[cones688]

It's interesting as the only involvement I have had with CCTV was positive.

On a night out in a city, myself and my friend were walking home from a club about 3.30am. We were joking about me being from the North and him being southern (a common UK joke), this was unfortunately overheard by someone nearby who took it personally and started punching my friend in the head, I managed to break it up and the other chaps mates pulled him away as his was rather inebriated. A girl nearby ran over after seeing this and called the police and within a minute a police officer had arrived - the most interesting and relevant part was that the officer had been dispatached by CCTV operators who had seen the whole incident. The policeman was being relayed that the perpetrator had been already arrested by a colleague down the street (after CCTV identified him), the officer with us knew it was an unprovoked attack as the CCTV operator saw at no point did we interact with the assailant, so treated us with respect and started explaining the options for prosecution.

I appreciate the flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV.

[tomp]

I would prefer to live in a society that was 100% supervised, if the laws of the society were sensible.

Unfortunately, our society, where people can be denied tourist visas or arrested because of twitter jokes, where pregnant women can be charged with attempted murder (of the unborn baby) for falling down the stairs, where police can enter homes to remove "illegal" advertisement on your window or to arrest your 12 year old daughter who was downloading movies, is not sensible.

[drzaiusapelord]

Or when you look at felony charges for cannabis use. Every time I hear about the wonders of surveillance I think about how many lives the drug war has destroyed, even for drug use that is non-addictive, peaceful, and done in the dignity of one's own home by productive adults.

Also, as someone who lives in Chicago, I can tell you that a lot of crime is caught on tape, but only crime that is politically convenient for the police to go after. There's no shortage of stories of homeowners or landlords with videos of vandals and robbers only to be told to piss off. The police don't want to mess with the gangs unless they have to or it looks bad if there are too many minority arrests that month.

It seems the surveillance state is more often used against us than for us for a variety of reasons, mostly due to corruption, which we still don't have a fix for. In some weird way it has empowered the criminals, because it's a long way with lots of roadblocks from a face on tape to an actual arrest. We put up cameras instead of tall gates and guard dogs or gun ownership and think we're safe. We're not.

Not to mention, the criminals aren't stupid. They pull a hoodie down over their face as much as they can, and in the dark, can't be identified on tape. All the success stories I've heard seem to focused on crazies and idiots who more or less would have been caught with old fashioned police work. Holding up footage as the be and end all of police work really just empowers the worst kinds of people in law enforcement and fools the electorate into handing over powers that law enforcement has historically been shown to be irresponsible with. I just read that the PATRIOT ACT is now used on drug offenders. The slippery slope in unfortunately real in this case.

[honeybooboo123]

> It seems the surveillance state is more often used against us than for us for a variety of reasons, mostly due to corruption, which we still don't have a fix for

There is no fix for "corruption".

Imagine there's a ruler with only one subject. Would someone inevitably ask him for a favour? "Could you have your peon mow my lawn? -I'll buy you a beer some time!"

Would the ruler want more subjects? -Of course! It just means more benefits for him, more opportunities for making money at his subjects' expense! The possibilities are limitless!

Now take a bunch of rulers with 320 million subjects. Would Comcast ask them to make it difficult to compete with them? Competition is bothersome you know. It forces you to provide better quality at lower prices, even though you'd much rather just fleece a captive audience!

"Corruption" is a bit of a misnomer. It sounds like something is wrong, but actually it's just an element of a system with rulers and subjects working as intended.

> There's no shortage of stories of homeowners or landlords with videos of vandals and robbers only to be told to piss off. The police don't want to mess with the gangs unless they have to or it looks bad if there are too many minority arrests that month.

You're seeing another aspect of the system working as intended.

If you're a ruler, do you really care about your subjects' well-being? -Of course not. You'll pretend you do because you need them to refrain from overthrowing you, but your subjects are just tools to you.

Your "Royal Guard" (=the police) are meant to protect your power and to enforce your edicts, not to help your subjects. They behave accordingly.

[dropit_sphere]

This is half a truth, in that incentives do influence people's behavior:

> There is no fix for "corruption".

But not the whole truth, as the West is far less corrupt than, say, Bangladesh. We're under the impression that it's all because of our political systems and so are eager to teach the rest of the world Political Science 101 at gunpoint, convinced that if they only understood then they'd all be liberal democracies. But it's not their understanding of game theory that's flawed, it's ours.

As we've found out, it's not just a systems problem. Western Civilization? We didn't build that. There is, at least, a lot of residual faith in institutions built up over the last 800 years ago. And also some unabashed patriotism---the quiet kind that has you pay your taxes fully when you could perhaps pay a bit less and get away with it.

[honeybooboo123]

> But not the whole truth, as the West is far less corrupt than, say, Bangladesh.

The current degree and overtness of corruption in a particular area is completely irrelevant. The point is the very nature of political power: Its only use case is to gain at other people's expense.

That's it. Political power implies intervention in what people would otherwise do in their mutually beneficial, voluntary exchanges and arrangements.

Want to charge a fee for driving people from A to B? -You have to get a $X-hundred-thousand license to do that. If you don't, you will be punished, by force if "necessary". Who benefits? -The state-supported taxi cartel of course: now their drivers are debt slaves and profit margins remain higher than otherwise.

Note all those foreign governments protecting their taxi-cartel buddies from Uber.

Rulers want subjects because they benefit from them. Subjects are resources, like human livestock to be milked. And oh boy, milk us they do.

Sorry but I'm not sure how to address the rest of your post. Feel free to ask something or make some specific claims.

[dropit_sphere]

>Rulers want subjects because they benefit from them. Subjects are resources, like human livestock to be milked. And oh boy, milk us they do.

