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No 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
by sancha_ 11y ago
No 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.
- anonymousDan 11y agoThat's not actually true. A large amount of those CCTV cameras are in fact managed and monitored by 2 or 3 big security companies, making them much more accessible to the government.
- Silhouette 11y ago[citation needed]
- anon1385 11y agoYes, but that article is talking about both public and privately owned cameras. You said public cameras. Unless you want the government to ban private CCTV the large number of private CCTV cameras in the UK isn't really much to do with the government. Also that statistic on its own doesn't show that the UK has the highest rate unless you have number from other (similarly wealthy) countries to compare it to.
- mattmanser 11y agoCCTV cameras are mandated with new licences for pubs, bars and clubs. The police often force you to have X cameras or your licence will be denied. So the private/public distinction is fairly meaningless. In my home city, Nottingham, because it's very hard to get a new licence at the moment, the police have such clout I heard of ridiculous scenarios where they started asking for 7 or 8 cameras in small restaurants in quiet areas of town.
- wumbernang 11y agoTo be fair, as an ex-Nottingham resident, putting a CCTV camera up made life better for us. There were crack whores jacking up on heroin on my doorstep because there was a light there. Eventually I took the bulb out. Mapperley Road for reference. There were even crack whores on Google Street View on there for a couple of years...
- mattmanser 11y agoMapperley Road leading to St. Anns, one of the worst council estates in England? So not that surprising. Also Mapperley Road leads onto Forest Road East, which at least used to be a notorious red light district and always have really skanky prostitutes hanging out on it. You lived on a really bad street. I lived 10 minutes down the road from you about 8 years ago, Zulla road. That area was really nice, although they'd recently finished a big campaign to stop robberies in the area due to, you guessed it, St Ann's residents. I really don't think one extreme problem area should be compared to a restaurant in Hockley where all the hipsters hang out.
- anonymousDan 11y agoTotally irrelevant. Most of the 'private' CCTV cameras are in fact hooked into the monitoring infrastructure of 2 or 3 big security companies, making access much easier for the government.
- tomtoise 11y agoWhile this is true, I think there are arguments for and against your statement. While some areas of the UK are unquestionably far more monitored than their US counterparts, geographical size definitely comes into play. It's easier to monitor the UK because it is a tiny fraction of the size of the US and, therefore, will cost a fraction of the price. Our police also aren't quite as heavily militarized as the US (Thanks to US Military selling surplus to PDs for steep discounts and weird gun laws), we just have two huge water cannons on standby, I predict them being authorized in the next year or two though. Maybe it's just misplaced nationalism and my consumption of fairly left-leaning media that leaves me with the impression that the US is #1 for that stuff, I dunno. I think we're pretty evenly pegged on the totalitarian state front.
- sancha_ 11y agoI agree that the size plays a big role. But then again not even in the big cities in the US can you find as many CCTVs as in the UK.
- anon1385 11y ago>not even in the big cities in the US can you find as many CCTVs as in the UK. Do you have evidence for this? I find it hard to believe that branches of Walmart in the US don't have CCTV cameras in them.
- cdent 11y agoYeah, agreed. Having spent half my life in one and half in the other it is very interesting to compare the different ways in which attitudes to privacy and personal integrity are violated. In the UK it is normal for everything to be surveilled. CCTV on every corner and every road etc. To someone with a "rugged individualist" US attitude this is appalling. "What, what, you're going to give me a speeding ticket and you didn't even have to catch me doing it? WTF, that's not cool." Yet in the US it is rather normal for people in authority to kill someone when the target is running away or convicted of a crime. To the UK attitude this is barbarous. How it feels to me is that the UK tends to co-opt a lot of modern US ideas badly: without empathy or sympathy or respect for individual rights. In the US it feels like there is at least some measure of collective guilt (or at least shame) over surveillance whereas in the UK those doing it are either gleeful or at least remorseless.
- jamespo 11y agoDo you break speed limits a lot then?
- cdent 11y agoUh... No sir, not me, not these days. When I was younger, and in the US, and frequently traveling between states I did manage to rack up a significant number of speeding tickets. There were all, to use a UK term, a fair cop: I was speeding and I was caught by an officer of the law patrolling the roads who stopped me and gave me a ticket in person. Getting them in the mail several days after the fact, without ever knowing you were speeding in the first place is a) confusing, b) not great for immediate enforcement and safety concerns.
- themartorana 11y agoBut let's be fair, traffic tickets are rarely about safety.
- cdent 11y agoDisagree. The one UK speeding ticket I have was for being over 30mph in a 30 zone. The limit is set to 30 in those zones because of Science™ about braking distance and impact with human bodies that appear suddenly. If I'm being careless and/or distracted in one of those zones, I want to know about it immediately, not up to 14 days later after I've already plowed through a bunch of schoolchildren.
- branchless 11y agoYes - UK is a turnkey fascist wet dream waiting for the right psycho.
- tomtoise 11y agoI think you'll find that psycho's name is Theresa May.
- gpvos 11y agoDo not forget the Netherlands, phone tapping world champion.
- gpvos 11y agoDo not forget the Netherlands, phone tapping world champion.
- neilk 11y agoYup. According to Snowden, the GCHQ is worse than the NSA. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret...
- thom 11y agoPretty sure they're sat in their underground bunkers, reptilian fingers steepled, chuckling loudly at the game of "my country's less fascistic than yours" that we find ourselves playing.
- marincounty 11y agoI don't know how many public surveillance cameras we have in America. I am an American, and never thought there would be so many cameras. I'm not offended when someone comments on our use of surveillance! I am offended when Americans don't seem concerned over the proliferation of cameras everywhere? The UK seems to have a lot of visable cams. At least they can point out most of the cams? Why do I have a sneaky suspicion the United States has more surveillance cameras than the UK, but they are hidden in very sneaky ways?
- abawany 11y agoIt is sad that the country of John Locke, the Father of Classical Liberalism, is fast becoming the realization of the nightmare that was "1984".