Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians, but credited in London with helping to catch a variety of perpetrators since the early 1990s.
Given the chief arguments, pro and con — a way to help solve crimes vs. too much of a government intrusion on privacy — it isn’t close: 71 percent of Americans favor the increased use of surveillance cameras, while 25 percent oppose it.
Count me in the 25%.
Snarky Shark
When did Americans become such bed-wetting cowards? Its like our fore-fathers fought and died for nothing.
I am becoming more and more ashamed to be called an American.
Did none of these idiots read 1984?
The Other Steve
I’m only in favor of surveillance cameras installed in Rudy Guiliani’s bedroom.
Andrew
You’ve got a voyeuristic fetish for senior cross dressers?
Stu in VA
This really surprised me- I thought people with more education would better appreciate the erosions of civil liberties this type of monitoring might lead to.
Scary.
capelza
Will shooting out “public safety” cameras replace shooting the sign at the pass? Hmmmm…maybe you have to live in the hills to get that.
This really bums me out. It’s awful. But then I think Amercians are conditioned to a lack of privacy, first with handheld video cameras, now with the cell phone camera. Privacy is not really a concept so many understand any more.
EdTheRed
They’ve had them up and running here in DC for quite some time now…and while I don’t feel one bit safer, I do feel quite a bit less free.
jh
Sometime between VJ Day and the Bay of Pigs.
SASQ No. 26 Vol.MMVII
Comrade Mattski
Guess I’m in that 25% too. I’ve just started noticing a bunch (Maybe 5-7) new police style camera’s (The ones with the tinted globe as opposed to the traffic camera which are stationary grey boxes) on the 40 miles of highway between my house and my fiance’s house in good old South East Pennsylvania. That an i’m an advid fan of seeing how fast i can drive to her house using that as a personal record and then I try to break that record.
I wonder how many times a day i get my picture taken? at every ATM machine, everytime i enter a store or even i enter my office building… what’s that 10-20? scares the jebus out of me.
Wilfred
What the Foucault!? It’s the panopitcon.
salvage
At the risk of being dog-piled I say “meh” to this.
When I’m in public I don’t really care how many video cameras are recording me doing whatever. If someone wants to watch me drink my latee, ride my bike or scratch my ass I can’t get too upset about it. It goes to expectation of privacy and when I’m out and about I don’t expect any.
So I guess I with the majority here.
demimondian
John, as you know, I don’t agree with you on this. I have the same attitude about surveillance cameras that I have about globalization, about working with the PRC, or about money in American elections — I may not like them in their pure form, but they’re going to happen, so I’d rather that they happen in the sunshine than that they happen in the dark.
You see, the problem with surveillance cameras is that the libertarian ethos says that a person has the right to protect his or her property. Since surveillance by private citizens is therefore inevitable, the data will be collected either way, but in an untrustworthy fashion. Worse, given that the video data will be collected, “security agencies” will, inevitably coagulate into large “video data gathering” warehouses, which will become essentially unregulated big brothers — and *that* scares me a lot. I’d rather have governmental entities being responsible for collecting their own data, provided that collection is disclosed and regulated, than have private enitites engaged in spying
The Pirate
I don’t understand how civil liberties could possibly be eroded by public cameras. You guys understand that when you are in public, people can see you, right? There is no expectation of privacy in a public place.
keatssycamore
Stu said:
This really surprised me- I thought people with more education would better appreciate the erosions of civil liberties this type of monitoring might lead to.
Stu this is just the Duke Lacrosse Affaire effect in action…”We are shocked to find abuses of prosecutorial discretion occurring.”
Third Eye Open
The question I have for anyone who “mehs” cameras in public view. Haven’t we learned that when our government is given a new toy, it eventually gets pushed to boundries which it was never meant to extend. I hate arguing “slipper slope” points, but how long before we have a high-profile bar fight that ends in someone underage getting killed, and they start pushing for state reviewed cameras in private business, and once that principle gets engrained, how long before there is a camera on every school bus, classroom, porno theater…etc?
I understand the idea that public is not “private” but when did we get so scared of our own shadows that we are willing to give up what small vestige of “collective privacy” we have left in the 21st century. I personally just don’t want it, and i’m willing to turn my nose at this idea that federal employees behind a bank of monitors make me no safer than federal employees behind an x-ray machine.
Pb
I’m less worried about having more surveillance cameras around than I am about what ends up being done with the video they collect. For example, I’m fine with having surveillance cameras in banks, convenience stores, etc., for the express purpose of identifying the people who rob them. However, I’m not fine with having cameras set up at toll booths or intersections or on police cars for the express purpose of identifying everyone who drives by, and/or tracking their movements. What would be worse? RFID-enabled license plates.
LITBMueller
Translation: “Glory Holes for EVERYONE!”
So, what is the guarantee that the collection will be “disclosed and regulated”? You really trust a government like the current crowd in D.C.? Much less, you trust the dimwits in local governments? What if the government says, for national security reasons, the information collection must be kept classified?
