CCTV in Marmora Road

[Moos]

Loz Wrote:

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> The problem is their is no rules or regulations

> about how and why it is used - and RIPA (the

> council snooping charter) means they are being

> used in more and more insidious ways

A comparable situation is the Yorkshire police arresting and holding underage drinkers under the anti-terror laws - because they are often getting into clubs using false ID. The person who told me about it said that some people had been held in prison for two weeks, but I wasn't able to find any record of that. However, the people in question may have a mark on their record for life. Yorkshire Post

The point is that the laws were passed for one purpose, but are being used for another which the original legislators did not intend or foresee. It's not that I'm in favour of teenage drinking. But in this instance, accepting new laws that infringe existing civil rights, even for a good and worthwhile purpose, has resulted in making it perfectly legal to give someone a criminal record for what I consider to be a very minor offence.

[Marmora Man]

Blimey - a plethora of posts since I last looked.

I'm against CCTV for following reasons:

1. They don't really work - most (if not all) the research and comment I've read have them simply moving the loaction of crime not preventing it.

2. There was no consultation - do residents of Marmora Road want CCTV

3. It is intrusive - the state grows by little tiny incremental steps. If we don't protest this small step we could be too far gone when we realise just how far state intrusion / oversight of our lives is.

Having phoned Southwark Council four times results are:

a. Put thrui' to the CCTV unit - "this is a sub contractor - I cannot comment on Council policy"

b. Put thru' the Environmental Services - "You're not in Southwark - not our problem". Phone hangs up.

c. Put thru' to Environmental Services - "I'll speak to my manager, please hold". Four minutes of silence an phone hangs up.

d. Put through to Environmental Services - no answer.

I have e-mailed them now.

[kford]

Spray graffiti on the poster. See if you get arrested.

[david_carnell]

Sounds like a pretty standard and shocking response MM.

I posted here last night and have only just checked back now. A right little hornets nest we have ourselves. Our resident Singapore expat seems to have had a Mai-Tai too many and thinks he's landed in the garden of Eden where heavy-handed state policing is to be encouraged:

The rate of crime has dropped 35% since 1995 (nobody was calling us the surveillance society then, so can we assume that the introduction of CCTV has had an impact?).

Right - because nothing else has change since then? I think you're making a fairly simplistic error of cause and effect. My apple consumption has also risen in the same period - do you think there is a link?? How about looking at other factors such as the introduction of a minimum wage or the reduction in child poverty and homelessness for a reduction in crime rate.

As can be easily deducted from my previous post I'm firmly in the anti-CCTV camp. Although Keef quotes me as being happy to have them high streets what I said was I unhappily tolerate them there as I can, at a stretch, see they may have some benefit in certain locations in targeted policing projects.

What shocks me is that this forum is normally a hot-bed of "nanny-state" whingers - people whose right to drive fast, smoke themselves (and others) to death or drop their litter around, jump on their high horse, and yet now everyone suddenly adopts the "I ain't done nuffink wrong - I' alright guv" schtick.

As an earlier poster noted the truely scary things are not merely the presence of cameras but a) just how many are there and where? b) how owns/operates them and c) what is done with the images?

To put it crudely, "who watches the watchers?"

[Moos]

The EDF a hot-bed of whingers, david_carnell?

I think I'm going to have to ask for some evidence....

More seriously, this thread also bears some resemblence to Marmora Man's last hornets' nest, the Somerfield Incident, when the posters seemed divided between those who felt that those in authority would not have acted without good reason and those who felt that there was a violation of rights going on that we should protest about. Plenty of ways to divide up the citizenry of the EDF, but this seems a common split.

[Pierre]

snorky Wrote:

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> Please dont use the term "drug dealers"

>

> I much prefer the term "pushers"

- was this a joke?

: P

[Marmora Man]

Ant Wrote:

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> I don't agree, SteveT and PGC. I don't agree at

> all, and think that the argument you're making is

> actually quite a dangerous one. This article sets

> out much better than I could ever do why this is

> so.

>

> http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/

> securitymatters/2006/05/70886

The Wired Article in Ant's post is an excellent summary of a logical positionthat rebuts the use of CCTV and in particular covert CCTV.

[SeanMacGabhann]

It might be but I get a "content not found" when I follow the link. Might be a work thing...

[david_carnell]

The original link works (back on pg 1)

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Edited to temper my post. The writer didn't sway me.

[Cassius]

I was mugged at Elephant and Castle in front of several CCTV cameras - great deterrant there. Two of the little darlings that smashed my head on the pavement until I let go of my bags were caught because a member of the public caught them as they ran away. Although my experience was on tape, the evidence was not allowed in court because of a technicality - so the other two lads that ran faster and who got away were not convicted.

There is no plethora of CCTV cameras in other European countries that I know of - is crime significantly higher there?

