Big Bother [Article about CCTVs in Britain]

[Winston Blake]

5. Public acceptance, welcome and popularity do not imply liberty. People will accept a loss of liberty in exchange for security. Consider that if an Outer Party member opposed the presence of telescreens, it would obviously have been an extremely unpopular proposal.

Surveillance is not a loss of liberty. You are just as free to do things after cameras as you were before. What do you think "liberty" means, exactly?

You might argue that privacy is an absolute right, even in public (even though that doesn't really make sense), but the idea that public surveillance reduces your "liberty" seems completely unjustified. Unless, of course, you just mean that "liberty" = "good" and "public surveillance" = "bad".

My position is that if a population is caused to avoid exercising a right, then that right effectively ceases to exist. If Democrat rallies were regularly (and legally) shadowed by Republicans with AR-15s, and those rallies dried up voluntarily because of it, then I would consider the actions of those Republicans as having effectively damaged Freedom of Assembly.

No-one says the word 'bomb' while waiting in line at the airport - voluntarily. While this has a clear and limited scope, the advanced technologies being proposed make it possible to automatically flag people as 'suspicious' or 'possibly militant', merely for discussing a war movie with a friend in public. IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list? This is a bit facetious, but many people know all too well that airport security isn't paid to think - they're paid to follow 'standard procedure'.

The fact that people dislike it does not substantiate the claim that it removes peoples' "liberty". Those are still separate propositions. Why do people insist on turning everything into a "freedom" issue? It's like this magic word, and if you can attach it to your pet cause, then you win.

People will voluntarily limit their own rights to avoid hassles, and IF the scope and capability of CCTV expands enough, then I consider it to effectively damage those rights.

You might argue that privacy is an absolute right, even in public (even though that doesn't really make sense), but the idea that public surveillance reduces your "liberty" seems completely unjustified.

Recording makes a big difference, to a lot of people. Being in public inherently means being seen by other people, so very few people are bothered by simple watching. However if you take out a video camera and film random people with it, a sizable fraction will demand to know what you're doing.

Yeah, because they're assholes and they don't want their assholery caught on film. It doesn't mean they have lost their "liberty". AFAIK, the only time amateur video of private individuals becomes news is when they're caught doing something terrible.

Since you're implicitly not an asshole, are you saying that your behaviour would be unchanged if you spotted a stranger keeping a camcorder over you and your family in public? A business owner may be 'watching for suspicious persons', while recording everything you say and do - that wouldn't affect your choice of speech or actions?

I don't see the relevance of 'getting on the news' or 'notoriety'. That's not the problem. I'd be more concerned about quiet annotations in a government database labeling innocent people as 'suspects', with conversation fragments and details of acquaintances and routines quietly built up over time. You can say 'Sufficiently large numbers of well-trained personnel could unflag people', but that means admitting that such people are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Seconded. Privacy means "license to be a douche" to a lot of people, who hate the idea that their mistakes might be on public record. The fact of the matter is, private citizens record untold amounts of information every day. I take pictures when I go on vacation, and you'd be an absolute douchecock to demand I delete a photo because I captured somebodies face on it.

And you see no qualitative difference between holiday snaps and large-scale, automated person tracking and conversation recording?

This is not to say there should be no such thing as privacy. People shouldn't have the interior of their house monitored. People shouldn't be allowed to take pictures up a women's skirt without asking. But when you step outside your own home, privacy, beyond aforementioned invasions of the upskirt nature, becomes rather irrelevant. The only difference between being seen by a bum on the street and a CCTV camera is quality of the memory; the difference between a bum spotting a robbery and the camera doing so is that the camera is going to give more reliable information and be more useful as evidence in court. In fact, the camera isn't going to spread rumours or notice things people might; honestly, the electronics are much more benign then most people are.

1. 'Rumours' are utterly irrelevant. 2. The entire point of reviewing camera footage is that it allows noticing details that people might not. 3. Apparently you didn't read the part of the OP article talking about future capabilities.

Out of curiosity: imagine that over the next few months, a number of important, high-profile crimes involving children were solved due to CCTV. The cameras just happened to catch a glimpse through windows of private houses/businesses - a blurry 2 second clip of a child waving for help, for example. A wave of public opinion supports cameras positioned to see through windows in 'troublesome areas'. What would your response be?

