New(?) argument against police cameras in public

[Erik von Nein]

I was arguing with someone the other day about the cameras police agencies have installed all through-out London. His central argument was that the government could use them for data mining and tracking people's activities through image recognition software. Basically, watch for areas the government suspects of harboring seditionists and get facial images from those cameras and, I guess, track these people down.

All told, how feasible could this even be? I argued that, if they already suspected an area of harboring people the government is going to target they'd just post police to watch the area, anyway, and mark down who came and went, that they didn't need the entire system for that, anyway. His counter was that it would make it easier for them to do.

All this was spread amoung arguments like "treating all citizens like criminals," "promoting a culture of fear," "taking away your right to anonymity in public," etc. All those I've heard before, but the first one was new to me.

[General Zod]

The "anonymity in public" argument is not only bullshit, it's self-contradictory. When you're in public areas you have no right to privacy and trying to claim otherwise is simply absurd.

[Gaidin]

From a more technical side than Zod, I think it would be really amusing to watch them try to follow someone from camera to camera and not lose him by going to the wrong camera. Probably a LOT easier to have a plainclothes officer tail him anyway...

[Sea Skimmer]

From a more technical side than Zod, I think it would be really amusing to watch them try to follow someone from camera to camera and not lose him by going to the wrong camera. Probably a LOT easier to have a plainclothes officer tail him anyway...

Did you just totally miss the point that software can do the job? Facial recognition technology is already been used on those British cameras, and its give the potential to track thousands of people without any human intervention.

[cosmicalstorm]

Yes I believe cameras like that are already used in malls and shops to track suspected shoplifters as they move about.

[Gaidin]

Did you just totally miss the point that software can do the job? Facial recognition technology is already been used on those British cameras, and its give the potential to track thousands of people without any human intervention.

Why no...I never would have...considering the last type of facial recognition software I've been reasonably familiar with needed pictures from angles the police never take. Either they've changed their policy on mugshots or I'm not familiar with newer methods. More than likely the latter I imagine.

[Sea Skimmer]

Why no...I never would have...considering the last type of facial recognition software I've been reasonably familiar with needed pictures from angles the police never take. Either they've changed their policy on mugshots or I'm not familiar with newer methods. More than likely the latter I imagine.

They’ve been advancing the technology by leaps and bounds over the last couple years, and the systems can now actually determine the contours of a face besides just the differences in contrast. It’s been driven by demands for security uses, and also be related technology that’s being developed to allow robot vehicles to recognize terrain features so they can navigate autonomously without using LIDAR.

Anyway, even if you need a human to first order the computer to start tracking someone (rather then just being able to feed in mugshots), it could then continue to follow them autonomously, searching through every possible camera to keep looking. The only limit to how many people you could track would really just be raw computing power.

[Starglider]

The technology has indeed been advancing very fast; not just the software (though that's the key thing), also the cheap computing power (this task parallelises nicely), the new high-definition security cameras that improve accuracy at range and fast cheap wireless links that reduce deployment costs. Generally the answer to 'will they be able to do X' is 'yes' if X is even vaguely plausible. Any notion of banning this stuff is now thoroughly impractical; you should now be thinking in terms of trying to regulate the uses personal information from any source can be put to.

Next interesting question; how long is this going to remain the province of governments alone? There's a huge number of private CCTV cameras out there and installing new ones is getting cheaper every day - as is installing network taps to pipe the data back to a server farm for analysis. Which company will be first to start aggregating this data and mining it for consumer profiling purposes?

Unfortunately nearly all the technical work is highly application specific, so it isn't advancing the rest of the AI field much - but then the human brain has a dedicated, specialised area that handles face recognition, so perhaps that was to be expected.

[Zixinus]

His central argument was that the government could use them for data mining and tracking people's activities through image recognition software.

So what? If you are obeying the law, as you should be, the government will lose interest in you.

The point of a police investigation is to see whether you are committing illegal activities. That's why its called an investigation. If you are not, then they move on. If you are, then you are, in fact, a criminal.

The real question is how the government handles private information. Obviously, private information should not be given to the public unless the information is incriminating. The public does deserve to know why you are imprisoned.

I am sure people more versed in the mysterious language of laws and human rights can tell you more about stuff like these. However, this is again a different argument then the one proposed.

I simply do not see any problem here, as such things would give powerful tools to the police, which I am sure they appreciate very much. Almost any police force that is actually trying to do its job is inherent overworked between paperwork and trying to gather enough evidence to arrest someone. Having the ability to track someone is an obstacle for criminals and an arguably significant advantage to the police.