If only they understood that! That would not be the worst case( http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/the-...)

>That's it. Political power implies intervention in what people would otherwise do in their mutually beneficial, voluntary exchanges and arrangements.

Remember, though, that not all voluntary exchanges and agreements are mutually beneficial (paycheck advances); or if they are, there may be an unknowing third party suffering some nasty externalities (I will sell you an extra-polluting car for only $1000!). Is this not a non-exploitive use case?

[hackuser]

> There is no fix for "corruption".

There is no fix for anything by that reasoning; we'll always have illness, accidents, crime, and browser crashes. We can improve those things significantly though, and we have and we can improve corruption.

[honeybooboo123]

> There is no fix for anything by that reasoning; we'll always have illness, accidents, crime

Well, the fix for corruption is for no one to have political power. Would you say the fix for illness is to be dead?

[Avitas]

Be careful what you wish for. I don't think you intended to push the boundaries, but I'll do that for you.

Again, I consider this quite a stretch of your vision. But, imagine having supervision include things such as:

- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

- Direct supervision of every trade (whether monetary or barter) for taxation and violation purposes

- Supervision of normally private / personal (i.e., at home) things for medical, safety and potential criminal behavior

I am not sure where the line should be drawn, but I would not feel comfortable with pervasive, unlimited supervision.

[WildUtah]

"Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued"

35,000 people die every year on our streets because of careless driving. There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you.

Killing a cityfull of innocent people every year is not some kind of civil right.

People who can't drive safely and within the law don't have to drive at all. Those who do have a responsibility to comply with public safety measures, including traffic laws and enforcement tracking. It makes little difference if that means cops or electronic tracking, except that electronic tracking can do a better job keeping us safe.

-- "supervision of every trade (whether monetary or barter) for taxation"

I don't know why you're shilling for tax evasion, either. And I'm a libertarian: I don't like the taxes, but that's no excuse to cheat while they're still the law.

[cgriswald]

Who is more dangerous? The traffic moving at 70 mph (which is 5 mph over the legal limit) or the car that merges into that traffic at 40 mph? In my view one is doing something technically illegal while the other is doing something technically legal but batshit insane. An automated system would ticket all the safe drivers in this scenario.

"People who can't drive safely" and people who can't drive "within the law" are two separate groups with limited overlap. And I 100% reject to your idea that they "don't have to drive at all." Driving is a necessity. (And if it isn't, let's get those idiot drivers off the road...)

Complying with "public safety measures" is not the same as driving safely. Everyone has a responsibility to do the latter and should not be penalized for it for not doing the former. I keep away from other cars and stay with the flow of traffic. That makes me a safer driver (even if traffic is doing 5-10 mph over the limit) than the guys who drive right next to each other doing the speed limit or less.

Electronic tracking doesn't keep us safer. Case in point: The shortening of yellow light timings beyond legal limits in order to increase revenues from red light cameras.

And even those red light cameras we have now have humans making all the decisions. I've triggered those cameras many, many times while making perfectly legal right turns on red.

[robomartin]

> Who is more dangerous? The traffic moving at 70 mph (which is 5 mph over the legal limit) or the car that merges into that traffic at 40 mph?

All, one-up that one. How about someone merging into a 60 to 70 mph highway flow at 40 mph with three cars behind him that also need to merge and are now stuck behind someone creating an incredibly dangerous situation because they are (conjecture) afraid of the accelerator. I have see potentially horrific situations just like the one I described on the California 5 freeway. This is a major trucking route which is full of 18 wheelers. They, of course, keep to the right-most lanes. I saw a woman (sorry ladies, it was a woman) merge onto the freeway at what had to be 35 mph and get right in front of a semi doing at least 60. Right behind her two cars who were just stuck there desperately trying to figure out how not to get killed by this semi that had to lock all its breaks.

Nah, give me someone with years of experience (not a teenager) driving fast any time. They are generally much safer drivers than the fools who are afraid of going over the posted speed limit. I've never had a problem getting on the freeway behind someone who's got the pedal to the metal and knows how to match traffic speed and merge safely.

[penguat]

What I do, stuck behind such a driver, is spot it quickly and hang well back. Then I can accelerate to match the traffic behind such a dangerously slow driver. Plus, if they have their accident early, I have lots of space and time to deal with it.

Drivers behind me often misunderstand this.

[simplemath]

Every time I am stuck behind someone merging at 40 into a 55 I whisper a silent plea for mass adoption of SDCs

[runamok]

Laws can't satisfy every single edge case. I have to sometimes run red protected left turn lights (very carefully) on my motorcycle because they don't sense it. Sometimes you have to swerve out of your lane due to an emergency, etc.

We have judgement for a reason. I also feel like the current fines associated with various law breaking have the expectation that not all of the behavior will be captured and thus it's rather high. If I got an automatic $5 fine every time I went 10 mph over the limit I might be more amendable to it than if it was $300 each time (as it is now). Again, if I am speeding 15 over in the middle of a deserted highway it's different than doing so in a residential area.

Also per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i... I would not say ALL of those deaths are caused by "careless driving". In fact the majority is probably due to alcohol, falling asleep, etc. although I suppose you could consider being drunk while driving "careless".

[prawn]

Driving while tired (including driving for too long without a break) is careless. If you are tired enough, I believe the impact on your reactions can approach that of you being tipsy.

I have driven after working 30ish hours straight and think it's something best avoided.

[taejo]

Driving while tired can well surpass tipsy. http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/about-this-sho...