[Darth Wong]

My position is that if a population is caused to avoid exercising a right, then that right effectively ceases to exist.

Do you have some real evidence that the mere presence of CCTV cameras make people stop exercising their rights? Which rights in particular do people stop exercising in the presence of CCTV cameras?

IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list?

Since these ridiculous airport security restrictions came into being with no help from CCTV cameras whatsoever, I fail to see how this is relevant.

People will voluntarily limit their own rights to avoid hassles, and IF the scope and capability of CCTV expands enough, then I consider it to effectively damage those rights.

Again, let's see the evidence.

Since you're implicitly not an asshole, are you saying that your behaviour would be unchanged if you spotted a stranger keeping a camcorder over you and your family in public?

It happens all the time when I go into businesses and we're monitored by security cameras. If I got upset about it, I would never go into these businesses. It's not like being stalked by an individual because it's equally applied to everyone.

A business owner may be 'watching for suspicious persons', while recording everything you say and do - that wouldn't affect your choice of speech or actions?

Not at all, no. I behave exactly the same way inside a business with CCTV security cameras as I do when I'm walking down a street with no cameras in sight.

I don't see the relevance of 'getting on the news' or 'notoriety'. That's not the problem. I'd be more concerned about quiet annotations in a government database labeling innocent people as 'suspects', with conversation fragments and details of acquaintances and routines quietly built up over time. You can say 'Sufficiently large numbers of well-trained personnel could unflag people', but that means admitting that such people are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Bullshit. If the system was that pervasive and that prone to false positives, it would flag almost everyone over time. And what would they do with it? The sheer number of flags would make this kind of "evidence" worthless for pursuing anyone or even singling anyone out for scrutiny.

Out of curiosity: imagine that over the next few months, a number of important, high-profile crimes involving children were solved due to CCTV. The cameras just happened to catch a glimpse through windows of private houses/businesses - a blurry 2 second clip of a child waving for help, for example. A wave of public opinion supports cameras positioned to see through windows in 'troublesome areas'. What would your response be?

Shrug and say that it's no different than people on the street looking into your windows from a distance. We invented "curtain" technology for a reason.

[Akkleptos]

Excuse me, but this is just scary:

IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list? This is a bit facetious, but many people know all too well that airport security isn't paid to think - they're paid to follow 'standard procedure'

That is just scary enough for me to research other forms of travelling... especially when coming through the US. Really scary... Way to go, US. Next time it'll be Mexico - England... Otherwise, it will be Mexico - Canada - England...

Fuck you very much... Lest they clear my flip-flops, my shirts, my trousers, my shoes and my sunglasses as tourist-safe items.--- Paranoid bastards...

[Samuel]

Excuse me, but this is just scary:

IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list? This is a bit facetious, but many people know all too well that airport security isn't paid to think - they're paid to follow 'standard procedure'

That is just scary enough for me to research other forms of travelling... especially when coming through the US. Really scary... Way to go, US. Next time it'll be Mexico - England... Otherwise, it will be Mexico - Canada - England...

Fuck you very much... Lest they clear my flip-flops, my shirts, my trousers, my shoes and my sunglasses as tourist-safe items.--- Paranoid bastards...

What? You have never heard of the no-fly list before?

Didn't you ever hear any of the stories pointing out how insanely broad it was and how it was including people who were completely unrelated to... anything actually?

[Keevan_Colton]

What? You have never heard of the no-fly list before?

Didn't you ever hear any of the stories pointing out how insanely broad it was and how it was including people who were completely unrelated to... anything actually?

What really amused me about it is the fact that it's entire (questionable) utility relies on the assumption that terrorists will be using their real names and documents...

It's almost as good as the customs and immigration questionnaire which has a section for you to list any affiliated terrorist organisations.

Sometimes I think the world is fortunate that most terrorists are even dumber than the people trying to stop them.

[Simon_Jester]

What exact laws would reduce liberties if they were more strictly enforced? I don't buy the argument that cameras will make the government abuse you if it turns into a dictatorship ; If democracy fails this badly, you will have problems with secret police rounding you up in the streets with or without cameras. Only an idiot thinks that corrupt dictatorships opress people by zealously enforcing victimless crimes.

