Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 156 posts

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#111

Post by icebraining »

billyjobob wrote: post #91
confounded wrote: post #11

Growing up in the UK and living in the US has given me the odd distinction of being strongly against online surveillance of private space, and strongly in favor of regulated visual surveillance of public space. CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of…

Men are far more likely than women to be the victims of all forms of violent crime, so why are you 'especially' concerned about women?

Not anymore, at least in the US: "Unlike in 2005 when a higher percentage of males than females were victims of one or more violent crimes, no significant difference was detected in the 2014 prevalence rates for males (1.2%) and females (1.1%) in 2014."

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv14.pdf

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#112

Post by dumb-saint »

rikkus wrote: post #105
dumb-saint wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that more authoritarianism leads to less crimes. This is a well-known fact. But at what cost? Historically, we have been through all this before. Notice that it's never just the cameras. You also have to make it illegal for me to hide from them. No face camouflage, for example. And even if you don't make it illegal, you will immediately single me out and pay close attention to me. Not in the old sense of havi…

There's plenty of spontaneity, randomness and street-level interaction occurring in the cities of the UK. I see this every day. I don't think CCTV is stopping this.

There's no point arguing over something we can't measure. Instead let me give you a scenario:

Behaviour X is illegal. "No expectation of privacy in the public space" people argue that, well, stopping illegal behaviours is great, don't you think? There will always be an implicit shaming: surely you are not up to something questionable, right?

Time passes and now 75% of the population believes that behaviour X is fine and should be legal. Nobody will ever rebel and do X in public, because they could go to jail. Civil disobedience is over.

No, we have total order and we should go through the "proper channels" to change the law. Like Snowden should have done. Like homosexuals should have done, instead of throwing the reality of their existence in everyone's face, in the public space.

Don't you see how much power this apparatus of surveillance represents? Don't you read enough history to know how much power corrupts, and how no human being can be trusted with it?

How the fuck can anyone believe that politicians care about crime? Crime has been going DOWN, consistently, for decades. Do you ever see politicians pointing that out? No! They want to give you more "solutions" for a problem that appears to be solving itself. Why? What is in it for them? Ask yourself that.

Want to save people? Show them how to eat better. Improving nutrition would be orders of magnitude more effective in saving lives. Can't be done though, because it would interfere with too many corporate interests.

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#113

Post by joncrocks »

morgante wrote: post #43
confounded wrote: post #11

Growing up in the UK and living in the US has given me the odd distinction of being strongly against online surveillance of private space, and strongly in favor of regulated visual surveillance of public space. CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of…

I definitely share your views. If I'm in public, I by definition should not expect privacy.

I think there's a bit of a miscommunication that happens when people discuss 'privacy' in this area.

With the advent of unprecedented recording and computational resources, comes a new type of privacy, which I would call here (and is used in other places) the 'right to be forgotten'.

I absolutely think that you shouldn't expect privacy in the sense of "no-one should be looking at me", but I think you should be able to be able to assume that information about what happens in public is not kept indefinitely, and only used to track people who have been suspected of a crime (and had authorisation given for surveillance).

While lots of things don't generally change 'on a computer', the scale of some things change, and when the scale of what's possible changes that can and should encourage debate.

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#114

Post by LordKano »

tombrossman wrote: post #86
white-flame wrote: post #2

This is selective enforcement, not equality under the law. I understand the load police tend to be under, but I really wish they would have some lottery enforcement style that grabbed one random instance of "common" crime like this at a time, and went whole-hog with it. They do it for speeding, so they can make a bit of money with fines, and have the hope of finding connected crimes; what's different about theft like…

I had my car stolen a while ago in San Diego county. I was very low on fuel so I knew whoever did it would have had to fill up soon after the theft. Fast forward two weeks and my car was found. When I got it back, a credit card receipt for fuel at a nearby gas station was sitting in a tray in the center console. The date and time were the same night as the theft, after I had parked for the night. I first rang the sta…

No one's career gets made by catching a car thief. Perhaps by busting a car theft operation but no one is going to get promoted for one car thief.

I would suspect that the hostility you felt from the officer was because you got your car back and no one was injured so there was no glory to be had in arresting the thief.

