The Ultimate Big Brother comes to the UK
 

Ever see 1984?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6524495.stm

A hobby of mine, fast, would be a super-soaker loaded with paint.

Yea, but they would still have your picture on camera. :D We were walking around Nottingham in Nov 06 and there is a central shopping area where no cars are allowed but there are a ton of people there, thousands, suddenly there were about 20 cops coming down to a single intersection from all directions. Talking on their little walkie talkies. They busted some guys who had committed some crimes minutes ago. They were directed to the specific individuals via their headsets and guided by the cameras, because you could see them picking people out of the crowd. It was the wildest thing I have ever seen. We need that in some places here in the US.

The Times.

Vandalism is the answer but you have to be smart about it.

We have just started to get red light cameras here. We have two major intersections with them and as much controversy that surrounds them people have stopped running the yellow to get through. I understand that in the UK you never know exactly which of the yellow boxes have a camera in them at any one time becasue they keep moving the cameras around from box to box. Maybe some of the UK guests here could enlighten us.

Yeah, freedom's a bitch.

Have you guys started to get Red Light Cameras where you live yet?

In one area, a sniper took one out, I laughed.

Well that would be one way to take them out, but most of the ones we have around here are in fairly populated areas. You would be hard pressed to fire off a rifle in this area.

The other thing that the local cops just picked up is a License Plate Scanner. What they are doing is driving around the city, through public parking garages (of which we have a few big ones), and scanning every single plate into a computer. It scans as it drives by in a matter of seconds. It compares that against a national data base for all kinds of things including delinquent child support, wants and warrants, expired plates, delinquent taxes, or what ever they can pull from a plate. Then they bust the people or tow and impound the car.

OK, so what is the issue with CCTV? How exactly does it encroach on your personal freedom? It's not in your home (a la 1984), it's in the streets. In the areas where you would like to be able to walk freely without fear of attack. In the areas where you would like proof that the dickheed who ran the red and wrote off your car was at fault.

Would you rather get a warning or a fine for littering? What is the problem? Do you like to litter?

As long as the cameras aren't in my private space, I have no problem. How is it any more of an infringement of my personal liberties than it is when someone throws trash from their car that interacts with mine? Would I rather have the freedom to solicit for sex without the watchful eye of the state on me, or the freedom to walk home at night by myself safe in the knowledge that no-one will rape me because it's recorded?

I sort of have mixed opinions of them. One of the problems here in the US is that it would be very hard to take that system and expand it nationwide as it is in the UK. Regionally it is ok, but still very expensive. I know that they use them at many of the very large stadiums where they need to have a broder security cordon. I would like to see them in some of the seedier crime ridden parts of town but you know that some ACLU asshat would sue and say that it was racist.

My rifle is accurate up to a mile.

I have no problem with them as long as they are NEVER trained on ANY private property, at any time.

I have mixed feelings about cctv. On the one hand I don't like the idea that the UK is the most spied upon nation in Europe.....and given howlittle i trust the establishment generally, I am not thrilled at them having ever more access to information about me (though I find id cards more worrying frankly); however, there have been many instances in recent years where the cctv network coverage of areas has helped in crime solving and crime prevention. For instance in some cases of spousal abuse, where a guy has laid into his wife/partner on the way home from the pub, then bullied the woman into dropping charges, the police have had cctv evidence to be able to push the prosecution forwards. And, I must admit I feel safer in staions and on buses that have cctv on them, travelling alone at night.

AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
QUOTATION:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).

This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Interesting.

In one thread you support the Bush administration's covert domestic spying campaign despite the Constitutional prohibitions against it.

In another thread you scream George Orwell on England's above-board, anything-but-covert surveillance of public property.

I'll take a camera watching me pick my nose while crossing the street over having my bank statements, phone records, credit card activity and internet/email logs demanded without a warrant and submitted without my knowlege or consent to the same irresponsible government bozos who sat on their fat asses eating jelly donuts while terrorists were training right under their noses any damn day.

Speaking of talking points, I think I hear your fax maching ringing. If you had that thing where faxes could come right into your computer, you could just cut and paste your reply to this post rather than having to retype it. Just a thought.

1) What about the freedom to be safe? If you are not safe are you truly free?
2) Being old does not make the written word true or closed to different interpretations. Take the bible for example.
3) How do cameras and speakers remove your freedom? You're still free do do whatever you damn well please. You may be more likelty to be caught if it's illegal, or feel more awkward doing whatever it is you want to do, but are the cameras themselves or their operators really at fault?

I'm not sure if this is a nonsense point, but let me try. There are a growing number of people in the US who base morality on legality not vice versa. If we extend that mindset to enforcement of law, does that not lead to a situation where if they (can't prove) don't film you in your misbehavior then you don't consider it misbehavior? It just seems like we're turning into a society guided by extrinsic forces rather than intrinsic forces, which to me is one more step toward a general societal melt down.

No dicotomy here, one is specifically designed to combat terroristic activity the other deals specifically with crime. Huge frigging difference.