[psc]

Just because our laws are poorly suited for new technology doesn't mean we have to be stuck with the tech we have. With more automated traffic enforcement, our laws would have to better model our expectations, as you point out. If we had speed cameras on 100% of roads, I doubt people would be okay with $300 fines for speeding, so it's bound to change.

[BrandonMarc]

That's a cute notion. It's exceedingly rare for a law to disappear once it's on the books, while mission creep for current laws is all too pervasive.

The idea that people balking at fines will cause the fine amounts to drop is equally silly. Consider the times the (local / state / federal) government introduces a temporary tax ... or builds a road that will only at first be a toll road. All too often, these temporary things become permanent fixtures.

[coldtea]

>35,000 people die every year on our streets because of careless driving. There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you. Killing a cityfull of innocent people every year is not some kind of civil right.

And who said that amount is big?

Perhaps it goes with the territory -- driving machines that weight a ton for hundrends of miles with 70 mph, and it's not just the driver going 5 miles over the limit, but other factors that could be statistically inevitable despite any surveillance.

>I don't know why you're shilling for tax evasion, either. And I'm a libertarian: I don't like the taxes, but that's no excuse to cheat while they're still the law.

So do you do immoral things to if they are "still the law"? Slavery was the law too at a not too distant past, as was segreggation (and some of us lived at that time too).

[baddox]

> There's no right to privacy in what you do in public that endangers the lives everyone around you.

It's pretty terrifying to see that argument in favor of the government tracking everyone's detailed vehicle statistics.

[tracker1]

"John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute."

I have to agree here, I'd have less problem if all camera feeds that the gov't has access to are available for all citizens, including police cars, etc.. at all times.

Also, the fact that discretion is rarely something one thinks of when it comes to the police or prosecutors lately with nearly 1% of the U.S. population in prison.

[MisterWalter]

>I have to agree here, I'd have less problem if all camera feeds that the gov't has access to are available for all citizens, including police cars, etc.. at all times.

Remember that stalkers exist. Madison, WI did this momentarily a year or three back, and a lot of abusers and such used it to stalk and harass other people much more consistently than they could have otherwise.

[gambiting]

>>- ...Vehicle sensors. Exceeding the speed limit, making an illegal turn, failure to maintain safe distance, littering or any other violation automatically relays infraction details to relevant government agency and ticket is automatically issued

I am afraid that this is already happening with trackers fitted by insurance companies. Going over the speed limit, or flooring it from the traffic lights is not going to get you a ticket, but your insurance premium will go up(and that can hurt more than a ticket). I hope that there always will be a choice of policies without trackers.

[Avitas]

Regarding vehicular tracking...

I realize that there are voluntary tracking programs in-place for insurance purposes. That is the reason I specifically mentioned the somewhat fantastical thought of an automatic ticketing system for every type of vehicle-related infraction one can imagine (e.g., littering, endangering for lack of maintenance).

From what I've seen on the roads, something like this would mean crushing financial burden for many people for the first few days, weeks and months of operation. On the flip side, I think we would see a welcome change on the roads.

Wouldn't that be something? On second thought, maybe that is not such a bad idea.

[UrMomReadsHN]

We seem to have a cultural attitude that most dangerous and illegal behaviors are socially acceptable just as long as one is operating a motor vehicle. That thinking really does baffle my mind.

We have a very real privacy issue with potentially tracking vehicle movements by authorities and/or private companies. I think somehow there can somewhere be a middle ground that makes the roads safer while preserving some privacy. Perhaps?? I personality think there isn't nearly enough to deter dangerous driving at the moment.

Hopefully we just will all have self driving cars in a few years instead.

[nitrogen]

There should be a distinction made ib every discussion about this subject between "dangerous" driving and merely "illegal" driving. Sometimes they are the same, like speeding through a school zone (never do this!). But sometimes they are not, like when four lanes of traffic on a limited access freeway all decide to drive at 80mph in a 65mph zone. In that case, driving 65 would be the much more dangerous choice, as it forces other traffic to back up and make more lane changes (more opportunities for accidents).

[gambiting]

On one hand, yes, I agree. But on the other - insurance companies will want to decrease their risks as much as possible. Which means that they will penalize everyone for accelerating faster than at a snails pace, for going into corners so you start leaning to the side a little bit, and of course for driving late at night. At which point, there will be absolutely no point in buying anything other than a 1.0L self-propelled shopping carts.

I know HN is extremely anti-car sometimes, but there are people(like myself) who enjoy driving. And by "enjoy" I don't mean going 100mph on country roads and overtaking like a maniac. I just like the physical act of driving, and I feel like having every one of my reactions judged by an insurance company to penalize me would kill any enjoyment I might have had left.

[zanny]

It would be nice if several US states could do this, and people could move there, and we could stand on the sidelines and see how it works out.

People could pick and choose where to move depending on what they like. One state could be mass surveillance and one could be anarchy. Or you could stay in a moderate state that is centrist and acts a lot like what modern states do.

It would be a lot better than the broad supernational control states and companies can have over policy and society. There is no political experimentation anymore and that really sucks.

[dragonwriter]

> People could pick and choose where to move depending on what they like.

People may be legally free to move between states, but certainly very many are not economically free to move between states.

> There is no political experimentation anymore

There certainly is significant political variation between the states, with some of those single-state variants becoming popular and spreading.

There may not be changes in the direction you want or on the issues you care about -- but that's different than an absence of political experimentation.

[cgriswald]

What you say is technically true, but kind of misses the point. Historically variation between the states was so great that today's variation is practically indecernable. Political experimentation still exists, but is difficult, because of strong centralized government. A strong centralized government makes some experimentation impossible and other experimentation gets pushed to the federal level even if not appropriate to the nation at large.

