CCTV in the UK is widespread in large cities, but operated by individual shop owners, and has been since the 80s when cameras became cheap enough. There is no big government CCTV operation. Closest thing is probably the London congestion charge cameras, or individual towns who decide to install their own to cut down on crime.
And if you go out of the cities, you can go forever without seeing a CCTV camera.
My Yorkshire village has a playground. They installed CCTV last month. More people complain about the main road changing from a 40mph to 30mph. I don't care if the 'they' is government or centralised or whatever. The numbness to surveillance unsettles me greatly.
They're almost certainly recording to a VHS tape, which cycles every couple of days.
IF some crime or vandalism happens on the playground, they will then grab the tapes, and check them. The chances of a conviction will be far higher with video evidence.
It's not "numbness to surveillance", because it's not really surveillance.
If you want to be free to take videos and photos of random places/things without being arrested, you should also allow that same freedom to owners of property who want to reduce crime.
I suspect that if you stop random people on the street, point to a camera, and ask them "What kind of camera is that?" the most common response will be along the lines of "I don't know, who cares?" These would presumably be the same people who don't pay CCTV cameras any mind in their day to day lives.
It is not that people don't mind because they are recycling VHS cameras placed by private citizens, but rather that they just don't care regardless. The fact that there is a widespread myth that all the cameras are government installed and networked actually drives home this point. People incorrectly think this and they still don't really care.
If CCTV was a problem for people, we'd hear about it. But it's not, so we don't.
The fact I visited a certain shop is on record for 2 days on a crappy VHS tape.... why do I care?
Some tourist probably also took my photograph, but I'm not going to stress about that either.
The damage being done, in my opinion, is a shifting of the Overton window. It changes our perception of normal so that other hypothetical, actually dangerous or sinister, developments will not seem as unusual or outside the norm.
There is not a massive tracking network of CCTV cameras today, but people seem to have the idea that such a thing exists.. and they don't care. Give it a few more years and you could probably actually install such a system and the only people who said anything would be considered weirdos for caring, just like you find it weird that people are bothered by the current system.
I should emphasis that I do not think the UK is going to turn into East Germany in any foreseeable future.
I take your point, in theory an evil genius prime minister could install some mass surveillance system. But what the hell would be the point? And the chance of him not getting found out and called out by the media is negligable. Add to that the utter incompetence of government to do anything IT related, and I think we're pretty safe.
I think it's even stronger.
I for one am not ok with lack of CCTV installations as in:
"They (stole my bike/slashed my tires/robbed my office) and (there was not a single camera to record this/image from only available camera was so crappy that it doesn't help)."
A camera is far more cost effective to the parish council than sending someone to search for health hazards every morning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/oct/25/birmingham-cctv-mus...
Of course, CCTV simply pushes street crime away from the central areas.
I've heard that argued for many years but never seen the stats. Do you have a reference for us?
"Mixed findings: Birmingham 14 CCTV cameras in the city centre in the early 1990s failed to reduce overall crime levels. However, recorded crime statistics indicate that CCTV reduced robbery and theft from persons, whilst incidences of theft from vehicles rose. The CCTV system was not designed to target vehicle related crime and so was not installed in many car parks. There was some displacement of crime to surrounding areas. Surveys of the public before and after CCTV installation found little change in general feelings of safety for those using the city centre during the day. Nevertheless, for those using the city centre after dark there was an increase in feelings of safety amongst those aware of the CCTV cameras. It is not clear whether these effects were a direct result of CCTV as the area was also redeveloped at the same time."
from http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn175.pdf
The source cited in that summary in reference [3] is no longer available at the Web address given but is available from
http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/hopolicers/fcdps68.pdf
pages 40 to 57 of that second reference contain a detailed discussion of some statistics from 20 years ago in Birmingham city centre, a location I know well. Once sentence on page 50 seems to suggest displacement of street crime to car theft, only as a suggestion. However the whole section gives you an idea of how hard it is to be definite about displacement or reduction in a city centre subject to shifting building patterns and traffic routing.
The second doc² appears to make no clearer claims on displacement either.
Mind you we've 17 years more data now and there must be several areas where CCTV has been installed, removed (or deactivated) and possibly reinstalled.
