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How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

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Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#41

Post by rational-future »

Osmoticat wrote: post #29
jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #8

Very interesting article. I've been thinking about this more often recently (perhaps it's watching the 31C3 talks that do it) and I find that I'm becoming increasingly conflicted over the whole issue of surveillance. On one level, my gut instinct is "mass surveillance of innocent people is wrong"... But the moment I think of it from the law enforcement point of view, I realise how desperately I'd want that bulk data…

Mass surveillance has negligible impact on crime rates. The UK is one of the most surveilled nations on earth, yet has one of the highest crime rates in western Europe. If you want to truly impact crime rates, then put resources into fixing social problems.

Hehe, crime, kids, etc. are just excuses to grab more power and create a totalitarian surveillance state.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#42

Post by lozf »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

I guess it depends where you are but UK cities are right up there with surveillance on public transport too, both trains and buses[0]. Transport for London have a system that detects if you're still on a platform after a train to each destination has departed, and alerts a human - ostensibly in case you're contemplating suicide or otherwise need help. It stands to reason that implementing the likes of facial recognition and "Gait DNA"[1] is high on the agenda if not already functional.

Not to mention the huge incentives (>50% discount) for using a traceable RFID card as your "ticket" instead of paying with cash.

[0] http://boingboing.net/2009/08/31/london-bus-with-16-c.html from 2009 - newer buses, e.g. the 2012 "new" routemaster may well have more.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspon... from 2007.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#43

Post by jacquesm »

dllthomas wrote: post #40
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've actually made public surveillance sound entirely reasonable. A video camera in a private home would have a far higher chance of catching crimes in progress than a number plate camera ever did. So he hasn't done anything to make public surveillance sound entirely reasonable but you're just getting out of it what you want to hear. The scale: - kill everybody (crimerate: 0) - lock everybody up (only crimes comm…

You're assuming that a higher chance of being caught has no deterrent effect. My understanding is that this is very much not the case. On the flip side, you're also ignoring the opportunity for abuse of surveillance, which it may make sense to consider additional crime.

I don't subscribe to the view of humanity that we'd all be raging maniacs if we knew that we wouldn't get caught.

Most people are decent and most criminals are not smart enough to evaluate their chances of getting caught rationally, if they did then the prisons wouldn't be as full as they are.

The chances of getting caught if you're committing a crime are plenty high as it is, and yet we still have repeat offenders. As rule criminals are not capable of seeing the consequences of their actions, don't know the penalties for the crimes they commit and are frequently not even in control of what they're doing.

It's a complex situation, but surveillance does not seem - to me - to be a major factor. If it were then the crimerate in London would be around 0 today.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#44

Post by lozf »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
EliRivers wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That enables them to track the card, but not the person. The card does not have to be tied to a specific person. I suppose you could correlate known journeys someone made and work out which card is their's, or watch someone using the card on CCTV and use the timestamp to identify their card, or once you'd got someone in custody take their card and get their travel history, but if someone simply changes card (and pays…

Can you pay for those cards with cash? In NL they do everything possible to avoid you buying the cards with cash (and there is a surcharge for disposables).

You can pay a GBP5 "deposit", which is inconvenient to get back without registering, but cash top-ups are available from machines and ticket offices under certain circumstances.

Also, like with most things these days, we're sold on the convenience that registering adds i.e. no loss of funds if lost or stolen, and "auto top up" from your registered credit / debit card... most people don't care enough to pay an extra GBP5 to make their transport history "disappear" every so often - especially when there are so many other ways we're tracked.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#45

Post by MichaelCrawford »

lozf wrote: post #42
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

I guess it depends where you are but UK cities are right up there with surveillance on public transport too, both trains and buses[0]. Transport for London have a system that detects if you're still on a platform after a train to each destination has departed, and alerts a human - ostensibly in case you're contemplating suicide or otherwise need help. It stands to reason that implementing the likes of facial recognit…

Fuck.

I'm never leaving my house ever again.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#46

Post by MichaelCrawford »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

"Just because you're paranoid it doesn't mean they aren't really out to get you."

I have Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder. It's much like being manic-depressive and schizophrenic at the same time. One of the schizophrenic symptoms is paranoia; if the paranoia gets bad enough, I have visual hallucinations as well.

Having all this surveillance going on, even to the extent I am assured they're not looking for me, makes my illness far worse.

It doesn't help to take more medicine.

I would be very interested to see a comparison of psychiatric hospitalization rates from before and after Snowden's disclosures. It's not hard to get such statistics but it would be some work to interpret them meaningfully.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#47

Post by ycitm »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

Did you see the "Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes" adverts? Pretty scary:

http://imgur.com/oR4iFYs

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#48

Post by MichaelCrawford »

pdkl95 wrote: post #35
asuffield wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that they call it "analytics" or "big data" everyone seems cool with it. It generates massive value that everybody benefits from. People appreciate that.

I wonder how much real value is actually generated from web bugs. A lot of interesting stuff can be generated from server logs; much more if you use analyzers. I just wonder how much of the set of "analytics" that requires involving 3rd parties (web bugs and other referrer tricks) is actually useful and a value. The set that is a value "that everybody benefits from" is going to be even smaller. I'm sure most people w…

I spend a lot of time analyzing my own logs. I get a lot of value from it.

I am completely cool with someone analyzing their own logs if I visit their site. What I'm not cool with, is them finding out what _other_ sites I visit.

I regard the current focus on analytics as unduly obsessive. How much do you need to know about your customer to flog your products? Just because you can measure something, it doesn't mean that it's going to do anyone any good to measure it.

I used to do direct mail; all we ever did was what today is known as A/B testing - we'd send "test drops" to different lists, with different prices, different wording in the offer letters and so on. It worked really well.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#49

Post by MichaelCrawford »

ycitm wrote: post #47
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

Did you see the "Secure Beneath the Watchful Eyes" adverts? Pretty scary: http://imgur.com/oR4iFYs

The artistic style of that image looks just like Soviet propaganda.

Re: How Britain Exported Next-Generation Surveillance

#50

Post by mrec »

roel_v wrote: post #36
MichaelCrawford wrote: post #2

Well that clinches my decision. I've been getting around on public transit for quite a long time, but have been thinking of getting a car. Now I've decided not to. I'm a generally law-abiding citizen, but I simply do not wish to be tracked. How would you feel were someone to follow you around everywhere you went? Even if they kept their distance, never spoke to you our overtly harmed you in any way, it would be very…

In a few years there will be enough processing power to do facial recognition that will be accurate let's say 90% or so of the time. More than enough to track you everywhere where there is public transport.

Masks. They're terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.
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