Comments on: Sleepy English town to be entirely surveilled in case criminals forget and drive through it on their way to crimes

By: SarahKH

SarahKH — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:40:00 +0000

It will happen once. Then there will be ‘outages’ and the data will vanish in a puff of ‘whoops’. After that it will become illegal to do so.

People have already tried to take cameras away from people quite inoccently snapping pictures. And plod most certainly doesn’t like being filmed unless it’s for the next episode of: Action, Police, Brutality.

By: Brent Kirkham

Brent Kirkham — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:20:00 +0000

Welcome to Airstrip One, viewers from Oceania!

Once the surveillance theatre becomes established, remember that it will work both ways. Videos of cops snarfing donuts on the tax-payers dime uploaded to the ‘nets, politicians words recorded for posterity, and their trials. Maybe we should investigate the family connections of those who propose these systems and those who manufacture them.

Who watches the Watchmen? We do. Otherwise no-one else will.

By: SarahKH

SarahKH — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:08:00 +0000

Fun thing to consider. The number of traffic camera’s that were given a viking funeral (tyre + petrol + match) now means that every traffic camera installed now has at least one CCTV camera watching it in case someone decides they don’t like it… unfortunate that in the UK high powered rifles are uncommon or someone with a scope, time, a bit of skill and a flagrant disregard for the law could have enormous fun. I wonder if you could hack an air rifle to deliver enough force to punch through the ‘armour’ of a cameras metal shell or it’s plexiglass front…

So when figures for the number of camera’s & camera poles are available always add +1 to them to count the newly installed CCTV system to keep those cameras safe. I wouldn’t be surprised if in some places there was CCTV to watch the CCTV that’s watching the traffic cameras.

I hate the phrase “police state” yet when talking about them monitoring the populace to this level it does seem to fit quite aptly.

By: Daniel Smith

Daniel Smith — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:29:00 +0000

This is exactly the issue. It has no real benefit. An actual Criminal could use a duplicate licence plate and circumvent the system. I for-see a future where each of us collects video at all times – to protect ourselves – against litigation etc. And that in the event of a crime, people can voluntarily crowdsource their video. Who watches the watchers, we watch each other.

By: Chris Driskell

Chris Driskell — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 01:55:00 +0000

This is not about catching terrorists or even petty criminals, agreed…this is rather the hacker definition of “job security” — poor Inspector Piper needs something to do to justify the expense of his office.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:41:00 +0000

I am always surprised when real life begins to mimic so many of the dystopian science-fiction novels that I have read in the past and that is not a good thing.

By: jphilby

jphilby — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:46:00 +0000

they burden everyone with it for the hope of catching the very few

I thought this was a country in dire economics straits, raising tuitions and taking dozens of other measures to prop up the economy … AND YET there always seems to be money for expensive cameras, installations, maintenance, and the technology and personnel to support them.

What kind of leadership could be so afraid of its own people that it has to go to such lengths? Maybe it’s incompetence. Maybe it has gradually become so afraid of the connotations of words like ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’ that it can’t sleep. Or, maybe, just maybe, it thought Orwell wrote it a cookbook.

By: NickPheas

NickPheas — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:22:00 +0000

I am getting the urge to get one of those label printers and add SCORPION STARE ENABLED to any camera I can find.

By: Snig

Snig — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:47:00 +0000

Reminds me a lot of “The Prisoner”

By: kringlebertfistyebuns

kringlebertfistyebuns — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 07:24:00 +0000

Would a handheld laser similarly affect the cameras, or rather…disable them? I seem to remember seeing that lasers are Not Good for CCDs…

By: awjt

awjt — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 03:11:00 +0000

If I do that, then the 8th camera will be pointing at my front door.

By: Paul McLaughlin

Paul McLaughlin — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Royston may be a small town, but it has an enormous platinum refinery in it. Think billions of pounds worth of precious metals moving through it each year.

By: monopole

monopole — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:37:00 +0000

Au contraire it is paved with smart cameras

By: Gulliver

Gulliver — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:14:00 +0000

Some Mexican prisons aren’t even this well guarded.

