
Real-Time Surveillance Will Test the British Tolerance for Cameras - atlasunshrugged
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/technology/britain-surveillance-privacy.html
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pjc50
The British tolerance for cameras, and other oppressive behaviour by the
police, is actually very high. Football fans have been subject to all sorts of
illiberal measures ranging from face recognition to passport confiscation for
decades. The rest of the public support it because they like order. See also
the "ring of steel" London security system and everything related to
terrorism.

This is partly why there haven't been any significant anti-Brexit protests;
the police have very effectively dismantled the structures from which violence
might spring.

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bb123
This comment is just the silly kind of bile that gets spewed on Fox News to
convince Americans that countries like the UK and Canada as Dystopian
Hellscapes. If you had any cultural context around the history of violent
football hooliganism in the UK you might understand why those measures were
considered necessary and a re supported by a large part of the public. Also
there have been very significant anti-brexit, anti-austerity and anti-trump
protests in recent years so I'm really sure what you're talking about there. I
can only only assume this is some sort of hand wave to the idea that people in
the UK aren't able to protest or express themselves like they are in The Land
of The Free (TM).

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Except there's a core of truth in what they say, though I might differ on the
point about protests. Football hooliganism was well on the way to being solved
by the early 90s. The international ban ended in 1990. It was the seventies
and eighties that most would have been hesitant to take the kids along to a
match, and the big clubs had scary reputations. Most of the measures since
have _not_ been necessary, and most of the fixing of the problem wasn't down
to cameras.

Police tactics, ground changes, putting responsibility more on to the clubs,
and a good degree of managing the groups of supporters. Companies would once
finish early if there was a Wednesday match and their office was even vaguely
on a route to the ground. By the nineties and noughties, normality was far
more expected.

Far more has been for security theatre and red top media campaigns that the
"government must DO something!!!!". So government _does_ do something. Like
rings of steel around London. Tanks at airports (huh?) and all the rest.
Despite this a man in a van can still perform a terrorist outrage on a bridge,
or take a bomb to a teen pop concert.

We're far more likely to hear some days after that some perpetrator was known
to police or security services, than all the security theatre prevented some
atrocity, or the perpetrator was arrested en route.

~~~
bb123
I think the problem is that we have no real way of knowing how many threats
have been successfully countered by the security services, and no one knows
how many potential bad actors have been dissuaded by them either. So it's easy
to call them out as security theatre. People on this thread are talking about
the rings of steel like there’s some sort of TSA checkpoint on every road into
Greater London. Unfortunately the reality is a lot less exciting. It only
surrounds the square mile (a much, much smaller and higher risk area) and is
pretty uninteresting. It consists of some ram-raid bollards and police booths
that have fallen into a pretty bad state of disrepair. I struggle to see the
downside of ram-raid barriers in a pedestrianised area - you’ll note none of
the van attacks occurred in the City.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
it's the presentation as much as anything else that makes it theatre.
Protecting pedestrianised streets from unauthorised traffic with pop up
bollards happens in towns and cities everywhere. Presenting it as a terrorism
ring of steel does not.

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opsunit
I was once asked by a visting American friend why there was so much trash
(rubbish) in London. I answered that it was because there weren't very many
trash cans at all.

"Then why don't they install some? Perhaps people would respect their
environment a little more".

"Because the IRA put bombs in them".

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t34543
[http://archive.is/v0Bmd](http://archive.is/v0Bmd)

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auiya
I'm from the US and recently took a trip to UK for about a week. I was
honestly surprised at the number of cameras strung up everywhere in the metro
areas. Indeed the article states "The roughly 420,000 closed-circuit
television cameras in London are more than in any other city except Beijing,
equaling about 48 cameras per 1,000 people, more than Beijing." I did feel
slightly safer knowing they were there however. The tolerance for surveillance
there is already quite high it would seem.

~~~
codedokode
I don't understand why you should feel safe. Cameras won't prevent a crime and
won't make you immune to a knife.

But they are very convenient to monitor daily life of political activists.

~~~
dTal
Most of them are privately owned and not networked. This renders them very
inconvenient to monitor the daily life of political activists.

~~~
mattmanser
They might be privately owned, but the police actually get to say to new bars,
restaurants, etc. how many CCTV camera they must have in order to get an
alcohol licence.

It got a bit ridiculous at one point with one perfectly normal pizzeria in my
town being asked to install 6 different CCTV cameras, but they started pushing
back at that point.

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jaclaz
I guess we need a comparative term to appreciate the sentence:

>The police said that since 2017, 58 people had been arrested after being
identified by the technology.

I mean, 58 people in 2 years is like 2-3 per month, if the scanned faces were
(say) 1,000 per month is one thing, if they were (still say) 1,000,000 per
month it would be another.

And it all depends on how the 998 or 999,998 not-identified people data (if
any) is used (or stored).

The analogy of:

>a police officer standing on the corner looking out for individuals and if he
recognizes somebody, saying, ‘I want to talk to you.’”

is fine and dandy exactly because those that were not recognized are not
"talked to" nor any note about them is taken by the officer.

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baybal2
A strange thing, British continue letting its spy agency doing away with
domestic espionage of the most extreme form (operation optic nerve,) but
complain about "their face being scanned"

I can't think of an explanation for that.

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DanBC
"Doing away with" means "getting rid of" or "stopping". Is that how you're
using the term?

I think you're right though. British people have a complicated relationship
with surveillance. Mass government surveillance is mostly seen as okay so long
as there are some checks and balances. CCTVs (and most UK CCTV is privately
owned and run) are mostly seen as ok so long as there are some regulations
around how it's used. But police surveillance does make some people feel
uncomfortable.

~~~
baybal2
I meant as if letting it go unchecked

~~~
iamnotacrook
You meant "getting away with", which means "not being stopped/punished for".
"Doing away with", as was pointed out, means to stop/abandon.

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bookofjoe
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20980754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20980754)

