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The Mets stance on this to me seals any doubt about their involvement in deploying these boxes. I've been watching developments in the surveillance state in the
by tomtoise 11y ago
The Mets stance on this to me seals any doubt about their involvement in deploying these boxes. I've been watching developments in the surveillance state in the UK with some concern, this just puts the final nail in the coffin.
You can't defend such dragnet surveillance techniques as 'terrorist prevention'. How can I make a difference?
I don't want my country to become America 2.0 (It's already starting to look like that with water cannons on standby, internet filtering and now this).
- jalfresi 11y agoIt's become so ridiculous that I'm really, seriously considering wether having a mobile phone on me for my convenience is worth the constant surveillance.
- abluecloud 11y agoThen you go home, open you laptop and communicate with people over the internet. What's the difference.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoYour phone knows your location.
- eterm 11y agoYour phone is your location.
- Jtsummers 11y agoIf the phone is powered on it allows for (potential) pervasive location tracking. Your communications can be listened to whether mobile or a home computer, but all that using your home computer reveals (by using it, not the contents) is that you're home. Using your mobile reveals that you're at Starbucks or on I-40 stuck in traffic, or that you're frequently connected to the same tower as some other persons of interest. And that's what can be known before observing the actual contents of the communication.
- dredmorbius 11y agoIn addition to other responses (particularly location data): VPN or Tor usage from a desktop is, for now at least, more viable from desktop than mobile. Desktops can also have camera(s) and / or mics disable more readily than phones.
- wumbernang 11y agoBetter cover your face as well. There are 11 cameras within 50m of my house in London.
- tomtoise 11y agoMandatory 4 lions link; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dss_9FmCqtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dss_9FmCqtg
- wumbernang 11y agoHahahaha. That's such a good film and a good reference too.
- sancha_ 11y agoNo offense, but I always thought the UK is surveillance state #1 in the world and the US follows a close second. Why? There is no country in the world with more public surveillance cameras, and they were always playing ball with the US when it came to mass collection of citizens data.
- abluecloud 11y agoI agree, and most of the public don't even care.
- anon1385 11y ago>There is no country in the world with more public surveillance cameras Do you have a source for that? Every discussion of the number of CCTV cameras in the UK I've seen has always been talking about both public and private cameras (with by far the majority being private). Also I assume you meant to say per capita. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television#Unit...
- sancha_ 11y agoYes, per capita, e.g. this article says there is one camera for every eleven people in the UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveillance-camera-for-every-11-people-in-Britain-says-CCTV-survey.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10172298/One-surveilla...
- Silhouette 11y agoBut most of those cameras are privately held for things like security in small shops or around homes or garages. They aren't connected to some centralised Big Brother database. In fact, the authorities probably don't even know most of them are there until, say, the police turn up to investigate a theft from a shop and the owner offers relevant CCTV footage to help the investigation. There are also a lot of state-controlled cameras monitoring places like public spaces in big cities, and we do have things like ANPR cameras monitoring lots of our roads, and there are genuine and legitimate privacy concerns about these technologies and how they are used. But please let's keep any discussion of them proportionate and based on the facts not the FUD. There are greater threats to privacy in this country than cameras that show you where the queues on the roads are before you set off to your London job in the morning.
- dazc 11y ago"You can't defend such dragnet surveillance techniques as 'terrorist prevention'. How can I make a difference?" I'm beginning to think the police in the UK have lost all interest in normal law enforcement - maybe it's just too much hard work?
- jwdunne 11y agoThe police are facing and have experienced funding cuts. I wonder if CCTV is a more efficient approach than PCSOs.
- dazc 11y agoGetting out on the street by foot would seem to be a good way of deterring and clearing up a lot of petty crime and anti-social behaviour? It would save a fortune on transport costs too. PCSOs are just pointless.
- jwdunne 11y agoI think PCSOs do deter from petty crime when patrolling, especially teenagers in deprived areas.
- crimsoneer 11y agoPlease, please can we stop with the attitude that PCSOs are pointless. They certainly are not. To deter low level crime - the only type of crime "foot patrol" prevents - a PCSO is far, far better value for money than a PC. We are losing any ability to conduct neighbourhood policing, and that's entirely because the public fetishises police officer numbers, so we fire a bunch of far cheaper, more competent and specialized police staff. A lot of crime prevention and fighting is walking through areas, talking to people and giving out leaflets. You really want PCs doing that and being paid for it?
