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

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

#91

Post by billyjobob »

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?

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

#92

Post by dumb-saint »

ciaranm wrote: post #84
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…

Lots of CCTV isn't government-run. Some is, like local parks or whatever, but most is run by businesses who want to be able to catch folks who have broken in. In order to get access to the footage, police generally need a warrant. I guess I disagree that "camera == authoritarian", but I totally get your concerns. I'd be more worried about the secret courts(US) and super-injunctions(England) that mean we can't talk ab…

I have no problem with businesses having CCTV inside their premises -- as long as this is clearly advertised, so that I can decide if I'm ok with it or not. But I don't think they have the right to point the camera to the public space outside and film me without my consent.

Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it. There is no way around it. Maybe you don't value what they destroy, but it is hard to deny that something is destroyed.

Imagine kids playing. Do you think they behave the same when no adults are watching? And do you think it is good for mental health to have zero "unsupervised" time?

And then, let's not be naive. After Snowden we know that the reach of the government knows no bounds. Every private camera is potentially public. Everything that is recorded is potentially recorded forever, and sifted through by increasingly powerful algorithms. In this realty, one less camera is always a little bit more freedom for everyone -- to do both good and bad things, of course, but I would rather live like a free adult than as a constantly supervised child, always submissive to Society with a big S.

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

#95

Post by pdimitar »

dumb-saint wrote: post #85
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding automatic face recognition: I believe most US/European citizens, at least those who travel on airplanes, are in the facial recognition corpus of the intelligence services by now. What they do (I'm guessing) is use the cameras at passport checkpoints in airports. There they get many thousands of frames of your face from various angles, and due to the strict ordering in the queue they can match all those to y…

Yes, I think modern airports are a good prototype for the sort of dystopian environments we can expect in the future. It will only get worse until the entire thing collapses, as it always does -- Stasi, McCarthyism, Gestapo, you name it. This time it's more scary because the technology is sci-fi compared to the previous iterations. I am more and more convinced that the cyberpunk guys got it right in terms of predicti…

[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) history is [mostly] not on the side of this sentiment and (2.2) we are touched by ambition and greed ourselves and we realize that we could become just as bad (if not worse) given the same power as the current spy agencies / corporate hires / whatever else.

(3) We understand that "pure capitalism" and "corporatism" leads to the 0.5% having 95% of the capital, assets and anything else valuable. So when you see a dark art piece on DeviantArt showing people miserable on the streets while a high-tech shiny vehicle surrounded by police-men passes by, and a few huge adverts are glowing in the background, don't be quick to say "2edgy4me". ;)

(4) We also know technology is seen as a way of gaining an unfair advantage over everybody else -- and most of the time technology is not used to the majority's advantage. If somebody invents AI by themselves, do you think they'll just share it with the world? LOL no. The "Transcedence" movie script is the most likely scenario -- the AI becomes sentient, escapes to the internet to evade attackers, and then talks to you through a smartphone or a tablet.

=== The general cyberpunk audience is wide and interesting but it mostly boils down to two types:

(1) Rebelious teenagers who would give everything just to prove the bad adults that if their thoughts and feelings are ignored, the world is gonna go to shit (and to be fair, they might have a point). Some of them are toxic, some are not -- but they're mostly an okay bunch. Still, I give them kudos for going outside the typical teenager boxes. Getting engaged in cyberpunk fandom consciously implies some level of critical thinking, IMO.

(2) A group of rather dark-souled adults who stopped believing in the "bright future" a long time ago. Again, we're touched by greed and ambition ourselves, we're very conscious about the balance of power around the world and we don't kid ourselves.

I hope this helps you understand the cyberpunk bunch a bit.

EDIT:

As mentioned by @Fnoord a few comments below, "Ghost in the Shell" is your absolute Bible of a starting place in the cyberpunk genre. The anime movies and the series touch on a plethora of problems that don't even exist yet but are extremely likely to exist pretty soon. And they are a masterpiece in exposing the corruption which all of us would be vulnerable to.

Order of watching:

http://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/2922/in-what-order-...

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

#96

Post by adrianN »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #48
nkurz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where ubiquitous automated cameras sent you a ticket every time you jaywalked, or if your car automatically reported you every time you exceeded the speed limit. I'm probably being naive, but I think having rules that are universally enforced would be much better than our current approach of selective enforcement. I'd expect that as soon as those with power to change the law are negatively affected by…

You're extremely naive. The US and its individual states have a litany of laws on the books. There are so many that I can get sure every person breaks at least one law everyday, gay people in particular. It's sad but most laws do not get repealed.