And finally: - thanks Keef:

"Depressing as it may be, I believe that we are all just little worker ants with very little power, making the world tick on for the big people. We try and read, and we rage against the machine, and we drink and we go on holiday, but at the end of the day we are back at work on Monday, making the wheels turn, and earning the money to go on holiday and drink... We then have kids, and they go on to live the same lives we're living, and really and truly, it could be a lot bloody worse!"

I'm off to slit my wrist because if that really is all there is then what is the fecking point?

[kford]

Good article. Good arguments. If we've nothing to hide, then install cameras in our bathrooms; after all, we're not doing anything wrong.

Interesting Google ad next to the pice though: http://www.e-stealth.com/ULTIMATE-BLUETOOTH-MOBILE-PHONE-SPY-SOFTWARE-NEW-EDITION-2008_p_1-8.html?GA&gclid=CM2p8fn7zpUCFRSO1QodlkSqig

[Keef]

Cassius I'm sorry if you thought you were gee for a higher purpose, but that's the way I look at life. I did say that I have plenty of fun, but I don't think there i a point as such. Anyway, meaning of life thread this isn't.

[DaveR]

There are principled and practical arguments against the proliferation of street CCTV cameras. Tne principled argument is based on (as the wired article discusses) the connection between privacy and human dignity. We all have an expectation of privacy as we go about our everyday activities, even in 'public' places - how would you feel if you knew that a camera was not just in your street, but following you as you left your house each day, observing all your movements, conversations? The presence of CCTV cameras makes this possible and leaves the discretion as to how much information, and of what type, is gathered and retained, to the operators (the initial deployment of cameras is usually subject to far greater scrutiny than their subsequent use).

This sounds paranoid, but it is perfectly easy to attract suspicion without having done anything wrong. Do you ever go to football matches, on political demos, give money to animal rights campaigns, or do you have close friends who do?

The practical arguments are manifold and largely obvious. The deterrent effect pushes crime out of view of cameras rather than preventing it. The chances of any specific incident being observed and usable footage obtained are slim, and the greater the number of cameras, counter-intuitively, the slimmer the chance. The more screens an operator is watching, the more chance they will miss you being mugged. The greater volume of material being obtained, the less chance it will be properly reviewed, let alone retained for any period of time.

As to reassuring those described as "the timid", I think the overall net effect is zero. The appearance of cameras in a particular location both suggests that there is a problem with crime, and that it is being addressed - simultaneously worrying and reassuring. Unless you live there and know that the neighbourhood is doing fine without them, in which case it's just going to piss you off - back to you, Marmora Man.

[kford]

Even the police doubt its use as tool against crime: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/06/ukcrime1

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

I want it in my street now. Some moron has taken off my wing mirror.

[SteveT]

There was an incident at Hungerford Bridge when a bunch of thugs tipped two individuals into the thames after mugging them.

One of them died and the other was able to get out and scramble to shore to tell his story in court, the thugs were caught on cctv and got twelve years.

Hooray say I, a good result.

The only pity was the creeps didn't pay with their lives, anyhow it was the camera footage which was crucial in bringing them to justice.

I certainly would not mind my life being cctv'd as I would feel better protected from the thugs.

[kford]

Didn't stop the crime, though, did it?

[PeckhamRose]

Exactly!

That echoes some of the original points made, CCTV does not prevent crime.

It sometimes records it and sometimes police may catch the crims, but it does not prevent it.

It does however have the effect on everyone that "well, that must be a dangerous area look at all the CCTVs" or, some young kids I speak to feel that they are being unfairly watched so they may as well do something wrong as that is what the society is expecting of them with all those cameras around.

[louisiana]

"The images from the camera, including the woman without her clothes on, were shown on a large plasma screen in the council's CCTV control room in November 2004, Liverpool Crown Court heard. Over several hours, she was filmed cuddling her boyfriend before undressing, using the toilet, having a bath and watching television dressed only in a towel..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4609746.stm

Don't forget, many modern-day cameras can be redirected remotely by the operator. In any residential street there are many windows. These guys were unlucky you could say, somebody took exception to what they were doing and reported them - but they are hardly likely to be unique amongst the thousands of camera operators across the country.

The 4.2m figure quoted earlier was an estimate made by somebody at Sheffield University in 2004. So an out-of-date estimate.

Apparently there were around 10,500 cameras operated by the London boroughs themselves in 2007 (excludes London rail, TfL tube and bus - combined estimate around 8,000 - and all he many private cameras - figure completely unknown). Again, these figs likely to be out of date now.

[andypandy]

I wonder if it had anything to do with the large number of cars that were Graffitied earlier this year on the South side of the road?

[PeckhamRose]

Bit late then, innit. Marmora Man? Was your car graffiti'd?

[Marmora Man]

PeckhamRose Wrote:

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> Bit late then, innit. Marmora Man? Was your car

> graffiti'd?

Nope.

[SteveT]

I read somewhere that on Holloway Rd between Highbury Corner and Archway tube there was 170 cameras, less than 3 miles length of road.

[PeckhamRose]

Yeah and that area's crimeFREE now, right?