4 ms·

Yeah, that stat is very misleading. Those cameras are all privately owned, mostly by shops. So unless you think there’s some great grocers government surveilla

Yeah, that stat is very misleading. Those cameras are all privately owned, mostly by shops. So unless you think there’s some great grocers government surveillance network (there isn’t, I’ve actually asked), then the government has no idea what your doing. To find out they would need to send a police officer with a warrant to every shop in the country to request the footage. Even then the footage is mostly crap (again I’ve actually seen what the police collect for investigations). To claim that the mere existence of a camera indicates a surveillance network is just intellectual dishonesty. No one would ever claim that very laptop camera is monitored by the government, but apparently supermarket cameras are?

cycomanic 5y ago
That is not true, there are a lot of police/government owned CCTVs in public places in the UK. They even had some initiatives, were some of those had speakers attached so the person monitoring the camera calls out "unwanted" behaviour. I would say ignoring the fact that the US and UK have set up and are running (well the UK is really just tagging along) in the biggest worldwide surveillance operation on the planet is the intellectual dishonesty. Also I never said that the existence of a camera indicates surveillance, that's a straw man. However, the existence of automatic licence plate tracking is definitely an indication of surveillance. The wikipedia article on UK mass surveillance is quite enlightening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
- avianlyric 5y ago
  You should go and talk to some actual police officers trying to investigate actual crimes. I’ve talked to quite a few when working for a company that specialised in dealing with CCTV, and I was trying sell stuff to the police. I can tell you with some confidence that U.K. CCTV infrastructure, both state run and private, is a complete joke, and almost completely useless. Try giving an officer CCTV footage of a bike being stolen, and you’ll quickly discover how useless it is.

cycomanic 5y ago

That is not true, there are a lot of police/government owned CCTVs in public places in the UK. They even had some initiatives, were some of those had speakers attached so the person monitoring the camera calls out "unwanted" behaviour. I would say ignoring the fact that the US and UK have set up and are running (well the UK is really just tagging along) in the biggest worldwide surveillance operation on the planet is the intellectual dishonesty. Also I never said that the existence of a camera indicates surveillance, that's a straw man. However, the existence of automatic licence plate tracking is definitely an indication of surveillance. The wikipedia article on UK mass surveillance is quite enlightening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...

avianlyric 5y ago
You should go and talk to some actual police officers trying to investigate actual crimes. I’ve talked to quite a few when working for a company that specialised in dealing with CCTV, and I was trying sell stuff to the police. I can tell you with some confidence that U.K. CCTV infrastructure, both state run and private, is a complete joke, and almost completely useless. Try giving an officer CCTV footage of a bike being stolen, and you’ll quickly discover how useless it is.