Of course, they already do this…
Anyone willing to take a bet on how many times in an average day someone operating a camera on a public street uses it to zoom in on some woman’s cleavage? Heh.
Seriously, though: the biggest problem is the ole “Slippery Slope.” Next thing ya know, Big Brother is watching you sleep through Comcast.
Andrew
I have no problem with public cameras in public places as long as the public can see what the cameras are seeing.
Dave
but no permanent record is being made from it.
Zifnab
Yeah, its a tough call in my head. Cameras really don’t scare me because while, technically, I’m under a great deal of survallience, I – personally – am not being watched any more than the million-odd other people who pass under the lens. Cameras are remarkably unscary specifically because they give you a great deal of information about a place, but – unless you know who you’re looking for – do a terrible job of keeping track of people.
In the age of Google-Earth, however, RFID-enabled license plates scare the everliving crap out of me. The idea that a cop has to spend ten hours in a lab sorting through reams of black-and-white feed to hunt me down is one thing. The idea that a license plate number is all you need to know my absolute location at any given moment in real time? That’s bad.
John Cole
No. We have not.
Another edition of Simple Answers…
sab
I changed my attitude when some goofball started leaving pipe-bombs in the trash bins in my little town’s only park. None of the bombs ever exploded, but we assumed it was only a matter of time before the goofball became more proficient. We really couldn’t afford 24/7 police presence at the park, and anyway that would only have encouraged the goof to leave them elsewhere.
capelza
There are cameras in banks, quikymarts, etc. But one can choose NOT to go into them as well. Actually I tend to stay out of quikymarts as a rule, because they are prone to being robbed. It would be just my luck to be in one when it went down. Any business that wants camerahas that right, just as a consumer can choose not to go there.
A local bar did put a security camera in, originally to protect themsleves from our very hyper-vigilant state liquor comission (it is against the law to get drunk in a bar in Oregon) and catch pilfering employees. Once the local denizens found out, business dropped rather noticably.
Let’s be like Singapore, orderly citizens never chewing gum or spitting on the street. Walk in neat lines, be pleasant, be a good citizen, someone is watching you.
Peter VE
I see a coming market for burkas for both sexes…
The next generation of US Passport will have RFID tags. I see markets for RFID blocking wallets. As for RFID tags in license plates, I’m sure the same people who today make plate covers which obscure the plate when read off center (IE: by roadside cameras) can figure out how to block the RFID reader.
Just another example of how our government helps support the private sector…
capelza
I forgot to add, “why should it bother you if you have nothing to hide”.
MikeF
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, all the more quickly without a vigilant citizenry. And we have been good ostriches for too long.
Shinobi
I think the breakdown of responses was interesting:
Support Oppose
Dems 66 30
Ind 71 23
Reps 81 16
I always thought it was the democrats who were pushing for a Nannystate. Some people must have missed that memo.
Personally I prefer the second amendment to state sponsored survelliance. I would rather protect myself than have the government invade my privacy in order to better protect me.
yet another jeff
Not like we’re anywhere near the summit of this slippery slope, this slide started a long time ago. The future we’re heading towards is some sort of a mix between Brazil and Harrison Bergeron.
Wilfred
That’s the point. Once the Watched become sufficiently aware of being watched, they begin to alter their behavior into whatever is being preached as the most socially correct. After a while, they don’t need to be watched anymore. That’s why the teacher stands in front of the class.
For those who aren’t bothered by this, a question: How is this different from listening in on everyone’s telephone conversations or reading their correspondence? After all, the video surveillance depends on having crack crime-fighters nearby once wrongdoing is perceived. If the objective is to stop crime, wouldn’t preemptive audio/electronic surveillance be more effective?
capelza
Wilfred, very well said.
It just occurred to me, though. Like so many of the “public safty” vids, these would most likely make it onto T.V. in yet another inane, but wildly popular “reality show”. That’s not snark.
So there is a weird cultural thing happening in this country. Our right to privacy is being eroded (as it has for sometime) and yet it somehow made palatable because it “entertains” us.
Not to go off topic, but this reminds of the 2 copters that collided while filming a car chase. All died, and the D.A. is trying to charge the car thief with their “murders”.
IanY77
It’s nothing new in most cities. In New York, for example, if you are in viewing distance of the Empire State Building, you’re on camera (looking for my source on that, read it a couple of years ago, will update).
Zifnab
Cameras are useful in identifying the criminal after the fact. But you’re looking to physically catch criminals in the act – a la Minority Report, perhaps? Once a crime – a carjacking, a mugging, a break-in – occurs, you can identify the perpetrator and track him back home. Then you send in the “crack crime-fighters” to arrest the villian.
Honestly, when compared to the previous two centuries of “eye-witness accounts” when everyone in the courtroom just points to blackie and say “lynch the n—- that raped ma baby”, I would think the ability to look at a camera and identify the actual perpetrator would be a boon in a civil and evolved society, not a burden. Isn’t it nice to be able to see live feed of a crime (or lack of crime) in progress, rather than just trusting the DA and the defense attorney to sort it out for the jury?
