Lords: rise of CCTV is threat to freedom – Guardian.co.uk: The steady expansion of the “surveillance society” risks undermining fundamental freedoms including the right to privacy, according to a House of Lords report published today.
The peers say Britain has constructed one of the most extensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world in the name of combating terrorism and crime and improving administrative efficiency.
The report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, by the Lords’ constitution committee, says Britain leads the world in the use of CCTV, with an estimated 4m cameras, and in building a national DNA database, with more than 7% of the population already logged compared with 0.5% in the America.
I guess getting RFID chips implanted into persons is the next step. Hell, if you have an Oyster card, your movements can be very easily tracked while using public transportation.
If you have nothing to hide, why do you care? People are like sheep, without a shephard, bad shit happens.
4 million CCTV cameras. The vast infrastructure of computers, software (facial recognition), communications, etc. to operate this system accounts for a huge sum of money. How many people are required to actually monitor, maintain and operate the equipment? Would all this money and personnel perhaps be better utilized in patrolling areas of high crime?
Study after study shows the CCTVs in the UK offer no deterrent value and very little use in solving crimes. So why do the Brits keep installing more and more of the durned things? A skeptic might say it was just to get people gradually accustomed to being observed at all times. George Orwell may have been off by a few years but, in the UK, at least, it looks he will be proven right.
It’s too late for “Great” Britain but one hopes Americans will come to their senses sooner rather than too late.
#1, You have nothing to hide? Why don’t you tell all of us how much you earn?
If you have nothing to hide, why don’t you walk on the street naked?
#3 Kudos,
#1 OWNED!
#5, The British Prime Minister is from the Labour Party, lefty as you can get.
#1 I’ll be right over with my camcorder since you have nothing to hide. I will film you jerking off in your bedroom since you have nothing to hide. I will post it on the internet since you have nothing to hide.
RFID chips? We’ve already got ’em in our credit cards and passports here. That’s why I bought the anti-RFID wallet and passport holder. I’ll decide when someone reads my card.
I would support the CCTV infrastructure if the people who paid for it can access it as well, i.e. the taxpayer.
#13, where is your proff that “gun violence skyrockets”?
Alls i can see is a post with your ignorant opinions and no real facts..
Have you been following Paddy-Hoes example and spouting off info with no backup?
#12
Glad to see you can make a relevent post in this otherwise bleak thread
[Ed. Duplicate comment deleted]
#15 – http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2328368.ece
15,
Never let facts get in the way of a good political belief.
#17
I asked for Ah_Yea’s proof, but since you two are basically clones I will let you hold his little hand and post for him..
Thanks Paddy
#19, sorry my page is lagging, didn’t see your #19
Jimbo… I’m getting really confused by your self-references!
#20 – Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don’t look around my eyes, look into my eyes, you’re under. You didn’t see any CCTV camera’s… 😉
Paddy-Hoe-Bag,
Those numbers seem pretty constant from 04 to 07…
The gun crime thing has kind of staved off recently(07/08), the last big news story was of a child being shot by a teen……with a 1914 british sidearm of all things….Resourceful brits.
NI has a bigger gun problem than the mainland, but thats Libya’s fault
# 24 jimbo said, “Those numbers seem pretty constant from 04 to 07…”
Could be. I was just posting what a quick search revealed.
#19 ever wonder why the first and second amendment are tied together? Don’t read any history of the martial arts. It might make you think differently about a few things. (http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am1)
[Ed. Anyone still posting links with “www” still in gets just desserts. They don’t work. Remove the three w’s.]
Orwell’s novel “1984” was meant to be a warning; not an instruction manual.
All these cameras and dna data banks===a good social experiment. Is there any actual data/statistics about various issues of interest? We’ve all read stories now and then about criminals being caught because they were on camera or dna sample was secured==but what are the stats.
Without even looking it up===AH YEA–I’ll bet if gun violence has gone up it is still one/tenth of the USA violence.
Any takers?==or just a bunch of self centered gun totting chicken-littles?
#28, Don’t have time to find the link again, but was reading somewhere that guncrime is increasing more in UK than US, but the overall instances are lower due to the pop. difference.
Still though, gun crime in the UK doesn’t appear to be AS extreme as the US, with the majority of it being linked with large cash robberies and minority gang rivalry.
We don’t have mass shootings here…unlike a certain other country of gun totting chicken-littles.
“All these cameras and dna data banks===a good social experiment. Is there any actual data/statistics about various issues of interest?”
If you come across any stats, keep me posted?
Here you go, all you anti-gun koolaid drinkers!
WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE?
A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE
By Don B. Kates* and Gary Mauser**
Don B. Kates (Ll.B., Yale, 1966) is an American criminologist and constitutional lawyer.
Gary Mauser (Ph.D., U. California, Irvine, 1970) is a Canadian criminologist and
university professor at Simon Fraser University.
“Police statistics show that England and Wales are enduring a serious crime wave. In contrast to North America, where the homicide rate has been falling for over 20 years, the
homicide rate in England and Wales has been growing over the same time period. (See Figure 1). In the 1990s alone, the homicide rate jumped 50%, going from 1.1 per 100,000 in 1990 to 1.6 per
100,000 in 2000, and the homicide has remained higher, averaging 1.7 per 100,000 since 2001. As for violent crime in general, police statistics show a huge increase since the handgun
ban, and since 1996 violent crime has been more serious than in the United States (See Figure 2). The rate of violent crime has jumped from 400 per 100,000 in 1988 to almost 1,400 per 100,000
in 2000. In contrast, not only are violent crime rates lower in the United States,there they are continuing to decline.”
You might need to create a login to access this paper, but it’s worth it.
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=998893
#30, is this recent?
“In 1900 there were few gun laws. New York had no handgun law and California no waiting period. Guns of all types could be ordered by mail or bought anonymously. And the homicide rate was 1.2; about one-sixth of what it is today.”
“Ministers should examine whether local authorities, rather than the police, are the appropriate bodies to mount surveillance operations, the peers say. If they are, then their use should be confined to crime investigations that carry a minimum two-year prison sentence.”
Be careful what you ask for. The local council will make littering a minimum 2 year prison sentence! Letting your dog crap on the sidewalk would be a 5 year mandatory.
Uhm, well, that last might not be a bad idea…
#31 jimbo.
The paper was published in 2006, so it’s close enough.
This is an excellent paper. Not only does it give the well researched numbers, but it also offers other informative tidbits as well, such as:
“On the one hand, despite
constant substantially increasing gun ownership, in the 1990s the U.S. saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence. On the other hand, the same period in the United Kingdom saw constant and dramatically increasing violent crime to which England’s response
was ever-more drastic gun controls including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns.134 Nevertheless, to reiterate, criminal violence so continued its rampant increase that by 2000 England surpassed the U.S. to become one of the developed world’s most violence-ridden nations. Ironic though this is, the English governments’ desperate responses to the crime crisis are even more so. Predictably ever-heavier penalties are proposed for the ever-increasing crimes involving the guns no one is supposed to have any more. More ominously, since England has no written constitution, the government is able to jettison civil liberties to a far greater extent than anything American critics of the Warren Court ever dreamed of.”
Let’s hear that last part again. “since England has no
written constitution, the government is able to jettison civil liberties to a far greater extent than anything American critics of the Warren Court ever dreamed of.”
Hurray for that “Damned piece of paper”!!
#26 Paul.
Thanks for that excellent link!
I’ve bookmarked it.
Who needs to implant RFID chips into people, when every Tom, Dick & Harry has a cellphone, PDA or MP3 player on them all the time?