The CCTV challenge
Posted on: October 12, 2008 - 5:37am
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The CCTV challenge
This question is mainly for Libitarians, but I'd be interested in replies from any point on the political spectrum.
Suppose that wherever there was a street light there was also a CCTV camera. None were trained on private property, and all recorded for at least a fortnight before the recordings were deleted (unless a police investigation of the tapes were launched during that time frame).
Can you name a legal activity, harming nobody, which you would not be able to do under such circumstances?
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I see my point still stands undefeated
take that cameras!
Where did I accuse someone of being a murderer? I said you had the freedom to kill. There is a difference between killing and murdering, as I would have thought anyone who debates with Evangelicals would be aware of.
The abuse of freedom by drivers kills more people than the abuse of power by the police (sorry Libertarians but the worldwide total of executions and deaths in police custody still doesn't come close to the annual road deaths, even if you take the most liberal estimates). I've reported dangerous drivers to the police here but only four cases went to court due to lack of photographic evidence. It would be useful to have more cameras for that.
I don't see how the abortion issue comes into it. Medical practices are already private, even though the entrance to the average clinic is publicly accessible. The question I have been putting here has always been about what you do in public places, not private.
As for the objection of 'loss of privacy', which part of 'it's a public place. Other people can already see you and have the liberty to do so' is so hard to comprehend?
I'm not what you'd call a libertarian, I'm more a socialist leaning strong liberal but in any case I would suggest that under these circumstances you wouldn't be able to congregate in groups peaceably for any reason and you probably couldn't sit there more than once if you were homeless or having the appearance of belonging to any other maligned element regardless of your number.
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The fact of the matter is that there are better ways of managing drivers. Especially in this day and age. The first step could be making maximum speeds actual maximum speeds in the factory. There isn't a speed limit in North America above 120 kph to my knowledge, yet most cars(even low power ones), have speedometres that go as high as 160 or even 260 or more.
And, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy even in a public place. If you and a friend are having a conversation on a bench, it is considered exceptionally rude for someone unknown by the parties to come up in the middle of it and join in without being invited. Having cameras in every public place is akin to having someone hanging over your shoulder every time you leave your house. Now if you wanted to limit these cameras to parking lots, dangerous intersections, and highways, you would accomplish most everything you want to accomplish without undue invasion of privacy. It is still a lot more than I personally find acceptable, but at least it's a far cry from the police state you describe.
When you consider all the cameras in existance in private hands as it is, and how cheap and easy it is to set one up today, there is absolutely no cause for a more than doubling of them in public places. Most public places are already on camera.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
10-16-08, Britain considering database for phone calls, e-mails
"Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Britain's police and security services need new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mails and Internet traffic. Her department said one option being considered was a database that would store the phone numbers dialed, the Web sites visted and the e-mails addresses contacted by everyone in Britain. "
Ha ha ! Sweet. The noose is tightening. Poor fools, before long England will become the world's largest prison.
Holy fuck!
Eloise, yes you can, if the law says you can. You can't if the law says you can't.
Vastet, anyone is allowed to listen in on your conversation if they are within earshot and are not close enough to constitute harassment in order to be so.
Last time I checked, CCTV watches you and doesn't listen to you (and someone only sees you if they are staffing the cameras).
By the way, it's typical head-in-the-sand thinking to want to pass the responsibility for road deaths onto the manufacturer. In large numbers humans tend to act irresponsibly when they can get away with it. That's part of the real world.
Maybe it's legal to listen to someones conversation (actually if you use certain devices it isn't ) but it's still considered rude. So would following someone around watching you. Hence the expression "The more you keep your nose out of other peoples' busines, the less it will get broke. " I'm definitely not a legalist - I don't define right and wrong by the law. There are a lot of bad laws and a lot of laws that should exist but don't.
Have you noticed so far literally nobody here agrees with you and about half of us are NOT libertarians (I tend to agree with them on social freedoms, other than gun control and strongly disagree with them on economic issues. )
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
And so the response to reckless driving is to track everyone's public movements in cities at all times? Don't we already have police to reign in bad drivers by ticketing them? Many police officers are overzealous in their desire to hand out traffic tickets due to the fact that they have to meet quotas specified by their department. From what I see the polices' efforts have effectively controlled people's driving. Very rarely do I see someone acting reckless in a vehicle.
