George Orwell Was Right: Spy Cameras See Britons' Every Move

[originalpckelly]

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's Saturday night in Middlesbrough, England, and drunken university students are celebrating the start of the school year, known as Freshers' Week.

One picks up a traffic cone and runs down the street. Suddenly, a disembodied voice booms out from above:

``You in the black jacket! Yes, you! Put it back!'' The confused student obeys as his friends look bewildered.

``People are shocked when they hear the cameras talk, but when they see everyone else looking at them, they feel a twinge of conscience and comply,'' said Mike Clark, a spokesman for Middlesbrough Council who recounted the incident. The city has placed speakers in its cameras, allowing operators to chastise miscreants who drop coffee cups, ride bicycles too fast or fight outside bars.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=avL4PSqZrcj4

Do you approve of cameras that can watch and talk to pedestrians?

[Eurobabe]

1. V for Vendetta, in the flesh, alive and well in UK. n/t

[originalpckelly]

2. Oh come on, what's a widdle camera gonna do to you?

:shrug:

:sarcasm:

[Eurobabe]

3. Don't know, but we have lots of them here in Germany too...

just to make us feel safe.

[originalpckelly]

5. Well, that's what happens when people want to be on TV.

Just not the kind that they envisioned.

[Deja Q]

4. A pity more people won't look after each other on their own...

I had no idea Britain was that bad off; of all the stories I hear about crime in America (e.g. the pregnant lady who got beaten at night in a parking lot in a mall on University Ave where, despite a local wal-mart existing there were no cameras to capture the event...)

I honestly can't pick sides here. Like unions, they are (as my uncle would call them) "a necessary evil". :(

[Warpy]

6. I have no problem at all with cameras in public places

because one expects to be seen in public places. Most of us don't walk around with our fingers up our noses and the cameras have managed to catch a few bad guys.

I don't want one that listens and I don't want one that talks back. I also want the video destroyed after 5 years if it hasn't coincided with a crime.

[originalpckelly]

9. Would you allow police officers to follow you around 24/7 when you are in public?

:shrug:

[Crandor]

15. Do you think you should have a right to be able to mug people without being seen? nt

[originalpckelly]

18. Why do we have warrants as a country?(nt)

[WinkyDink]

19. There are laws against assault and battery. Not wanting Big Spying Brother

does not equate to thinking mugging "should" go unseen. Mugging "should" not exist, seen or unseen.
But it will. And cameras might---might---serve for an arrest, but the victim has still been mugged.

[Warpy]

24. HAHA, been there done that

back in my antiwar, hell raising days, only they were FBI.

That's not a realistic question for most of us, including me right now, because one would have to have half the population assigned to specific people in the other half.

Surely you can tell the difference.

[WinkyDink]

17. No, we do NOT "expect" to have unseen authorities WATCHING US as we walk or

drive or converse or stroll or sit in a park or feed a pigeon or comb our hair or window-shop or fix a bra strap or preen in a window or kiss a lover or frown or skip to my Lou or ogle someone or parallel park or struggle with the groceries or......

[Warpy]

25. Sure we do

unless we're yacking on a cell phone and oblivious to the world around us.

[WinkyDink]

30. Well, there go my days of affixing a maple-tree pod to my nose!

Or maybe I will still not act my age, and then raise high my second digit to the nearest lamp-post. Hope those low-life un-civil servants are bored to real bitter tears.

[Warpy]

34. Why not? I do.

Besides, they're not watching in real time. They only examine the data if they're looking for somebody who's done something very wrong.

[no_hypocrisy]

7. Big Brother IS watching you . . .

[originalpckelly]

10. Oh come on, it's just a camera which can talk to you!

How is that at all like Big Brother, or the telescreens in 1984?

[no_hypocrisy]

14. They're phasing them in . . . .n/t

[WinkyDink]

20. The camera isn't talking; a PERSON WATCHING YOU is.

[originalpckelly]

26. Sorry, I forgot the "sarcasm" tag.

[WinkyDink]

31. I forgot my literary analysis cap! (And I DO have one, hee.)

[Solo_in_MD]

8. Green lasers are your friends

they can temporary and sometimes permanent bad things to cameras.

[Crandor]

12. So when you disagree with what the gov't does, the solution is destruction of property?

Timothy McVeigh would agree.

[mark414]

13. that

was a stupid thing to say

[Waya]

21. ...............

:wtf:

[WinkyDink]

22. So might the Boston Tea Party patriots.

[originalpckelly]

23. Because as we all know, people who vandalize oppressive video cameras...

and bombers who kill 168 Americans are the same.

:eyes:


I think it's a little disturbing when a country has more security cameras than it does people to watch with those security cameras.

[Solo_in_MD]

27. Take it this way...

Your neighbor sets up cameras to monitor you subversive activities (all us DU posters are pinkos after all). He points them at your front door and your backyard. What do you do?
- Moon them every chance you get?
- Cut the wires/vandalize them
- Jam them with a $3.00 laser pointer

Modern CCD camera can't be burned out with a red laser, but all the viewer will see is white. Green lasers are much more powerful and could do damage, though I have not seen any reports of such.

My privacy is important to me...I can and will distrupt intrusions on it whenever I can.

[mark414]

11. that is scary

whoever voted yes should go live in saudi arabia or something

[WinkyDink]

16. The Prisoner.

[originalpckelly]

28. The three who voted yes, ought to be ashamed...

you're no better than a little sheep without a shepherd.

[MazeRat7]

29. There needs to be more cameras in public places....available for all to view..

Being able to monitor what the masses and law enforcement are doing in public is not a "privacy" issue. Its a public information issue and the more public information available to us all the better. So my vote is add as many cameras "in public" as you want... just make sure the "public" also has access to those cameras.

All that being said, if you care to talk to me while I am out and about fine. But if I find out your are using ultra-sensitive microphones to listen in to my private (low db) conversations while in public that is completely unacceptable. However, if I'm yelling for all to hear or talking loudly above the crowd on my phone, or just in general,...listen away since apparently I "want" everyone to hear what I am saying.

MZr7

[WinkyDink]

32. People should try NOT to talk "loudly above the crowd on [their] phone".

There is/was a REASON phone booths were both isolated and enclosed: PRIVACY, and not just for the caller.

[The2ndWheel]

33. Does it matter if we "approve"?

This is what the whole thing has been headed to for thousands of years. A mass controlled society. It happens inch by inch, but that's what the whole thing is. It's not called the Information Age because we get to play around on the internet and hold power accountable(hahahahaha...sorry, I mean, democracy, freedom, America, woohoo).