By the way Evil, you are using the same argument the NRA does about keeping assault weapons legal. "If they take away our AK-47s, what will they take away next?"
What's Your Opinion of Putting Spy Cameras On City Streets?
by minimus 115 Replies latest jw friends
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tetrapod.sapien
Nothing in comparison to tracking down one pedophile. I say let them look up skirts all day.
except for the pedophile that gets his jollies from hacking into the system. or if the government grunt is a pedophile, and the skirt being blown up is a 12 year old school girl's skirt.
come on!
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Sith
By the way Evil, you are using the same argument the NRA does about keeping assault weapons legal. "If they take away our AK-47s, what will they take away next?"
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Ellie
The point I'm making EvilForce is that if all the cameras either had film or where monitored then they would act as a much better detterant than they do now.
As it is, the cameras which are monitored may not deter crime but do help the police to investigate crimes and make identifications, also they help the police to intervene while say a fight or mugging is taking place.
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EvilForce
Sith..no I do not believe in letting assault weapons be doled out like candy. I do not worship at the alter of the 2nd amendment and guns for everyone. Quite the opposite in fact. But to stay on topic:
The average London dweller can, in the course of a day, be filmed up to 300 times. British surveillance cameras, however, have not stopped crime. Examining the British experience, UPI reported on March 8, 2002 that "crime is soaring across the country. In London, a city of 8 million people, murder is going on at a record pace. Street robbery, the very crime that CCTV [closed circuit TV] is supposed to be best at deterring, will reach 50,000 this year." UPI noted: "A three-year study commissioned by the British government and conducted by the Scottish Center for Criminology suggested that 'spy' cameras had little or no effect on crime. It concluded that 'reductions were noted in certain categories, but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall.'"
The evidence from Australia is equally unpersuasive that surveillance cameras are effective against crime. At best, the camera system in Sydney that Mayor Williams wishes to emulate produced one arrest only every 160 days. Before limited resources are spent on surveillance cameras, close attention must be paid to the claimed benefits.
Closer to home, consider the experience of Oakland, California. For three years, the police department advocated the use of surveillance cameras in public places. The department had technology that could read the fine print on a flyer from hundreds of yards away, and that could recognize a license plate or a face from more than a mile away. In a report to the City Council, Chief of Police Joseph Samuels, Jr., stated that his department had hoped to be ". . . among the pioneers in the field of taped video camera surveillance" but ultimately found that ". . . there is no conclusive way to establish that the presence of video surveillance cameras resulted in the prevention or reduction of crime."
Detroit, Michigan took 14 years before it decided to abandon its surveillance camera system in 1994 citing high maintenance and personnel costs and mixed results.
So Phophesor.... the camera only caught a grainy unidentifiable figure on camera. How does that help anyone?
Consider please..... In Britain, tapes from surveillance cameras, which are usually kept for a month before being erased, often find their way into the wrong hands. Clips of people driving badly or behaving foolishly are a staple on British TV. Footage of a man trying to commit suicide was broadcast without his consent.
The invasion of privacy sometimes ruins lives. In Manchester, a TV show broadcast a CCTV still of a man accused of using a stolen bank card. It later turned out that the camera operator had submitted the wrong photo, but the apology came too late. The man lost his job and eventually suffered a nervous breakdown. -
Ellie
Ok evilForce, I can see that you have done your homework and probably have a lot of valid points.
However, can you imagine an average town, its kicking out time and the highstreet is full of drunken revellers.
Down a little side street a man begins to assault another man, there is CCTV and the surveilance team spot what is going on, alert the police (who stick more or less to the high street) and the assault is brought to a stop, victim is ok and man is arrested.
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EvilForce
Ellie...you point is similar to many that are made so it's a valid point but it may be more hypothetical than real. There will always be one or two instances where one crime fighting tactic might be better than another....but you have to consider the whole picture.
Let me ask this. What price is your freedom / privacy worth? Secondly, how much do those cameras cost? Not only the original purchase price, but the upkeep. The maintence crew to fix them....the monitors...the administration to hire the "camera watchers"...the "watchers" themselves....etc... Instead of spending all this cash on dubious technology at best how about putting an additional 100? 200? Maybe 300? full time cops on the street. Resources are never "unlimited"...there is always limits to what can be spent per year. -
Ellie
Ofcourse, in a perfect world there would be a lot more police on the streets, however it is unlikely that there would ever be a copper down each street, what I think would be a better and cheaper solution would be to have one fully working camera down every street, that could alert the police to any incidents.
The town that I live in has a high level of policing, its dificult to walk to the shops without seeing atleast one police car on patrol and its difficult to walk down the high street without seeing a cop on the beat, however, its always nice to know that the cameras are watching too.
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the_classicist
Why should the government be monitoring our every move? Criminals aren't stupid, they will move to areas where they can't be seen to committ crime.
Moreover, how in hell is a video camera going to catch a terrorist? What, is he going to be walking around with a large suitcase with a nuclear symbol on it?
The only thing that effectively prevents crime is having more police officers on the street (not in their cars, but actually patrolling the streets). Cameras are usually used in areas where they don't have enough police. It is not focused on prevention, but on catching people who have already committed the crimes. And like I said before, criminals will know where these cameras are and will do their crimes elsewhere.
The question is about liberty and being able to move about without fearing that someone is watching your every move. "Give me liberty or give me death." How far Americans have strayed from these ideals. They are soft with wealth, more wanting to go on a witchhunt than to die for their freedom (and not in the preserve-democracy-by-fighting-in-Vietnam way).
Not having a AK-47 doesn't impede your freedom, but being observed electronically does.
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EvilForce
Ok, Elle I found some budgetary numbers... Sorry I had to put everything into $$$ not pounds.
The average cost of one CCTV camera, at least of the sort that Britain is using, is about $30,000. Operating costs add another $18,000 annually. There are 40,000 monitored cameras of this sort across the UK, resulting in a total capital cost of $1.2 billion, and an annual operating cost of $720 million. This represents three quarters of the total government budget for crime prevention. For a system only a quarter as effective as better street lighting, that might be said to represent poor value for money no?
So if you spread the $1.2 billion original cost over 7 years (typical lifespan of camera) gets you another $170 million per year + the $ 720 million operating budget is $970 MILLION dollars PER YEAR more to hire cops. So if the average officer (FBI Crime Statistics = $ 85,900 in 2000) costs $ 90,000 per year (2005 dollars) including benefits, training, overhead, equipment, etc... you could have almost 11,000 ADDITIONAL cops on the street in the UK.
And I am of the opinion that the cost of loss of privacy is too great at all to put a $$$ amount on...however, the above example should give you pause.