Funny you should mention that. I was thinking that most political ideologies would be against this kind of monitoring. Leftists value personal freedom in most respects, so their "keep out of my private life" attitude should prevent them from supporting this. Conservatives (but not neocons, which are not conservatives) value a small government and should not want this kind of a massive (read: expensive and intrusive) surveillance performed by the government. Libertarians obviously don't want the government tracking all or most public movements.
All that leaves are the authoritarians and the statists (and neocons, which are authoritarian and statist). Authoritarians would likely support this because they support just about any imaginable increase in government control over our lives. Statists like a large and intrusive government, so this seems like the kind of thing that they would support. And of course: the neocons would love to implement this kind of thing to "protect the homeland from homegrown terrorists and terrorism from abroad." Though I suspect that statists, authoritarians and neocons would value this kind of surveillance most because no one could protest or publicly petition the government for a redress of grievances without a high risk of the police paying them a personal visit at their home later. This would be one of the best tools ever implemented towards stopping dissent; that fact alone should make this very attractive towards statists and neocons.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
From experience (I have lived in a community where this happened) I can tell you you can't if someone of influence in the community views you as a nuisance, an eyesore or a threat and if laws don't already exist local procedure can be instated to move on undesirables.
When this happened where I lived in NSW (it happened twice) the greater community was disgusted by the prejudice, opposed it and had it overturned but keep in mind in this case the rule was targeted in public public places monitored by eye, the debate over it took place in a very public arena both sides of the debate were named and visible to everyone.
Now I may be wrong but it seems to me that CCTV monitoring adds a level of anonymity (that didn't exist in the case I've cited) which would benefit socioeconomic bigotry by keeping its perpetrators relatively obscured from the critical eye of the wider community. That is to say, by my estimation, it would be easier to be a bigot from behind the veil of technology.
I say it could happen.
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MattShizzle, that is the most profound and convincing argument I have ever heard ever in my life ever ever!
The number of people in a particular place who disagree with me is larger than the number of people who agree with me.
What a titanic line of argument that is! I can't imagine having ever heard that from the members of a church or from people in a school playground.
Phew!
Jormungander, there aren't enough police for the job. 1.2 million deaths a year worldwide (45 a day here) is a big figure.
Eloise, if the law in your country forbids the moving on of people for a particular reason, mechanisms already exist to safeguard against their abuse.
CCTV assists in upholding the law when it doesn't.
Eh, we can agree to disagree if you like, David. You seem genuinely inclined to want to focus on what you see as the positives of implementing widespread video monitoring whereas I, frankly, see paranoia and prejudice as the very basis underpinning such an idea. To me it is inherently a negative state of affairs whatever purported "good" comes of it because, of itself, it is a reinforcement of dysfunction (pre-emptive hate and fear) in sociological dynamics. It's like a P.C. arms race.
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No, Eloise. I'm only interested in what legal activities in public I'd have no longer available to me, or anyone else for that matter, if CCTV were introduced everywhere, or almost everywhere. It wouldn't really bother me all that much if it had no overall beneficial results. I simply can't find anything negative about it, speaking as a law-abiding citizen who knows how to write a letter to an elected member of parliament.
What should and shouldn't be legal is another matter, and in a democracy cannot be prevented simply by being visible to a law enforcer in a public place.
Well as I said it would depend on who you are, or moreso appear to be in the minds of those monitoring. What you're essentially asking is if CCTV monitoring has potential for abuse, and I'm answering that I think the answer must be yes because "big brothering" in and of itself plays directly to prejudices and fears, it is born of them moreover, there's no avoiding it.
I agree somewhat that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with the objective concept. Ideally, video monitoring could be a perfectly objective law keeping device. The problem is that in ideal and objective circumstances we wouldn't even be considering using video monitoring on neutral public property, the idea itself is symptomatic of a deeper ill, a social dysfunction, a society demanding protection and insulation from itself and that's so sure of hating and fearing it's own in the future it prepares to capture the image for posterity.
It's very optimistic of you to say that but I disagree, visual media is all too easily turned to he task of misleading a public's opinion. Video monitoring is an externalisation of human prejudice and fear it's a small step from there to amplifying those social ills with vid-bytes and portentous voice-overs. I agree to a point that making all of our bad hair days more visible to others musn't necessarily undermine democratic decision making, but I don't agree entirely, I believe the potential for damage is already thoroughly precedented (think tabloid news reporting). We'd do better for ourselves to tackle the social dysfunction that is driving us to consider big brothering our neighbours, surely, than to walk arms open into proliferating contempt and disdain for ourselves and each other.
