CCTV Cameras

[RabidGibbon]

I can't talk for the rest of the world but here in the UK the number of CCTV cameras has been increasing at a pretty explosive rate. They are used on cash machines and in town high streets to catch vandals, thugs etc etc.

Recently CCTV cameras played a high profile part in attempts to identify the london suicide bomber's.

It's even possible for private citizens to buy CCTV cameras to watch over their gardens, thus proving once and for all that it was the neighbours dog.

Civil liberites groups, on the whole seem to be against the introduction of ever more CCTV cameras into public places and often argue that they just push crime out into the suberbs, and on the other hand law enforcement agencies think there the bees knees and seem to want to slap one on every lamp post in the country.

Whilst dis-liking the need for them, and not being over keen on being "in the movies" every time I step out my door, I can see that they do have a role in preventing minor crime. I do sometimes wonder however if a larger more active (ie: less paperwork to do) policeforce might be a better subtitute for these cameras.

What do you all think about CCTV cameras?

[Ronin]

i don´t have a problem with them....

when you are in a public area you just have to assume that people might be watching you.....this isn´t much diferent from small towns and vilages were everybody knows everybody else and basically if you step out your door everyone will know were you are going and how.

they can help prevent crime....i don´t think a law-abidding citizen has anything to worry about.....if you are not doing anything wrong, why worry that someone might be watching?

[Navaros]

as far as i know here in Canada such cameras are already all over the place and have been for many years. they often are used to solve crimes.

i saw a documentary about it once. it was extremely creepy just how prevalent they are. you can not really go outside in the city in this day and age without constantly being under the all-seeing eye of one or more cameras

most people do not even know that big brother is already watching them, but he is

[Franconicus]

It is a nightmare!

[R'as al Ghul]

if you are not doing anything wrong, why worry that someone might be watching?

Because it's nobody's concern but mine?
Would you object to having cameras installed at your home or
your telephone conversations being listened to or
your email being read?
After all you aren't doing anything wrong, do you?

Of course I'm aware of the fact, that when you move into public space
you're being watched by your fellow citizens but recording all of this on tape is something different imo.
Also, it didn't help preventing the London bombings.

[Ronin]

Because it's nobody's concern but mine?
Would you object to having cameras installed at your home or
your telephone conversations being listened to or
your email being read?
After all you aren't doing anything wrong, do you?

Of course I'm aware of the fact, that when you move into public space
you're being watched by your fellow citizens but recording all of this on tape is something different imo.
Also, it didn't help preventing the London bombings.

you answered your own question.....home/telephone/email ->private....and in my case even if they checked all of those things they wouldn´t learn much

when you move into a public space.....well...i don´t have a problem with someone filming me walking down the street or into any shop....

as for the london bombings....no it didn´t help prevent it...because unfortunatelly terrorists don´t walk around with a giant "T" stamped in their foreheads...but cctv did help find out very quickly who they were, this lead to suspects and arrests that might not have hapenned otherwise.

[R'as al Ghul]

you answered your own question.....home/telephone/email ->private....and in my case even if they checked all of those things they wouldn´t learn much

Right, I did. I guess I was thinking a bit further. Where will this development stop?

when you move into a public space.....well...i don´t have a problem with someone filming me walking down the street or into any shop....

I would have a problem if it was possible to "follow" a citizen on his walk through the city.
It's different from being spotted by people you don't know.
Being constantly observed by video is like being stalked.

as for the london bombings....no it didn´t help prevent it...because unfortunatelly terrorists don´t walk around with a giant "T" stamped in their foreheads...but cctv did help find out very quickly who they were, this lead to suspects and arrests that might not have hapenned otherwise.

Okay but the argument for cctv is crime-prevention.
I don't think it will be possible, even if more cameras are installed.

[Ronin]

Okay but the argument for cctv is crime-prevention.
I don't think it will be possible, even if more cameras are installed.

i think that once it becomes general knowledge that the cameras are there and the perps realize that they WILL be picked up easily after commiting a crime the crime rates will drop....so it offers prevention....or more like deterrence.

on the case of a suicide bomber this of course is meaningless because you can´t really do anything to them afterwards....but hey....no system is perfect.

[R'as al Ghul]

i think that once it becomes general knowledge that the cameras are there and the perps realize that they WILL be picked up easily after commiting a crime the crime rates will drop.

Or somebody will work on a workaround:

iSee is a web-based application charting the locations of closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras in urban environments. With iSee, users can find routes that avoid these cameras ("paths of least surveillance") allowing them to walk around their cities without fear of being "caught on tape" by unregulated security monitors.

Linky

Try it, it's fun.

Edit: The same site provides some arguments against the use of cctv:
Excerpts:

Minorities

One of the big problems with video surveillance is the tendency of police officers and security guards to single out particular people to monitor. It is hardly surprising that the mentality leading to racial profiling in traffic stops has found similar expression in police officers focusing their cameras on people of color. Indeed, a recent study of video surveillance in the UK, the leading user of CCTV surveillance systems, says that "black people were between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half times more likely to be surveilled than one would expect from their presence in the population." It is worth pointing out that, in this study, 40% of people that the police targeted were picked out "for no obvious reason," other than their ethnicity or apparent membership in various subcultural groups. In other words, they were singled out not for what they were doing, but simply based on how they looked.

Women

It appears that police monitors just can’t seem to keep it in their pants when it comes to video surveillance. In a Hull University study, 1 out of 10 women were targeted for “voyeuristic” reasons by male camera operators, and a Brooklyn police sergeant blew the whistle on several of her colleagues in 1998 for “taking pictures of civilian women in the area ... from breast shots to the backside."

Another part on the connection to crime:

More disturbing, however, was the finding that incidents of police brutality and harassment captured by CCTV surveillance were routinely ignored. The tapes of these events also had a tendency to be "lost" by operators.

The effect of video surveillance on criminal psychology is also not well understood. One Los Angeles study found that cameras in a retail store were perceived by criminals as a challenge, and in fact offered became an inducement towards shoplifting.

At best, CCTV seems to not reduce crime, but merely to divert it to other areas. According to one Boston police official, "criminals get used to the cameras and tend to move out of sight."

[Marcellus]

I don't really mind them, as long as I don't see them too much. If they are out of the way then I don't notice anything and I feel fine. But I don't like seeing that I am being watched.

CCTV cameras can help prevent low-level crime and can help identify terrorists so that they can be captured more easily.

As long as they are in public, they are OK, because anything that you do in public should be appropriate for anyone to see, including the police. This situation does not apply to private situations.

[Blodrast]

Criminals will always find workarounds. Always. This will only discourage idiots from committing crimes, and even those probably only for a short while. Then they can just resort to disguises, masks, iSee, or half a dozen similar things.

On the other hand, you, as the righteous citizen, will be at the discretion of any monitor who is bored and has nothing better to do than to follow you around... and that's an abuse of your civic liberties. The monitors will never be perfect, they are human, too, and it's completely understandable (and predictable, imho).

Okay, posting serious stuff makes me tired, so, to recover, I need to throw in some less-than-serious stuff, so...

/runs away screaming: 1984!!!

[dgfred]

They sure did help with the current situations.

[Blodrast]

ok, that may very well be so - I am completely uninformed about that.
Then I guess in the end it's like everything else - a tradeoff