UK 'Bag Brother' Trashcams

[Joanne98]

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1079

Tiny spy cameras hidden in bin bags (trash in a can) will be used to make sure that British citizens are disposing of their trash properly.

Every time I think that I've done my last story on the absurd extent to which citizens of the UK allow themselves to be spied upon, something else comes up. Don't put out your rubbish on the wrong day or time or place in Weymouth, Dorset. Or else.

The city council has decreed that tiny spy cameras will be hidden in bags of trash to spy on wrongdoers.

The initiative has shocked local taxpayers. The spy camera is being introduced in the Park district in Weymouth, an area that suffers from fly-tipping. Residents in the area will have to follow strict rules which come into force on June 22.
They will only be allowed to put out their rubbish between 8pm and 6am the night before collection and it will have to be at the front of their homes.

"Fly-tipping" appears to refer to illicit dumping of trash - by anyone, apparently. Earlier in the year, a London borough announced a plan to put spy cameras in bricks and tin cans.

According to Ealing council in west London, the hidden cameras will catch people committing "major envirocrimes."

See also Trashcan Surveillance - Halt! Who Throws There?. Via the Telegraph and the Mail. Take a look at this interesting comment on similar regulations in the Netherlands at Expatica. Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/17/2007)
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1079

The only thing good about living in the US, is NOT living in the UK!

If you have a story about government spying, send it to Technovelgy
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/contactus.asp
They will print it. They printed mine..
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1068
CitizenObserver.com On The Watch

CitizenObserver.com is a website that encourages citizens and police to work together to solve crimes. Citizens and businesses can sign up to receive alerts from police, and provide tips; police organizations can sign up to receive the tips and dispense alerts to citizens and businesses in defined areas.

The site has an elaborate tip form to allow citizens to report people that they find suspicious. The information requested includes marks and tattoos, hangouts, known associates, and gang affiliations. You can even upload a photograph of the "suspect." The tips are submitted via another site, TipSubmit.com.

The site is currently in use by 300 law enforcement agencies in thirty states, according to Terry Halsch, president of the St. Paul, Minn.-based company. Mr. Halsch is apparently the owner of the site as well. In a 2005 New York Times article, he also suggests making your outdoor cameras accessible from the Internet, to allow anyone to watch what's happening on your street. "We're trying to bring back something of the old feeling of neighbors watching out for each other, combined with new technology," Mr. Halsch said.

A recent article on the use of the system in Pittsburgh states that it is too early to tell if it will be helpful; no arrests due to citizen participation have been reported.

Not everyone seems as happy about this site as Mr. Halsch. The site raises a variety of concerns from civil liberties and privacy advocates. On DemocraticUnderground.com, it is described as a "Big Brother type of website that allows you to report your neighbors." Site users note concerns ranging from CitizenObserver becoming a mecca for busybodies with noting better to do than watch their neighbors, to the site being a place where upper-class people with easy access to computers can report everyone else, to worries that this is yet another step towards establishing a police state in which everyone is forced to watch everyone else.

One commenter thought of the same thing I did - the similarity between this site and the police use of media in Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. In the novel, the police are chasing Guy Montag, the novel's protagonist. The police use the parlor wall televisions (an early reference to the big screen TV you have now) to organize a group effort by the public.

"Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a font or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready!"
The doors opened...

He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like gray animals peering from electric caves... (From Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury)

The director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, Vic Walczak, says "I don't have any alarm bells going off."

Thanks to Joanne98 for this story; read more at Government Innovators Network and DemocraticUnderground.com. Also, see this 2005 NY Times article (may require registration) as well as CitizenObserver.com. Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/3/2007)
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1068

[kurth]

1. Coming Soon: UK unveils cameras to monitor citizens' wiping their ass

What the hell happened to the Magna Carta?

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. So - are you in favour of people throwing trash where they shouldn't?

I presume not. If a policeman saw someone throwing a bag of rubbish where they're not meant to, I presume you'd be OK with him telling them off - and if they did it again, perhaps giving them a fine.

So, in an area where this is a known problem, do you think they should have to keep a policeman permanently on duty to prevent people doing it? Would that be a good use of public money? Or would it be better to set up a camera to record who it is that regularly leaves their rubbish in a public alley?

[cooolandrew]

3. It all sounds very sinister but mostly haven't seen it used for any facist methods really.

The monitoring of bins is to push to be more environmentally friendly, now it's invasive but the environment is a big issue. Our government can push the boundaries of civil liberties because we don't have a bill of rights here, but as yet not been used in any facistic way. Although the police terrorism unit have been over zealous at times and the worse case scenario was the brazillian guy that got shot but that has been the worst of it mostly. Although one death is one too many espcially when it was a innocent bystander.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Yes!

Blair has not been the greatest on civil liberties and privacy rights; and I would strongly support a written bill of rights to stop and prevent abuses. Nonetheless, there are some very exaggerated ideas floating around about our being a 'police state', constantly spied on, etc; and frankly, a lot of this originates with elements of our own right-wing press who look for any opportunity to portray the welfare state as a 'left-wing nanny state'; 'political correctness run mad!'; 'Big Brother government controlling us!'; etc. Most of it needs to be taken with quite a few grains of salt.

[WinkyDink]

6. Really? You think being scolded and warned from a Big Brother Voice isn't "controlling"?

That you are THE most-observed populace, exceeding any tyranny's denizens?

You have completely missed the point: The apparatus is being put into place. The Fascist use comes afterwards. The next step is for the U.K. to abandon the monarchy.

[LeftishBrit]

7. I have never in my LIFE been scolded or warned by a 'Big Brother Voice'

(unless you count one or two administrators in my workplace!)

This is the point: someone comes up with some rather silly technological idea somewhere, and at once it's being presented in the press as though EVERYONE is using it; and this DEFINES Britain. It's just like some British people who have never been to America, and who read media coverage of a sensational murder in an American city, and think that all Americans are criminals or crime victims. It's pure sensationalism!

We do have too many invasions of our civil liberties; and I do actively oppose them. But we are in most ways less of a police state than many Europaean countries, or for that matter the United States, which has a lot more people in prison than we do.

I don't expect the UK to abandon the monarchy any time soon; though it might not be a bad idea, considering the money that gets wasted on it. In any case, what on earth has that got to do with police surveillance issues?

[WinkyDink]

5. That comment from my state's ACLU has MY alarm bells going off.