[dumb-saint]

I agree that more authoritarianism leads to less crimes. This is a well-known fact. But at what cost? Historically, we have been through all this before.

Notice that it's never just the cameras. You also have to make it illegal for me to hide from them. No face camouflage, for example. And even if you don't make it illegal, you will immediately single me out and pay close attention to me. Not in the old sense of having some police officers "keeping an eye on me" but in the new sense of using the full power of all of our current technology to track me.

I'll tell you what the cost is: spontaneity, randomness, street-level interaction, the right to be WEIRD. All this while crime rates have been naturally going down for decades. None of this stuff is about crime for the politicians, it's about control and business deals (I promise you someone sells all those cameras and related equipment to the cities, and it's not you or me).

I am not that old, but old enough to already see that historical lessons don't last long, and everything has to be learned over and over again :(

[ciaranm]

Lots of CCTV isn't government-run. Some is, like local parks or whatever, but most is run by businesses who want to be able to catch folks who have broken in. In order to get access to the footage, police generally need a warrant.

I guess I disagree that "camera == authoritarian", but I totally get your concerns. I'd be more worried about the secret courts(US) and super-injunctions(England) that mean we can't talk about things, than I would about being on camera.

[dumb-saint]

I have no problem with businesses having CCTV inside their premises -- as long as this is clearly advertised, so that I can decide if I'm ok with it or not. But I don't think they have the right to point the camera to the public space outside and film me without my consent.

Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it. There is no way around it. Maybe you don't value what they destroy, but it is hard to deny that something is destroyed.

Imagine kids playing. Do you think they behave the same when no adults are watching? And do you think it is good for mental health to have zero "unsupervised" time?

And then, let's not be naive. After Snowden we know that the reach of the government knows no bounds. Every private camera is potentially public. Everything that is recorded is potentially recorded forever, and sifted through by increasingly powerful algorithms. In this realty, one less camera is always a little bit more freedom for everyone -- to do both good and bad things, of course, but I would rather live like a free adult than as a constantly supervised child, always submissive to Society with a big S.

[Ntrails]

>Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it.

Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?

I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc. Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure. Come back to me when they do that, until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.

[dumb-saint]

> Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?

Are you saying or are you asking?

> I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc.

Yes, and you are also less likely to do things that are allowed, but that could still harm you depending on who's watching. Kiss your girlfriend. Do a silly dance. Participate in that protest. Use that t-shirt with the political message. Hold hands with your gay lover. The public space changes when you point a camera at it.

Don't worry too much about arguing with me -- I will lose this argument. Every day that passes, fewer people will remember what a world without constant monitoring looked like. You can't miss what you never experienced.

> Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure.

A strawman is when you attack a claim that was not actually made by your opponent. Maybe the expression you are looking for is "slippery slope"?

> Come back to me when they do that,

"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations. I can show them to you, but you will probably just say that I am exaggerating and that this is a different situation. Just as people did back then.

> until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.

Crime rates have been going down for decades, long before all this new tech. The perception of crime rates has been going up, because of many things including the lowering standards of journalism. I live in a very safe big city where CCTV cameras are mostly illegal.

[JackFr]

> A strawman is when you attack a claim that was not actually made by your opponent.

...

> I can show them to you, but you will probably just say that I am exaggerating and that this is a different situation.

?

[dredmorbius]

Which is precisely what proceeded to happen: "I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13220139

[Ntrails]

I'm not asking, I'm telling but with a questioning inflection to reflect the absurdity of the statement.

I don't believe any of your suggestions are true in a way that don't apply to public spaces in general. I wouldn't do "thing x" in case the wrong people saw, but that includes the possibility of a friend of my boss seeing me making out with his wife so I'm not going to do that where I might be seen.

Claiming that surveillance is bad because oppression is bad is a Strawman. It's the process of taking any position (the GP stating public cameras are fine) and then introducing your own version of his claim (Cameras=Oppression) and then arguing against oppression.

>"They" have already done that over and over in analogous historical situations.

This argument sits in the box with my father who was eternally upset because we didn't have the military to fight a war and we'd regret that because ~World War 3~. He may indeed end up being right, but to pretend that nuclear proliferation hasn't changed the face of war seems ludicrous to me.

[dumb-saint]

It all depends on your model of who is on the other side of the camera. If you think the entity on the other side is on your side, you probably have fuzzy feeling about cameras. If you don't think that the watcher is someone like you, it feels creepy.

Again, historically, people who had comfortable positions in an oppressive regime tend to sincerely claim that the abuses being attributed to secret/political polices are an exaggeration. They are usually not lying, they had a nice position in society, so those that protect the status quo feel benevolent to them.

Most people on this site have a very nice situation in live compared to the remaining 99% (to be conservative) of the world. So I take any "doesn't bother me" uttered here with a grain of salt. Also, many here have a vested interest in the expansion of the global technocracy.

When I go to the UK I feel oppressed, even though I have no intention of breaking the law. You can argue that I am crazy and should take some meds, but this is how I actually feel. Judging from art that I see (for example from Banksy), I don't think I'm alone in feeling like that.

[kuschku]

> until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates

Unless you live in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Japan, or Singapore, it's unlikely you'll have lower crime rates than Germany.

Yet, Germany has close to no surveillance of public spaces, at all, as private surveillance of public space is banned, and public surveillance of public space is very strictly regulated.

[rikkus]

There's plenty of spontaneity, randomness and street-level interaction occurring in the cities of the UK. I see this every day. I don't think CCTV is stopping this.

[dumb-saint]

There's no point arguing over something we can't measure. Instead let me give you a scenario:

Behaviour X is illegal. "No expectation of privacy in the public space" people argue that, well, stopping illegal behaviours is great, don't you think? There will always be an implicit shaming: surely you are not up to something questionable, right?

Time passes and now 75% of the population believes that behaviour X is fine and should be legal. Nobody will ever rebel and do X in public, because they could go to jail. Civil disobedience is over.

No, we have total order and we should go through the "proper channels" to change the law. Like Snowden should have done. Like homosexuals should have done, instead of throwing the reality of their existence in everyone's face, in the public space.

Don't you see how much power this apparatus of surveillance represents? Don't you read enough history to know how much power corrupts, and how no human being can be trusted with it?

How the fuck can anyone believe that politicians care about crime? Crime has been going DOWN, consistently, for decades. Do you ever see politicians pointing that out? No! They want to give you more "solutions" for a problem that appears to be solving itself. Why? What is in it for them? Ask yourself that.

Want to save people? Show them how to eat better. Improving nutrition would be orders of magnitude more effective in saving lives. Can't be done though, because it would interfere with too many corporate interests.