They don't, not in our experience... but ubiquitous automated surveillance isn't in our experience. No dictatorship has ever been able to watch everyone's public activities at once, even when they had total control over public spaces. They still had to figure out who to watch before they could even begin to watch them seriously, and that left holes in the net big enough that you could reasonably hope to slip through as long as you didn't deliberately do anything the government disliked.

What you lose under universal public surveillance isn't, strictly speaking, a "liberty." You can still lawfully do all the same things you could normally do lawfully. But that doesn't mean there isn't an effect on the culture. Again, I want to point out the analogy of airport security checkpoints. There is no law preventing you from talking about bombs at the checkpoint as long as you don't claim to have one or to want to make one... but that doesn't mean you're guaranteed safe passage through the checkpoint if you do so.

And that's not unreasonable in context; when security people have control of a situation and are encouraged to prevent anything from going wrong on their watch, they start looking for anomalous behavior and giving the anomalies a good thorough looking over. But when that's happening all the time, everywhere, it becomes a problem, except for that rare breed of people who are both utterly fearless and utterly indifferent to the time expended in dealing with the sudden attentions of the security force.

IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list?

Since these ridiculous airport security restrictions came into being with no help from CCTV cameras whatsoever, I fail to see how this is relevant.

Because airport security restrictions are an example of the kind of stuff security forces come up with when given the opportunity to go looking for potential troublemakers as hard as they can. They wind up concocting absurd rules with a high false positive rate, because they don't get in nearly as much trouble for harassing innocent people as they do for letting guilty people by. So they start thinking "better safe than sorry," and all their brains seem to dribble out the bottom of their skull for some reason.

Set up CCTV cameras everywhere and give law enforcement agencies the software and mandate to really use the hardware to the limit of its capabilities, and I'd expect to see the same breed of stupidity in new fertile soil.

[Samuel]

They don't, not in our experience... but ubiquitous automated surveillance isn't in our experience. No dictatorship has ever been able to watch everyone's public activities at once, even when they had total control over public spaces. They still had to figure out who to watch before they could even begin to watch them seriously, and that left holes in the net big enough that you could reasonably hope to slip through as long as you didn't deliberately do anything the government disliked.

The Stasi was capable of doing that. You don't even have to have that many agents- just enough so that people assume that if they are in public one is watching them. As for the second part... isn't that redundant?

But when that's happening all the time, everywhere, it becomes a problem, except for that rare breed of people who are both utterly fearless and utterly indifferent to the time expended in dealing with the sudden attentions of the security force.

So you get to the point where people stop joking about commiting crimes. Which is different from now when people don't do that in earshot of law enforcement personal anyways... I'm not seeing it.

[Winston Blake]

What exact laws would reduce liberties if they were more strictly enforced?

Haven't you heard of sedition laws?

I don't buy the argument that cameras will make the government abuse you if it turns into a dictatorship ; If democracy fails this badly, you will have problems with secret police rounding you up in the streets with or without cameras. Only an idiot thinks that corrupt dictatorships opress people by zealously enforcing victimless crimes.

That's a strawman - no-one is saying the cameras will MAKE a good government go bad. Anyway, this argument boils down to:

- If the government is good, then it will not abuse its power, therefore restrictions on its power are pointless.
- If the government is bad, then it will abuse its power anyway, therefore restrictions on its power are pointless.

This is the same black/white fallacious point the OP article made. It could be used to justify any expansion of government power.

[Winston Blake]

My position is that if a population is caused to avoid exercising a right, then that right effectively ceases to exist.

Do you have some real evidence that the mere presence of CCTV cameras make people stop exercising their rights? Which rights in particular do people stop exercising in the presence of CCTV cameras?

Any history of East Germany will mention the Stasi and the effect of their mass surveillance on people's behaviour - freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association. The proposed mass CCTV system of the future would be critical to a mass surveillance system on an unprecedented scale. Although I admit that current CCTV in the UK is fairly weak (poorly managed, mostly video-only with limited zoom, many failed experimental processing technologies), it's not a slippery slope fallacy to point out that the direction the technology is moving in is towards heavily processed, highly capable mass CCTV as a key enabling component of a powerful integrated system. Hell, it's practically advertised as the best thing since sliced bread.

