[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.