Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#111

Post by stordoff » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #95

HenryBemis wrote: post #26

Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements. We are talking about a nation that has 4,200,000 [1] cameras surveilling them and nobody bats an eye about this. For some reason, Britons have decided (or was forced to them and they didn't push back) that privacy is not necessary, so, let them hav…

>> Briton are 95% comfortable with massive surveillance. The "average Joe" has the "I got nothing to hide" and that "go get them paedophiles", which are very true statements. The British just have their own ideas about privacy. I've lived here 12 years and I still don't understand how almost everybody leaves their blinds up with the lights on, after dark. It's not without risk either. I think it was last summer when,…

I suspect it's partially an emotional response to ID cards - there's no current requirement to carry (or hold) ID, and the concept conjurers up clear images of Nazi Germany.

Regarding blinds, I doubt many people even think about it - you aren't doing anything private (or even interesting most of the time), so it just doesn't occur to you. It's also generally considered rude to stare into people's houses, so even if they can, there is a general presumption that people won't. It's quite possibly related to your last paragraph - there's no culture of shielding your day-to-day life because they has never been anything really to shield it from ("no need to hide" being subtly different to "nothing to hide" - even people with things they would rather not be public don't necessarily see the need to conceal them from the government).

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#112

Post by opless » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 12:33 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #91

icc97 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, there goes another good theory. Perhaps I should change my example to the English getting sunburnt lying on Spanish beaches.

I think you'll find that is more likely Scots rather than English. The Big Yin famously described the effect in his Aussie tours. To be fair, us southerners can also burn as well (but I personally don't.) What you might consider "English" is two countries and four nations. It's complicated. For safety, I'd refer to the two large islands off the NW of mainland Europe as "Britain and Ireland" (in short.) It's complicat…

s/English/British/g

English people are from England, British people are from four nations.

But yes, Complicated. Very.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#113

Post by grkvlt » Mon, Feb 19, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

around_here wrote: post #104

grkvlt wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, would you have a problem with Argos using CCTV to track you via ML that identifies different individuals and records their path through the store? What about CCTV that is displayed on a monitor and a minimum wage drone views, and records people's paths through the store manually? The outcome is the same in all three cases - Argos has data about how individuals are using their property, and can use that data for w…

The "don't go there" answers only hold true if there are actual alternatives. It's a shit argument, and collusion to monitor and track customers is pretty much universal.

My point is that private companies are perfectly within their rights to track you on their own property, whether by computer or manually, and if you have a problem with it your only recourse is to avoid those companies. I have zero problem with a supermarket using my presence to improve the layout of their store, and to be honest, zero problem with Google tracking my phone's presence there to produce those useful 'when is this location busy' bar charts on their search results - it's helpful to me, and others, and free!

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#114

Post by brokenmachine » Tue, Feb 20, 2018, 12:14 AM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #68

bayerrr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German, you could not be more wrong with your idea about ID cards. ID cards are not used to track your movement. There is no need to show an ID to the police unless they have suspicion that you committed a crime and confront you. There are no passport controls along roads. There is a huge difference between the scales at which passport controls and CCTV can be executed, too, because passport controls require wor…

I'm talking about when the police stop you. I live in Belgium and I've seen the oppressive stop and searches the police do on buses. They come on and haul people off. You are required to have an ID on you at all times. If you don't have an ID on you you've committed an offence. It makes it very easy for police to find identities of people they question. In the UK you have the privacy that you haven't committed an off…

> So you can just give a fake address and the police can't do anything.

That sounds like a dangerous strategy. Surely lying to police is an offence.

You'd be better off asking what crime you are suspected of committing first, and if there is none, declining to answer.

Of course, police probably wouldn't like that strategy much either.

Re: Stop replacing London’s phone boxes with corporate surveillance

#115

Post by ljm » Tue, Feb 20, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

walshemj wrote: post #75

ljm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK government has an unhealthy obsession with surveillance but ID cards are a strange target. They offer nothing except convenience, considering if you ever want to buy alcohol or travel abroad as a Brit, then you have to get a driving license and a passport. The end result is that something as simple as proving who you are on a document, or renewing your driving license, requires that you provide every address y…

Yes give the police have more excuse to stop and ask for "papers please" guess which type of citizen will be asked for this.

The police don’t do that in the first place, it’s a paranoid myth that ignores the serious infringement on privacy in the UK.

Meanwhile those on an anonymity crusade have to show their phone provider legit ID (driving license, passport) to open up a porn blocker and provide every ID provider in the country evidence of where they’ve lived in 3 years in order to get anywhere. Meanwhile the police push for unfettered access to government databases.

The police aren’t stopping and searching because they need an ID card to ask for. They have plenty to go off already.