IIRC your son was considered a potential terrorist (on a no-fly list), and this caused delays and hassles (I don't remember the details). What if he had mumbled 'Bam!' such that an automated system recognised it as 'Bomb', and linked this with the no-fly list?

Since these ridiculous airport security restrictions came into being with no help from CCTV cameras whatsoever, I fail to see how this is relevant.

It is relevant because cameras have already been trialed with microphones, and high-quality voice recognition and transcription technology is already old tech, if you're willing to pay for it. That's the automated system I was referring to. Mainly though, the snipped part completed the point regarding ridiculous hassles as a form of intimidation.

People will voluntarily limit their own rights to avoid hassles, and IF the scope and capability of CCTV expands enough, then I consider it to effectively damage those rights.

Again, let's see the evidence.

Again, even the briefest history of East Germany will describe the universal fear of speaking against the government in public, in any way. Further, through a quirk of genetics, I could be mistaken for a person of Middle Eastern descent (although I haven't a drop in me), and if I visited the UK, I personally would feel intimidated by mass CCTV into not making any comments against the government.

However, I think the real disconnect between us is this: my default view is that the government (or big corporations) should have as little power as can be proven necessary for it to perform its required functions. Your view appears to be that the government should have as much power as possible to catch crims, except where it can be proven to be unsafe - hence your demands for evidence. Because of this difference in fundamental views, I doubt we'll be able to agree.

I'm reminded of the Challenger disaster, where the speakerphone conversation between the engineers and the managers slowly morphs from one view to another. Originally, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was safe, or the launch would be cancelled. By the end of the conversation, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was unsafe, or the launch would go ahead. No Shuttle had ever been lost before; the managers dismissed concerns, and the launch went ahead.

Since you're implicitly not an asshole, are you saying that your behaviour would be unchanged if you spotted a stranger keeping a camcorder over you and your family in public?

It happens all the time when I go into businesses and we're monitored by security cameras. If I got upset about it, I would never go into these businesses. It's not like being stalked by an individual because it's equally applied to everyone.

A business owner may be 'watching for suspicious persons', while recording everything you say and do - that wouldn't affect your choice of speech or actions?

Not at all, no. I behave exactly the same way inside a business with CCTV security cameras as I do when I'm walking down a street with no cameras in sight.

Your original point (vs Starglider) was that people only dislike being recorded by an individual who pulls out a video camera if they are 'assholes and they don't want their assholery caught on film'. You've said here that you're not bothered by a security camera, yet implied that you would be bothered by an individual recording you. Therefore, 'being an asshole' is not the only reason people dislike being recorded by an individual with a camera, contradicting your point.

I don't see the relevance of 'getting on the news' or 'notoriety'. That's not the problem. I'd be more concerned about quiet annotations in a government database labeling innocent people as 'suspects', with conversation fragments and details of acquaintances and routines quietly built up over time. You can say 'Sufficiently large numbers of well-trained personnel could unflag people', but that means admitting that such people are treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Bullshit. If the system was that pervasive and that prone to false positives, it would flag almost everyone over time. And what would they do with it? The sheer number of flags would make this kind of "evidence" worthless for pursuing anyone or even singling anyone out for scrutiny.

Future integrated surveillance isn't bullshit. Ten years ago, the idea of recording the license plate number of every car that passed under a bridge would have been considered bullshit. A few years ago, a fellow student of mine (with everyone in his class) was working on that kind of software, as a mere student assignment in image processing.

I really think you're underestimating the power and rate of advance of image processing, data mining, and data processing in general. I'm sure you've heard of the ECHELON system - such capabilities are not only not bullshit, they are old tech, just waiting for new applications, like the INDECT project.

Those aren't false positives - they're true positives, if you're looking for potential suspects. Although I had to study some AI and image processing, I will probably be corrected by Starglider on anything I say, so I will simply repeat him:

Future technology will combine pervasive recording with a global search capability, so that organisations with the appropriate access rights will be able to pull up recordings of people doing specific things as easily as you can pull up someone's Internet comment history given a username and a topic. In the UK, mass deployment and networking of numberplate recognition cameras is already in progress, and Labour have made repeated attempts to get all cars fitted with government-monitored GPS trackers. Integrated surveillance capabilities of this kind are something even the communist police states could only dream of. They are something new, dangerous and do require special legal attention.