There really must be better citations than this around. I've no time to dig for them now but these don't convince me that displacement is, if anything, more than a minor effect. Moreover those docs show a shift from direct personal robbery/theft to theft from vehicles; I'd expect that would result in less bodily harm overall at the expense of broken windows and bent door frames, probably a good result.
- - -
¹ http://www.parliament.uk/post/pn175.pdf, 2002
² http://library.npia.police.uk/docs/hopolicers/fcdps68.pdf, 1995
Yes, if they walk into the shop with a warrant and ask to see their tapes. They can't track us all walking around in realtime, which is a huge distinction.
The UK CCTV is widespread in large cities and operated BY THE POLICE FORCE. It is also on most major roads: look for the blue cameras.
CCTV does not 'cut down crime' in fact it does the opposite: it increases crime by a small but measurable effect.
Do you know why CCTV increases crime?
I am not doubting your argument. I am militantly opposed to 1984esque surveillance. I am just curious.
That is to say, more things are counted than before. Although CCTV cameras may not help solve crimes (I don't know if they do or not), perhaps they make it easier to count crimes.
A crime is just a crime statistic. The more police you have the more crimes are recorded so crime goes up. CCTV is like adding an extra cop (sitting in front of 30 cameras).
CCTV generally does not deter any crimes but it acts on the the kind of crimes that are usually ignored: mostly public order offences linked to alcohol.
CCTV operators spend their nights following couples and women hoping to see sex acts. Occasionally they spot someone urinating against a wall and call the cops.
Urinators, drunken vandals, soliciting prostitutes are seen and logged where they would mostly be ignored—crime goes up.
I don't particularly like CCTVs but this is terribly weak reasoning however you try to twist it. This is akin to me arguing a new cancer test actually causes cancer because we now detect more cases of cancer.
Most people and politicians generally do not understand the difference between a measurable statistic and a physical event. Often in the eye of the law and the lawmakers there is none. Everything you know about crime at a macro-level is actually knowledge of a crime statistic.
Millions of pounds of CCTV cameras were sold on the back of my study that showed a 33% drop in crime that was in fact caused by the simultaneous removal of one of the three police officers patrolling the area. A subsequent study that took this effect into account and showed a 3% rise in crime was buried so as not to embarrass the politicians who ordered the expensive equipment.
Usually a rise in crime is statistics while a fall in crime is good policing. Similarly, politicians call for a 10% drop in cancer deaths but never tell us which death-rates they want to go up to compensate.
1. See "Perceived security compared to real security" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security
2. CCTV moves the community's mindset on a crime/non-crime level - "You are (or not) a criminal", "You are a suspect until proven the contrary" (aso.) - and this generates thoughts which aren't always good ones ranging from curiosity/challenge ("wh/if I'll try to overcome this...") till repulsion. An educational way of keeping the criminality rate low is way better than "Big Brother" way. Note, that I don't preach Anarchism here but another way of community management. The force and surveillance must be in the background.
"The UK has an extensive (ANPR) automatic number plate recognition CCTV network. Effectively, the police and security services track all car movements around the country and are able to track any car in close to real time. Vehicle movements are stored for 5 years in the National ANPR Data Center to be analyzed for intelligence and to be used as evidence."
"What we're trying to do as far as we can is to stitch together the existing camera network rather than install a huge number of new cameras," - Mr Whiteley chairman of the ANPR steering committee said"
OTOH they are all in public places and the footage is not released to the public without some reason (in contrast to basically anyone just recording with a phone).
People always say they want more police on the street, so if each of these cameras was replaced with a uniformed policeman watching the street would this be better or worse?
Better, unequivocally. Why wouldn't it be?
And that's real, trained, qualified, experienced, officers. Imagine what it's like if you have people like the UK "Special Constables" (PCSO, Police Community Support Officer) - volunteer police with limited powers (and training). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_Community_Support_Offic...)
Police on the streets probably aren't much good at catching criminals; from the little I've read there needs to be more detectives but not more beat officers.
PCSOs generally do not have any more rights than any normal citizen in terms of arrest etc and therefor don't really have grounds to make threats against you (apart from using their radio to call an actual police officer).
PCSOs are paid, barely trained normal citizens with a police-like uniform.
Their job is essentially to find "bad guys" so when there are many more cops then bad guys, the category of bad-guy gets vastly expanded.