There is no breach of human rights, because the tracking is done trough public areas and could be done by a regular police officer. The only thing that the system does is that it makes it easier and quicker.

I imagine that people arguing against these kind of things do not trust the police to handle these wisely but are afraid to stand by that argument.

[Erik von Nein]

Well, it was most of a "the government could use it for nefarious purposes" than anything else. I.E. tracking government opponents and, I guess, arresting them for trying to hold a meeting. Basically, while he admitted that the cameras do help to reduce crime he thought the potential for abuse was too great v.s. the benefit of reduced crime.

[Zixinus]

Well, it was most of a "the government could use it for nefarious purposes" than anything else. I.E. tracking government opponents and, I guess, arresting them for trying to hold a meeting. Basically, while he admitted that the cameras do help to reduce crime he thought the potential for abuse was too great v.s. the benefit of reduced crime.

Then he admits that the problem isn't the intrusion of privacy but rather that he doesn't trust the government to have such tools. And stopping a meeting is illegal for a government to do, unless its done by trespassing or otherwise breaking law.

This argument implies that the government frequently breaks its own laws in order to impose itself. This implies a dictatorial government as well. This is a good attack I think.

In case of Britain, make him show a case where this did in fact happen and demand evidence that such things happen frequently.

In sci-fi books, governments that love surveillance are always portrayed as evil. But this is reality and the question is, whether this prediction is real?

Also, "enemies of government" are known as terrorists. In a democracy, people who oppose the current government are other politicians, one way or another. If you are trying to do it the other way, then you are a revolutionist, therefore a terrorist to justifiable degree.

[Sarevok]

I think the arguement about abuse boils down to something else. If a technology, law or new regulation / enforcement agency can be abused by those in power it will be indeed be abused at some point. Corruption is a universal trait. In third world police don't have access to advanced forsenics labs. So what they do is beat confession out of suspects. They did not magicaly become better just because they don't have high tech gear with potential for abuse. So the problem lies in the users not in the tech itself. A goverment like North Korea would do it's damn best to spy on people regardless of whether they can afford computerized imaging systems in every street. On the other hand it is much less likely the British goverment would abuse such a tool.

[dragon]

From a more technical side than Zod, I think it would be really amusing to watch them try to follow someone from camera to camera and not lose him by going to the wrong camera. Probably a LOT easier to have a plainclothes officer tail him anyway...

Did you just totally miss the point that software can do the job? Facial recognition technology is already been used on those British cameras, and its give the potential to track thousands of people without any human intervention.

And as computer get more powerfull and faster all the time they will be able to track more people easier. So in a few years these same computers will be able to track tens if not hundreds of thousands of people.

Hell in a few years I wouldn't be to suprised to find a global network of these types of cameras all sharing a data base, after all places like interpol and CIA and others all ready have global data tracking sources.

[PeZook]

The government could also cordon off a street with troops, arrest everybody on it, move them with trucks to secluded "interrogation compounds" and waterboard everyone untill they admit to everything from shoplifting to planning terrorist attacks.

Really, if you're worried about government abusing people, there's a thousand horrible ways they can do that already.

You should be worried about political change which would bring about the will to do that, not the tools which can potentially be used for opression. A simple police baton is a tool which can be used to cripple people for life, but the political will isn't there. Should you be worried more about the baton, or the people who give orders to the man holding it?

Besides, even in a worst-case scenario, dissidents can simply arrange meetings by encoded e-mail, and then meet up outside of camera coverage (it's not like they cover the entire country). At most, the police will know you left the monitored city at 21:32:12 and came back an hour later, like twenty thousand other people. Get a good alibi and you should be fine.

Conspiring against an opressive government was always hard, cameras and tracking software change very little about it (Oh! They lower manpower requirements! Ye gods!) Of course, the best way to fight it is to prevent the government from becoming opressive in the first place.

[Solauren]

It gets down to this; Wa-Wa, I don't trust the government.

The reality of the situtation is, realistically, even with computer advances, you need someone to review all the data to decide if someone is a criminal and needs to be picked up.

That is why tracking software and technology is used
1) - After the fact. i.e Back tracking to see who was in the area at the time.
2) - Prior to the fact with suspicion is already in place. Basically, have the monitoring software do the job of a plain cloths, but much more 'covertly'.

Do you know how many people it would realistically take to monitor all of London? It's roughly equal to the population of London. You'd need one half of the populace spying on the other half.

