from the sofa, go to the crime scene and beat the living shit out of the bastards.

As a criminal, I'd be scared to death knowing that 80 thousand people are coming my way right now carrying pitchforks, ropes and tubes of vaseline.

Think of the health benefits for coach potatos!

To avoid the system misuse, we may borrow from Slashdot. Each citizen will be issued a gun with 5 bullets from time to time and ...well, you know how it works. There will also be a team of forensics doing meta-moderation.

In time, we may completely abolish police and judicial system, since every crime will be on tape. People could vote the least simpathetic criminal out with their remote control etc. etc...

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

"There's a threshold though."

Yeah, but 99.999% of the time this channel will be as interesting to watch as C-SPAN. I doubt you'll find so many people watching the channel at any one time.

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

Indeed, surely the expectation of privacy in a public space approaches zero as technology increases? Why should it be any other way? The whole AT&T meets the NSA is just a consequence of a space that most people thought was private (relaying messages) turning out to be public. The rich & important in society have always treated messaging as a public space, otherwise we wouldn't have developed crypto systems.

But in this case the video being sent is from cameras mounted *in the street*. If I walk out my front door I can watch what you are doing there anyway, so why expect that it is private? Besides there could be other interesting applications for this that we don't find until we try it. One odd aspect is why transmit the video as a TV signal? 400 cameras, 400 URLs and a constant live stream. That would be interesting. Wondering what's going on in town - have a fly around and see. The hack that ties it into the OS polygon data for UK cities and Google Maps would be pretty awesome.

 

Re:It's not 1984 if everyone can watch everyone

The concept of the panopticon is not new; Jeremy Bentham published it in 1791. However, the original purpose of designing the system was for a PRISON. George Orwell used the concept as a basis for Big Brother. England has revived it to destroy society for some short-lived power.

People don't expect privacy in public. They do, however, expect to not be stalked, recorded, and studied just because they are in public. They don't expect people watching them pick their nose, or adjusting their crotch, or knowing which stores they've gone into. They don't want people to be able to watch TV and tell when they've left their home, or whether they decided to drive, or what they were wearing.

All this push for a government sanctioned life, recorded by the government, will only result in the actually wise and intelligent people avoiding all the places that they do this. People will go out of their way to develop ways to foil the cameras, simply to go about their life withing being spied upon.

Prevent crime?

I refuse to think that I'm the only one who believes that this won't actually help prevent crime. Sounds like the title is used to raise publicicity, public opinion, and ratings, but not actually describe the show.

From what I understand, the police in the U.K. already monitor those cameras with a huge staff. Adding another 500 people (assuming that's the number of people who actually bother to watch the show for hours on end) who don't know what to be looking for is only going to add to the number of false calls that the police already receive.

Re:Prevent crime?

What this really is, is an exercise in "grooming" the public to accept privacy invasion on an even greater scale.

CCTV cameras are known to have a definite effect on crime; they displace it to camera-free areas, where it obviously isn't anyone's problem. There was an incident a few years ago, along a road out of the city where every building is a shop, restaurant or pub. Some runt went around spraying graffiti on every establishment that was not CCTVed. The only images were a few blurred, grainy ones of him running from one shop to the next.

If the "experiment" is not universally opposed, the government will find a way to take it nationwide. The more affluent areas of every city will be filled with cameras that anyone can monitor. Crime will simply be displaced to the non-CCTV areas. Meanwhile, the public will gradually be getting used to the concept of never expecting to be able to go totally unobserved. The way will be paved for ever deeper intrusions into individuals' lives.

"Mummy, does Jesus watch you when you're on the toilet?"
"As long as he's watching channel 36, yes!"

Re:Prevent crime?

I think you're all confused on the subject of privacy. The issue is not just whether you're monitored in real-time (that's bad enough) but that you are being recorded for all time! Worse, you're being watched by people with the power to have you arrested if they so choose. Perhaps you have faith in your government and truly believe that this power will only be used for the common good and that any mistakes that are made will be minor and easily rectified. Frankly, I'm not so trusting, and the more power my government arrogates to itself the less trusting I become.