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This fearmongering crap since 9/11 has unfortunatly reshaped public perception of what society should do to be safe. If anyone has any doubts about where we should or should not go as a society 1984 and Animal Farm are exlent books to read.
I would rather live with the potential for my neighbor commiting criminal acts than to intrust my safty to a government that could violate my privacy at will.
When a citizen commits a criminal act you are dealing with an individual, when the government becomes the criminal, you are screwed.
Franklin said, "those who sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither".
There are lots of bad things that can happen to you. You could get lung cancer from smoking. You could get hit by a car. You could slip in your bathtub. |There is absolutly no way government can wrap you in bubble wrap to protect you 100% of your life. And it is a dangerous prospect to put your privacy, property and rights, into the hands of politicians who may or may not agree with you.
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Finally something I said was responded to. I guess that means every other point I made was not arguable.
Both false by reality and future implication. First, a camera can be as small as a dot. A person is millions of times larger. I can see a person eavesdropping. I can't see a camera eavesdropping. A camera can infringe on my privacy without my knowledge. A person wandering around cannot. Second, nothing about the technology makes it impossible to record sound. Many cameras already do. Many more will in the future as the price and quality go down and up, correspondingly. And finally, the fact that the camera recorded it means that eavesdropping on my conversation can be extended through time, instead of having to be there as the conversation occurred. A week after I have my conversation, someone can listen to and observe it as if they were standing right there when it happened. The vast majority of observation of security footage comes after recording, not during.
Bullshit in so many ways I'd need a calculator to add them up. And you didn't even try to defend this statement with facts(that don't exist), so I don't have to do anything more than call it what it is.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
This question seems rather naive. There's an underlying assumption here that illegal activity is bad so should be excluded from allowed activity. Let me remind you that changing bad laws often requires breaking the bad laws. At the very least, breaking those laws and showing that society does not implode is a helpful activity. Surveillance makes this approach to bettering society immensely more difficult and should not be allowed.
"I am that I am." - Proof that the writers of the bible were beyond stoned.
Mechanisms already exist to safeguard against their abuse....the system cannot fail !
Mechanisms already exist to safeguard against their abuse....the system cannot fail !
Mechanisms already exist to safeguard aginst their abuse....the system cannot fail !
All Hail Fascist Law Enforcement !!!
We have no limits !!! 
Did I forget to mention lip readers often make actual sound recordings unnecessary?
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
So long as we are using images to express our views, I have a funny one to show:
Big Brother is watching you. Slavery is freedom.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
Vastet: You are not living in the real world.
Dangerous drivers cause road deaths.
Countries that make more of an effort to prosecute them have fewer road deaths than those that don't.
The BHP of the engines in the cars has nothing to do with it.
Honestly, some people on these boards seem to have the mind of a fourteen-year-old.
ProzacDeathWish: I win the office sweepstakes. I had bet 50 PLN on "68 posts before someone thinks they're being original by making a Nazi reference". Now put your tinfoil hat back on again and go to sleep.
By the way, I had a side bet on when the first "1984" would appear.
As for what cameras may be capable of, there is such a thing as crossing a bridge when you come to it.
Here's a concept that Libertarians have difficulty handling: a right-wing government wants to keep its operating costs down. It doesn't have the staff to keep a file on every single person in every public place. It does, however, have a vested interest in showing it's keeping its promise that it takes responsibility for your safety in public places (even if in reality it's not doing so effectively) and leaves you alone in private. CCTV might be a threat in a Socialist country, but not in a Capitalist democracy.
"A right wing government leaves you alone in private" is one of the stupidest thing's I ever heard of in my life - look at all the ways they want to impose their sexual mores. A Socialist government would leave you alone in public. You might want to take a political science course.
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
Speak for yourself.
Because society allows them to.
Where's your evidence?
Ridiculous. For one thing, I mentioned merely one factor that could be altered without affecting privacy, opposed to your suggestion that we should take it even further and actually follow people around on camera all day every day. There are dozens of other factors I could have mentioned, but didn't. That doesn't preclude their existence. For another, limitting speed would have a drastic effect compared to your suggestion of just putting cameras everywhere. It's also cheaper by billions of dollars.
