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March 29, 2024, 01:36:10 PM

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"Remain where you are, citizen!" - Talking CCTV camera madness

Started by duckorange, April 04, 2007, 01:01:09 PM

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Uncle TechTip

Be interested to read about mics and body-scanning cameras in use on Britain's streets today, linkz plz.


Uncle TechTip

Thank you (can the foyer at Canary Wharf be considered a public place?)

for those short on time, the links contained news of one example at Canary Wharf, one example of a body-scanning trial on the Heathrow Express, and many examples of "leaked documents" and "plans for the 2012 Olympics"

So your "being used on streets today" boils down to one example in a public place, and one example in what could be private property. Across the entire United Kingdom.

Apologies, there is one example of mics used on the streets of Soho - "The microphones only activate if noise levels reach above a certain threshold. There isn't someone listening in to everyone 24 hours a day."

Biggy, if you want to convince us that what you say is true, please stop lying/misrepresenting what is happening. We can all speculate about where this will take us but that's not much use today.

I think these sound fantastic!  As long as I'm allowed to run them obviously, otherwise they're a disturbing piece of intrusive nonsense.
I'd love not to have to mutter and tut and instead be allowed to tell people what I really thought of them without danger of being hit, or even worse, slightly embarrassed.


Fry

I'ma ctually really quite scared by this. Even more so that nobody realises how fucking wrong this is. i just had to argue to my friends and parents, both groups of which say they'd freely give up their liberty for safety.

Uncle TechTip

What liberty are you giving up, exactly? Until these things appear inside homes I don't see what we are losing from our public space. The right to break the law? What else, the ability to not be tracked by the authorities? What about till receipts, mobile phone records etc? The state, or rather the law & order & justice section of it, has been using these methods to track people for years. Please, someone explain what it is we are giving up.

Clone Army

In an ideal world I wouldn't have a problem with a massive judgement machine to police urban areas but this gives a small number of people the opportunity to control the public's lawful social indiscretions like smoking a bit, being loud or, heaven forbid, gathering!. The government's current security paranoia and the lack of any sign of standard use protocols is what scares me.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: "biggytitbo"The police were called and i was given a warning! Not only has it put me off going to Whitley Bay but it has also made me more determined to cross where i want.

You weren't put off going to Whitley Bay the first time you visited?

There's no trust between the public and the authorities anyway, the lack of respect police get in England is unbelievable. As far as this talking CCTV thing goes though, you're not losing any liberties, but it seems a bit silly really. At least make it so it fires a laser at the offenders arse or something.

23 Daves

Quote from: "kidsick5000"I imagine the other use would be

"Hey Baby. How you doing..?"

You joke about this, but the military have used similar cameras in certain parts of Derry, and apparently seem to spend half their time using them for just that purpose.  My wife has even witnessed such an occurrence whilst she was there.  That or she hallucinated the entire experience.  You never know.

I can't really put my stamp of approval on to this project, quite honestly.  It's the kind of thing that's likely to be absolutely useless whilst serious crimes are going on, but very over-used where petty mis-deeds are concerned, as well as fucking expensive.  And I'm afraid my first impulse would be to give the thing the finger, and I'm not exactly that uncouth a person myself.

Pinball

But then 5 credits would be deducted from your database, citizen.

Milo

I think the main problem here is that the arguments in favour of the scheme can be easily expressed while the arguments against are just some fundamental sense of wrongness which I find myself unable to properly articulate.

Thus the pro camp win by default.

They are still wrong.

samadriel

QuoteHome Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, "in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions".

"But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can't go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people," he added.

The talking cameras did not constitute "secret surveillance", he said.

"It's very public, it's interactive."
So you can shout back?  Yessss!

Milo

God, I wouldn't want to interact with the people behind the mics. Imagine being lumbered with one at a party. It'd be like talking to a bailiff*.

*idea for thread. Which occupations are only taken up by bastards?

Dark Sky

My GCSE English teacher once told us a story about how she was alone in a lift in a carpark and she suddenly thought of something funny and giggled to herself a bit.

Then suddenly a disembodied voice in the lift said, "I can see you.  You're laughing."

She never went back to that carpark again.  Whooooooo!!!

That story needs a better ending really

Al Tha Funkee Homosapien


Shoulders?-Stomach!


Mr. Analytical

Quote from: "Milo"I think the main problem here is that the arguments in favour of the scheme can be easily expressed while the arguments against are just some fundamental sense of wrongness which I find myself unable to properly articulate.

 How about it is every man's right to face his accuser?

 If he's to be accused of wrong-doing by someone then that person should confront him in person rather than shouting at him from the safety of a booth somewhere.  Alternatively, he could call the police who would, in turn, confront the man.

mothman

a) The system will be easy to beat - well, not easy, but certainly possible.
b) The system will not be fool-proof by any stretch of the imagination.

I'll be interested to see how this can be parlayed into Yet Another Infringement Of OUr Civil Liberties By The Draconian New Labour Government when in reality it's just another bloody stupid idea that, if not soon proved to be totally unworkable, will really just complicate matters and make all benefits claims, whether genuine or not, even more convoluted and long-drawn-out.

wasp_f15ting

As someone who is in this field of work, I find this EXTREMELY dodgy.. the technology already exists on quite a few cameras in the city centre, they are loud as fuck 110db-120db at least.