There's a qualitative difference between being in public and having others casually observe your activities, and having video of you watched by a police officer dozens or hundreds of miles away and archived for some indefinite period. If you honestly believe that that information cannot be used against you at some later date you're simply fooling yourself.

Hell, I live in the U.S., and records from our tollway automated billing system have already been subpoenaed for numerous stupid reasons, even divorce cases ("well, if you were at work Mr. Smith why does the tollway's billing system say you were nowhere near your place of employment?") This is getting out of hand, and you can apologize for your (or my) government's intrusive behavior all you want, but the truth is that everyone will, sometime, somewhere, do something he'd rather other people didn't see. In your shiny new world, all of our imperfections would be recorded for posterity the instant they occur, and come back to bite us in the ass when we least expect it.

Automated surveillance is bad, any way you cut it, for law-abiding citizens, because it can very quickly turn into automated justice.

No thanks.

Re:Prevent crime?

Trure. But, you must admit... It's a great way for crazy girlfrinds to stalk their boyfriends.

I can see as many bad uses coming from these as good.

No obvious correlation

black people account for 46% of all arrests generated by new automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras

Are you are trying to imply that ANPR is discriminating against blacks in some way? Unless licence plates are allocated according to a racial profile, I cannot see how this could happen.

From the article you linked:

The report tacitly appears to address concerns among ethnic minority communities who believe they are unfairly targeted by the police through stop and search powers. Black people are up to six times more likely to be stopped than whites.

If I interpret this correctly, it means that when police officers get to choose whom to search, they choose blacks over whites in a 6:1 proportion, while the automated system chooses them in about 1:1 proportion. This is still not racially neutral because, according to the article, blacks are only 11% of the London population, but still the automated system seems to be more fair than human cops.

OTOH, if for any reason at all there are more blacks involved in crime than whites, then the only way to stop this kind of racial discrimination would be to cease all efforts to fight crime.

 

It is political correctness gone overboard

We all know how crime was handled in the old south. Arrest the nearest black person. Worked especially well in rape cases cause everyone knows those niggers just can't keep their hands of white women right?

To combat this you have to have a legal system wich is "blind". It is the reason that justice statue has a blindfold.

The problem is that every police person can tell you it is a load of bullshit. If you see a group of black people in a poor area of london in an expensive car you know it is stolen.

Note here that the figure is that 50% of ARRESTS involve blacks. NOT stoppages. The only way people are arrested after being stopped is if they have been found to do something illegal.

What the story is effectivly saying is that the police shouldn't arrest so many black people. But how? Let them run because "oh yeah he done it but we are over our quota off blacks for this week". Arrest white people on made up charges?

Cause the horrible fact is that blacks just seem to commit more crimes or at least be caught more easily. But you can't say that.

This system is impartial. It just looks at the facts and flags a vehicle as suspicious or not.

In fact at its simplest it checks wether a vehicle has been stolen and then tells the police to pull it over.

if then it is found that in 50% of the cases the driver is black what the hell can you do about it.

In holland we got a similar case. Suriname (former colony with a largly black population) is a known traffic route for drugs smugglers. So customs check passengers on flights from Suriname more thoroughly then from other countries. Is this racist? Well yes and no. Obviously the majority of passengers from Suriname are black. Why aren't say asian passengers from Japan searched as well?

Because it ain't about racism. IF that was the case black passengers from japan would be searched extra as well. They are not.

The problem is that political correctness has made it impossible to accept any figures that suggest minorities are more involved with crime. This is just one extreme example.

Re:It is political correctness gone overboard

What you say is fine as far as it goes. And it's certainly the case that if the justice system were truly blind, we wouldn't need to worry about the proportions of the various races that are arrested.

But you are missing the purpose of that which is pejoratively labelled "political correctness".

Now it's fair to say that in most white dominated countries, more blacks are arrested/jailed for crime. And it's probably true to say that blacks as a statistical group commit more crime than whites. But that doesn't indicate that being black makes a person more likely to commit crime. In reality the big factor that makes people more likely to commit crime is coming from poor background. And because the historic and current racist reasons, black people are more likely to come from poor backgrounds than white people.

