Minority Report-style CCTV that spots crimes BEFOREhand

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... appen.html

Okay this is creepy beyond belief. Soon there will be no privacy anywhere in the world!

Surprise surprise, yet another form of public surveillance in the UK... Is the average Brit just more docile or something? Americans wouldn't put up with this sort of invasive scrutiny, at least not yet.

It's appalling- our current political class has a boundless appetite for control and there is no sufficient organised opposition to this.

What the government seeks next is even worse. They want to force all British citizens to carry 'identity cards' containing our biometric details; that is to say our unique facial proportions rendered into computer code. This means that a persons identity would be discerned by scanning a frame of CCTV and matching it with this biometric database. Entire crowds can be scanned in seconds like this -all completely automated- and the technology is already here.

It will be literally impossible to walk down the street without the government knowing exactly where you are.

This creeping destruction of our traditional liberties is dangerous and really shocking and I don't know what we can do to organise their restitution in a genuinely effective way.


Magliabechi.

Last edited by Magliabechi on 28 Nov 2008, 2:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

"Councillor Jason Fazackarley of Portsmouth Council said: 'It's the 21st century equivalent of a nightwatchman, but unlike a night-watchman it never blinks, it never takes a break and it never gets bored."

THAT IS UTTER BALLS.

In my job I have to co-ordinate with our local CCTV room at the police station. The operator there controls what must be near a hundred cameras, and isa moaning jobsworth bastard who regularly disappears for coffee, cant be bothered to send units out, or resorts to sarcastic commentary. No matter how many cameras there are, someone has to watch them, and that someone will be human, and fallible.

Also, many operators (ours included) will not send out police units unless a crime HAS occurred or IS occurring. I've been on the other end of the radio, all but begging for police backup because our gaff is full of nutters about to do one (and I know when that's going to happen because I see it all the time) and the Radio room has just boned me off. By sheer luck and brute force we have avoided any serious harm, but we could have solved the issue easily if we had just got a police response.

This "system" wont cause any more issue than what we already have.. and anybody actively monitoring over CCTV should already be able to spot suspicious behaviour anyway. Otherwise, you're just using the cameras as an evidence record for AFTER the crime.

Finally, anybody who has had use of the CCTV network will know how useful it can be.

Yes, we do.

We are simply more discreet about our surveillance systems. Even my neighbors don't know about the PTZ cameras I've mounted under the eaves of my house. And I'm certainly not going to point out the CCTV cameras I've helped install for local law enforcement.

ever heard of Echelon?

Yep! Although "Echelon" is only first-generation of its kind ...

I assume you're referring the NSA's automated eavesdropping system of that name? Yes, I'm familiar with it, not to say that I'm happy about it. There is a bit of a difference however between listening to wireless communications looking for key words and phrases, and blanketing an entire country in CCTV cameras with facial ID software that tracks where any particular person is at any given time. Technically, though I don't trust them on this, NSA is only supposed to monitor foreign communications, and when they get caught listening to Americans it causes a scandal. Contrast this to Europe, where ever more invasive surveillance is accepted, if not welcomed by the populace on the flimsiest of justifications. We at least needed the catalyst of terrorism to relax our civil liberties, all England needed was "hooliganism".

We do have more trouble and technically more casualties and crime from "hooliganism" than we do from terrorists. Its a day to day threat.. a "real and present danger".

And the reasonable response to this was to blanket the entire country in police surveillance? This of course after stripping the citizenry of any legal right or ability to defend themselves from crime, or even to take reasonable preventative measures. Face it, the UK is seriously demented as far as their government goes, it's not even debatable anymore.

Police barely look at it. The first line of defence as far as CCTV is concerned is actually shopkeepers, doorstaff and barmen. Its us that get direct radio links to the camera room.

Oh yes you would, this system is a copy of one allready running in New York.

L.

It's mentioned in the link.

I actually missed that, re-reading the article it was right below one of the pictures and I must have thought is was part of the caption and skipped over it. I'd be curious to know exactly where in the US it's been tested, I'd guess airports and government buildings, which I don't have nearly as much of a problem with as the sort of blanket coverage they have in the UK. What bothers me is that if this system was installed country wide and coupled with their biometric mandatory ID card, it would in effect be like putting a real-time GPS tracker on every citizen whenever they left their home, and even it that resulted in a huge decrease in crime I don't think it would be worth the cost. Perhaps it's my turn to be naive, but I really do think that if the US government tried to roll out the type of public surveillance that is commonplace in Europe, there would be a massive public outcry and the offending politicos would back down or be voted out. Americans successfully fought the Clinton administration on the Clipper Chip encryption key escrow scheme, and that wasn't nearly as invasive as this system is, and was far more esoteric. We definitely seem to have a lower tolerance for Big Brother over here, and I for one think that is a good thing.

We dont actually have blanket coverage per se. Articles suggest thatevery square inch of the nation is camera'd up to f**k, but there are huge swathes that don't have them. Most cameras are concentrated in town and city centres, and obvious crime black spots such as red-light districts. The rest are in the same places as everyone else has them worldwide.. shops and garage forecourts.