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#115

Post by predavlad »

icebraining wrote: post #111
billyjobob wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are far more likely than women to be the victims of all forms of violent crime, so why are you 'especially' concerned about women?

Not anymore, at least in the US: "Unlike in 2005 when a higher percentage of males than females were victims of one or more violent crimes, no significant difference was detected in the 2014 prevalence rates for males (1.2%) and females (1.1%) in 2014." https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv14.pdf

Equality ... finally !!!

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#116

Post by rebuilder »

dumb-saint wrote: post #71
confounded wrote: post #11

Growing up in the UK and living in the US has given me the odd distinction of being strongly against online surveillance of private space, and strongly in favor of regulated visual surveillance of public space. CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of…

I find it extremely creepy to visit the UK because of all the cameras, sometimes actively pointed at me. It is one thing to not expect privacy in the public space, in the sense that others can see you. It is another to be actively targeted by a gigantic network of cameras connected to who knows what -- in an age where automatic face recognition is becoming trivial. I would like to ask people who make the "you have no…

Here's a terrific-terrible idea: let's create an open network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition. Permanent logs, free access to all, an easy search function, plot all events on a map with timestamps. Should kick up a storm.

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#117

Post by [deleted] »

dumb-saint wrote: post #71
confounded wrote: post #11

Growing up in the UK and living in the US has given me the odd distinction of being strongly against online surveillance of private space, and strongly in favor of regulated visual surveillance of public space. CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of…

I find it extremely creepy to visit the UK because of all the cameras, sometimes actively pointed at me. It is one thing to not expect privacy in the public space, in the sense that others can see you. It is another to be actively targeted by a gigantic network of cameras connected to who knows what -- in an age where automatic face recognition is becoming trivial. I would like to ask people who make the "you have no…

[deleted]

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#118

Post by dumb-saint »

rebuilder wrote: post #116
dumb-saint wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it extremely creepy to visit the UK because of all the cameras, sometimes actively pointed at me. It is one thing to not expect privacy in the public space, in the sense that others can see you. It is another to be actively targeted by a gigantic network of cameras connected to who knows what -- in an age where automatic face recognition is becoming trivial. I would like to ask people who make the "you have no…

Here's a terrific-terrible idea: let's create an open network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition. Permanent logs, free access to all, an easy search function, plot all events on a map with timestamps. Should kick up a storm.

That is a great idea, but it will not work. People will say that only the government and big corporations can be trusted with that data, because of reasons.

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#119

Post by Fnoord »

techer wrote: post #109
pdimitar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ Apologies for off-topic ] As a relatively new cyberpunk fan, let me give you a few points: (1) Cyberpunk is very much about being realistic about human nature. Some of us (like me) assume malice by default. You might not believe me but I get saddened every time I am proven right. This is coming from a 36-year old programmer supporting his mother and girlfriend. (2) We don't assume altruism by default because (2.1)…

Thanks for that. Can you suggest some additional reading?

Not sure if manga qualifies as reading but for manga/anime cyberpunk I can recommend Ghost In The Shell. It deeply touches these subjects, from multiple angles.

Then, since you specifically said read, there's Philip K. Dick, who wrote loads of books on this genre. When people think of Blade Runner they don't even know its based on a novel by him [1]

If you're referring to a book which studies cyberpunk as a genre from a documentary PoV then I wouldn't know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_...

Re: A World of Surveillance Doesn’t Always Help to Catch a Thief

#120

Post by pdimitar »

Fnoord wrote: post #119
techer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that. Can you suggest some additional reading?

Not sure if manga qualifies as reading but for manga/anime cyberpunk I can recommend Ghost In The Shell. It deeply touches these subjects, from multiple angles. Then, since you specifically said read, there's Philip K. Dick, who wrote loads of books on this genre. When people think of Blade Runner they don't even know its based on a novel by him [1] If you're referring to a book which studies cyberpunk as a genre fro…

+1000 for "Ghost in the Shell", I am ashamed to have forgotten to mention this absolute masterpiece which remains unbeaten in this genre to this day.
Post reply on HN