In 2002 at LAX there were so many cops it was ridiculous. My friend got a ticket for littering and I got one for jaywalking. Actually he was going to arrest me at first.
So yes, please, I want that experience everywhere I go. If I walk briskly, well then I should be stopped and questioned. If I stop slightly ahead of the line at the crosswalk, I should get a $500 fine every time and eventually lose my license.
But the police of course can simply turn on their sirens and go through whatever red light they please, or park in front of a hydrant, or on a sidewalk, they are above the law after all.
This overreaching police state sounds simply wonderful. Where does one sign up?
No idea why the grandparent is being down voted.
No, it's not and we all know that. That's why I phrased it that way. However it does falsify the [apparent] claim of it being a universal truth, for me - obviously you'd need to weigh my trustworthiness as an observer+reporter for it to count as evidence.
Specific to my statement and your rebuttal. I only know about the current UK police's history. What's the earliest police force and how do we know they hired sadistic sociopaths?
It doesn't falsify anything, and I have no reason to believe you aren't trustworthy. I just need to be able to provide lots of examples where the opposite is true, and I can. It's trivial.
I don't for a second believe that every German soldier in WWII was as bad a person as Hitler made them be. I do believe they were willing to go well past what most people would admit to doing, likely because they were afraid they'd die if they didn't. But millions of jews were slaughtered because it wasn't that hard to convince people to do it.
Just reading through various threads here and I see examples of cases where cameras solved problems better then people could have.
This could then be used for all kinds of purposes but AFAIK they wouldn't be breaking any laws in doing so, so in this case it doesn't give the state any extra rights than a private company has.
At first, more police would probably improve a few things. Fewer people would litter, and the occasional drunk who passes out on the side of a street would be removed faster.
The trouble is, there's not actually much for extra police to do, so they'd eventually find things to do. They'd have to start writing speeding tickets for 5 mph over the limit and picking up stray cats. That kind of enforcement would not make this a more pleasant place to live.
Aren't those good things? I wish for someone to get a ticket if they drive faster than the speed limit, they're a hazard to themselves and others. I'd like stray cats to get picked up so that they will get taken care of and won't be a nuisance to the neighborhood.
If you are in the US and want more cops in your community, you can make it happen by convincing enough people to vote for the necessary tax increases to hire more law enforcement. Alternatively, you could move to a gated community, many of which hire security guards, that you pay for, who will help take care of the stray cat problem - but you'll still have to contend with the speeders outside the gate.
Do you really believe this platitude? On a purely logical level, there are so many counterexamples that one has to be embarrassed to state it as fact.
Look at Switzerland. Do they have huge mass murders happening on a daily basis?
In Switzerland, most 20-30 year olds are in the militia, and have automatic assault rifles in their homes. After their service, they are made into semi-automatic rifles and generally kept by the servicemen in their homes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland 2006 - 34 gun killings, 7.6mil population - rate of killings or attempted killings with firearms at about one for every quarter million residents yearly
DC - poster child for gun control, had 137 gun killings last year with a population of 600k. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/11/18/effect...
That's compared to 0.22 for DC, or 0.04 for Switzerland, so it's still higher than Switzerland with vastly higher gun control. However, I think that it's more about the surrounding gun culture than it is the laws: most Australians are against gun usage (see the response to the Port Arthur massacre or the Monash Uni shootings), whereas for Americans, it's their right to hold arms, and they seem to defend that adamantly.
See also, this opinion piece by our former Prime Minister: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-...
Edit: http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia notes 30 gun-related homicides in 2008 for a population of ~21 million.
Is the subtext of this statement "An armed society is a polite society because rude people get shot"?
Then wouldn't a more appropriate aphorism be "An armed society is a safe society"?
I think a CCTV would afford more real security (if it does at all to begin with) by following the norms of a real watchman (being visible).
tl;dr I think I have right to watch the watchmen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...), even though this is not guaranteed by any law.
If the police feel that hidden cameras are the way to go, then they should surrender the protection that claim to have (not being allowed to videotape or otherwise perform surveillance on a police officer). (I am not at all sure about this last part, please correct me should I be wrong).
edit: replaced <em></em> with *s
CCTV in the UK is essentially completely privatised anyway & thats even considering that the government run cameras to track car plates etc. Similarly, the government can request that the shop keeper etc hands over the CCTV footage but seriously who cares?!