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Well CCTVs, or even older technology like finger prints, could be used to reduce crime, while also resulting in abuse or a reduction in privacy and freedoms. I

Well CCTVs, or even older technology like finger prints, could be used to reduce crime, while also resulting in abuse or a reduction in privacy and freedoms. Its always been the job of society to be rational about this and look at the cost of further infringement upon your liberties vs the marginal utility offered by a tool which enhances crime fighting ability.

ck2 14y ago
CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Drones can circle a city for days and with high resolution sensors can not miss a thing. This isn't just a more advanced CCTV, it's a near-infallible machine.
- baddox 14y ago
  > CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Why not?
  - beedogs 14y ago
    Do you really want a non-sarcastic answer to that? Use some common sense: CCTV cameras aren't ubiquitous. There are gaps in coverage all over the place.
    - zepolud 14y ago
      You've obviously never visited London.
      - zimpenfish 14y ago
        Nah, I reckon there's at least 150yds between my flat and a commute into the centre of London (~8mi) where there's no camera coverage. Possibly even 200yds!
      - vidarh 14y ago
        And yet if the police wanted to trace you, they'd face utter hell of figuring out who operates what camera (mostly private businesses monitoring their own premises or immediate surroundings; sometimes local councils or agencies such as TfL; very occasionally a police force), get them to agree to hand over tapes (or get a court order), assuming the tapes have not already been deleted, and that the camera worked at the time. Repeat for pretty much every camera, and fan out every time they can't see you... While we're on camera most of the time in London, we can be pretty confident that the sheer hassle of obtaining footage and cost in processing them keeps the police from abusing it all that much...
    - abstrakraft 14y ago
      Use some common sense: There are gaps in drone coverage all over the place.
      - kaolinite 14y ago
        Drone coverage can adapt and follow specific targets, that's the difference.
        FooBarWidget 14y ago
        How do you follow a specific target, if you don't know who the target is until after you've analyzed the recordings?
        krichman 14y ago
        The drones have flux capacitors, they are near-infallible machines.
        kaolinite 14y ago
        Ah, yeah, there are gaps in drone coverage in that sense.
        foobarqux 14y ago
        They now have drones with a very wild field of view so that you don't need to target the camera anywhere, it just records an entire city from above.
    - gaius 14y ago
      You forget: London is already tooled up for Case Nightmare Green.
    - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
      In what sense would the drones be ubiquitous?
    - DanBC 14y ago
      You just add very many more cctv cameras. You don't need total coverage. You just make sure some cameras have calibrated timestamps and automatic number plate recognition. That allows you to build up a sequence of cctv coverage of suspects. The UK has one fifth of installed CCTV in the world. With that many cameras they pretty much are ubiquitous.
    - Intermernet 14y ago
      Not sure how accurate this is, but it seems fairly believable. http://youtu.be/Okk26NOLry8 http://youtu.be/Okk26NOLry8 EDIT: The link above is a Reuters reports (Uploaded in 2011) on London's use of Ipsotek's Tag & Track software (now owned by BAE Systems http://www.baesystems.com/page/BAES_026518 http://www.baesystems.com/page/BAES_026518) EDIT 2: Sorry, apparently not owned by BAE Systems, they're partners.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Yes it is, that's quite common in Britain, or at least London, because CCTV coverage is so dense there. To turn your argument inside out, drone deployment is temporary whereas CCTV deployment tends to be permanent.
  - vidarh 14y ago
    CCTV coverage in Britain is dense, yes, but it's exaggerated greatly. The vast majority of them are low quality privately operated cameras that are not networked in any way, and with varying degrees of retention - all the way down to no retention at all. It is incredibly hard for the police to trace someone based on CCTV even after the fact - even after the 7/7 bombings it took an immense amount of manpower to stitch together the movements of the bombers. So while in theory, yes, you could be traced that way, in reality police often don't even bother gathering CCTV tapes from the cameras they know cover a relevant area unless it's for particularly serious crimes and they lack other evidence because of the cost involved. In the central core of London, it's a little bit different in that there are sections that are well covered by police operated CCTV, but even then "well covered" usually means that operators decide what to focus on and zoom in on, so ongoing coverage of a specific location might be spotty.