[kisielk]

Ideally by the time we get to that point of surveillance we'll have sufficiently advanced self-driving vehicles such that driving infractions will no longer be a thing.

Most financial transactions that hit the banking system at some point can already be tracked and audited. Arguably many people who elude that are basically ripping off the rest of society. As far as banks cheating people, maybe that kind of surveillance could help curb that?

Definitely would need to be careful about how far it pervades in to private life. Maybe it's impossible to limit, in which case it's probably a bad idea.

[JoeAltmaier]

We'll just have to get used to it, then. Tinier and tinier cameras get built every year. Imagine a limit - dust motes that record and relay, blown by the wind and carried by your clothes, hair, pet into your home. Anyone can tune in to anyone, anywhere.

The only hope I see is new social rules. Can't stop people from peeking into everything; but CAN have taboos against mentioning it. So the illusion of privacy maintained, which is all people need to keep sane. Already cultures have rules like this, especially where folks lived in close confinement.

[RAB1138]

This feels like such a cop-out philosophy: just get used to it and don't bring it up in polite company. This reeks of cognitive dissonance.

[JoeAltmaier]

No, its bowing to the inevitable. There is actually no way to avoid loss of privacy due to technology. It would be like asking everyone to quit breathing your air. Its not a cop-out to concede that, and work from there.

[gaius]

That all would be OK if we also had drones that followed politicians and senior civil servants 24/7 and streamed video and audio to any citizen who wanted to check up on them.

[baddox]

> I would prefer to live in a society that was 100% supervised, if the laws of the society were sensible.

Don't forget the enforcement of laws. In my estimation, the entire legal system of a 100% supervised society would have to be significantly better than any legal system that has ever existed for the advantages of surveillance to outweigh the disadvantages.

[coldtea]

Yeah, and then a despotic (or perhaps just idiotic) government takes over. And they have the 100% surveillance machinery in place to use as they please.

[LLWM]

And it's those nonsensical laws that are the problem, not surveillance. Limiting surveillance doesn't help solve any of that, it just makes enforcement more arbitrary.

[infinity0]

The article contained a story which directly disagrees with your last point.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2849#comic

Surveillance may result in more evidence that could potentially allow for better enforcement. However, people run these systems. Centralised surveillance gives a minority of people more power. As seen in the article, this power is abused, because there is nothing else to balance this power.

All these arguments talk about the benefits of surveillance without looking at the social relationships of how real-world surveillance is implemented. Like privacy tools, surveillance is just a tool. Without looking at the social relationships, one can make any argument in favour of, or against, these tools.

Centralised surveillance run by security forces, by nature will overestimate what crimes are being done, and allow the people in charge the ability and incentive to overinterpret innocent acts inappropriately.

CCTV rescuing you from drunken arguments is only one very small part of what CCTV can and will become.

[gambiting]

And then you can never foresee what that data is going to be used for in the future. Nazis used "completely innocent" records held by countries to find out where Jewish families lived so they could find them and put them in camps. The less the government knows about you the better.

[LLWM]

And if the records had been complete video of those peoples' everyday lives, those Nazis might have felt some empathy for the people they were exterminating, and reconsidered their positions. Anyone can make up whatever arguments they want about history, since it's not a repeatable experiment.

[msvalkon]

And if such behaviour was ever found, the gas chamber ate another person. The Nazi government did not take well to dissenters, especially among the armed forces.

[LLWM]

You're looking at it the wrong way. It's not a matter of abusing power or not. That power is destroyed when people realize that privacy doesn't exist. You are worried that someone will record you picking your nose? Instead of banning such recordings, how about changing society to one that accepts that everyone picks their noses?

[silentOpen]

That is not a realistic scenario. Not everyone kisses people of the same gender. Not everyone wears religious head garb. Not everyone vomits in the street.

A free society is one where people are free to question social norms, express themselves, and act in ways that don't violate others' rights. A society with ubiquitous surveillance is no longer a free society because people cannot freely and openly question social norms through action, express themselves, or act in ways that may be annoying or unbecoming but which do not violate others' rights. In a surveillance society, even one where "everyone knows", these behaviors are implicitly and globally discouraged by the act of recording all behavior and saving it in perpetuity.

I recommend reading about chilling effects < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect >.

[LLWM]

Sure they can. They might choose not to out of paranoia or cowardice, but that already happens today. Chilling effects are the result of vague laws and inconsistent enforcement. Universal surveillance solves that problem, it doesn't exacerbate it. There's much less need to speculate about whether you will be convicted of assault for punching this person when you can review every single alleged assault of the last 20 years and whether each defendant was found guilty.

[infinity0]

You're talking about a theoretical world where absolutely no-one has any privacy, even presidents, security guards, etc.

In the real world, there is lots of asymmetry. This asymmetry is absolutely critical when making ethical considerations.

[LLWM]

Yes, I'm talking about the world that we should work towards realizing. Wasn't that the entire point of this discussion?

Obviously it will take some time. Even if we recorded everything everyone ever did starting 50 years from now, which is still quite a stretch, it would likely take another 150 before we could be certain that every living person had been under surveillance for their entire lives.

[coldtea]

Arbitrary (in the sense of limited) envorcement of the laws is what makes society tolerable.

[tomp]

I strongly disagree. I think that laws should be enforced 100%. If we (the society) wouldn't like that, it means that our laws suck, and need to be changed.

[coldtea]

The problem is some laws will always suck, and those in power are either bad or idiots.

So one is a harder nut to crack.

Until we solve the "laws are now all good" problem, is better to have some breathing space ("at least we can bypass some").

To put it in another way, they estimate that each of us commits three felonies per day (from obscure BS laws, edge cases etc).