Out of curiosity: imagine that over the next few months, a number of important, high-profile crimes involving children were solved due to CCTV. The cameras just happened to catch a glimpse through windows of private houses/businesses - a blurry 2 second clip of a child waving for help, for example. A wave of public opinion supports cameras positioned to see through windows in 'troublesome areas'. What would your response be?

Shrug and say that it's no different than people on the street looking into your windows from a distance. We invented "curtain" technology for a reason.

To be clear, I will state your perceived position in my own words: 'CCTV is OK as long as it does not record anything which could not be perceived by a person who could be situated legally where the camera is located'. Is that accurate?

[PeZook]

Haven't you heard of sedition laws?

Cameras (with microphones) make it easier to strictly enforce sedition, but the real problem lies in sedition laws itself.

Frankly, they're a useless relict of a bygone era and should be abolished, or tightened up. Again, the problem is government's authority to punish a loosely defined "crime", not cameras which let them actually do that with any degree of efficiency. Many countries were able to enforce fucked-up laws without hi-tech surveillance.

That's a strawman - no-one is saying the cameras will MAKE a good government go bad. Anyway, this argument boils down to:

- If the government is good, then it will not abuse its power, therefore restrictions on its power are pointless.
- If the government is bad, then it will abuse its power anyway, therefore restrictions on its power are pointless.

This is the same black/white fallacious point the OP article made. It could be used to justify any expansion of government power.

No, actually, the point is that the government's authority itself is the main problem, not tools that allow the government to enforce it. Close-to-perfect enforcement in itself is not a problem, it's what the law regulates and what it doesn't, which is the thing you should primarily fight.

To look at it from another view: squad cars, radios, helicopters and the Internet all let the police enforce the law better and with higher efficiency. Why aren't you opposing those tools? With a squad car, two cops can monitor a wide area, thus more people will feel watched and "intimidated" by the police (mostly into behaving themselves).

[Darth Wong]

Do you have some real evidence that the mere presence of CCTV cameras make people stop exercising their rights? Which rights in particular do people stop exercising in the presence of CCTV cameras?

Any history of East Germany will mention the Stasi and the effect of their mass surveillance on people's behaviour - freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association.

Did the former East Germany guarantee these freedoms in the first place? How is this evidence of your assertion that CCTV cameras would somehow take away these freedoms even if they are still written into law?

Since these ridiculous airport security restrictions came into being with no help from CCTV cameras whatsoever, I fail to see how this is relevant.

It is relevant because cameras have already been trialed with microphones, and high-quality voice recognition and transcription technology is already old tech, if you're willing to pay for it. That's the automated system I was referring to. Mainly though, the snipped part completed the point regarding ridiculous hassles as a form of intimidation.

Well of course they're a form of intimidation! Why do you think the guards carry weapons? In part, it's to intimidate and deter the public. This still doesn't substantiate your claim that they take away peoples' rights. Oooh, a CCTV camera can see that I'm engaging in perfectly legal activities! So intimidating!

Again, let's see the evidence.

Again, even the briefest history of East Germany will describe the universal fear of speaking against the government in public, in any way. Further, through a quirk of genetics, I could be mistaken for a person of Middle Eastern descent (although I haven't a drop in me), and if I visited the UK, I personally would feel intimidated by mass CCTV into not making any comments against the government.

Did the former East Germany actually guarantee freedom of political or religious expression in law? If not, then it's a totally irrelevant example. You are arguing that a state which guarantees freedom of political or religious expression in law would somehow remove those freedoms if it puts up CCTV cameras capable of detecting that you are making use of them.

However, I think the real disconnect between us is this: my default view is that the government (or big corporations) should have as little power as can be proven necessary for it to perform its required functions. Your view appears to be that the government should have as much power as possible to catch crims, except where it can be proven to be unsafe - hence your demands for evidence. Because of this difference in fundamental views, I doubt we'll be able to agree.

This is not about personality. This is about you making claims of cause and effect which you have done precisely jack shit to substantiate.

I'm reminded of the Challenger disaster, where the speakerphone conversation between the engineers and the managers slowly morphs from one view to another. Originally, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was safe, or the launch would be cancelled. By the end of the conversation, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was unsafe, or the launch would go ahead. No Shuttle had ever been lost before; the managers dismissed concerns, and the launch went ahead.