    - regularfry 14y ago
      About 8 years ago I had a chat over drinks with a guy responsible for a large part of Westminster Council's CCTV deployments. His take then was that the only limiting factor preventing total surveillance (which, as I recall, he viewed as a good thing) was bandwidth. Next up was storage. Next was the software to integrate the feeds and make them human-comprehensible. None of these problems will last very much longer, in the grand scheme of things.
      - vidarh 14y ago
        Westminster is "special" in that it is very dense, has a lot of violence compared to its affluence (due to the amount of nightclubs and bars etc) coupled with a massive amount of high priority buildings, and the combination of that means that it has far more government controlled CCTV than pretty much anywhere in Britain outside of City. Westminster and City are probably the two small parts of London where there'd be a reasonable chance of "total surveillance". But even Westminster is also chock full of CCTV dead zones due to the narrow streets and complicated building facades with lots of nooks and crannies - it might be "easy" to get coverage of people moving along the streets in Westminster, but incredibly hard to eliminate opportunities for people to hide away.
- r0s 14y ago
  > near-infallible machine. Here is where the discussion jumps the shark.
- intended 14y ago
  This isn't about CCTV vs Drones. This is about forensic and surveillance technology advancement vs civil liberties, the expectation and right to privacy, and the abuse of new powers. > ..tool for when crime happens but what do we do when it's guaranteed to be abused? Law enforcement would love to be able to record all phone calls and keep comprehensive videos of every event. Going backwards, people have argued for having people fingerprinted by default vs only when being processed during a criminal investigation. In each case, it is the acceptance that while the tools are valuable, we draw the line saying that : "Yes, the marginal utility of having 1 drone flying or 1 or a 100, vs their impact and chance for abuse is something we are uncomfortable with." The question I suspect that is worth looking at, which I don't have data for, is the value of increased CCTV/Monitoring technology in solving crimes. I'd rather offer a Stradivarius to someone who can get the most out of it, vs someone who can occasional hit the right notes from it.
  - Kequc 14y ago
    This is the part I don't understand is that in almost any way you look at it CCTV are a benefit to the masses. An example of one benefit to having CCTV spread out over downtown is that you can relieve some police presence and spread them out to places that aren't. Another benefit would be that crimes committed in downtown would be recorded forcing criminals to wear masks rather than relying on the shock of the incident to make the victim forget details about the perpetrators features. If you have criminals walking around wearing masks then they can be quite easy to spot. Another benefit would be in the case of this bombing. When I first heard of the bombing I was pretty interested, I wanted to know who put the bombs there, when and then who they were and what their problem was. I figured well they'll pull up CCTV and we'll all know what happened. Instead police are being relied on to manage all of it in the moment. It isn't a violation of freedom to be filmed in public, that's completely legal. People just start getting up in arms about it when it's a service offered by the american government for some reason. Any private individual is allowed to film for who knows what reason.
    - deepvibrations 14y ago
      So the world you want to live in is covered in CCTV and people being monitored everywhere? Sounds like a 'trust nobody' world, 1984 style... Don't you think it's about time we set about looking at why people commit these crimes and tackling these problems at the roots? Why not try and PREVENT these things from happening rather than acting after people have committed crimes by locking them up, which often only serves to create a life-long criminal rather than helping in any way.

