Well, in that case, forget it. They could’ve been halfway to Heathrow before the bus bomb exploded.
If accusations of guilt have been made, and if the video footage (or whatever) has been used to do so, this evidence is not admissable in court. The obscure doctrines you’re looking for are “fair trial” and “presumed innocent until proven guilty”.
You realise how many tens, hundreds of thousands of hours of footage that would run to?
No. They are indirectly employed by the government, but do not do the government’s work.
In the context of Sam Stone’s unsubstantiated allegation that the Met were withholding information for political reasons, it’s a crucual distinction.
WTF? Are you telling me that if (for example) a live news broadcast happens to capture a shooting, including a passerby’s cry “Hey! That guy shot somebody!”, the video record would become inadmissable simply because it happened to contain a public accusation against the defendant?
Annie-Xmas, that link is … enlightening. Phew.
Sam Stone, I really agree with some of your points, and really disagree with others. Having people at the bottom helps, I agree. This is already happening though. You mention
Agreed. But I think what you’re proposing would mean more rules and regulations, not fewer.
I don’t see how you can possibly know this. What cameraphone evidence are you talking about? (Again, genuine not rhetorical question).
Yup, excellent idea.
Absolutely dreadful idea. For a start, what effect would guns have against bombs?
You mean like having a central communications centre with an easy to remember number where people can report emergencies? LIke, say 911 and 999?
Yup, yup.
Switzerland has an utterly bizarre political and cultural system. It’s like nothing else in the world. It’s also landlocked with no resources, which helps a lot WRT defence. Israel - bloody Hell, I hope you’re not suggesting we become like Israel defensively.
You mean like seatbelts?
Not a bad idea at all. Don’t know if it would work in practice or not, but the basic idea is fine.
That’s a scary thought. Really. I go to park my car, I have an ‘Arabic appearance’ and am carrying a child’s clockwork toy - kablamo!
Again, guns wouldn’t be terribly effective against bombs. Dude walks in, leaves bag, goes away.
So anyone can watch anyone anywhere?
Burglar: Let’s check that this bloke has caught the train. Yup, we’re good to go.
Cuckolded husband: I bet my wife’s cheating on me. Look, there she is on a different train than she said! Bitch! kills self
Stalker: So she takes the DLR to Bank, changes to the Central Line, then waits under the Jacob’s Creek poster and sits near the door …
Rapist: There’s a girl who always leaves the station onto the unlit street. Better check there’s no-one else leaving the station at the same time. OK, there isn’t. Excellent.
Passengers: I’d better not scratch my nose in case it looks wrong. I’d better not read this gay magazine in case my boss happens to be watching. I hope the camera can’t see down my top.
But wait, there’s also:
Concerned citizen: there’s an Arabic-looking guy. He just left a bag on the train. Better report that!
His call is added to the reports from 10 other people actually on the ground, because tube passengers are pretty vigilant about reporting left luggage. The Arabic guy (who’s actually Hindu) has also reprted it and is panicking about his lost belongings, but his description has already been passed on to the police.
Alternatively:
Concerned citizen: There might be a bag there, or someone acting suspiciously, but since it’s rush hour the train is so packed that all I can see is the tops of people’s heads.
It would be for the judge to decide, as in all such situations. In the scenario you describe, yes it would probably be admissable - because the video shows the shooting, so it’s not a ‘public accusation’ but an observation, (b) the cry is an integral part of the evidence, as it is an eyewitness reaction.
What seems to be being talked about earlier in this thread, and what lead me down this route, is the idea of any available footage of dodgy-looking Arab guys carrying rucksacks being pumped out to the TV stations, with “this is the guy who did it” straplines. That would be ruled inadmissable, and could jeopardise the whole trial. When it does come to the point where carefully-selected footage is publicised, it’ll be footage where the police are certain it’s the person they want, and they will be very cautious about making outright allegations at that stage.
I had the same impression, more or less, which is what prompted my reply.
I’m sorry if it was all a misunderstanding - I didn’t think, or wish to imply, that you personally were advocating mob justice - only that some of your proposals would increase the likelihood of that happening.
Do you have a rationale for why that is an unwarranted consequence of some of your ideas? Maybe it’s simply due to a different mindset based on locality. What might seem reasonable for wherever you are in Canada could be untenable in a place like NYC, or London, etc.