I understand the fear of cameras. No one wants a ten-year-old video of himself walking into a liquor store used as blackmail or evidence that he’s a drunkard. No one wants to be monitored from housemat to office chair and back again. But the alternative doesn’t relieve the government of power, it just lets them wave their hands at “evidence you’re not allowed to see” and use it against you. Frankly, in an age in which El Presidente can apparently have me arrested, deported, and tortured for four years because I was on a flight to Saudi Arabia, I value the airport security camera that clearly shows me boarding the flight to Tahiti. In an age when the government can just make shit up, I value verifiable truth, even if it does cut into my privacy.
jh
Two problems Zif,
Cameras would have to be EVERYWHERE to supplant eyewitness accounts as the prime source of proof in criminal cases.
Video can be altered quite easily these days using a Mac and some relatively inexpensive software. Especially the grainy, indistinct, B/W footage commonly produced by security cameras.
In Future World America 2012, video won’t be used to exonerate darkies like me from false charge, it will be doctored to suit the needs of the state.
This development is just one more paperweight added to the hellbound handbasket called ‘murrica.
Llelldorin
No, I think that problem will just move sideways–you’ll have a lot of arrests of black joggers, for example, on the “what possible reason might you have for running through that neighborhood at 5AM?” argument.
The whole point to civil liberties is that you don’t actually need a reason to doing something legal at whatever time–if you feel like going for a walk at 2AM, why not? If you decide to learn something about electronics and buy a lot of random crap from a surplus store for fun, why not? Allowing and encouraging random eccentricities like that is part of the point of being a free nation in the first place.
Combine lots of security cameras with data mining, though, and pretty soon “being a strange person” gets conflated with “probable cause.” As a certifiably bizarre person, this worries me enormously.
jenniebee
Does anybody else see this as an opportunity to raise picking one’s nose to the level of civil disobedience?
Wilfred
More problems. The first is that basing desirability of camera surveillance on its value in ‘punishing the wicked’ makes image capture normative. In other words, anybody wearing a ski-mask, or a hat pulled down over his face, would automatically be suspect for his refusal to participate in something good for society. This is the point of my earlier comment. Why would someone resist such a ‘good’ innovation, unless they were up to no good?
Second, I remember when these cameras first appeared in stores and the like. My friends and I would give it the finger, grab crotch, etc. But the other day I was on an elevator with my 10yo daughter and she pointed to the camera and was very respectful, even to the point of getting angry when I stuck my tongue out at the glass eye. Hers was the hegemonic response installed after 30 years of these things.
Zifnab
True. But you can’t get thrown in jail for years because you were caught jogging. You can get thrown in jail if you’re a “known jogger in the area” and a house you jog by got robbed. At least, in the former case, you are on camera clearly not doing anything. A even a bad defense attorney can’t lose a case like that.
And such changes can also be easily detected. You have to be a relatively experienced user to wipe out the more obvious marks of digital video tampering. You have to be exceptionally good to wipe out the more nuanced marks – miscolored pixels, invisible internal datestamps, expansion / recompression changes, and the like. Frankly, beat cop government workers just aren’t that good.
The way I see it, events Rodney King or more recently the UCLA taserings make me more attracted to electronic survallience than afraid. I know its hackneyed, but if you’re not doing anything wrong, you really don’t have anything to fear from cameras. On the contrary, you have alot to gain from them. Because, when the cops show up at your door with half-assed allegations and phoney bullshit stories about how you punched an officer first or you were holding a weapon or you tried to flee the scene.
Imagine if the NYC shooting – the one in which the kid got shot in the back, what? 20 or 30 times? – had been caught on video. Can you honestly say you’d rather not have cameras in the streets when you’ve got cops acting like that?
Punchy
Celebrities deal with the maxim every single day. I’m not sure how, but they do.
Also, what Shinobi said. How in the fuck did “small government” and “no gov’t in private lives” become the mantra of Dems and the antithesis of Republicans??? WTF?
LITBMueller
Yeah, you’ll continue to feel that way, until the day the cops show up at your door with a search warrant because a street camera caught an image of you leaving a jewelry store with your hand in your pocket at the same time it got robbed.
Now, the truth will be you had an itch in your crotch and just reached in for a quick scratch, but try explaining that to police officers who have no other suspects or leads…
tBone
It was a scratch, not a pick! No pick!
Mike S
When I was in London a year and a half ago there was a scandal going on about a couple of the people who were in charge of monitering the cctv’s. They had been filming women in their apartments.
I suspect that there will be a long line of people looking for that job here in the states.