By: Gulliver

Gulliver — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 23:13:00 +0000

A better idea? Just microchip the entire population, and install readers
in various locations in any town or city in the country. You can track
everyone that way.

Patience. The decade is young.

By: JohnBerry

JohnBerry — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 22:37:00 +0000

After committing a crime I usually drive through Royston with stolen plates that the owner will not miss for a number of hours. Sometimes I just steal the whole car. Smile for the camera!

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Tiburon really is a local town for local people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:San_Francisco_Bay_from_the_air_in_May_2010_04.jpg

By: NoBigGovDuh

NoBigGovDuh — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 18:25:00 +0000

And the money for this came from where?

By: gordonjcp

gordonjcp — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:42:00 +0000

Depends on the system you’re using, then. The ones I worked on didn’t (and indeed, under Scottish law it may be illegal to do so).

By: andygates

andygates — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:13:00 +0000

And how has that worked out for Tiburon, CA? Crime down? Mission-creep abuse of power? You could save us Brits two years of spray-paint and gaffer tape…

By: Jonathan Gilbert

Jonathan Gilbert — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:55:00 +0000

*pffft* Sleepy little Royston-Vasey are just a bunch of wannabe followers – we’ve been doing that exact same thing in Tiburon, CA since 2009. See also:
http://www.marinij.com/ci_11943579 and http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_11943579?nclick_check=1 and http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091123/1048117058.shtml

(Turns out, they’re *both* local towns, for local people.)

By: Abel Undercity

Abel Undercity — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:49:00 +0000

“Good Evening Royston. The time is seventeen hundred hours on the Thirtieth of the Seventh and this is the Voice of Fate…”

By: shadowfirebird

shadowfirebird — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:36:00 +0000

This is not about crime. It’s about control. It’s about the state (the police, the council, whatever) assuming that everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and wanting to control all those nasty guilty-of-something-probably proles.

In a way, I agree with andrei_timoshenko, above. I *do* think there is something wrong with it, but as technology advances, we may not have any choice. But we need to think hard about what the rules and limits should be. One of the ways this whole thing is out of kilter is that the state has all the cameras pointed at us, and we are increasingly getting into more and more trouble just for pointing cameras at each other, let alone the state.

Let’s see all public cameras logged in a database and the feed / information that the cameras gather made publicly available. That would still be intolerable, to my mind, but it stop the state behaving dishonestly with all this information.

Next, give the public the same right to use photography in a public place as the state has taken for itself…

By: willyboy

willyboy — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:15:00 +0000

“If I’m not doing anything wrong, then you have no cause to watch me.”

By: willyboy

willyboy — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:14:00 +0000

“if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about”

By: Pies

Pies — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 14:49:00 +0000

I think it’s a great technology, but the information that comes from it should be available to the entire public in real time. People with adequate resources can track you with or without it, so it’s a matter of empowering the rest of us.

I don’t have a problem with the government tracking me, as long as I can track the government too.

By: Daniel Sobol

Daniel Sobol — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:35:00 +0000

The road to hell is paved with stupid cameras!

By: Andrew Singleton

Andrew Singleton — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:12:00 +0000

Pretty much yea. You’re not putting cameras up to catch Big Crime. You’re putting ‘em up to fleece Joe Public out of speeding tickets, seatbelt violations, and the like….

Is all about prfit and keeping the public afraid by throwing TERRORISTS out there every so often.

By: Belinda Contague

Belinda Contague — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:12:00 +0000

Gee, I wonder where all the government money is being spent?

By: Eric Hunt

Eric Hunt — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 12:59:00 +0000

It’s being done in a posh suburb of San Francisco – Tiburon. There are are only two ways in and out and they’ve presumably installed cameras on either end. This is so they have instant criminal leads on any robberies. They’re not used for petty enforcement of paperwork violations – we’ve not given the cameras the ability to send tickets in the mail for expired registration.

I say presumably because I’ve not heard any followup since the original proposal was publicized back in the summer of 2009.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-07-10/news/17216638_1_license-plate-cars-cameras