Not sure if accurate, but even if it's one per year, would you want to go to prison now for that shit in the hope that there would be some backlash and those laws will change?

[tomp]

> Not sure if accurate, but even if it's one per year, would you want to go to prison now for that shit in the hope that there would be some backlash and those laws will change?

Well, yeah, obviously. In a year, everybody would be in jail, so I assume that, "yes", the laws would change. That's the point: if even absurd laws are 100% enforced, we'll soon realize how absurd they are, and repeal them!

[mindcrime]

I would prefer to live in a society that was 100% supervised, if the laws of the society were sensible.

Wow, just wow. It boggles my mind how anyone could say that. So you'd really rather live in a world where you're under constant surveillance, your every move, word, action, behavior constantly tracked and recorded for all perpetuity? If so, I just have to say, I can't even begin to imagine the thinking behind that.

Personally, I would consider that world to be completely evil and dystopian, and would work to undermine, destroy, damage and subvert the "supervision" in any way I could.

[tomp]

Yes, but not in the 1984 sense - in the sense that everything is public, and secrets don't matter, because nobody cares.

Basically, I reach this conclusion from my desire to have robots that would assist us. Obviously, to have omnipresent AI that can help you with your life, you need to have it "perceive" the world - i.e. 100% surveillance. Furthermore, you wouldn't want this AI to just "forget" stuff, so you want it to remember things forever. As I said, this doesn't work with our current repressive political system that prohibits many victimless activities, but it could work in a different world (e.g. the fictional Australia in the story Manna [1]).

[1] http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

[teddyh]

What is “sensible” or not is extremely subjective. If you propose that your standards should apply, you are effectively proposing to become a dictator.

Also: If technology improves over time, and cool technology increases willingness to give up personal privacy, we have a bit of a situation brewing:

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3370#comic

[honeybooboo123]

The real problem is political power. Laws are irrelevant once political power reaches outright tyranny, as it's done countless times over the course of history.

The US and England are leading the charge to show the Western world that having rulers is still a bad idea, just like it was when Stalin was in power. Will we ever learn?

[aluhut]

What a wonderful example.

Never seen or heard of anything like that happen.

I lost my phone two years ago on a railway station in the city of Frankfurt (Germany). Two guys forced it from me with one pointing a knife at me and ran away. Three levels up through hallways full of cameras. I waited for an additional ~20mins (collecting information from bystanders). Nobody appeared. Not even the police one of the bystanders called...

The situation we have here is exactly what the CCC and all the anti-surveillance movements said when the hype for cameras all over began. They said back than that we'll have less police and security on the streets and we'll lose the control of the data recorded there.

Today even the smallest bus company has cameras in their bus. Even if they can't afford to clean the bus properly. Open drug market places have been moved to shady side roads where crime rose. Videos of people being beat up in front of cameras became popular and seem to become popular until media stopped reporting and playing the videos. And so on.

I don't see the whole thing work out. Cameras create a false security hole that allows to cut down money where it would have been better invested: in police officers on the streets. What happens to all the collected data, I don't even want to know anymore. Btw I've heard a polish city is recording audio also. Isn't it nice? They even prevented some crime with it...

Btw. the Police was unable to get the videos from my robbery. "Technical reasons".

[davidw]

This is covered in David Brin's book The Transparent Society:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

There are actually a lot of benefits to surveillance like this, but we need to be able to watch the watchers, so to speak.

[badname]

There is a book. "The Circle". Proponents of transparent societies should read it IMHO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_%28Eggers_novel%29

[DanBC]

In England we have The Surveillance Commissioners who should do a reasonable job of oversight.

https://osc.independent.gov.uk/

[zorked]

But how can we be sure? Maybe we need another level of oversight...

[gfrench27]

humans are guaranteed to drop the ball at some point in time

[8ig8]

Very recently in Baltimore, MD, USA, a woman's abduction from an empty street was caught on video. A couple days later, her bank card was used in another city to withdraw money. The video from the bank, along with the video from a nearby gas station helped identify the captor and save the woman.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/t...

Edit: Earlier story with original street video:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/la-na-nn-reward-abducted-philade...

[mpyne]

To go along with that, the captor was nabbed because his car had a built-in GPS tracker, installed by the dealer to deter theft.

Don't worry, it was in the fine print somewhere.

[8ig8]

Some details here:

http://news.yahoo.com/abducted-philadelphia-woman-rescued-ma...

The second paragraph is apropos:

> A woman snatched off the streets was rescued with the help of a GPS tracking device that had been installed on the suspect's car by the dealer in case it needed to be repossessed, authorities said Thursday.

> It was just the latest arrest made possible by the surveillance technology that is seemingly everywhere nowadays. And it involved not just GPS but surveillance video, traffic-camera imagery and a left-behind cellphone.

Edit: Also from the above article regarding traffic-cam:

> Her rescue came after authorities spotted the used-car dealer's name on a traffic camera photo of Barnes' vehicle and recognized the dealership as one that routinely puts GPS devices on its cars, said sheriff's Capt. Jayson Crawley, of Charles City County, Virginia.

> "We called the dealership, and within five minutes they had the location," he said.

[hackuser]

An interesting story but I'm not sure of your exact point. Do you mean surveillance has some benefits? Of course. There is good and bad to everything, including asbestos, lead, authoritarian government, plastic shopping bags, and even COBOL.

[Robin_Message]

I toured the council CCTV office where I live, and was impressed by the fact (well, claim) that it was operated by council employees, not police officers (seemed true), and that the police could ask them to look out for things or for footage, but any kind of operational use by the police required high-level authorisation (the reverse wasn't true; as the parent indicates, the CCTV operators can and do alert the police to crimes and direct them to the perpetrators.)