Tax Analyst
ummm…”66-30″ in favor of the surveillance cameras does not indicate, at least to me, that the Democrats are all that much against Nanny-Stateism…that is, after all, more than 2 to 1 in favor of it. It only looks good when compared to the Pants-Wetting Party…err…I mean the Republican Party, where things go bump at any time of the day or night and they wet their pinstripes and look for swarthy people to detain and torture a confession out of. Jack Bauer always gets
hisa man, after all, doesn’t he?demimondian
It always was. The basic tenet of liberalism is the right to be left alone; the only difference between me and Pb (or Cole, fwiw) is the level at which we judge the government to have such a responsibility to the general welfare that we’ll recognize the needs of the many to override the rights of the few.
jenniebee
It’s been that way for years. Republicans kept on exaggerating Democratic positions, creating ad absurdem straw men to stand in for their opponents, until they eventually came to resemble the rival they only thought they had. Nowadays, they’re the nanny staters who want to control your health care decisions, what you can research at public libraries, what your kids get taught about religion, your sexual peccadillos, etc. They also want to limit what you can do about paying any or all of the above by effectively keeping anything but a corporate monopolies out of the marketplace, all in the name of “competition” and “consumer choice” which essentially means that even though you may be both a consumer and a voter, you should never ever use your power as a voter to improve your lot as a consumer because that would be socialism.
Democrats, on the other hand, instead of viewing R’s as the enemy, have been bemoaning the fact that so many voters who D’s thought should like them, didn’t, and decided to fix the problem by kicking their own progressive base to the curb (aka Nader) in an effort to appeal more to people who don’t vote for them than people who do. Also, some D’s formed the DLC and became the corporate shills we used to think we were standing against. Crazy world. Somebody ought to sell tickets.
capelza
jenniebee…not to thread jack this, but Nadar did a fine job kicking himself to the curb. Then went down that street drain next to it by taking GOP money.
But I agree completely about the “Socialist” boogeyman. I can not tell you how many people honestly believe Hillary Clinton and her husband are extremely left wing socialists. When you ask them why, the usual mumble about “that health care plan” and not a whole lot more, but dammit, she is a commie!
jh
I only know this because I ran a computer lab where video/digital compositing was taught.
It’s scary what kids can do today.
Some of the better students were very close to being able to alter video without any trace. I’m not sure of the technical terminology used (I was only responsible for the hardware) but from what I overheard the professors saying, these skills are in ever increasing demand.
Punchy
/squeals tires on way to get job application
salvage
Can I have an example?
And the cops could show up because someone saw you, the camera is neither here nor there and in fact I’d say that a camera might even be a better witness. The cops search while you call your lawyer (innocent or not, always call you lawyer and say nothing till they arrive but be polite). I’m still not seeing a problem here.
myiq2xu
Surveillance cameras are overrated as a crime-fighting tool.
I used to do retail security and I spent many, many hours watching monitors connected to surveillance cameras scattered throughout our store. We had about 20 different cameras in a medium-sized department store, 5 of which were remote controlled.
Despite the number of cameras, there were still many blindspots in our store. Someone has to be watching the monitors, and that person can only look at one monitor at a time. The resolution is often inadequate, especially at longer distances.
Crime happens very quickly, and if you’re distracted for even a few seconds you will miss it. And criminals tend to depart the scene very quickly. Even when you see them, you still have to chase them down.
Imagine the number of cameras necessary to cover even a medium sized city. Imagine the number of monitors, recording devices, and watchers. Imagine the costs involved.
And we would still need all the same number of police patrolling our streets.
Now – imagine George Bush and Alberto Gonzales as the people in charge.
What’s the weather like in Canada?
RSA
There’s some nice discussion in this thread of the implications for an evolving society in which everyone is being watched (and knows it), and the potential for government abuse. I have a simple rule of thumb that doesn’t always work, but I think it’s suggestive: Would I be happy with the government replacing every one of its security cameras with a live police officer? On the highways, sure, who cares? (Slippery slope arguments aside.) On every street corner in a city, with several at each open square? The law and order folks may think that this is the return of beat cops, but this kind of overkill should make people think of a literal police state.
I’m open to the idea that if the government is going to be monitoring people in public, there should be strong accountability. I think it’s worth trying to prevent it in the first place. There are all sorts of things that we (voters) would like to keep the government out of; this is one of them, for me.
myiq2xu
“And the cops could show up because someone saw you, the camera is neither here nor there and in fact I’d say that a camera might even be a better witness. The cops search while you call your lawyer (innocent or not, always call you lawyer and say nothing till they arrive but be polite). I’m still not seeing a problem here.”
First of all, you’ve never had the police come by your place with a warrant. It’s kind of hard to make phone calls wearing handcuffs. It’s also intimidating when they knock with a bootheel or battering ram.
I don’t care to have guns pointed at me either, sometimes they go off accidentally. If you should be startled and reach for a weapon to defend yourself and your home, rest in peace.
Getting arrested even though they failed to find any evidence ain’t a whole lotta fun either. You can sit in jail for a few days and hope the judge O.R.’s you, or you can pay a bail bondsman to get out right away. Around here armed robbery has a presumptive bail of $50,000, so it will cost you $5,000 to post bail. YOU WILL NOT GET THAT MONEY BACK, EVEN IF CHARGES ARE DISMISSED OR YOU ARE ACQUITTED.
