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Err... actually, what happened to you happened because of faulty and inadequate surveillance. Had they had cameras in the places watching 24/7, they would have

Err... actually, what happened to you happened because of faulty and inadequate surveillance. Had they had cameras in the places watching 24/7, they would have seen you DIDN'T do it. It was only because they didn't have surveillance that they had to rely on partial data. If you think about it, had surveillance been even less, and they relied on a random witness who said they saw a guy in a hoodie, and you happen to own a hoodie, you could actually be vindicated by better surveillance. In other words, the truly innocent will always benefit more from such a system than those who are actually guilty. But this assumes the use of surveillance is benevolent. Your example is not actually a good example of why surveillance is bad. It is in fact an example of how it can help. Where surveillance might be bad is in the potential for abuse. It can cause misunderstandings, but even better surveillance resolves that.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago
I have a personal rule that I am forming, where if the approach to improve something, is to use that something in greater quantities, it is probably a bad thing. e.g. brute force, vendor specific stack, XML, C++, classes, templates, advertising and surveillance. Have you ever had the misfortune of watching reality TV? You do realise the power of selective editing. Sufficiently motivated camera operators can 'destroy evidence' with no paper trail. So no, I really don't think more surveillance would necessarily give a better result. Who would be so crooked as to do such a thing? Faculty to get insurance claim/avoid insurance claim, overloaded cop who just wants to get to 'done' or a promotion.
- davidw 13y ago
  From http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ : "XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."
- chrischen 13y ago
  I'm not saying more surveillance == better. I'm saying more surveillance would resolve that guy's specific problem, therefore his example is false.
  - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
    I'm saying more surveillance == worse. And I'm saying that it would not necessarily resolve his specific problem. It would resolve the problem of whoever controls the footage.
    - chrischen 13y ago
      Why wouldn't more surveillance have solved his specific problem? His specific problem arose because nobody knew the truth about where he was or what he was doing. Imperfect information caused him to be falsely accused. Here's a though experience. If you believed in an all-knowing God, do you think He would know that the OP was innocent? If yes, then that's because the God knows and sees everything right? Again, I'm not saying more surveillance is good in any way. One of the problems is that it's a lot of concentrated power and whoever gets a hold of it could abuse it. However, one way to ameliorate this would be to implement lots of surveillance, and make it all public data. A more open society would probably be a good thing though.
      - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
        Because unless I am mistaken, you had not mentioned it being public data. Private surveillance is not really much use to him. I've worked in places where the surveillance tapes were wiped or mislaid when it wasn't in the interest of the footage owner to have its existence known. Making it all public data would be totally different. That opens another can of worms: Would it then be a crime to delete the data if you were the owner of the footage?
        chrischen 13y ago
        Regardless of it being public or not, fundamentally it still stands that more surveillance means the OP would have been vindicated. If you want to talk about abuse of the data, that's a whole other issue. The question is, if surveillance is benevolent, would it have helped the OP? Yes. It would have.

eliasmacpherson 13y ago

I have a personal rule that I am forming, where if the approach to improve something, is to use that something in greater quantities, it is probably a bad thing. e.g. brute force, vendor specific stack, XML, C++, classes, templates, advertising and surveillance. Have you ever had the misfortune of watching reality TV? You do realise the power of selective editing. Sufficiently motivated camera operators can 'destroy evidence' with no paper trail. So no, I really don't think more surveillance would necessarily give a better result. Who would be so crooked as to do such a thing? Faculty to get insurance claim/avoid insurance claim, overloaded cop who just wants to get to 'done' or a promotion.

davidw 13y ago
From http://nokogiri.org/ http://nokogiri.org/ : "XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it."
chrischen 13y ago
I'm not saying more surveillance == better. I'm saying more surveillance would resolve that guy's specific problem, therefore his example is false.
- eliasmacpherson 13y ago
  I'm saying more surveillance == worse. And I'm saying that it would not necessarily resolve his specific problem. It would resolve the problem of whoever controls the footage.
  - chrischen 13y ago
    Why wouldn't more surveillance have solved his specific problem? His specific problem arose because nobody knew the truth about where he was or what he was doing. Imperfect information caused him to be falsely accused. Here's a though experience. If you believed in an all-knowing God, do you think He would know that the OP was innocent? If yes, then that's because the God knows and sees everything right? Again, I'm not saying more surveillance is good in any way. One of the problems is that it's a lot of concentrated power and whoever gets a hold of it could abuse it. However, one way to ameliorate this would be to implement lots of surveillance, and make it all public data. A more open society would probably be a good thing though.
    - eliasmacpherson 13y ago
      Because unless I am mistaken, you had not mentioned it being public data. Private surveillance is not really much use to him. I've worked in places where the surveillance tapes were wiped or mislaid when it wasn't in the interest of the footage owner to have its existence known. Making it all public data would be totally different. That opens another can of worms: Would it then be a crime to delete the data if you were the owner of the footage?
      - chrischen 13y ago
        Regardless of it being public or not, fundamentally it still stands that more surveillance means the OP would have been vindicated. If you want to talk about abuse of the data, that's a whole other issue. The question is, if surveillance is benevolent, would it have helped the OP? Yes. It would have.