[HenryBemis]

Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements.

We are talking about a nation that has 4,200,000 [1] cameras surveilling them and nobody bats an eye about this. For some reason, Britons have decided (or was forced to them and they didn't push back) that privacy is not necessary, so, let them have it.

What harm can 3 more cameras can do? :) (per kiosk, per street)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

[gaius]

Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance.

Here's a true story, a few years ago I was supervising a diver training session at a swimming pool in London, it was closed to members of the public at the time. My locker was broken into, my phone, tablet, credit cards, car keys and bizarrely a load of Mexican money I happened to have in my wallet was stolen, as were a couple of other lockers. Thank God I hadn't driven in that evening, I'm sure the guy walked around all the local streets pushing the button and seeing if any cars lit up. That was the most annoying thing to get the car re-coded, I easily bricked all the devices and cancelled the cards, no activity was detected on them. Insurance replaced them. No idea what he wanted with or did with the pesos.

Anyway, the thief was caught on several CCTV cameras, should have been an easy job for the popo to pick him up, but actually, CCTV footage is next to useless. All you could tell was that he was 6-ish feet tall and approximate ethnicity. So I don't mind the pervasive surveillance, because it doesn't work anyway. I guess I am vaguely annoyed that taxpayer's money is wasted on any of it deployed by the government, but that's all. Maybe it at least has some deterrent effect, but this guy clearly wasn't bothered by being caught on camera at all, so probably not.

[icc97]

If it doesn't work then it should be taken down.

It's even worse, it means the police know it doesn't track criminals and so just want to track regular people.

It tests the water of how much the population is willing to be under surveillance.

Like boiling a frog you don't notice how much surveillance there is until it's too late.

[mhb]

Like boiling a frog

In 2002 Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, with a research interest in thermal relations of amphibians, said that "The legend is entirely incorrect!" He described how a critical thermal maximum for many frog species has been determined by contemporary research experiments: as the water is heated by about 2 °F, or 1.1 °C, per minute, the frog becomes increasingly active as it tries to escape, and eventually jumps out if the container allows it"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

[eeereerews]

Must we have someone point this out whenever someone says "boiling a frog"? The use of the phrase does not constitute an factual assertion about whether you can, in fact, boil a frog.

[yesenadam]

No, but people using it think it's a fact about frogs. Comparisons involving it contain an assumption/presupposition that's unknowingly false. Jesus employed facts about e.g. lilies in his parables; I doubt dodgy urban myths would have cut it. Please permit the people not so smart as you on the internet to learn someone without having to hear "Arghh I know that". But maybe you've read someone pointing out the frog myth 1000 more times than I! In which case I sympathize.

edit: Hehe I left HN after writing that to do something 'more useful', reading The Inmates are Running the Asylum. On about the 2nd page I read was:

"A frog that’s slipped into a pot of cold water never recognizes the deadly rising temperature as the stove heats the pot. Instead, the heat anesthetizes the frog’s senses. I was unaware, like the frog, of my cameras’ slow march from easy to hard to use as they slowly became computerized."

[icc97]

Yes I'd put it something like a floppy disk for save. It might not be true but it gets the point across.

Never-the-less I respect a good nitpick and I didn't know the article so for me it's a welcome reply

[icc97]

Damn, there goes another good theory. Perhaps I should change my example to the English getting sunburnt lying on Spanish beaches.

[gerdesj]

I think you'll find that is more likely Scots rather than English. The Big Yin famously described the effect in his Aussie tours. To be fair, us southerners can also burn as well (but I personally don't.)

What you might consider "English" is two countries and four nations. It's complicated. For safety, I'd refer to the two large islands off the NW of mainland Europe as "Britain and Ireland" (in short.) It's complicated.

[icc97]

I'm English and I've been sunburnt lots, I seem literally incapable of pre-planning against it. Doesn't need to be Spanish beeches though. I'm thinking of the English style tourist who wants his egg and chips wherever he is.

[opless]

s/English/British/g

English people are from England, British people are from four nations.

But yes, Complicated. Very.

[goblins]

>It's even worse, it means the police know it doesn't track criminals and so just want to track regular people.

The police knowing is really beside the point, local government (councils) own and operate the public space CCTV, the police will and do make use of it. The problem is quality and with quality is identification. If no one knows the person on CCTV there's not much to be done.