So, after you post bail, you get to read your name in the local paper. If you are “lucky,” after numerous court appearances, the charges are dropped. The local paper won’t mention this.
So you go to trial and are acquitted. How much work did you miss? How much did your attorney cost? If you had a public defender appointed, how much did you get billed for his/her services? Where do you go to get your reputation back?
Yeah, no problem here.
The Pirate
How is this different from listening in on everyone’s telephone conversations or reading their correspondence?
Are you serious? Telephone conversations and private correspondence are private exchanges between individuals. Going to the 7/11 to buy a pack of smokes is not.
You people do understand that everywhere you go, people are watching you, right? I am looking out my window right now and observing some kids skateboarding down the street. Maybe that makes me a prime candidate for Thought Police School.
demimondian
I’m not happy about governmental video monitoring, RSA, and I hope that nobody really is. At best, it’s the lesser of two great evils.
In my opinion, we have a stark choice. Either we have video footage all over the country, unregulated and monitored by every voyeur who wants to post a picture of you copping a quick feel of your SO on that way out of the car, or at least in principle regulated and collected by the government. I consider a belief that the data won’t be collected unmitigated Pollyanna-ism.
Steve
I live in NYC. Most people here don’t seem to have a problem with security cameras. You’re pretty much always on someone’s private security camera anyway, considering there’s like a bank on every street corner.
I understand all the slippery slope arguments but I still don’t think it’s a big deal. Do people in London really feel as though they’re living in a police state? I don’t think so.
salvage
myiq2xu and all that would only happen because of video cameras?
And I’ve had the cops come by a buddy’s place with a warrant and I sat for about five minutes until they checked by ID and kicked me out.
Buddy not so lucky but he was guilty so what can you do?
myiq2xu
BTW – anyone who has a lawyer on retainer they can call and who makes house calls has little to fear in George Bush’s Amerika.
It’s the poor people who need to be afraid.
RSA
It’s your comment I was thinking of when I wrote mine, demimondian. I’ll have to think about what would constitute practical oversight.
capelza
London and NYC…this is not small town America (so a very cliched comment, but this time I mean it).
A town of 10,000 people does not need security cameras on every corner. Yet, I can gaurantee you that if this is implemneted it will be Chief of Police JoeBob Whippersnapper that’ll get funding for it. They lurve the toys!
I know COP Whippersnapper, I do not want him watching me when I walk down to the docks at 2 Am to greet mu husband when he comes home from his fishing trip or just out chasing the wharf rats fro fun (just kidding, but those suckers are big and I should be able to do that if I feel like it). Or pulling over “suspicious” men in a crummy at 4:30 in the morning, because the dunderhead doesn’t know the difference between a bunch of loggers going to work and lord knows who still up from the night before, if his life depended on it.
The U.S. isn’t just NYC, in case someone forgot.
myiq2xu
I’m just opposed to expanding police power in this country.
Do you really want to build the infrastructure that would make “Big Brother” possible?
Power corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Wilfred
The point of my comment was the motivation behind the surveillance. I’ll say it again: If you accept the premise that surveillance prevents crime, or catches the guilty or whatever, then why not extend surveillance to ‘private’ conversations where plans are often discussed, etc?
I made lame pun above but you really ought to read Foucault’s discussion of the controlling apparatus of the Panopticon.
canuckistani
Why ask me? Check the Toronto club district police security cameras.
As far as I can tell, the benefit of the security cameras is to move crime from trendy downtown locations to seedy unwatched areas. I have severely mixed feelings about the whole thing. I’ll let you know when I’ve come to a conclusion.
Snarky Shark
But you don’t really know, do you?
And yet they still had the bombings. Maybe what we are talking about is really just a big waste of time and money?
Or voyeurism writ large?
yet another jeff
I think our choice isn’t that stark…either the voyeur video and govt video, or just the voyeur video.
Zifnab
You fail to demonstrate how the current system is any different from the one you described. What keeps cops from doing exactly all of this on an “eye-witness account” or an “anonymous report”? You don’t have a fear of cameras, you have a fear of cops.
As a person who once got falsely picked up by mall security, then dragged through the pathetic excuse of an investigative process, then (temporarily) banned from the mall after they couldn’t even find anything to hold me on, I can agree with you right off that getting fingered like that is an absolutely horrible experience.
But all this happened without a lens in sight. No one caught me on a doctored security tape or a cell phone camera. This was purely my word against the word of another mall patron I’d never even met before. Had a camera or some other objective source of information been present, I could have been easily vindicated. As it stands, I got five hours of my life sucked down the drain while Officer Barbrady slowly figured out there was nothing to see here.
Bottom line, unless there is a conspiracy of people really out to get you, I don’t see how cameras make you less safe rather than more safe from a lazy or hostile police force.
The Other Steve
I’m envisioning the Google Global Video Warehouse.
Right now they’ve got still imagery you can look at, in the future you can dial up the time frame you want to view and see just who came out of the restaurant on Grand Ave at 10pm.
I say buy stock in video camera companies, and have fun!
myiq2xu
Zifnab –
Damn right I have a fear of cops!