That reassured me it couldn't at that point be used as a dragnet. Obviously there is a slippery slope issue involved though (the article claims congestion charge ANPR cameras are being used by the police indiscriminately because "terrorism"), so I'm not sure if I'm totally happy with it.

[nb1981]

The people you visited probably had nothing but the best of intentions. But to expect all those other thousands with similarly elevated privileges to behave similarly as such would be..short sighted indeed.

[Robin_Message]

I agree, it's not easy to get right. But this is a general problem of Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Two things that are protective in the CCTV case are:

- Policy: having police and CCTV operated separately is protective - both have to collude for things to go badly, like any government separation of powers.

- Technology: one example of this is the cameras had preprogrammed "no-dwell" zones - areas the pan/tilt/zoom of the camera is not allowed to stay in (e.g. windows of residential buildings). Although this could be overridden, there was an operational log where such overrides had to be justified, which feed back into oversight policy above. (They demoed this, then had to write into a logbook that they had done so.)

In general, CCTV is a force multiplier, but not excessive - the council could pay people to stand around in the street taking notes for example. The use of unmitigated ANPR with permanent recording – that is something else.

[hackuser]

> I toured the council CCTV office where I live, and was impressed by the fact (well, claim) that it was operated by council employees, not police officers (seemed true), and that the police could ask them to look out for things or for footage, but any kind of operational use by the police required high-level authorisation (the reverse wasn't true; as the parent indicates, the CCTV operators can and do alert the police to crimes and direct them to the perpetrators.)

> That reassured me it couldn't at that point be used as a dragnet.

Who gave you the tour? How do you know those procedures are followed? Is there any reliable oversight on what they actually do?

There are many cases of procedures like that not being followed. In fact, most organizations I've worked in, in any field, have a difficult time following procedures.

[mahyarm]

Police and courts are usually pretty chummy with each other, how does that not apply to council employees and local police departments funded by such councils?

[vidarh]

UK police departments are not funded by councils. They are funded in two ways: A precept issued to council tax collection authorities, and grants from the Home Office.

Note that the precept is set by the police, not by the council - the councils have no authority over police spending.

[pbhjpbhj]

>UK police departments are not funded by councils. //

When council tax has an earmarked additional portion specifically noted to be for police funding I think you're clutching at semantics. UK Police are in part funded from council tax garnishing, a precept as you say.

Where I am at least [in the UK] the police commissioner details a request based on a proposed budget which is put to a panel "the police and crime panel" which sit to set the funding that will be made. The panel comprises members of the local councils and they must vote as to whether to endorse an agreed budget and so collect the tax to pay for it.

The distinction you seem to be making doesn't appear to be there. The police and council set the budget between them effectively, councillors having veto powers, the council collect the money as part of council tax.

[HarryHirsch]

> he flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV.

Considering what British city centers are like around chuck-out time, why can't we have some police out on foot patrol around that time? It's not that the areas around the lager palaces are no-go zones, but then I'm not that comfortable around lagered-up yoof either.

With CCTV cameras you have a better chance of arresting a drunk hool after he has committed an assault, but with police out they will think twice before picking an argument. Cameras might help solve crime, but proper policing is preventing crime before it occurs. Besides, I don't appreciate having my every movement stored on tape.

[mnw21cam]

There often are police wandering around at chuck-out time. However, they are spread fairly thin on the ground, simply because there aren't that many of them. Using CCTV in this case allows the police to be directed to where they are needed, increasing their effectiveness and reducing the tax-payers' cost of policing.

[vidarh]

I live in Croydon (for those who don't know, it's one of the largest London Boroughs; there are 30 of them), and here there's huge numbers of police around the town centre all weekend. Last Thursday I was out walking around 10pm, and passed at least a dozen in five minutes when I walked past some of the bigger clubs, as well as an ambulance on standby, and that is fairly standard for the readiness here.

Most of the time they're just hanging around chatting to people, or making sure people are ok. With the added fun of making sure nobody gets run over when the clubs close and people spill into the road.

Despite the jokes (Croydon has a bad reputation; mostly undeserved these days), Croydon is about average for London boroughs when it comes to crime, and far better than Westminster (which has the biggest concentration of London nightlife).

Basically in boils down to whether or not the local forces choose to prioritise presence at night, since it's obviously more expensive.

[shitehawk]

Didn't England experiment with never closing the pubs so people weren't all dumped on the street at the same time, with the idea it would reduce fighting?

[switch007]

IMO as this was handled by police trained for city center brawling, it would have been almost the exact same outcome without CCTV. They may have arrived slightly later, but if you were in the city center near the pubs/clubs, there's often a minimum of 10 officers hanging around

[cones688]

Arrived slightly later and not known who the perpetrator was or have admissible evidence to that effect. The guy had already run away onto another street - it's likely he wouldn't have been caught.

It also very much changed the officer handling us behaviour I would imagine, as usually in such brawls they detain everyone then get he said/she said stories. Instead he knew the guy had run across the street after we hadn't even acknowledged him, so knew my friend was the "victim".

[Cthulhu_]

Of course, the CCTV only helped with the consequences of, amongst other things, excess alcohol consumption, apparent north/south hatred, and people with a violent nature apparently looking for a fight / easily provoked. I don't know if throwing money at a cultural change (i.e. drink less alcohol, love your southern neighbours, don't punch people) would've been more effective than throwing money at creating a surveillance state though.

[netcan]

I think this is not a great line of thought. Sometimes root causes are being ignored and dealing with symptoms is stupid.