Absolutely. For example, public camera footage could be streamed onto hard drives automatically but locked for public viewing, so that at a push of a button the police could release selected footage for viewing on a public web site, for the public to pore over to help identify perps. If, say, a 24 hour window were always streamed to HD, the police could make it available within minutes of an incident.
Now, I haven’t given this particular idea much thought. I just tossed it out there as an example of the kind of public leveraging I am thinking of. I’m sure there are lots of reasonable objections, and reasonable arguments in favor.
Do you know how many crimes “America’s most wanted” has solved? A lot. Put a perp’s picture on TV, and there’s no telling what kind of leads will pop up. Same model. The public is actually pretty good at this sort of thing. Why not simply make an announcement saying, “The CCTV camera footage from 30 mid-town cameras between the hours of X and X (minus actual footage of carnage, perhaps) have been made available for public viewing at www.whatever.com. Interested citizens wishing to help us are invited to view the footage. If you have information leading to the arrest of the people responsible, please phone us at 555-TIPS.”
A glib answer, but police work within a window somewhat larger. I forgot how they define the ‘golden window’ of opportunity - something like 24 or 48 hours. The first day or two after a crime are critical for piecing together what happened. After that, the trail gets longer and colder.
And we’re not just looking for bombers, we’re looking for surveillance teams, set up men, blind drops, or even just infrormation showing loopholes in the system that can be plugged.
A regulation that empowers the individual is fundamentally different than one that limits individual power. For example, the Freedom of Information Act is fundamentally different than campaign finance reform. The types of regulations I’m talking about would be examples of the former.
I meant in terms of getting information about the bombings out to the public. The CCTV cameras have been useless for that, since they haven’t given us any information.
But let’s think for a second about the fundamental difference between an empowered public and the police. The police are almost never able to stop a crime in progress, because the odds are that the police won’t be around. There’s just not enough of them. They’re useful for arresting people after the fact, and that’s important in getting dangerous people off the streets and acting as an incentive to prevent people from doing more crime, but they’re almost useless when it comes to, say, suicide bombers. Empowered citizens, on the other hand, are in a position to actually stop an attack. This is not idle speculation - it’s already happened twice in the U.S. - the passengers of Flight 93, empowered with communications to the ground, learned the nature of the hijacking, evaluated their options, made the right decision, and prevented the terrorists from reaching their target. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was stopped when passengers saw him attempting to set off the explosives in his shoe and overwhelmed him and disarmed him.
There have been bomb attacks stopped in Israel when citizens shot a suicide bomber before he could detonate his bomb. A school shooting in the U.S. was stopped when a teacher ran out to his car, retrieved a handgun, and used it to force the perp to drop his gun.
More to the point, it’s a lot harder to carry out a hijacking when you aren’t sure if your victims are armed. This is the whole point to the air marshall program. The odds of an air marshall being on any particular flight are pretty low, but high enough that a potential hijacker has to wonder if any one of dozens of passengers just might be waiting for him to turn his back…
No, I meant the other way around. How about a subscription service that pushes alerts to the cell phones of subscribers? It doesn’t have to just be a warning about an imminent attack, but it could be, “Be on the lookout for a man with a blue baseball cap and a long black coat. If you see him, press 99*, and you will be instantly be connected with an operator working this specific case”.
Why not? Maybe it’s not a good idea, but let’s not dismiss it out of hand. Allow concealed carry throughout the country (it’s already allowed in most states, I believe).
No, I mean like handcuffs. More specifically, those little zip-tie cuffs. And since terrorists may be using cutting implements as weapons, throw in some long elbow length leather gloves and a small lightweight riot shield. Nothing lethal, nothing that can be used to take over a plane, but stuff that would be useful to stop a hijacking.
Obviously, making that kind of stuff available 24/7 would have severe privacy implications. I’m thinking more along the lines of the police getting a court order or having some other concrete procedure to go through that would allow them to release footage in a specific place and during a specific time interval.
But then you have regulations that empower one individual and disempower another. I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the specific acts you mention.
Maybe they don’t have any information. It was rush hour. There would have been thousands and thousands of commuters going through, and the bombs were set off with a timer. If the CCTV does have any information it’s going to take a lot of sifting to get to it.
The only info the camera phones have given is nightmare-inducing pictures.