That’s why I don’t want to give them even more power.
myiq2xu
Funny how conservatives tend to want the government to be able to know what we’re doing, but want to keep US from knowing what OUR government is up to.
myiq2xu
Okay, I’m convinced. Increasing police surveillance powers can only protect us from “evil doers.”
While we’re at it, let’s repeal the 4th Amendment. Hell, the 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments too. They only protect criminals and terrorists.
If you’re not breaking the law, what’s the problem?
yet another jeff
That’s the thing…it just makes the lazy cops lazier.
They can’t even get the system working for running red lights, how in hell can a camera explosion be anything more than a non-helpful waste of money.
LITBMueller
Because police need probable cause in order to obtain a search warrant. One eyewitness account of a man walking out of the store with his hand in his pocket, with only a generalized description, no picture, no name, etc., is not enough information to form the basis of a warrant.
BUT, a still image from a mounted camera than can first be checked against DMV records or police mug shots – that gets you an address and SS# – then you can check for any prior contacts with the police. All of that sort of information can be used to write up an affidavit of probable cause in order to obtain a warrant. And, before you know it, the innocent guy who scratched his balls at the wrong moment has the police knocking down his door with a warrant in their hands.
Believe me, that can happen REAL easily. Its amazing how much more information you might be able to get on a guy using camera images – his face, the license plate of the car he got into, etc. You need all of that kind of specifics to lead to a warrant. Some old lady’s recollection of some guy she saw leaving a store at about the same time as a robbery just ain’t gonna cut it.
You know what the biggest problem with the whole debate over cameras really is? Not enough people fully understand their rights to realize how they are implicated by increased public surveillance.
Zifnab
That’s the only argument I can honestly listen to. Everything else implies that beat cops are really eager to run around arresting people at random.
Yeah, scratching your balls could conceivably get you a visit from the cops, but this assumes that over the entire course of analyzing your face print (on grainy video) and CSI-ing your shoe size and your retinas, someone doesn’t stop and say “Wait, he’s just scratching his balls.” Envisioning an entire law enforcement network that can quickly and easily identify people implies a law enforcement network that should quickly and easily identify whether or not someone is committing a crime. Why doesn’t anyone zoom in on the suspect’s crotch and come to the conclusion that – unless a pair of bowling balls and a hockey stick got stolen – my hand was grabbing my junk and not unlawfully gained goods? (That’s right, ladies. You heard correctly.)
More likely, it’ll be a massive waste of money for people who don’t know how to use it. But in any event, its not going to turn the world into 1984.
yet another jeff
Of course we’re not on the road to 1984, that would require competence. We’re on the road to Brazil. It’s not CSI, it’s CYA.
Never assume there’s going to be a rational voice piping up to say “he’s just scratching his balls.” That’s where the trouble starts, sometimes that rational guy isn’t there, sometimes he’s overruled. Sometimes the aluminum tubes are just aluminum goddamned tubes.
tBone
As you say, it is a stark choice, and not one that should be examined casually. Please upload a video to YouTube for evaluation purposes so I can give this the consideration it deserves.
dianne
We’re all just a bunch of frogs in boiling water. The newest trick up their sleeve is the ability to remotely turn on a cell phone and listen in to the conservations nearby. I wonder how the 71%ers will like that?
jenniebee
If I were a truly devious person, I would write a wingnut welfare sci-fi novel in which Our Good God-Fearing Conservative Hero supports the idea of surveillance cameras in public spaces, thinking that it would be used primarily to track crime. He would be a top engineer at a face-recognition software company, designing the systems that make this new method of crime-prevention truly come alive. Only a month after deployment of his super-good software, he would be called by the cops to give expert testimony in a case where his software identified terra-ists!!1!one! The DA shows him how useful his software has become – now that faces can be matched, patterns of movement for single faces are tracked, and profiles are built. But while he’s there, he discovers the first clue that his innocent and pure and good surveillance and identification system was being used by Libruls! in Teh Beauracracy! to profile Good God-Fearing Conservatives!
And then the harassment begins. Stories begin to pop up through his church that people are being mysteriously turned down for jobs they should get. Some people at their workplace get the sense that they’re viewed differently. A new convert who works in HR whispers to him that her company, like many others, is checking with the profiling system to find out what profiles their employees have, and those with beliefs all those limousine-liberal CEOs don’t like are now being discriminated against. It is widespread. Only Christian companies are safe havens for believers.
It is up to our Hero to do… something to put a stop to it all! And the clock is ticking because… I don’t know why, but it just is. Armageddon is coming or something. I haven’t worked all of this out yet. Still, think that’s enough for me to write up for Regnery and see if they’ll give me money?
yet another jeff
jenniebee, I think this needs to be a graphic novel…somewhere between The 300 and a Jack Chick tract.
myiq2xu
Isn’t “graphic novel” just a fancy “comic book?”
I quit reading “picture books” back around the 3rd grade.