At the same time, all problems are never solved. Crime exists and it demands a response from police and courts. It's very "let them eat cake" to suggest that crime in Soho next friday be addressed by dealing with drinking culture and making sure no one is allowed to leave Manchester.

We can do both at the same time, but we can't not respond to a bottle attack with police.

[XorNot]

Also that cause and effect aren't so cut and dry on social issues. A good neighborhood doesn't need a strong police presence because it has little crime. This is very much socioeconomic. Of course, if it becomes a bad neighborhood, bow are you going to ever improve its socioeconomic status until you make a dent in the crime and gang problem so you can give a chance for your social programs to actually work?

[LyndsySimon]

I understand where you're coming from, but I have a complete opposite view here. The idea of 24/7 monitoring by government authority is something that disturbs me a great deal - the very thing that makes you feel safer makes others under attack.

[icebraining]

But your friend still got punched, so what exactly did you gain from being surveillance? Getting a drunk guy to spend a night or two in jail?

[netcan]

First, if you believe in policing and the justice system at all, you think it's a good thing when the right person is punished for a crime, even if it's a small punishment for a small crime.

Second, it prevents the wrong person from being treated as the problem. Without immediate hard evidence that video gives police, both men could easily treated be treated the same. They could all spend a couple of nights in jail. That's a good win.

[icebraining]

First, if you believe in policing and the justice system at all, you think it's a good thing when the right person is punished for a crime, even if it's a small punishment for a small crime.

I think it's silly to have such a black and white view. Whether it's a good thing or not depends on the actual situation, that is, if it's actually likely to have a positive effect on people's lives.

That doesn't mean the cops shouldn't have arrested him - it's their job to uphold the law - but I don't think much was gained by having him arrested, no.

Second, it prevents the wrong person from being treated as the problem. Without immediate hard evidence that video gives police, both men could easily treated be treated the same. They could all spend a couple of nights in jail. That's a good win.

Well, sure, we can invent hypothetical scenarios to justify anything. But if imprisoning everyone when the situation is not clear is a method frequently employed by the local police, I'd argue that you have a different problem to fix.

[alexhawdon]

Are you really saying that not much was gained in the punishment of someone who, unprovoked, assaulted a complete stranger? Do you not think their experience will cause them to think twice next time they have an impulse to act like this? Nor that it's a net positive when society sends them a message that this is NOT acceptable behaviour?

All I can say is that I'm very glad you're not in charge.

[icebraining]

All I can say is that I'm very glad you're not in charge.

Well, we can agree on that :)

But I'm not saying he shouldn't be arrested, or that it isn't a net positive to send a message to violent aggressors. I just think what will actually happen is that he'll pay a fine and possibly spend a night in jail, control himself for a month or so, and then carry on as usual.

And even that is still a positive effect, I just don't think it justifies pervasive surveillance of the streets. It's not like it actually prevented to guy from getting beaten.

[vidarh]

> Do you not think their experience will cause them to think twice next time they have an impulse to act like this?

There it little evidence that it does. Punishment in general has extremely low utility when it comes to changing behaviour.

There may be value in some degree of punishment to satisfy societal needs, and there may be some value in incarceration to keep some particularly dangerous people off the street, or if the incarceration is used to enable training to reduce the chance of re-offending, but punishment alone is not an effective way of reducing negative behaviours - criminal or otherwise.

In some situations it's even directly counter-productive.

[sliverstorm]

punishment alone is not an effective way of reducing negative behaviours - criminal or otherwise.

Yeah, we're gonna need a source.

[netcan]

I think we're in danger of getting to a youtube comments 'you-stupid-no-you-stupid' argument here but that said, I think you're being somewhat unrealistic about the real world.

One of the things police do is keeping the peace. Getting in fights outside of bars at 3am is disturbing the peace. IE, people don't feel safe when that is common. When police show up, most everyone is drunk, angry, scared, etc. They don't know what happened. Sometimes they can work it out from talking to people but a 4 minute investigation and witness statements from a bunch of drunks is not all that reliable. They need to do something to keep the peace. So, they might arrest all involved or some or sternly send them all home. Video solves that problem. They know how done it.

On the philosophical note, I think outcomes are important. Prison systems producing 80% re-offence are a failure. That said, I also believe in justice. I want rapists, murderers and assailants to go to jail regardless of harm reduction or rehabilitation. If there were 10 of us on a deserted island and number 8 beats up number 6 because he's angry or drunk or somesuch, coconut hull lashings would ensue.

[danielweber]

Psychologically, there is a very real difference between the fear of getting assaulted and the fear of getting assaulted and the person who did it getting away with it.

People on HN may insist that the way the rest of the world acts is silly, but that says more about HN than the rest of the world.

[icebraining]

Clearly this isn't an HN vs the world issue, since I seem to be the only dissenting voice.

I can see the difference if I feared he was out to get me; I certainly would feel safer with him caught. But a drunk guy who punches you because of a joke you said will still punch you the next time he's drunk. I just don't see his night in jail as fixing the issue in any way.

[balabaster]

There is also a very clear difference with the way the British feel about CCTV and the way Americans feel about it. This is largely down to the perception of what goes on behind the cameras.

In the States it seems that far fewer people trust their government than those in the UK. I know there are areas of serious distrust with the police in the UK, but I feel that the majority of the population still have the perception that the police are to be trusted. I honestly don't have that same feeling about Americans...

Of course, that opinion is largely biased by the media. As are most of my perceptions about America/Americans - but then, perhaps Fox News/CNN and other partisan media (which appears to engulf more and more American media by the day) aren't the best choices to form clear objective opinions about the environment and the world around me. It becomes harder and harder to watch American TV and remain objective about life. It's no wonder the NRA are so fearful about their guns being taken away. Perhaps if media sensationalism (driving almost constant fear uncertainty and doubt) weren't so pervasive, people would spend less time living in fear and be more trusting of the government oversight... like the British.