I'm reminded of the term "false analogy". Engineering safety has nothing to do with the completely unsubstantiated notion that freedoms guaranteed in law would disappear if the authorities can see that you are making use of those freedoms.

Your original point (vs Starglider) was that people only dislike being recorded by an individual who pulls out a video camera if they are 'assholes and they don't want their assholery caught on film'. You've said here that you're not bothered by a security camera, yet implied that you would be bothered by an individual recording you. Therefore, 'being an asshole' is not the only reason people dislike being recorded by an individual with a camera, contradicting your point.

You're a fucking liar because you're totally taking that out of context. We were obviously talking about public-surveillance cameras, not an individual stalking you. I would be upset at an individual stalking us even if he did not have a camera, you idiot. In the hands of a stalker, a video camera is disturbing because he is using it for stalking purposes. Similarly, a firearm in the hands of a stalker would be extremely disturbing, yet I am not at all disturbed by the firearm carried by a police officer. This is only a "contradiction" if you're being incredibly dishonest, or retarded.

Bullshit. If the system was that pervasive and that prone to false positives, it would flag almost everyone over time. And what would they do with it? The sheer number of flags would make this kind of "evidence" worthless for pursuing anyone or even singling anyone out for scrutiny.

Future integrated surveillance isn't bullshit. Ten years ago, the idea of recording the license plate number of every car that passed under a bridge would have been considered bullshit. A few years ago, a fellow student of mine (with everyone in his class) was working on that kind of software, as a mere student assignment in image processing.

What are you, mentally retarded? I didn't say that the technological possibility of high surveillance was bullshit. I said that it's bullshit that people would be singled out for wrongful persecution by a system which monitors the entire public and is so prone to false positives that no such positive would ever hold up in court.

I really think you're underestimating the power and rate of advance of image processing, data mining, and data processing in general. I'm sure you've heard of the ECHELON system - such capabilities are not only not bullshit, they are old tech, just waiting for new applications, like the INDECT project.

See above.

Those aren't false positives - they're true positives, if you're looking for potential suspects.

Nice parsing of language. You can't be charged with being a "potential suspect". Such a classification is only used for authorizing more surveillance, and if it generates huge numbers of such hits, then it's useless for that purpose as well.

Although I had to study some AI and image processing, I will probably be corrected by Starglider on anything I say, so I will simply repeat him:

Future technology will combine pervasive recording with a global search capability, so that organisations with the appropriate access rights will be able to pull up recordings of people doing specific things as easily as you can pull up someone's Internet comment history given a username and a topic. In the UK, mass deployment and networking of numberplate recognition cameras is already in progress, and Labour have made repeated attempts to get all cars fitted with government-monitored GPS trackers. Integrated surveillance capabilities of this kind are something even the communist police states could only dream of. They are something new, dangerous and do require special legal attention.

Again, you seem to have some bizarre notion that I am contesting the technological potential of public surveillance, as opposed to your bizarre belief that it would be used to persecute people who are engaging in completely legal activities, explicitly protected by law. Or that people would be so terrified of this impossible persecution that they would effectively lose these freedoms.

To be clear, I will state your perceived position in my own words: 'CCTV is OK as long as it does not record anything which could not be perceived by a person who could be situated legally where the camera is located'. Is that accurate?

Pretty much. As I said earlier, the idea of demanding privacy while standing in public places is completely absurd.

[Winston Blake]

Haven't you heard of sedition laws?

Cameras (with microphones) make it easier to strictly enforce sedition, but the real problem lies in sedition laws itself.

Frankly, they're a useless relict of a bygone era and should be abolished, or tightened up. Again, the problem is government's authority to punish a loosely defined "crime", not cameras which let them actually do that with any degree of efficiency. Many countries were able to enforce fucked-up laws without hi-tech surveillance.

Are you opposed to mass CCTV (with microphones etc) in a society which has not proven its safety, in this case, not examined the law to eliminate 'fucked-up' laws like sedition laws?

No, actually, the point is that the government's authority itself is the main problem, not tools that allow the government to enforce it. Close-to-perfect enforcement in itself is not a problem, it's what the law regulates and what it doesn't, which is the thing you should primarily fight.