The government doesn't have the time, interest, or resources to do anything like protrayed in popular media. Quite frankly, monitoring the entire populace for any tiny slip up is a colossal waste of time and resources.


Let me give you two examples, one from real life, one from fiction, to illustrate the point.

1984: During the morning exercise routine, Winston stopped exercising, and was yelled at by the woman on the TV.

Okay, fine. Kinda scary. But consider this; How was she watching everyone at once?

Realistiacally, she can't. More then likely, the TV also has a motion sensor in it, and when he stopped moving, or wasn't moving enough, her monitor showed him and his information, and then she yelled at him.

It's entirely possible that had he kept moving, no one would have noticed.

Also consider how much, and how long, he got away with his affair, and his general lack of interest in the Party, including his little notebook. journal.

If he was under the level of video survillance hinted at, he would have been nailed within a few days at most.

What it gets down to is, Winston was paranoid.

He didn't get nailed for his affair, or anything else, until after he was approached to be 'recruited' by the 'Goldstien' supporters. At which point, they probably suspected something was up, because someone noticed it, and reported it, but they lacked any evidence, or didn't care. So what if two office workers are shagging? If that's all they are doing, who really cares.

Religious Dominance, the Dark Ages/Middle Ages;
The priests were not watching everyone. They waited for everyone else to do the accussing, and then stepped in and brought down the 'Holy Hammer' so to speak. They didn't have spies everywhere. They didn't need to. The populace did the work for them.

[Darth Wong]

Well, it was most of a "the government could use it for nefarious purposes" than anything else. I.E. tracking government opponents and, I guess, arresting them for trying to hold a meeting. Basically, while he admitted that the cameras do help to reduce crime he thought the potential for abuse was too great v.s. the benefit of reduced crime.

It's a good thing North Korea doesn't have this kind of technology, or else they'd be able to oppress their citizens.

[Erik von Nein]

Yeah, basically. I argued that they can do all these things already and that the whole system changed little. His counter was "Well, it makes it easier." Though, if you're government has gotten to that point, not having a camera system wouldn't change anything. I guess it's because it's less intrusive and everything could be more hidden, but not really. It's not as if most people could point out plain-clothsed officers or government agents like the KGB.

Hell, I even brought up about how the KGB collected whare-house loads of various kinds of data (skin/saliva samples and such) without even having any of the technology we do already. He basically just said the same thing; "Well, it makes it easier."

[Timotheus]

Question.

Who should win out here? Lets say that in the good ole USA we start to put these systems in place all over the country.

Congress refuses to step in for whatever reason so a grassroots referendum is started. After months or years of work litterally millions of votes are collected and after a national vote it passes 60/40 to remove all these cameras.

Do they stay or go? What is more important? The government or the people?

[Darth Wong]

Question.

Who should win out here? Lets say that in the good ole USA we start to put these systems in place all over the country.

Congress refuses to step in for whatever reason so a grassroots referendum is started. After months or years of work litterally millions of votes are collected and after a national vote it passes 60/40 to remove all these cameras.

Do they stay or go? What is more important? The government or the people?

What the fuck does this have to do with the wisdom of the principle itself? You're trying to turn it into a pure popularity contest, when the argument is over the morality of the concept.

[Zixinus]

Hell, I even brought up about how the KGB collected whare-house loads of various kinds of data (skin/saliva samples and such) without even having any of the technology we do already. He basically just said the same thing; "Well, it makes it easier."

My response to him would be something like:

It also makes fighting crime easier.

You know, crime? Like rapists, murderers, thieves, gangsters, drug dealers and crazed psychotics?

It makes it easier, yeah, but it doesn't change anything. Oppressive governments get a little stronger while democratic governments get a little cleaner.
...


He again assumes that the government would be dictatorial given these tools. Does he prove this assumption? Did Britain get more dictatorial when it installed it CCTV network or was it pretty much the same?

An oppressive government will be an oppressive government, with or without high-tech. A democratic government will be a democratic government with or without high-tech, or at least, it won't become an oppressive government with high-tech alone. There is no reason why such advanced networks shouldn't be. Yes, there is a potential for abuse, but so is there with a tazer, gun or a simple police baton.

This should be a good attack against him.

Congress refuses to step in for whatever reason so a grassroots referendum is started. After months or years of work litterally millions of votes are collected and after a national vote it passes 60/40 to remove all these cameras.

Do they stay or go? What is more important? The government or the people?

Woppie, this is my first red herring.

