All public spaces are under 24/7 archived surveillance......

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

A decade or two in the hazy distant future of the year 2000…

Full video and audio surveillance of all public spaces is not only recorded but actually stored and archived and occasionally when a fancy new software for face or character or behavioral recognition comes out they turn it loose on the archives.

The movements of everyone is there, every moment ready to be pondered in the light of day and analyzed for behavior outside the statistical norm. Lets have the behavioral software analyze all movements in this area for the last 12 months, we believe there might be some drug activity here.

With this does your definition of what privacy entails change? Do you believe that public is public, despite the fact the equation has just changed completely and you can now receive a citation for actions that went unnoticed months or years before.

Would you argue the legal definition needs changing, or that legal restrictions need to be placed on the recording?

#2

Personally, I’m all in favor of it, so long as it doesn’t intrude into places where we have a presumption of privacy. A “public restroom” isn’t a “public place.”

Obviously, such a system would have advantages and disadvantages. Muggers would get caught more often. But some muggers would simply move into secluded spots, like inside stairwells, or behind a hedge in a park. It wouldn’t “solve” the problem, as much as move it around a little.

Still, in my opinion, the benefits outweigh the detriments. I say do it.

(Good for historians, too. Think of the JFK assassination with lots more cameras in Dealy Plaza.)

#3

I would be opposed to it. Even if you aren’t doing anything wrong, would you want someone knowing where you and your family go every time they leave the house? What if you had a medical problem or something you’d rather keep to yourself?
That’s not even counting the cost. Who would root through the millions of hours of footage?
I think criminals would find a way, just like they always have.

#4

Like with most government programs, what is done with the information matters more than the raw information itself. I don’t mind the government recording me speeding to work every day (along with everyone else on the road). I DO mind if they plan to use that knowledge to issue me (and everyone else) speeding tickets every day.

In the name of security, government grows ever larger and takes ever more advantage of its people whenever possible. Even though I or others may not mind them having the raw data, maybe it’d be better to prevent them from collecting it in the first place. That way, they can’t be tempted to use it in ways that piss us off later.

#5

Any code that can be written can be hacked. For enough money, I’m sure certain people could be deleted from the database. Instant “invisible person.”

I don’t mind the data, or even what they try to do with it. These are people who developed TSA, remember? They’ll fuck it up.

#6

People must be able to have some expectation of what data is being observed and recorded AND how that information might be used, so they will know what personal information to divulge – and that includes what might be done in public places.

In the aftermath of the abuses of the Nixon administration, laws were passed limiting the ways any collected data could be used, other than the ways the data was intended to be used at the time it was collected.

I think a lot of that sensibility has been repealed, or overturned in courts, or simply forgotten over the years.

What if you, minding your own business, walk into a hardware store, but unknown to you, there is a whorehouse in the same block, and you are seen on some camera walking on that block? Would you like some self-righteous busybody e-mailing that to your wife?

Some years ago, they were doing things like this in Fremont, CA. If you parked your car within a block of a whorehouse (and everybody knew where those were), the bible-thumping thugs took pictures of your car, looked up the plate at the DMV (you could just do that in those days), all of which the local newspaper would happily publish.