To look at it from another view: squad cars, radios, helicopters and the Internet all let the police enforce the law better and with higher efficiency. Why aren't you opposing those tools? With a squad car, two cops can monitor a wide area, thus more people will feel watched and "intimidated" by the police (mostly into behaving themselves).

I've previously mentioned that my view depends on 'scope'. There's a social contract between people and the government - the population gives the government powers in exchange for certain essential government functions. I support CCTV with limited scope, as previously mentioned. I support squad cars. However, I would not support a 1000x increase in the number of squad cars (for the sake of argument, let's say by using mass-produced human-level-AI robots). I support the possession of firearms by law enforcement, but don't support the deployment of mounted General Purpose Machine Guns as standard police equipment.

These sorts of things tip the balance of the social contract, and if they were thoroughly justified I would support them - but not without proof that they were sufficiently necessary and difficult to abuse. Or 'tightened up', as you say.

[Winston Blake]

Do you have some real evidence that the mere presence of CCTV cameras make people stop exercising their rights? Which rights in particular do people stop exercising in the presence of CCTV cameras?

Any history of East Germany will mention the Stasi and the effect of their mass surveillance on people's behaviour - freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association.

Did the former East Germany guarantee these freedoms in the first place? How is this evidence of your assertion that CCTV cameras would somehow take away these freedoms even if they are still written into law?

Yes, it did.

Despite its repressive character, East Germany's Communist regime has had a constitution for years that embodied most of the liberal concepts of Western democracies. Drafted in 1949, when the Communists hoped to impose it on a reunified Germany, the constitution contained sections on human rights and religious freedom that were designed to allay the fears of nonCommunists. Not surprisingly, East German Party Boss Walter Ulbricht never bothered to put those provisions into practice. Last week, in the first referendum ever held in East Germany, citizens dutifully approved a new constitution that is more in line with the totalitarian nature of the regime.

Again, let's see the evidence.

Again, even the briefest history of East Germany will describe the universal fear of speaking against the government in public, in any way. Further, through a quirk of genetics, I could be mistaken for a person of Middle Eastern descent (although I haven't a drop in me), and if I visited the UK, I personally would feel intimidated by mass CCTV into not making any comments against the government.

Did the former East Germany actually guarantee freedom of political or religious expression in law? If not, then it's a totally irrelevant example. You are arguing that a state which guarantees freedom of political or religious expression in law would somehow remove those freedoms if it puts up CCTV cameras capable of detecting that you are making use of them.

And if so, then I would argue that it's not a totally irrelevant example. And yes, I am arguing that I view that as a risk. Clearly you think this is so profoundly absurd, that merely outlining my position is enough to refute it.

I'm reminded of the Challenger disaster, where the speakerphone conversation between the engineers and the managers slowly morphs from one view to another. Originally, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was safe, or the launch would be cancelled. By the end of the conversation, the engineers had to prove that the Shuttle was unsafe, or the launch would go ahead. No Shuttle had ever been lost before; the managers dismissed concerns, and the launch went ahead.

I'm reminded of the term "false analogy". Engineering safety has nothing to do with the completely unsubstantiated notion that freedoms guaranteed in law would disappear if the authorities can see that you are making use of those freedoms.

It's related to justifying significant changes to the social contract by implementing them first and then saying 'prove they are unsafe', instead of requiring them to be proven safe first.

Your original point (vs Starglider) was that people only dislike being recorded by an individual who pulls out a video camera if they are 'assholes and they don't want their assholery caught on film'. You've said here that you're not bothered by a security camera, yet implied that you would be bothered by an individual recording you. Therefore, 'being an asshole' is not the only reason people dislike being recorded by an individual with a camera, contradicting your point.

You're a fucking liar because you're totally taking that out of context. We were obviously talking about public-surveillance cameras, not an individual stalking you. I would be upset at an individual stalking us even if he did not have a camera, you idiot. In the hands of a stalker, a video camera is disturbing because he is using it for stalking purposes. Similarly, a firearm in the hands of a stalker would be extremely disturbing, yet I am not at all disturbed by the firearm carried by a police officer. This is only a "contradiction" if you're being incredibly dishonest, or retarded.

If I'm wrong about this, it must be because I'm a fool, not because I'm a liar. This is the context:

Recording makes a big difference, to a lot of people. Being in public inherently means being seen by other people, so very few people are bothered by simple watching. However if you take out a video camera and film random people with it, a sizable fraction will demand to know what you're doing.