So the way to make the racial spread of arrests/prisoners reflect the racial spread of society as a whole is to move towards poverty not being correlated to skin colour. And the way to do that is to make people in general more colour blind in their expectations of people. That way people get selected for education and jobs etc. on the basis of their merit, not skin colour.

All you do by saying blacks are more likely to commit crime than white people is create a self-fullfilling prophesy. Far better to say poor people are more likely to commit crime, and seek to reduce poverty.

Re:It is political correctness gone overboard

I agree with you about half way through your story but then you go into a fantasy land of how the world should be. The police has to deal with the world as it is.

It is not the job of the police to create a better social and economic system for all. That is up to goverment and the people who vote them into power. The police is faced with cleaning up the mess.

It is probably not nice to be black and have everyone assume your a criminal. BUT what can the police do. Ignore crimes because they would have to arrest a black person for it?

Racism is bad but the reverse can be just as bad when you can no longer say the truth. Look at this story, everyone is fighting over how the police is arresting 49% black people with this system and how it must be racist. NOBODY dares to say "fuck we got a HUGE problem here and we need to fix the problems in black communities to get them out of crime".

Ignore it, pretend it ain't there. It is safe and nobody can call you a racist.

But the problem won't go away. We got a disease in our society and until we dare to name the symptoms we will never find a cure. How would you get programs started to get rid of social injustice if your unwilling to admit those injustices are affecting the rest of society. Claim that blacks are not criminals and you don't have to spend any money or time in adressing the social injustices that turn them into criminals. Handy eh. Not a racist and saving money.

Re:It is political correctness gone overboard

The problem is that every police person can tell you it is a load of bullshit. If you see a group of black people in a poor area of london in an expensive car you know it is stolen.

So if you saw a bunch of 18 year old stoned and scruffy white kids tooling around a poor area of London in a top end BMW you wouldn't bat an eyelid? Interesting.

Personally, I would say that if you see a group of poor people in a poor area of London in an expensive car, you know it is stolen.

The question is, why is it that all the poor areas are filled with blacks?

Ummm CRIME??

They haven't really mentioned in TFA what kind of crime they're targeting. I imagine they mean the snatching-old-ladies-handbags kind, but I suppose this could occur:

Haughty socialite: Hello Police? I just saw a crime being committed on the 1984 channel.

Operator: Yes ma'am. Please give us your location.

HS: 42 Anstoltue Street.

O: And what is the nature of the crime in question?

HS: This guy, he had sideburns.

O: Alright ma'am, but what's the crime?

HS: HE HAD SIDEBURNS I TELL YOU! IN 2006!

O:

Re:Transparent society?

The ol David Brin Theory. I'm not going to explain it, I'll just link away

Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Nice...

Ah, the wonders of technology. Bet the folks living there are looking forward to calls like, "What do you mean you're sick? I just saw you at [venue of choice]! Consider yourself terminated!" or "Don't give me that, I saw you looking at that girl. Yes I did. I have it recorded!" or "Um, do you have to pick your nose when you're talking to me on the phone?" or "Yeah, I know you're in the middle of an important dinner. I was just calling you to ask how the food at that restaurant is, because I didn't want to spend the money if it's no good, and I saw you guys eating there. And what's that guy to your left eating?" or "You can't pay me back because you can't remember the PIN to your bank card? Hold on, let me flip on my Tivo, um, here it is..."

From the article

Jan Ashby, 57, a resident who previewed the scheme before yesterday's launch, said: "I wouldn't say it was spying, but it is nice to see what's going on. Look, there's my local pub."

She also added "I like to keep an eye on the pub to make sure that my husband does not go there. I'm not intruding on the little bit of a life that he has outside of me, I'm just looking out for his best interests."

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

BBC Article

Here's a BBC article on the subject [bbc.co.uk] as was in my submission for the exact same story about 5 days ago (grumble grumble).

Youtube!

cool vid of some bloke getting mugged outside victoria station. lol!!!!111!! *****

Also interviewed

"Estella thinks I'm a nosey busybody," said Ms Havisham. A 97-year-old fan of the channel and who hasn't left the house in years. "But I've seen her walking on the street holding hands with a boy, and I'm not about to take advice from a whore."