- dazc 11y ago"A lot of crime prevention and fighting is walking through areas, talking to people and giving out leaflets. You really want PCs doing that and being paid for it?" Yes I do. I get the impression that a lot of petty crime happens because the perpetrators know there is a negligible chance of being caught in the act. Having police officers 'walking about' may be seen as a waste of resources by senior police officers looking to make easy cost savings. I don't think most law abiding people would agree? I am wrong to say PCSOs are 'useless'. They are a better than nothing solution, maybe?
- fweespeech 11y ago> I don't want my country to become America 2.0 (It's already starting to look like that with water cannons on standby, internet filtering and now this). It already is America 2.0 with all the cameras and transport surveillance the FBI wished they had. ;)
- rudolf0 11y agoThe UK is actually much less progressive than the US when it comes to censorship and filtering. There is no Internet filtering of any kind by any ISP in the US; it's illegal for a common carrier to filter traffic in that way. Some lobbyists are pushing ISPs to block access to sites that allow copyright infringement, but nothing of that nature has started yet. The UK is very arguably also less progressive in terms of surveillance and espionage; GCHQ seems to be even more unethical than NSA, going by a few dozen of the leaked presentations.
- lmm 11y ago"progressive" is very much the wrong term to use here. Many of the worst measures have been pushed by parties that position themselves as "conservatives".
- themeek 11y agoNo filtering by ISP, though there has been plenty of legislation with an attempt to set this up. The filtering happens at the content provider level - Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
- blackbagboys 11y agoPeople in the UK not infrequently face criminal sanction for things as petty as rude or obnoxious tweets, so I'd argue that the situation is actually quite a bit worse than in America.
- swombat 11y agoPeople travelling to the US have been turned away at the border for humorous tweets... so I'd argue the situation is equally bad there. Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16810312
- mineshaftgap 11y agoPeople in the UK do jail time for offensive tweets, that is quite a bit different.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lotsofcows 11y agoYeah, we seem to prefer the "freedom of speech is a responsibility not a right" angle. Personally, I agree.
- Plough_Jogger 11y agoWater cannons are actually fairly uncommon in the US; the preferred water-based crowd deterrent is the fire hose.
- randomname2 11y agoThe UK has always been much worse than the US in that regard. Often you'll see the US only adopt such measures after a "trial run" in the UK.
- mcintyre1994 11y ago> You can't defend such dragnet surveillance techniques as 'terrorist prevention'. Of course they can. They'll never be made to tell us who they were targeting or what they collected and I'm sure if they need to make a statement the government will lend them a counter terrorism team to stand with for the cameras. It's the easy thing to do, I doubt they'll do anything else if push comes to shove (unless Theresa May needs another anti-extremism news story I guess). I think you were getting at the fact it's a ridiculous response to the supposed threat - I agree, but unfortunately at this point I don't think there's much the government won't do if they can call it terrorist prevention.
- themeek 11y agoMass surveillance is about terrorism. It's just not only about terrorism, or mostly about terrorism. When terrorism is invoked what the public is left with is, 'oh it's used for that so that's what it's intended for'. Surveillance is about power, plain and simple. Surveillance is information and this is the information age. Information is a weapon and it drives the world. Intelligence on persons of interest, propaganda, censorship, 21st century census operations, information for guiding policy, protest and riot management, aid in background checks, information support for public affairs and diplomacy, detection of cyber attacks - all of these things are enabled by massive data collection and analysis systems. There are hints, from the Snowden docs especially, and from others, that these systems are used for these purposes. So yeah, they are used for terrorism. In the US when the Attorney General did an investigation into why the brothers hadn't been caught by the FBI and National Counter Terrorism Center, it did just that. The report named the NSA two times - ones in the opening paragraph and once in the appendix. FBI use NSA intelligence to support investigations, but the NSA is not in charge of counter-terrorism. Other agencies have asks of the NSA and yes - I think it was Drake, but maybe it was Binney? - whistleblowers have reported on these capabilities being used to do background checks (in this case on Obama before he ran for President); they've been used against journalism outfits (the Associated Press); they've been used in cyberwar; they've been used for corporate espionage; their fusion centers have been used to target political parties (Tea Party) and protests (Occupy); the UK used them for propaganda in the Falkin Islands. Dragnet surveillance is not about terrorism. Or rather, it is not, has never been, and will never be merely about terrorism.
- harkyns_castle 11y agoIn terms of making a difference, I think we face the "tyranny of the majority". Whilst a lot of "us" feel strongly about where this is all going, it seems like the average Joe just hears from the media: "Its to protect you from XYZ threat of the month". Annoys me greatly.