[icc97]

The point is that regular folk don't hide their face, so they're easy to be tracked. But criminals know just to hide their features.

Maybe it's just paranoia but I neither want to have to hide my face nor worry about getting spotted in the wrong place at the wrong time by accident.

[goblins]

The police by the very definition of their job don't go around "tracking" regular folk. Only those that are doing or have done wrong. Seriously the police have better things to do than watch people on CCTV who aren't doing anything wrong. Not to mention the various laws and regulations that prevent the police doing just that.

Councils on the other hand are a different thing.

[lurker456]

That's not proof it doesn't work. If you ran the GCHQ and you had a way to track everyone, would you let it be used to solve petty crime ? Much safer to use it sparingly.

[secfirstmd]

The Security Service has access to all publically paid for CCTV cameras in the UK. Motorways, airports, city centres etc

[achamayou]

Would you not? It would make you pretty popular for one thing, and much easier to get funding next year.

[joshvm]

One of the arguments for mass surveillance is that you could hand over to another system if the suspect goes off-camera. So in this case, presumably they knew exactly what time the thief left the building and, provided everyone talks to each other, you could figure out where he went next. Ultimately you might be able to determine where the suspect lived or transition to a camera where better footage is available. Problem is that while we are watched en masse, most of these systems are separate. I'm not arguing that we should have this capability, but this is the obvious use-case.

The quality of CCTV footage (or lack of) is well known. How many times have you seen a news report with a blurry photo of a suspect and a plea for information? This is vague proof that mass surveillance is ineffective unless you throw serious manpower at it.

This is what happens in the case of serious terrorism cases, where the police can wave RIPA around and subpoena footage from everyone, but presumably tracking between cameras still requires a lot of manual intervention (and therefore money). Catching a locker thief isn't worth it.

[mrexroad]

Clearly the answer is to upgrade several million cameras to 4K, 60fps, IR at night models. Then all can do facial recognition, APNR, etc.

[linkmotif]

The answer is face recognition.

[goblins]

Current quality for the majority of CCTV is probably not good enough for facial. May be gait recognition is more feasible.

[Spearchucker]

There's an interesting article in last month's Economist. They show resolution that let's an operator recognise a face a mile up the road. That was in Islington.

[gaius]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo

[IshKebab]

Maybe a zoom lens that does.

[gaius]

I saw the CCTV footage - impossible.

[timthorn]

With state surveillance, I'd agree. I don't think things are so clear cut for private sector actors. Private CCTV is tolerated because it's a) typically not a networked system, b) rarely mined for analytics and c) often conflated with council run systems anyway.

[gerdesj]

We are Britons in Britain. There is no one living here by the name of Average Joe. There are a lot of cameras here, many more than than some other places apparently. The vast majority of those cameras are in town and city centres or on the motorways. It is possible that in Britain we are able to count better (and publish) than some other regions and hence look bad in this regard - who knows.

I don't feel more "surveilled" here than I do in say Italy, France or the US (all of which I am pretty familiar with). I will say that I do feel looked upon when driving along the M42, south of Birmingham, there are a lot of cameras there but that area is a massive cross-road for the UK and an obvious place to want to keep an eye on.

Push back? Will do when things really do go wrong. You don't know us ... mate.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Push back? Will do when things really do go wrong. You don't know us ... mate.

Problem is, if things "really" do go wrong, it will be too late to push back.

[gerdesj]

Bear in mind that this is a land that has executed kings and been a short lived Republic, run up a fairly large Empire and died back down and is still a constitutional monarchy. We've done a few other things here as well.

It's never too late. We're odd.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

It is also a country were police officers used the names and identities of people who died as infants to infiltrate activist groups, often having relationships with female members to gain their trust:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/undercover-policing-in...

You don't need to wait too long, I'd say.

[dvdhnt]

Okay, I'm going to toss out downvote material because I think it's important to say.

> Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance.

I think Americans are actually 99% comfortable with massive surveillance but can't admit it because of our culture. We consume reality TV like no one's business, watch YouTube to see people do dumb things in real life, and just in general, feel the urge to record and capture everything.

The 1% we disagree with is when it happens to be us doing something we didn't want anyone to see because it's embarrassing or causes us some kind of hardship e.g. pay a fine for breaking a law.

Personally, even if I have something to hide, it's my responsibility to hide it, or to stop doing it, and therefore, the public good shouldn't be hindered because I'm a crappy person.