Picture magazines are a whole different story (but I only read the articles)
Back on topic – Until we have cameras in the boardrooms and executive offices, keep them off the streets too!
capelza
I’ll assent to this when we can have cameras in the police station, available to all citizens anytime they want. Or the DHS section office, or any Congresscritter’s office (not that C-SPAN thing on the floor)that votes for it.
I mean, if they aren’t doing anything wrong, what’s the problem? And we do pay their salaries, they work FOR us.
Jake
Hellz yeah and no I’m not snarking. It would resonate well with the “Credit Card Numbers are the Number of the Beast” crowd.
In addition, you’d get the warehouse workers who smash RFID devices because they think they’re used to track people as well as goods and of course the people who shoot out the DOT tags on road signs because NATO will use those to navigate when the New World Order kicks in.
These last two groups are the real reason you’ll never see video surveillance in small town USA. These people already seriously fear (not without justification) that The Guvmint is watching them and think anyone who doesn’t is an idiot. Cameras would last as long as it takes for someone to fetch their shot gun.
Zifnab
Honestly – regarding Congressmen – I’d actually welcome that.
ConservativelyLiberal
Looks like I was just made in to a 25%’er today. Americans are turning into a bunch of wussies. This is just another step in the direction of the Big Brother state.
I guess that when children are born we need to assign them an attorney, pack them in styrofoam to prevent bruising, implant a tracking/ID chip in them so we know who and where they are at any minute of the day and so on.
As someone else said, video can be doctored. How long will it take for someone in a position of power to frame someone else with fake video footage? After all, if it is on video, they had to have done it, right? The tape never lies, right?
This is the slippery slope people, and you are stupid if you think that cameras will save your ass some day. In the case of your murder, it may help catch your killer. But you will still be dead, right? Some satisfaction…
Tim F.
It simply astonishes me that 81% of Republicans support making America into more of a top-down surveillance state.
Ingmar Bergman outlived conservatism by a good four or five years.
yet another jeff
I dunno…he got to see it die in the early fifties.
Bill Arnold
The Pirate asks: Are you serious? Telephone conversations and private correspondence are private exchanges between individuals. Going to the 7/11 to buy a pack of smokes is not.
Mix it up some.
– What if you get a call from your [contact you don’t want the local politicians to know about] while in the parking lot of the 7/11. Is your half of the phone conversation protected from (potentially automated) lip-reading? What if your phone was set to speaker, and the video recorder includes audio? (Perhaps the audio recording is illegal, or not, but it will happen.)
– What if you’re deaf, and in the parking lot of the 7/11, and have a (sign-language) conversation with someone else?
RSA
Uh, yeah. (For the anti-link-clickers, police arrested a bystander for taking pictures of their activities with his cell phone. WTF?)
Cain
Why should it? At least among the religious wingnuts you’re supposed to listen to your pastor of your church. They all want centralized control. They want to follow a messianic leader. That’s how good old george was sold to the base.
After all, for them the only real document is the 10 commandments what more do you need? Small government conservatism is dead.
cain
Bill Arnold
This is the slippery slope people, and you are stupid if you think that cameras will save your ass some day. In the case of your murder, it may help catch your killer. But you will still be dead, right? Some satisfaction…
Talking with a brother-in-law who lives in London, the deal is that crime levels are reduced by surveillance, because criminals know that they are on camera and so more likely to get caught. Lower crime levels and an increased likelihood that a perpetrator of a crime like a mugging or robbery is likely to be caught, combine to make people generally accepting of the cameras.
(I think they’re nuts because the video is (or will be) forever and the progressive improvement of automated video analysis technologies will relentlessly continue, but this is a minority opinion.)
Zifnab
I honestly think you’re all scared shitless over nothing.
There’s Big Brother technology and then there’s bad Sci-Fi. Being afraid of cameras is definitely falling hard towards the latter.
yet another jeff
I think the best to hope for in that scenario is that someone notices you being very still and takes you body to the morgue before the wolves come.
Will these cameras be underground or do they even acknowledge the threat from C.H.U.D.?
capelza
They might want to install “public safety” cams in Hot Topic dressing rooms, too. Those Emo kids might be a front for AQ, holding their secret meetings under the guise of trying on “My Chemical Romance” panties. You just never know!
Horatio
Read David Brin’s “The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738201448
+++++++++
David Brin takes some of our worst notions about threats to privacy and sets them on their ears. According to Brin, there is no turning back the growth of public observation and inevitable loss of privacy–at least outside of our own homes. Too many of our transactions are already monitored: Brin asserts that cameras used to observe and reduce crime in public areas have been successful and are on the rise. There’s even talk of bringing in microphones to augment the cameras. Brin has no doubt that it’s only a matter of time before they’re installed in numbers to cover every urban area in every developed nation.
While this has the makings for an Orwellian nightmare, Brin argues that we can choose to make the same scenario a setting for even greater freedom. The determining factor is whether the power of observation and surveillance is held only by the police and the powerful or is shared by us all. In the latter case, Brin argues that people will have nothing to fear from the watchers because everyone will be watching each other. The cameras would become a public resource to assure that no mugger is hiding around the corner, our children are playing safely in the park, and police will not abuse their power.