-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

Television Programs

The TV programs in the UK must be pretty bad if they actually get ratings on that channel. I mean... other than the "nosey neighbor" - who is really going to sit there for an hour or more and watch people walking down the street? And how does advertising work? Will people walk by with a sign on their back for Nike and Pepsi? Maybe put a Pepsi machine in one of the camera shots? Anyway, my #1 question is what's the target audience? 50+ years old, single, unemployed people with nothing better to do in their lives than try to catch someone doing something "bad". I'm getting bored just thinking about how boring this would be.

Xtreme Voyerism

I've always considered anything done in public (i.e. within the reach of CCTV) to be in the public space and not protected from regular CCTV surveillence - I don't really care if some security guard sees me doing anything I'd be prepared to do in public.

This proposal though, depends on the sort of desire for voyeuristic titilation for which 'we' (being society in general) seem to have an insatiable appetite - implied through the general addiction to reality TV, no matter how banal. In the case of reality TV of course the objects of voyeurism give their explicit consent.

With this proposal we have every act you do in public - every hidden snog in an alley - possibly exposed to the voyeuristic delight of thousands. I don't meant to stigmatise voyeurism, it is obviously a widely held, if taboo, fascination, but I do not think every public act should be potentially watched by thousands. The crime angle is obviously spin, the promoters are depending on people wanting to watch other people without their knowledge, and of course prevention of crime is never a good enough reason to remove essential liberties.

This sort of surveillance does have 1984 connotations, despite the absence of the government seeing into our homes, because it allows every public act to be watched by anonymous masses, and hence yields the potential for social ostracisation of people commiting various non-illegal acts. Imagine the MP or other high profile type 'caught' on camera in a homosexual embrace. Despite the legality of such an act, many such people may not want it to be made public knowledge, and given a secluded enough spot, neither should they have to fear such exposure. Public space can be consumed reletively privately, broadcasting CCTV would remove that right.

Re:Xtreme Voyerism

>The crime angle is obviously spin, the promoters are depending on people wanting to watch other people without their knowledge, and of course prevention of crime is never a good enough reason to remove essential liberties.
So if the crime angle is only spin, then what's the real reason they're doing it?
The rest of your post makes sense, but that bit sounds a little paranoid to me.

My guess is crime is exactly the reason they're doing it. It's just not necesarily a well thought out idea. The government doesn't have to be an evil big brother trying to restrict your essential liberties for the sake of restricting them. It could just be populated with idiots.

An interesting but probably doomed experiment

From my knowledge of how another UK town's CCTV system works I can see some issues with this experiment.

(1) The perps will be able to watch, too, won't they. This means that they will be able to work out exactly what the cameras cover and exactly what they don't, and will be able to plan their misdeeds accordingly, by doing things somewhere where there are no cameras. (In real life the perps do not know where the cameras are, what they cover, at a range of how many hundreds of metres they can read a newspaper headline, that sort of thing.)

(2) The perps will be able to watch, too, won't they. So they will be able to have accomplices who can see from moment to moment where the cameras are pointing, and phone or text their mates on the street to tell them the coast is clear.

(3) Prejudice to ongoing operations. Actually they've probably thought of this one, so when cameras are being used as part of a current operation the pictures from those cameras will not be broadcast ... provided that in the excitement of the chase the operators remember to press the right buttons, of course.

(4) Innocent victims. You might be doing something which is perfectly legal and of no interest to the police but which you still might not want your friends and relatives and employer to see. OK, so if you're snogging someone else's wife in the park when you're supposed to be home sick from work then maybe you deserve what you get, but I'm sure that if I tried a little harder I'd come up with a more deserving example.

And it'll make life just that much more complicated for politicians at election time, whether you think this is a plus or minus is up to you:

(5) No candidate or party can put enough bodies on the street to fight a full election campaign across an entire district. So where you concentrate your effort depends (partly) on knowing where the enemy is concentrating theirs. Once upon a time this was done on maybe a daily basis, as party workers reported back to HQ what they'd seen on the streets; nowadays it's more real time as reporting back is done with mobile phones; with publicly visible CCTV you'll be able to see what the enemy is up to even in areas where you don't have any bodies on the street yourself that day, and the candidate or party which can make the best use of this information will get a slight edge.

Re:An interesting but probably doomed experiment

N