Again, this choice assumes that such a network would be oppressive and make the government dictatorial.

The "choice" you propose is whether a government should turn dictatorial or remain democratic. This is a false choice, because this system does not does neither yet can support both.

This system is a tool, nothing else. Like any tool, it can be used productively or destructively.

[Timotheus]

Question.

Who should win out here? Lets say that in the good ole USA we start to put these systems in place all over the country.

Congress refuses to step in for whatever reason so a grassroots referendum is started. After months or years of work litterally millions of votes are collected and after a national vote it passes 60/40 to remove all these cameras.

Do they stay or go? What is more important? The government or the people?

What the fuck does this have to do with the wisdom of the principle itself? You're trying to turn it into a pure popularity contest, when the argument is over the morality of the concept.

Because its purely a moral question. Governments do what they want all the time while ignoring what they people say.

[Ghost Rider]

Question.

Who should win out here? Lets say that in the good ole USA we start to put these systems in place all over the country.

Congress refuses to step in for whatever reason so a grassroots referendum is started. After months or years of work litterally millions of votes are collected and after a national vote it passes 60/40 to remove all these cameras.

Do they stay or go? What is more important? The government or the people?

What the fuck does this have to do with the wisdom of the principle itself? You're trying to turn it into a pure popularity contest, when the argument is over the morality of the concept.

Because its purely a moral question. Governments do what they want all the time while ignoring what they people say.

So wait, to answer question asked, you give a non sensical philobabble answer to your idiotic hypothetical?

Are you this fucking stupid or are you trying?

[Zixinus]

Because its purely a moral question. Governments do what they want all the time while ignoring what they people say.

Then it's not a moral question. It's your weak attempt for you to make a trap for someone who tries to answer your question without thinking to support your weak blanket statement.

That's why its called a Red Herring, because there is no real choice that doesn't support your argument.

So, what should we do? Remove all and every governments? When we do that, things get FAR WORSE then without them.

Also, you might have been born in some shithole (but my guess that its a first-world, loving high-class family that told you that you were smart way too many times, like Vollyball) thus forsaken any hope for proper governance, but there are actually fairly good governments out there that provide education, health care, infrastructure and even aid to its citizens, along with protection. Sure, they ask tax for it (you can hardly expect anything to get done for free) and not always quite work when it should, but its better then living in bronze-age anarchy where anyone kills you or rapes you for whatever reason they want.

[Timotheus]

What the fuck does this have to do with the wisdom of the principle itself? You're trying to turn it into a pure popularity contest, when the argument is over the morality of the concept.

Because its purely a moral question. Governments do what they want all the time while ignoring what they people say.

So wait, to answer question asked, you give a non sensical philobabble answer to your idiotic hypothetical?

Are you this fucking stupid or are you trying?

No your both just being fucking stupid.

The point I was trying to make and missed both of you was that governments do what they want when they want.

If the people say no to cameras but the government decides it is better to have them because they do good then who is in the right.

Morally the people at least in America at one point were supposed to be from where the governments power sprang. So if they say the cameras go then they should go.

On the other hand the government could easily show that with enough cameras there is less crime and society is safer.

Soth both sides are making a moral arguement. The people say we are the roots of all things and what we want is what should happen and the government is saying they should stay because we know they do good.

[Timotheus]

Because its purely a moral question. Governments do what they want all the time while ignoring what they people say.

Then it's not a moral question. It's your weak attempt for you to make a trap for someone who tries to answer your question without thinking to support your weak blanket statement.

That's why its called a Red Herring, because there is no real choice that doesn't support your argument.

So, what should we do? Remove all and every governments? When we do that, things get FAR WORSE then without them.

Also, you might have been born in some shithole (but my guess that its a first-world, loving high-class family that told you that you were smart way too many times, like Vollyball) thus forsaken any hope for proper governance, but there are actually fairly good governments out there that provide education, health care, infrastructure and even aid to its citizens, along with protection. Sure, they ask tax for it (you can hardly expect anything to get done for free) and not always quite work when it should, but its better then living in bronze-age anarchy where anyone kills you or rapes you for whatever reason they want.

The fact that you cannot talk without personal insults shows your lack of arguement strength and I know the verbal equivalent of penis length through insults is the norm here but your still weak for it.


Yes the government we have now is better than it has been in the past. That in no way invalidates attempts to improve it and in no way gives it right to do what it wants when its citizens think otherwise. Unlike where you were born I live in a country that was founded on the concept that the power of the government flowed from the people.