ck2 14y ago

CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Drones can circle a city for days and with high resolution sensors can not miss a thing. This isn't just a more advanced CCTV, it's a near-infallible machine.

baddox 14y ago
> CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Why not?
- beedogs 14y ago
  Do you really want a non-sarcastic answer to that? Use some common sense: CCTV cameras aren't ubiquitous. There are gaps in coverage all over the place.
  - zepolud 14y ago
    You've obviously never visited London.
    - zimpenfish 14y ago
      Nah, I reckon there's at least 150yds between my flat and a commute into the centre of London (~8mi) where there's no camera coverage. Possibly even 200yds!
    - vidarh 14y ago
      And yet if the police wanted to trace you, they'd face utter hell of figuring out who operates what camera (mostly private businesses monitoring their own premises or immediate surroundings; sometimes local councils or agencies such as TfL; very occasionally a police force), get them to agree to hand over tapes (or get a court order), assuming the tapes have not already been deleted, and that the camera worked at the time. Repeat for pretty much every camera, and fan out every time they can't see you... While we're on camera most of the time in London, we can be pretty confident that the sheer hassle of obtaining footage and cost in processing them keeps the police from abusing it all that much...
  - abstrakraft 14y ago
    Use some common sense: There are gaps in drone coverage all over the place.
    - kaolinite 14y ago
      Drone coverage can adapt and follow specific targets, that's the difference.
      - FooBarWidget 14y ago
        How do you follow a specific target, if you don't know who the target is until after you've analyzed the recordings?
        krichman 14y ago
        The drones have flux capacitors, they are near-infallible machines.
        kaolinite 14y ago
        Ah, yeah, there are gaps in drone coverage in that sense.
        foobarqux 14y ago
        They now have drones with a very wild field of view so that you don't need to target the camera anywhere, it just records an entire city from above.
  - gaius 14y ago
    You forget: London is already tooled up for Case Nightmare Green.
  - BHSPitMonkey 14y ago
    In what sense would the drones be ubiquitous?
  - DanBC 14y ago
    You just add very many more cctv cameras. You don't need total coverage. You just make sure some cameras have calibrated timestamps and automatic number plate recognition. That allows you to build up a sequence of cctv coverage of suspects. The UK has one fifth of installed CCTV in the world. With that many cameras they pretty much are ubiquitous.
  - Intermernet 14y ago
    Not sure how accurate this is, but it seems fairly believable. http://youtu.be/Okk26NOLry8 http://youtu.be/Okk26NOLry8 EDIT: The link above is a Reuters reports (Uploaded in 2011) on London's use of Ipsotek's Tag & Track software (now owned by BAE Systems http://www.baesystems.com/page/BAES_026518 http://www.baesystems.com/page/BAES_026518) EDIT 2: Sorry, apparently not owned by BAE Systems, they're partners.
anigbrowl 14y ago
CCTV isn't going to trace you coming from your home, where you stopped along the way, how fast you went to each point and where you got out. Yes it is, that's quite common in Britain, or at least London, because CCTV coverage is so dense there. To turn your argument inside out, drone deployment is temporary whereas CCTV deployment tends to be permanent.
- vidarh 14y ago
  CCTV coverage in Britain is dense, yes, but it's exaggerated greatly. The vast majority of them are low quality privately operated cameras that are not networked in any way, and with varying degrees of retention - all the way down to no retention at all. It is incredibly hard for the police to trace someone based on CCTV even after the fact - even after the 7/7 bombings it took an immense amount of manpower to stitch together the movements of the bombers. So while in theory, yes, you could be traced that way, in reality police often don't even bother gathering CCTV tapes from the cameras they know cover a relevant area unless it's for particularly serious crimes and they lack other evidence because of the cost involved. In the central core of London, it's a little bit different in that there are sections that are well covered by police operated CCTV, but even then "well covered" usually means that operators decide what to focus on and zoom in on, so ongoing coverage of a specific location might be spotty.
  - regularfry 14y ago
    About 8 years ago I had a chat over drinks with a guy responsible for a large part of Westminster Council's CCTV deployments. His take then was that the only limiting factor preventing total surveillance (which, as I recall, he viewed as a good thing) was bandwidth. Next up was storage. Next was the software to integrate the feeds and make them human-comprehensible. None of these problems will last very much longer, in the grand scheme of things.
    - vidarh 14y ago
      Westminster is "special" in that it is very dense, has a lot of violence compared to its affluence (due to the amount of nightclubs and bars etc) coupled with a massive amount of high priority buildings, and the combination of that means that it has far more government controlled CCTV than pretty much anywhere in Britain outside of City. Westminster and City are probably the two small parts of London where there'd be a reasonable chance of "total surveillance". But even Westminster is also chock full of CCTV dead zones due to the narrow streets and complicated building facades with lots of nooks and crannies - it might be "easy" to get coverage of people moving along the streets in Westminster, but incredibly hard to eliminate opportunities for people to hide away.
r0s 14y ago
> near-infallible machine. Here is where the discussion jumps the shark.
intended 14y ago
This isn't about CCTV vs Drones. This is about forensic and surveillance technology advancement vs civil liberties, the expectation and right to privacy, and the abuse of new powers. > ..tool for when crime happens but what do we do when it's guaranteed to be abused? Law enforcement would love to be able to record all phone calls and keep comprehensive videos of every event. Going backwards, people have argued for having people fingerprinted by default vs only when being processed during a criminal investigation. In each case, it is the acceptance that while the tools are valuable, we draw the line saying that : "Yes, the marginal utility of having 1 drone flying or 1 or a 100, vs their impact and chance for abuse is something we are uncomfortable with." The question I suspect that is worth looking at, which I don't have data for, is the value of increased CCTV/Monitoring technology in solving crimes. I'd rather offer a Stradivarius to someone who can get the most out of it, vs someone who can occasional hit the right notes from it.
- Kequc 14y ago
  This is the part I don't understand is that in almost any way you look at it CCTV are a benefit to the masses. An example of one benefit to having CCTV spread out over downtown is that you can relieve some police presence and spread them out to places that aren't. Another benefit would be that crimes committed in downtown would be recorded forcing criminals to wear masks rather than relying on the shock of the incident to make the victim forget details about the perpetrators features. If you have criminals walking around wearing masks then they can be quite easy to spot. Another benefit would be in the case of this bombing. When I first heard of the bombing I was pretty interested, I wanted to know who put the bombs there, when and then who they were and what their problem was. I figured well they'll pull up CCTV and we'll all know what happened. Instead police are being relied on to manage all of it in the moment. It isn't a violation of freedom to be filmed in public, that's completely legal. People just start getting up in arms about it when it's a service offered by the american government for some reason. Any private individual is allowed to film for who knows what reason.
  - deepvibrations 14y ago
    So the world you want to live in is covered in CCTV and people being monitored everywhere? Sounds like a 'trust nobody' world, 1984 style... Don't you think it's about time we set about looking at why people commit these crimes and tackling these problems at the roots? Why not try and PREVENT these things from happening rather than acting after people have committed crimes by locking them up, which often only serves to create a life-long criminal rather than helping in any way.