You, for example. Though I'd actually put the age at 7.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I already won this topic 30 some odd posts ago...
Move along people, nothing to flame here
Oh Darn, you can read me like a book ! ......my comments are so useless and ineffective now
( funny that you anticipated those metaphors; the comparisons are so appropriate that even you saw them in advance. Sweet !
)
What a naive fool you are. Virtually any political evil can exist in a capitalist democracy. All it takes is a majority vote and even the most vile statutes can be enacted.
I live in a country ( the US ) that has always been a capitalist democracy. The history of that democracy includes the institution of legal slavery whereby any "capitalist" was free to buy and sell other human beings as if they were a piece of livestock. This democracy was responsible for engaging in a near genocidal war against the Native Americans and that eventually reduced their numbers to a fraction of their original population. The government even engaged in a form of biological warfare by deliberately handing out blankets to the Indians that were infected with the small pox virus. ( Unfortunately for the US government at that time sarin gas and weapons form anthrax didn't exist yet )
During the 1940's Japanese Americans were, without due process or even probable cause, rounded up and sent to internment camps and treated as prisoners of war by this Capitalist Democracy. They lost all their possesions as well as their freedom.
During WW 2 the US government deliberately targeted civilians during their bombing attacks. Cities such as Dresden were saturated with incindiary bombs and the results were tens of thousands of civilain deaths. The men, women and children were not "collateral damage" or killed by accident. Their deaths were deliberate and intentional. Their deaths were engineered by a capitalist democracy.
After WW 2 the US government turned a blind eye to the horrific war crimes of a Japanese doctor, Shiro Ishii, who oversaw the hideous "experiments" on captured civilians and POW's. Unit 731 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 This evil war criminal was given immunity from prosecution simply because, ( under the guidance and direction of General MacArthur) the capitalist democracy of the US wanted access to the information that was aquired by Unit 731 regarding it's cruel experiments upon live human beings. BTW, Shiro Ishii later moved to Maryland and was allowed to continue living as a free man.
More examples exist of a capitalist democracy operating as a political sociopath but the point has been made. There is no form of political rule that is immune from becoming a force for tyranny. The use of CCTV's to spy on it's citizens, whether publically or privately, is simply a lever that is used to manuever the population into a position of eventual helplessness.
Forgive me for truncating your post down to this one idea, but you have lost me here. The leftists and libertarians want to leave you alone in your private life. If you are gay, or a pothead, or watch porn, or a member of some unpopular religion, or are not a member of any religion at all; we just don't care. Live your private life as you see fit so long as you don't harm others. On the other hand, the right-wingers love to butt into your private affairs and 'help' you by outlawing what they think are amoral activities. I thought it was pretty clear that for the most part left=social and personal freedom, and right=social and personal control (only 'for your own good' or ' for your protection' of course) by the government. Am I the only one who thinks this way, or is this the way things are? And of course libertarians agree with the left on many issues regarding your ability to live out your private life as you see fit.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
I've spent most of my life in right-wing countries.
I've also encountered a lot of right-wing bigotry about what you can and can't show on television, teach in schools or get hold of in shops. The thing is, those aren't entirely private places.
The main selling point of the right is that their offer is cheaper government.
It's mainly the left who have tried to legislate about the expression of opinions. The concept of 'hate speech' is not really a capitalist idea, nor the old fashioned idea of 'political correctness'. Where the right get involved is usually in how you express opinions in public. Interestingly it is the left who are most keen to defend almost anything done in a public place provided it comes under the category of 'political expression'. The funny thing is the way people in such demonstrations have no problem with the broadcast media filming them (and often get quite irate when they don't make the news) but are up in arms (almost literally) when it's a closed-circuit camera doing it.
Just an aside, but the ardently right-wing former UK PM Margaret Thatcher voted in favour both of the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the 1967 abortion act. Much of Thatcherism was the ideology of 'get it out of state control if at all possible'. That is not to say though that everything on the right of the centre is the same as 'the right-wing way of doing things'. After all, there are many shades of right just as there are of the left.
And just what is implied by 'because society lets them'? If anything were a prompt for the state intervening in people's lives it's excuses like this.
Why would there be a need for these cameras?
People who think there is something they refer to as god don't ask enough questions.