If every law were properly enforced, then this situation would likely change. In the current situation with selective enforcement you're generally okay until someone in power has a problem with you. Then you're fucked. This is worse than enforcing the laws as they are written in the books, imho.

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

#97

Post by adrianN »

barsonme wrote: post #79
ryandrake wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with no speeding laws. It's not the speeding part that hurts people and causes damage, it's the crashing part. We, as a culture, love to make these second order laws that outlaw not the harmful action but the risky "derivative" of the harmful action. Because some people might crash when they speed, we outlaw speeding. Because some people might hijack planes, we confiscate nail cutters and toothpaste. Because…

I'd be totally down to remove speed limits in some places (I drive cross-state every weekend, so I'd love it :-) but, in my opinion, speed limits can be useful in certain areas. Off the top of my head: - Residential areas (like actual suburbs or cities) would benefit from speed limits. I'm a bit of a libertarian, but I'd prefer we have intentionally slow things down in highly populated areas, particularly where there…

I also think that speeding laws are good. However I think it would be better if we designed our streets so that drivers don't drive at dangerous speeds. Have frequent speed bumps, narrow lanes, cobblestones, etc on residential streets.

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

#98

Post by anexprogrammer »

Fnoord wrote: post #75
anexprogrammer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably mainly smoke and mirrors. I've lost count of the number of UK stories where some terrorist or criminal was known to authorities, or already on a watch list. They never manage to catch or prevent despite all these huge surveillance programmes. Then the news almost inevitably follows up that they've found out there were public exchanges of messages on Twitter 2 days before the incident or some such. It would b…

> Probably mainly smoke and mirrors. That is because CCTV does not directly decrease crime. Instead, it tries to increase the chance the alleged criminal gets seen, profiled, and caught later on which means the alleged criminal won't be able to commit crime for a while due to jail time. Mass surveillance and CCTV are notoriously bad at avoiding crime or terrorism from happening on the short term though, and as long a…

No idea why you're being downvoted, you're completely right [1]. CCTV does nothing to reduce crime, and can lull people into a false sense of security - as the GP illustrates. It perhaps increases convictions. To reduce we'd need Police near enough to react quickly. Visible Police on the beat again would probably have other societal benefits.

But they keep rolling out the security blanket. Someone is making a mint selling CCTV.

It would be better if we stopped letting the terrorists win repeatedly by completely changing our society in response.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/17/why-cctv-...

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

#99

Post by kamjam »

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…

I've never understood this "UK is creepy cos of all the cameras they have". Yes, there are a lot of them in the built up cities, most are privately owned and a lot are probably directly controlled by the government (and related agencies as well).

The large paranoia towards the UK probably stems from "The UK has more CCTV cameras per person than anywhere else in the world" but no ones knows this to be true for certain[1][2].

It may well be true, but don't think that you're being filmed any less in any other first world country. Also worth noting that most of the statistics are based on "per person". There may well be countries with a much higher population and much higher CTTV camera count.

1. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cctv_cameras_per_capi... 2. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/spy-britain-six-million-cc...

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

#100

Post by Ntrails »

dumb-saint wrote: post #92
ciaranm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of CCTV isn't government-run. Some is, like local parks or whatever, but most is run by businesses who want to be able to catch folks who have broken in. In order to get access to the footage, police generally need a warrant. I guess I disagree that "camera == authoritarian", but I totally get your concerns. I'd be more worried about the secret courts(US) and super-injunctions(England) that mean we can't talk ab…

I have no problem with businesses having CCTV inside their premises -- as long as this is clearly advertised, so that I can decide if I'm ok with it or not. But I don't think they have the right to point the camera to the public space outside and film me without my consent. Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes…

>Cameras are a tool of authoritarianism because they tell you in no uncertain terms that someone is watching. Pointing a camera at a space changes how people behave in it.

Not really? I don't look for cameras and I legit don't see them pretty much anywhere. I know they're in all the tube stations, but it doesn't make me wary?

I'm sure cameras mean you're less likely to do things which are not allowed - but guess what, I actually would rather have less vandalism, less assault, etc etc. Now if you want to straw man and say "well they can make anything illegal and use the cameras against you" - well sure. Come back to me when they do that, until then I'll keep enjoying lower crime rates.

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