I guess the Britons have it right now. They have these new video cameras in London with sound. So the guy who is watching from office location X and using his gizmo to zoom in on someone loitering or whatever can open up the loud speaker and tell him to get a move on. I guess the sound system has not made it ot the US yet, but it is on it’s way.
So what do you think about being watched at the post office, walking your dog, at a restaurant, strolling down main street? Is it an invasion of your privacy? Do you care if it is a private business watching or the Gov’t? What if te latter?
I ask all this because GMA this morning had a thing on Dumb Criminals: posting their stupidness on YouTube and other sites. They then got into crimes caught on tape, this is where the scope of how much we are actually watched in our day to day lives comes in. They show people in Atlanta being surveilled from all sorts of places…and a few where you wouldn’t expect it. i.e. public restrooms in city parks.
So how do you feel about public surveilance, how much is to much?
Does it make you feel safer, or does it make you feel less likely to walk in public areas, or somewhere in between?
I’d only go for it if it were mutual… instead of public video cams, public video conferences. I get to watch them watching me too. Big Brother Reality TV!
I’m all for public cams as long as they don’t see anywhere that would be illegal for a private person to observe. A camera pointed at an intersection from above is ok, but if the area is built up, the camera might incidentally be peering into peoples apartments and that is not ok.
I’ve no problem with it at all. Maybe it’ll deter crime, maybe it’ll help catch those who commit one. If you’re not doing anything wrong then what’s the worry? Somebody’s filming me? So what. They’re going to be very bored.
No problem. Any person could be looking at you at any time. Cameras are just an electronic means of looking. Unless you’re in a place where there is an obvious expectation of privacy (like a dressing room), I think what we do in public is fair game.
Several weeks back I wa sin the Gap buying some Jeans, I noticed when I went into the dressing room there was a sign that said something to the effect of “these rooms are routinely monitored by security surveillance” :dubious:
I was quite dismayed, I asked the girl giving apparell numbers to folks entering the dressing room and she said it was only OUTSIDE the dressing rooms.
Personally, I find it unsettling. Not sure exactly why. I don’t think we need ANY more incursion into our private lives by the government (and I work for the GOV).
I dunno that I feel too terribly strongly about this, and I realize that you give up all kinds of expectations of privacy when you cross your doorstep, but I place considerable value on an individual’s ability to remain relatively anonymous so long as they are not openly violating any particular laws.
The cameras themselves might be relatively innocuous. But will that continue to be the case when face recognition software or technology such as RFID improves? Who retains the tapes, for how long, and for what purposes?
I may be oversensitive to (defined broadly) surveillance and intrusions upon privacy, but I lump this in with so many recent and proposed developments including the requirement of national “smart” IDs and passports, without cause stops of pedestrians or drivers by police, reduced requirements of probable cause for searches, file sharing of personal information among governmental agencies, the compilation of profiling databases… Added together they can reduce privacy as nearly as effectively as requiring everyone to submit a DNA sample and carry a GPS transmitter.
As with most complaints against intrusions of privacy, the response is generally, “Well, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?” Just wanted to say that allowing authorities to tell a loiterer to “move along” is not sufficient reason for me to welcome a potential intrusion upon my pricavy - however minimal.
The thing is, when your outside your house, you’re not living a “private” life. These cameras are not monitoring your private life. If you walk out of your door and proceed to a porn shop, it could be embarrassing to have that recorded by cameras. But it is IN NO WAY an intrusion into your private life. The trip between the two places was PUBLIC. Is it embarrassing? Sure. But outside ones home, one should be prepared that all ones actions are open to public scrutiny.
I totally agree with Hypno, if you re in any public place where members of the public have unrestricted access then it doesnt matter if there actually is someone there at that time or not and it doesnt actually matter if the area is covered by cctv or not.
There cant be many reasons for a pedestrian to wait until the area is deserted before carrying out an action that they wish to remain unseen.
Car crime ?vandalism?graffiti? leaving your dogs excrement where it fell?
Off the top of my head Icant think of any reasons that would arouse my sympathy.
I don’t do things in public that need hiding. I will, however, be more mindful when hitching things up or making other such adjustments when I think I’m unseen
As a photographer who frequently pushes the laws concerning the right to document anything you wish in public, I can’t also deny this right to the faceless among us. Even as a grifter and urban explorer, who encounters these cameras in the private sector where one is not supposed to be, it has always been no harm, no foul. Cameras don’t deter us from exploring, but they serve as an extra reminder to be extra careful about not destroying anything. Sometimes you get careless, etc. There are hours and hours of video feed and unless something is very obviously messed up or stolen, no one will ever check it.