If we could implement a CCTV system with ACTUAL checks and balances i.e. used my authorities, regulated by a public authority, and monitored by some third-party NON-CORPORATE watchdog, I'll vote for it as often as they'd let me.

If it's 1% more effective at stopping sexual assaults, preventing kidnappings, or protecting us from mass shootings, then it's 100% worth it.

[alex_young]

Maybe I'm just part of that 1% who will reject this idea.

Is a 1% reduction in any crime really worth a totalitarian world where the state can hunt down people who disagree with them?

[yesenadam]

>Okay, I'm going to toss out downvote material because I think it's important to say.

I didn't get past that first sentence of irrelevant filler.

[dvdhnt]

You’d be better served expending energy reading my comment rather than proclaiming your failure to read it, friend.

[yesenadam]

Well, judging from the first line, I thought not. And don't be snarky then call me "friend". Thanks. I guess I was too obliquely referring to the "don't mention voting, it's tiresome" guideline. I was offering anecdata, sample size 1, that your first line could also serve to deter readers, which it seemed you hadn't considered. Well, I've learnt (from this and my previous attempt) that offering what free advice I can on here on how to better reach readers, isn't appreciated, so I shall stop. Thanks.

[rahoulb]

I would say Britons are 95% comfortable with government surveillance. But there is a growing backlash against private/corporate surveillance.

Of course, there is a grey-area with government surveillance when things like ANPR services are outsourced with completely opaque contracts.

[dingaling]

> (or was forced to them and they didn't push back )

How do you suggest that we should have pushed back? By voting the bastards out? The UK is actually quite good at that, but policy outlives politicians thanks to the civil service.

[celticninja]

New government can easily reverse or change the policies of previous governments, the civil service jut enacts what the government of the day tells them to do.

[desas]

Sort of. The civil service has lots of people with their own agenda which they push to the elected politicians when they ask the civil service for options on how to solve problems

[celticninja]

The civil service doesn't push their own agenda. They are tasked with finding solutions to enact policy decisions, they provide the best solutions that they can that will fulfill the policy presented by the government. A civil servant cannot push their own agenda and the civil service as a whole doesn't have an agenda except to serve the government of the day to the best of their ability regardless of their personal politics.

[benbristow]

At least these cameras give you WiFi in return

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements.

The British just have their own ideas about privacy. I've lived here 12 years and I still don't understand how almost everybody leaves their blinds up with the lights on, after dark. It's not without risk either. I think it was last summer when, for a few nights, Creepy Old Dude would walk past my window mumbling "show us your pussy" and "show us your legs". On the other hand, every so often someone tars people leaving their blinds down or curtains drawn as "skivers" sleeping it off through the day while everyone else goes to work [1], or as potential terrorists hiding some nefarious plot [2].

Then again, when a few years ago, the Labour government passed a law introducing ID cards for every citizen, everybody went up in arms - citing everything from concers about the potential for abuse and discrimination against minorities, the access of third parties to the database etc. Even -I kid you not- the conflict of a national ID card with Human Rights legislation, which is usually portrayed as a "criminal's charter" [4].

But- nobody worries that this is the European nation with most cameras than any other, or about the "Snooper's charter" (a.k.a. the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 [5]). I guess people really feel they have nothing to fear. There may be a historical explanation for why the UK is like this: most other nations in Europe have at some point been under the control of a totalitarian government that spied on its citizens and used the information collected to brutally oppress them.

But I'm sure that will never happen in the UK.

_______________

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2012/oct/08/curtai...

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10929203

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006#Object...

[4] Search for "Human rights laws are a charter for criminals, say 75% of Britons". I'm not linking to the Daily Mail directly.

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016

[stordoff]

I suspect it's partially an emotional response to ID cards - there's no current requirement to carry (or hold) ID, and the concept conjurers up clear images of Nazi Germany.

Regarding blinds, I doubt many people even think about it - you aren't doing anything private (or even interesting most of the time), so it just doesn't occur to you. It's also generally considered rude to stare into people's houses, so even if they can, there is a general presumption that people won't. It's quite possibly related to your last paragraph - there's no culture of shielding your day-to-day life because they has never been anything really to shield it from ("no need to hide" being subtly different to "nothing to hide" - even people with things they would rather not be public don't necessarily see the need to conceal them from the government).