No simplistic Utopian, Brin also acknowledges the many dangers on the way. He discusses how open access to information can either threaten or enhance freedom. It is one thing, for example, to make the entire outdoors public and another thing to allow the cameras and microphones to snoop into our homes. He therefore spends a lot of pages examining what steps are required to assure that a transparent society evolves in a manner that enhances rather than restricts freedom. This is a challenging view of tomorrow and an exhilarating read for those who don’t mind challenges to even the most well-entrenched cultural assumptions.
jg
I believe that is the very defintion of an authoritarian government. The opposite of that is a democracy.
Surveillance cameras are used for surveillance not crime fighting. Saying they are for crime fighting is the same lie as saying internet regulation will be used to protect children from porn.
jg
It may seem Orwellian but not if you apply some doublethink?
Horatio
Read the book before you make comments. That would be the intelligent thing to do. Of course, reading takes effort. Typing, hardly any effort at all.
Beej
Keeping government out of our lives has never really been the goal of the Republicans. What they really want is to keep government out of their POCKETS and the POCKETS of their corporate contributors and friends. Other than that, they are totally in favor of government intervention in private lives. How else to explain their stands on homosexuality, abortion, and end-of-life decisions?
yet another jeff
And with that, Horatio closed the post to all that haven’t read the book…or that don’t have it handy to read tonight before this post scrolls away.
yet another jeff
And with that, Horatio closed the post to all that haven’t read the book…or that don’t have it handy to read tonight before this post scrolls away.
Horatio
That doesn’t preclude you from reading the book. For those who don’t know, here is Brin’s CV (aside from his award winning SciFi writing career)
History
1950: Born, LA County, California
1973: Bachelor of Science, Caltech
1973-1977: Research Engineer, Hughes Aircraft Research Labs
1975-1977: Master of Science (Electrical Engineering), UCSD
1981: Doctor of Philosophy (Space Physics), UCSD
1982-1985: Teaching Physics and Writing, SDSU (and technical consulting)
1982-1985: Associate/PostDoctoral Fellow, California Space Institute, UCSD
Visiting Scholar/Affiliate Positions
Center for Study of Evolution of Life (UCLA)
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA
NASA NSCORT for Exobiology
Member, Board of Advisors of several corporations and nonprofit institutions
HyperIon
both of those incidents were captured by non-governmental cameras. they were the work of private citizens. when the government is doing the taping and controls the tape, i am less comfortable.
moreover, a recent incident of possible entrapment by seattle police was recorded on tape (at an ATM i think); and guess what, the powers that be STILL decided not to throw the book at the cops.
don’t give THE MAN more power!
Cain
Images captured by surveilliance should be available to the public using the freedom of information act. I might be more open at that point. We paid for it, we get to see it.
cain
yet another jeff
Seems that Brin agrees that the Powers That Be have to open up and cede authority for his ideas to work. (so I read the reviews…)
Problem here is that I think we really are arguing about whether it’s good to give the authority figures more authority…so at this point, having not read the book, I think that Brin agrees that that is a Bad Thing.
demimondian
I agree with Cain — if you’re watching me, I want to know what you saw.
Andrew
If there is even a 1% chance for a mushroom cloud of sadness and eyeliner descending upon us, we must preemptively strike!
MNPundit
As it doesn’t get me fired from my job for sitting down for a few minutes, I really don’t care if they’re in public places.
Private residences and businesses are where I draw the line but otherwise count me in the 75%.
At least that’s how I see it as different than the illegal wire-tapping. There is a presumption (however incorrect with mobile phones) that telephone conversations are private. But if you’re out in a public place anyone can take your picture from some tabloid reporter, to a guy practicing his photography for school. I don’t see why that shouldn’t translate to cameras as well…. in public spaces.
TenguPhule
Where were you these last six years? They’ve all been removed by order of Der Furher in the name of the War of Terra Boogie Woogie Wet Your Pants Foevah!
Krista
Well, in Nova Scotia you can just check the cameras.
I do have to say that I like the highway cams — it’s very helpful when traveling to know what the road conditions are en route.
As far as the other cameras go, I’m a bit torn. On one hand, I do kind of like the idea of having them in places where things get a little sketchy at night. And the voyeur in me does enjoy getting to look over my old stomping grounds. On the other hand, I think of how many nights my friends and I left the bars and staggered around this area, and it does creep me out to think that a camera was there recording it all. (Then again, if anybody had tried to take advantage of our drunken state, the camera would have been there.) So yeah…I’m really torn about the whole thing.
Njorl
I think it is a waste of money, but that is it. I can’t see banning the government from doing what any private citizen or business can do. Are you going to ban all filming in public by everyone? I think law enforcement types might actually prefer that.
Pb
Brin also showcased this idea pretty well in Earth, which is a great future prediction novel that covers surveillance, global warming, and, uh, tiny black holes…
Rome Again
You’re joking, right?