Yeah, because they're assholes and they don't want their assholery caught on film. It doesn't mean they have lost their "liberty". AFAIK, the only time amateur video of private individuals becomes news is when they're caught doing something terrible.

Since you're implicitly not an asshole, are you saying that your behaviour would be unchanged if you spotted a stranger keeping a camcorder over you and your family in public? A business owner may be 'watching for suspicious persons', while recording everything you say and do - that wouldn't affect your choice of speech or actions?

Starglider was talking about an individual taking out a video camera. Then you were talking about amateur video. Then I was talking about a stranger with a camcorder. Then you essentially said that such a person would be a 'stalker', and unlike such a person, mass CCTV wouldn't bother you - implying that such a person would bother you. As far as I can see, I didn't take it out of context.

Further, my scenario was that of a business owner watching for suspicious persons (as business owners do with CCTV), not someone who would be stalking whether they had a camera or not, which is the subject you've elaborated on here.

Am I wrong in thinking that you (like many people) would be bothered by the scenario I described in my Wednesday post?

Future integrated surveillance isn't bullshit. Ten years ago, the idea of recording the license plate number of every car that passed under a bridge would have been considered bullshit. A few years ago, a fellow student of mine (with everyone in his class) was working on that kind of software, as a mere student assignment in image processing.

What are you, mentally retarded? I didn't say that the technological possibility of high surveillance was bullshit. I said that it's bullshit that people would be singled out for wrongful persecution by a system which monitors the entire public and is so prone to false positives that no such positive would ever hold up in court.

I really think you're underestimating the power and rate of advance of image processing, data mining, and data processing in general. I'm sure you've heard of the ECHELON system - such capabilities are not only not bullshit, they are old tech, just waiting for new applications, like the INDECT project.

See above.

I've re-read my previous post and I concede that being flagged does not constitute being treated as 'guilty until proven innocent' - 'guilty' implies being charged. I concede that point; however the idea that I communicated badly is that people are targeted for surveillance without the normal legal process. Without mass surveillance, suspects are generally sought for a specific crime that has happened, and surveilling people requires a surveillance warrant. With mass surveillance, people are routinely sought as suspects of crimes that haven't happened yet, and will mostly never happen, all without warrants. The police do watch gangs and cells before they commit crimes; however, I assume those require warrants.

I'm going to stop pushing this angle and instead stick with my main point, because I don't know how to firmly show that warrantless surveillance is a bad thing. In fact, IIRC, over the past few years most developed countries have passed anti-terrorism laws that make warrantless surveillance OK. All I can say is that it's a significant increase in power, tying in with my main point.

Those aren't false positives - they're true positives, if you're looking for potential suspects.

Nice parsing of language. You can't be charged with being a "potential suspect". Such a classification is only used for authorizing more surveillance, and if it generates huge numbers of such hits, then it's useless for that purpose as well.

Although I had to study some AI and image processing, I will probably be corrected by Starglider on anything I say, so I will simply repeat him:

Future technology will combine pervasive recording with a global search capability, so that organisations with the appropriate access rights will be able to pull up recordings of people doing specific things as easily as you can pull up someone's Internet comment history given a username and a topic. In the UK, mass deployment and networking of numberplate recognition cameras is already in progress, and Labour have made repeated attempts to get all cars fitted with government-monitored GPS trackers. Integrated surveillance capabilities of this kind are something even the communist police states could only dream of. They are something new, dangerous and do require special legal attention.

Again, you seem to have some bizarre notion that I am contesting the technological potential of public surveillance, as opposed to your bizarre belief that it would be used to persecute people who are engaging in completely legal activities, explicitly protected by law. Or that people would be so terrified of this impossible persecution that they would effectively lose these freedoms.

I concede the point in the first sentence.

To be clear, I will state your perceived position in my own words: 'CCTV is OK as long as it does not record anything which could not be perceived by a person who could be situated legally where the camera is located'. Is that accurate?

Pretty much. As I said earlier, the idea of demanding privacy while standing in public places is completely absurd.

Further, 'if crimes or suspicious behaviour are perceived by such a camera, then people should be charged or investigated' - is that accurate?