Cool, please post my link where I "scream George Orwell" anything. All I did was post a thought which linked a movie, no screaming, just thought provoking. The movie was an over the top example of mind control, hardly compares. And I stated that I had mixed opinions about it. Neither one side or the other on monitoring for local crime control, again a HUGE difference between that and monitoring for TERRORISTIC ACTIVITY.

little bit of mixing up your facts there but ok, I'll take your word that you are paranoid.

Hmmmmmm..... ok, what ever the hell that response is to imply.:rolleyes:



:fumette:

Terrorist Activity is the GOP version of the Dems For the Children

I think you are on to something here. My biggest problem is the influx of moralistic ideals into the political process, things like Constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage, abortion issues, etc. All of these things appear to be an attempt to legislate morality, as well as re-writing history to reflect some aspect of political correctness. When we do that we have really screwed things up, spending way to much time on issues that are not all that important IMHO.

I think the reality is that the idea of personal guidance of moral behavior has dissolved to a greater degree with dissolution of the family unit, decreased influence of organized religious affiliation (keeping church in the home and community and out of society), and the nurturing of generations of "me" combined with generations of people who think they are "entitled" to things and have "rights" to things that in reality are neither.

I don't know, maybe among some of the hard core RWingers. All those terms have been so abused by the media I think you would be hard pressed to find any agreement among the groups as to what any of it means at any one time.

Yes, because you cannot be safe, but you can be free.

I don't get your second point. The quote is still around because it is true.

The old, bullshit, argument that one does not have to worry if they are not doing anything wrong is still a red herring for stealing rights.

We have red light cameras over here. I think they're a good idea. They certainly discourage people from running red lights which saves lives in the end.

If you don't want your picture taken, don't run red lights. It's pretty simple.

We have that here too. I don't run red lights so I'm fine but I think you can get screwed over if you push a yellow and it turns red before you make it because you will still get a ticket. Probably what they want to accomplish though.

If you are not doing any thing to provoke the Gubment then what is the deal if they film you picking your ass while you walk down the street ???

this is only in Urben areas right ???

good thing i live in the sticks , cameras on poles would NEVER last around here " POW , click !!! " no camera

Hell they busted some bubbas for shooting at a power sub station a while back , it got FEDERAL REAL quick !!!!

As far as I know the cameras are just in public areas in Urban settings. As far as ordinary CCTV goes, they tend to be in places where either a lot of antisocial activity goes on and people have complained (e.g the town centre outside a club) or they are in areas where people face risk of attack (such as bus stations and the small linking streets in town) or they are in places where residents have clubbed together and requested the council, police or housing assoc. place them, such as snickets where there is a high rate of drug dealing or vandalism etc. The other cameras tend to be privately owned by shopping malls or businesses who wish to protect their property. There are very strict laws about what and whom can be filmed. For instance, if I were to seek permission to put a camera in my garden because I'd been targetted by vandals or something, I wuold have to angle it so that it did not look into anybody elses garden, and I don't think I'd be allowed to have it look out onto the street itself either. The police could angle one to look at the street if it was to deal with a specific problem (e.g, there's a snicket in a housing estate that teens are using as a rat run and they then cause a bunch of damage and distress for a couple of people whose gardens back onto that snicket.)

What's of far more concern to me, is the idea currently being floated about having a National database of DNA.....and I.D cards which hold massive amounts of personal and financial (and no doubt eventually political) data all available to the government. That stuff worries me far more. Cctv we've had for years and has been proved as a useful piece of technology in crime prevention and crime solving.

As computing power increases, I would expect the camera feeds to be slaved to recognition software and tied to data banks for a perfect storm of privacy invasion. In the States it would start locally, probably in gated communities, and grow in conjunction with the technological capacity. Our aging population of scared whiteys will demand protection and they'll get it.

What's a snicket?

Umm..sorry. It's a guinnel.....a very narrow little alley/passageway running between gardens or houses, linking one part of an estate to another.

Thanks.:blush:

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The problem is not how compliance with laws is being monitored, it's what the laws are that are being enforced. Once law enforcement has these tools in place, they can easily put them to use for any other purpose that can be devised by our law-making bodies.

I don't mean just the cameras, but the wire-tapping, data stockpiling; the whole trend towards an omnipotent caretaker. We want to be protected from harm, but the tools themselves don't discriminate their usage. They can be used equally for any purpose.

To me, the issue becomes whether you trust the moral compass of your government. What is trickier is that you have to make guess as to what the moral compass of all future governments will consist of; because once these tools are in place, their usage will change with the political climate.

How can we guess at what laws our future governments will put in place? We can look at human nature, which never changes, as a guide. We can also look at the history of human culture, at how power is weilded in human civilizations. We have to ask ourselves: are we prepared to trust a governmental body with the ultimate power (omnipotence)? Or should we expect some misuse, and exercise appropriate caution?

An update on a related issue.

We have locals here that are starting to do something similar.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/tra...icle334686.ece

The main street in our state capital (where I live) is monitored 24/7 by cameras. It has been for over a decade now. The reason it was brought in is because the street is one big huge mall with a casino at one end, and late in the evening after people have been drinking etc there was a massive violence problem developing.

Since the cameras have been brought in, violence has decreased, and also it gives police the ability to see offenders on camera which obviously helps with identification if they're not caught at the time.