They are at the moment used to tell beggars near cash machines to fuck off. This will have zero effect on AS behaviour, if most of the scorty knob heads ignore police presence why an earth will they listen to a crappy loudspeaker.. rubbish I say.

Famous Mortimer

I think function creep is a very dangerous aspect of this. Governments have learned from Heath's lot in the early 70s to not do every bad thing at once. Hence Thatcher's gradual fucking over of the Unions, and now New Labour chip-chip-chipping away at our civil liberties in the name of safety.

Look at the things they've done in the last decade. All the ways they've had a go at us, all the little things that have encroached further and further into our lives. Imagine if they'd turned up in parliament the day after the 1997 election and gone "here's what we're going to do". Would so many people have been so blase about it then?

Pinball

Quote from: "wasp_f15ting"As someone who is in this field of work, I find this EXTREMELY dodgy.. the technology already exists on quite a few cameras in the city centre, they are loud as fuck 110db-120db at least.

They are at the moment used to tell beggars near cash machines to fuck off. This will have zero effect on AS behaviour, if most of the scorty knob heads ignore police presence why an earth will they listen to a crappy loudspeaker.. rubbish I say.
I'd be interested to know what other latent as-yet unused technology lies in these £20k cameras..

Something which actually would be useful is high quality still digital cameras co-located with the video cameras. That way, if a crime occurs a proper quality photo can be taken rather than the shite quality that most video cameras produce. How many times have people got away with crimes simply because the resolution is crap? It does rather make a mockery of having millions of CCTVs, when in practice they do little to stop or identify a hooded yoof. At best, they merely displace the vandalism etc.  

Recently near where I live, newly planted willow trees were removed from the one area of a park that didn't have CCTV coverage. A coincidence? So, okay, let's say a CCTV is then put in that part of the park, and the bastard scum displace to nearby residential areas where there are no cameras, and a lot more stuff to damage. What, then, has the CCTV achieved? IMO it's better to have kids hanging around unpopulated places...

Another idea - the CCTV camera/post has electricity and is in an elevated position. Why not use it for wifi? I guess that's not going to happen as it actually benefits the public.

Uncle TechTip

1. Who pays for the wifi? 2. commercial operators such as the Cloud would be up in arms.

wasp_f15ting

Well we do have a few wi-fi cameras around already, I think there are about 20 wifi dome cameras which are run this way, ofcourse as many of you studying into wifi will already know, that snow, rain and hail cause immense distortion in wi-fi waves. As such we lose control of cameras during these times.

The old optical line cameras are the ones which cost £70,000 each to install since they require such hefty fibre optics. They are far far far better in terms of quality compared to the newer wi-fi / broadband cameras we have now. The resolution is getting increased, the highest resolution at the moment is 1024 x 768 on some of the newer models, however if they use the Optics cable they could get far better.

As for the need for CCTV around the city its vital, the amount of lives saved easily justify the loss of privacy and expense of these things. More bobbies on the beat isnt the answer when you have people trying to shoot eachother to death, if for say one police officer goes to a crime, in the midst of a fire fight he tends to one of the victims, who looks upon the offender running away? With a network of cameras its easy to catch these scum and get them arrested with hard evidence.

Since I have worked there have been numerous arrests which have been made simply because drunken psychopaths were followed. I can see CCTV going very very wrong in the future, but the Human Rights we have are pretty clear about what we can and can't do whilst filming people. So its not all doom and gloom..

Uncle TechTip

Thanks Wasp for introducing some clarity and first-hand experience into the debate, much better than the frantic hand-waving and general objections along the lines of "I just don't like it". If it didn't work I'm sure penny-pinching councils would soon pull the plug. And it works, look how we got pics of the 7/7 bombers within about a day, not much use after the event you might argue but I'm sure these IDs led to connections made with the three charged today (well, you hope so anyway).

For the record I think the loudspeaker idea is a ropey one, but only because it'll soon become normalized and no-one will take any notice. At which point they'll have to start slinging insults.

Dusty Gozongas

Quote from: "wasp_f15ting"
Since I have worked there have been numerous arrests which have been made simply because drunken psychopaths were followed.

Isn't the location of cameras in the vicinity of pubs just an easy option though? I've always seen that argument as something similar to the old adage about 'arriving before the fire'.

What happened to getting tough on the causes of crime?

I'm not suggesting that CCTV doesn't work per se but I'll bet that they're placed where they are, for the most part, so that figures can be quoted with regard to their 'success'.

wherearethespoons

The main point is surely, has CCTV meant a drop in crime? And the answer is no. It doesn't matter too much whether you get to watch someone committing a crime, the fact is a crime is committed in the first place. Regardless of how a crime is punished, the act has still happened.

Even the name CCTV is misleading nowadays, considering how advanced the technologies being used are.

Uncle TechTip

Quote from: "arqarqa"What happened to getting tough on the causes of crime?
Yeah, in that case, the cause of crime being, a pub!!

Pinball


Dusty Gozongas