In the UK, CCTV has largely been seen to be a good thing. The corrupt are eventually found and dealt with - well, enough to keep the public placated to allow the remainder of the corrupt to continue unabated; that is, until the next can no longer be swept under the rug and hidden from public purview and they too are dealt with.

So the question really comes down to trust. The British media doesn't tend to sow the seeds of distrust and fear into the British people... and so we don't really tend to fear CCTV like Americans do. 1984 and Animal Farm didn't appear to have the terrifying impact on our psyches that they did with Americans. I am skeptical I would feel the same way if I were brought up in America.

[stuaxo]

It's definitely black and white. As a British person, I laughed out loud when on a train hearing an American family:

Little Girl: "Do people love the government here"

Father: "Yes, they do"

Which is very very far from the truth, we are a highly cynical country... sure we like the NHS and BBC, but certainly not the MPs that run our country.

[vidarh]

It is worth considering that when people outside the UK and people in the UK talk about CCTV in the UK, people tend to have very different views of what the UK CCTV usage is actually like.

Outside the UK it appears a lot of people imagine CCTV in the UK is pretty much a massive network of police/authority monitored cameras.

But the vast majority are privately owned, non-networked cameras exclusively monitoring private property, with no operator paying attention, and where the chance anyone will ever see you on the recording is pretty much nil. If the camera is even recording properly in the first place.

The use of actually live-monitored CCTV under police or council control is mostly limited to small portions of city centres, and even then mostly in larger towns. For the simple reason that it is too expensive and inefficient to use outside of certain types of "hotspots" which frequently have large crowds of high numbers of easily spotted crimes.

Outside of those areas, it's not uncommon for police to be totally uninterested in even trying to obtain the footage, because the odds of actually managing to identify someone are fairly low.

[icebraining]

I'm neither American nor British, though, I'm from continental Europe.

[TeMPOraL]

Apart from prosecution, another benefit is deterrence. As the word gets out that CCTV operators are actually reacting to crimes in progress in real-time, at least the less drunk bad guys will think twice before attempting anything within the surveilled area.

[icebraining]

Well, maybe. Has that been measured? I just don't see a great number of guys being drunk enough to punch people over a joke but not too drunk to remember the CCTVs.

[cones688]

He got fined about £300, which hopefully taught him a lesson.

[nb1981]

lol you mean he stole a further £300. Fines are not there to teach a lesson. Poor people can't pay so steal, rich people can afford to pay so do. Who does this arrangement benefit if not the victim?

[cones688]

He was a soldier in the Army, so very likely he got reprimanded rather strongly by his CO. I am not sure where "poor" and "rich" people come into this?

[nb1981]

fixed fine, variable means to pay, interests me.

[squidfood]

The OP "managed to break it up." What if he hadn't managed?

[jamespo]

If only "Minority Report" actually existed, eh?

[rmc]

The friend would have been punched anyway. The advantage was the (potential) prosecution.

[simoncarter]

The flip side to your flip side is that the cameras, for a number of reasons, do not always work. I remember dealing with a case of robbery, and it turned out that the camera was not working (either itself, or the transmission of the video to the center where they are monitored). This was some 7/8 years ago though, and the technology may have improved.

[nl]

(Genuinely curious): what do you mean that this is the flip side here?

In your case the camera not working doesn't seem to have caused any further harm (which is how I'd interpret "the flip side of the flip side" in this context).

It not working isn't helpful of course, and I can think of possible circumstances where it might have made things worse (removal of guards because of the camera etc), but these appear somewhat marginal (and are missing from your comment). One could equally argue that even a non-working camera provides a deterrent effect (eg, the "dummy" cameras one can buy).

What am I missing?

[simoncarter]

In that case, the presence of the cameras gave a sense of security that was unwarranted. It didn't prevent the crime from happening, but did let the citizens think that that their presence would detract criminals, which it didn't, at least in their case, and that if there was a crime, the culprits would have a higher chance of being convicted.

[philh]

To be precise, it didn't prevent that crime from happening. You seem to be assuming that the law-abiding folks reacted to the non-working camera but the criminals didn't.

[vidarh]

As far as I remember, there is little supporting evidence that CCTV usage in the UK have much effect on crime rates.

[badname]

If you want to get a negative one just try to fight for something that goes against the status quo. I.e. try to exersise your civil rights for what you might consider an edge-cause (which constitutes the majority of the causes civil rights are supposed to be about).

[hnriot]

London already is a police state, every square inch is monitored with cameras and servers equipped with licence and face detection capabilities. While there are some upsides, the down considerably outweigh them.

As an aside, and being from the UK, I wouldn't say it's common to make jokes about being from the north or south. It's also not a very good "joke".

[lobotryas]

I'm glad to hear that your situation was handled well.

With that said, would you like to take your camera for a stroll by the Grosvenor Park Hotel?

[muyuu]

Imagine a police force so corrupt and dangerous that you would rather deal with criminals yourself than having them dispatched to your whereabouts. Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens.

[hackuser]

> Or you being from a minority routinely targeted by police. These are not things you'd expect or even fathom in the UK but it happens.

How about Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians?

[muyuu]

Nope.

[genofon]

>I appreciate the flip side of the coin but personally now feel much safer when in an area with CCTV.

it reminded me Benjamin Franklin's quote: "He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither."

despite it's arguable that we are giving up freedom with more CCTV, but it scary what will happen if (when) Google Glasses will be more popular.

[sosborn]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-ben...