91–100 of 159 posts
I'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where. What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to fin…
I'm staunchly pro-Palestinian, despise Tommy Robinson and still think this is not a good thing. The UK has been draconian with its anti-free speech and surveillance. Even if you hate what this guy stands for (I do), it's only a matter of time before these techniques are used against causes you do stand for. Somehow I don't think Tommy Robinson would take such an approach to say the classification of Palestine Action…
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Regarding the broader picture, it’s interesting that despite the ineffectiveness of even major protests over the past decades—Iraq being the prime example—governments are introducing more obstacles to disincentivise them. From the perspective of government, why not simply ignore such events, use existing (extensive) laws which cover them? It’s like states are unconsciously preparing for the large-scale disruption whi…
Because then (when mass protests are simply ignored) the "Russian disinformation" about UK not being precisely a "democracy" suddenly starts looking true?
If you have no protests, it means that the public is ok with what the government is doing. In a democracy (whatever one understands by it) that is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There isn’t the resources to watch all of this cctv. Sure someone could spend weeks watching all the feeds in the city to track the thief down. But the cost quickly exceeds the value of the bike. Something that’s changing with computer video and AI powered video search tools. I’m very in two minds about it. Being able to solve bike thefts would be great, but a lot of evil could come from a system that actually can mo…
What do you mean? Pulling a few camera feeds to track down or identify a theft occurring at a known location at a roughly known time is a few minute's work. It's worth the value of the bike let alone the value of prosecuting a criminal.
1. The odds of the actual bike itself being covered by CCTV during the theft is pretty slim. Nearby? Sure, but probably not recording the offence. Then unless you're got a precise time window/know where the thief went, you're stuck watching hours of footage hoping to spot the right bike.
2. Even if you do get a clear, high quality facial picture of the thief, you have no magic way of figuring out who that is. You essentially email it to all the local cops and hope someone's recognises them.
The result is your bike theft turns into quite a big investigate, with a sub 5% likelihood of a position outcome.
I'm old enough to remember when my colleagues were vigourously expressing concern about the potential for Oyster cards to be used to track who was protesting where. What remains astounding about the UK is how few people benefit from this enormous scale privacy invasion. David Cameron, while leader of the opposition, managed to get his bike stolen twice, and neither time did CCTV being literally everywhere help to fin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has been no violence at any of the previous marches iirc. I think people assume there must have been because Starmer and co are foaming for violence...but there weren't. Also, they have banned 11 people from getting visas because they were "agitators" and are deploying 4k police officers. Just as a reminder though, the UK has people standing for political office who were convicted of terrorist offences, we have…
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Wow, that's... quite the precedent. Presumably this is a Reform UK event, which I'm not a fan of, but still, I don't think this escalation of surveillance will end well. The article says that drones "will scan the faces of suspects", suspects of what exactly? What crime has been committed that they suspect people for?
It's worth stating that historically these right-wing culture protests have been a bit more violent in nature than most protests are. I'm not suggesting that everyone in the protest is violent, but there's enough mob mentality that makes me (someone who lives in London) uncomfortable.
Regarding the broader picture, it’s interesting that despite the ineffectiveness of even major protests over the past decades—Iraq being the prime example—governments are introducing more obstacles to disincentivise them. From the perspective of government, why not simply ignore such events, use existing (extensive) laws which cover them? It’s like states are unconsciously preparing for the large-scale disruption whi…
"Why not ignore such events?" Because then (when mass protests are simply ignored) the "Russian disinformation" about UK not being precisely a "democracy" suddenly starts looking true? If you have no protests, it means that the public is ok with what the government is doing. In a democracy (whatever one understands by it) that is.
My question is, what is the reason that more restrictions on protest are being brought in now specifically (ever since the Extinction Rebellion protests); is there a deeper motive. If there is, I don’t know what it would be.