Citizens in on the act can do a lot of good, definitely agreed. But would guns have helped on the plane? The onlookers overpowered Richard Reid without the aid of bombs.
Again I think that the situation in Israel is too different to use as a comparison. They’re in a lot more regualar immediate danger than London is.
Ait marshalls are a good thing. I do also think your idea of proactive and trained passengers could be good if it’s workable.
This I can see being used to create terror. Hack the system, send out false alarms. Or people pressing 99*, not getting through because so many others are doing the same, and deciding to do something about it themselves - even if it’s the wrong guy.
Maybe so, but this attack took place in London. There aren’t even legal guns at all in the UK. Concealed carry is never going to happen.
They do do this, on a TV show called Crimewatch, for other crimes, so presumably could for terrorism too.
Draconian measures are not an appropriate response to one day of bombing.
I just noticed that for some reason half my last post in this thread got cut off. 
Great. You’re knowledge is based on TV crime drama.
Yes, obviously - and these are the things that are least likely to be found by the public, and most likely to be found by trawls of finances, phone records, and forensic evidence.
Again, do you realise the immense taks you’re talking about? The London Underground alone has thousands of CCTV cameras. The police would love it all to be immediately available at the push of a button, irrespective of public access - but it’s just not going to happen!
Different model. The useful information is presented, and the extraneous information removed. Give the public lots of unnecessary footage, and you’ll get flooded with irrelevant and unhelpful responses, burying any useful leads. Plus, I’d hate to see what fun the 9/11-missile-conspiracy nuts would have with it.
Apologies for multiple spelling errors in the above post
I think we should get Sam Stone over here immediately, as he obviously knows far more than the police about crime investigation.
To hell with doing things by the book, we need a can-do maverick who gets results. Give him 48 hours to crack this case wide open, then hand over all the tapes to CSI for enhancement and magnification. We should have this one solved by 10pm in time for the news.
But, to be serious, I think the idea that the investigation could be could be open to thousands of untrained members of the public playing private investigator/vigilantee sounds like the perfect way to waste everyone’s time, swamp the police with thousands of dumb theories, contaminate any possible evidence and ruin any possibility of a fair and successful trial.
A question for Sam Stone - how many hours of footage (of such exciting things as people waiting for trains, walking down corridors, sitting on trains, buying tickets) would you be prepared to watch in detail? How many minutes do you think Joe Public would bother watching?
How is this different from publishing newspaper articles and WANTED posters with police sketches drawn from eyewitness accounts (other than the fact that a mechanical record is more reliable than a human recollection)?
I’m just not seeing it, other than the point I’ve already partially admitted (it would make it harder, but still possible, to seat an unbiased jury – at worst, it would be rather like a celebrity media-circus trial).
‘Wanted’ poster et al are once again examples of carefully selected information, and of not making vast amounts of information public.
And jury selection is, AFAIK, very different in the US - the individual selection and rejection of jurors doesn’t happen in the same way, and the decision here is simply whether or not there is a risk that an as-yet-unselected jury will have been unduly influenced by media coverage.
I’m not sure what the fact that the politicans will refuse to implement a proposal has to do with its objective merits. The mullahs in Tehran aren’t about to allow freedom of religion, and Kim Jong Il isn’t about to allow private ownership of property, but that doesn’t discredit either of those concepts.
Changing from an unarmed populace (and unarmed police force) to a situation where concealed carry is commonplace would be a huge cultural shift. So there’s nothing objective about it at all, and it’s nonsense to talk about it in isolation.
The scenario you set forth in this sub-thread is:
That is a case of “carefully selected information” (a specific image labelled as a depiction of the perps), and is the video equivalent to a “WANTED” poster.
If you meant to say that it would be irresponsible to just slap such a label on any old picture of an Arabic-looking person seen on the video, I agree, and take it for granted that everybody else will do likewise.
Again, my read (now confirmed) is that this isn’t what Sam Stone was suggesting.
The sifting of the wheat from the chaff doesn’t happen by magic. It is accomplished by human observation. I don’t see any reason why concerned citizens couldn’t be allowed to help out, provided that actual decisions leading to action are made by people with training and accountability.
Sorting out useful tips from mistakes, vendettas, sad sacks who confess to everything in the news, etc is part of police life in any case. A first-stage winnowing, though crude, is still a step in the right direction.
I’d love to see it, myself. The system also provides entertainment value. 