In other words, whether I am doing something wrong or not, I still say “who cares?” Video tape all you want, it won’t stop my friends and I from exploring to our hearts content.
Somehow there seems to me to be a difference between being observed by assorted random people as you go about your business in public, and having a centralized network that can correlate all information from wherever you go, and potentially record it all for posterity in some vast cross-referenced database somewhere. If the cameras don’t record everything (or record everything on an hour-long tape loop, or a hard drive that only holds an hour’s worth of data and is then overwritten) I don’t think I’d have a problem with that. It’s the possibility of a network that can record everything that bothers me.
In the non-surveilled world, you leave your house to go to the porn shop, and although Mrs. Grundy down the street may note that you’re going someplace, she has no idea where you’re going. As you drive down Main Street, other people may see your car, but they don’t know where you’re headed (or even if you’re coming straight from home or work, or for all they know maybe you just left from that sleazy motel on the edge of town that charges by the hour). Now, when you get to the porn shop, someone might see you, but at that point you can get all furtive and glance around and make sure no one you know is watching you; if you see the deacon from your church walking down the street, you can duck into that Chinese buffet next door and pretend like that’s where you were going all along.
Of course, without omnipresent surveillance cameras, someone who is the specific target of an investigation may be assigned a whole team of plainclothes detectives to follow him around wherever he goes, but if nothing else the sheer impracticality of doing that to everyone helps ensure that only people who have given some reason to be watched are subjected to that level of scrutiny. Having cameras everyplace, if they record and are linked to a centralized database, means that everyone could in effect be followed around wherever they go, and there every move noted.
I know–If you have nothing to hide, there’s nothing to worry about. We should all be honest about ourselves, rather than being the sort of hypocrites who go to porno shops or sleazy motels and then lie about it. (But what about AA meetings…?) But humans aren’t angels, and I don’t like the thought of such a world.
What’s the worry, MEB? It’s not as tho our gov’t would ever actually spy on its own citizens or use information gathered for anything other than the most innocuous purposes! Sheesh! :rolleyes:
As with most such surveillance/search arguments, my position is that the presumption should be for anonymity and privacy, and that it is the intrusions upon same that should be required to meet a high standard. But my preference is clearly in the minority these days.
Your point is a good one. One thing to consider is the potential of private cameras. If a whole lotta folks put their webcams in their windows and record what’s on the street, it could lead to the concern you illustrate. This is not as out there as one might think. Storage is getting cheaper so people can record and store lots of imagery. It might be possible for a private internet market for video footage to emerge. People who have footage of public streets and locations could put it up for purchase from anyone who wants it. Combined with face recognition software, one private individual could learn quite a bit about anothers movements. Tracking one’s SO or children might be one use. Private Investigators would probably put it to good use. Corporations might track persons of interest. One could become a internet Papparazzi simply by tracking a celebrity through their daily life by these private webcams.
And if no private locations are disclosed, I doubt that there’s anything illegal about it. It may be that Big Brother is not the government, but private enterprise.
If you want a sci-fi exploration of that scenario, read **Kiln People ** by David Brin. It outlines a world in which almost any location one goes in a city is observed by webcams.
I don’t like it. I don’t ever like trading privacy for security.
That’s some dangerous thinking, in my opinion. Would it bother you if the police physically followed you around 24-7? Where’s the difference? There are plenty of things I may do which are perfectly legal, but which I would rather not have made part of the public record.
And speaking of public records, would not government-maintained video records be subject to open records requests? So that, say, some private investigator working on a divorce case might obtain them and use them to track his subject?
I don’t have a problem with private persons or businesses setting up surveillance cameras to protect their property. But I have a big problem with government surveillance, at least if it is pervasive. (Surveillance of a few high-traffic, high-crime public areas might be reasonable use of the technology.)
Dinsdale What does RFID have to do with survellance cams?
I don’t really see an issue with them. We had a case here in Stockton a coupleof weeks ago where a couple of guys robbed a store. A retired cop monitoring cams downtown was able to monitor the guys trail over a couple dozen blocks and direct police right to them. I can suppport more of that.
