
Cash-strapped councils switch off CCTV cameras across UK - DanBC
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cashstrapped-councils-forced-to-switch-off-cctv-cameras-across-uks-towns-and-cities-10271267.html
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hackertux
The lack of public awareness about the nature of surveillance troubles me. UK
public must wake up to risks of CCTV.

~~~
DanBC
It's a shame you're being downvoted. (I upvoted you, but your comment is still
grey.)

The man who made the announcement in the submitted article - Tony Porter (the
English surveillance commissioner) has previously said similar things as you.

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/tony-porter-
sur...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/06/tony-porter-surveillance-
commissioner-risk-cctv-public-transparent)

> The increasing use of surveillance technology – including body-worn video,
> drones and number plate recognition systems – risks changing the “psyche of
> the community” by reducing individuals to trackable numbers in a database,
> the government’s CCTV watchdog has warned.

> In his full first interview as surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter – a
> former senior counter-terrorism officer – said the public was complacent
> about encroaching surveillance and urged public bodies, including the
> police, to be more transparent about how they are increasingly using smart
> cameras to monitor people.

Opinion polls differ, but it seems that most people in England just don't care
about CCTV and that is worrying.

~~~
tim333
I live in the UK and care about CCTV because three guys on bikes snatched my
iPhone in central London and it wasn't covered. Install some more as far as
I'm concerned. Also one time in Ireland I had a different three guys thinking
of beating me up and then reconsider when they figured I was on camera. There
are loads of cases of CCTV catching or deterring criminals. Is there a single
case in the UK of someone innocent being harmed by the use of CCTV?

~~~
bhayden
The issue isn't that people are suffering direct financial loss or bodily harm
due to surveillance. The issue is that it enables authoritarian and repressive
governments. You lose your privacy. Anything you do is essentially public
information and can be used against you. As shitty as it is, people should
have the right to do something like cheat on their spouse without some
government official waving the evidence in your face for compliance. Or maybe
you're into weird porn, or you read/write embarrassing things on the internet,
or you're having sex with your second cousin, or you're gay but also a
Christian minister. People shouldn't have to live in fear of their legal
actions being used against them.

~~~
true_religion
> As shitty as it is, people should have the right to do something like cheat
> on their spouse without some government official waving the evidence in your
> face for compliance.

A lot of these avenues of privacy were only really enabled by the growth of
large metropolitan areas.

In smaller districts, you can't go to the inn and sleep with another woman
because the innkeeper went to highschool with you and will tell your wife.

For the vast majority of human society, you had to try a lot harder to hide
your activities if you wanted to go against the current social mores. It's not
really clear to me that the level of privacy we can easily attain today, even
if it is a social good, is not outweighed by the group benefits of social
cohesion, and newly found benefits of catching criminals after the fact that
CCTV would provide/encourage.

~~~
dTal
The difference is that the inn keeper, a single person with no authority, a
small social network, and a visual range measured in feet, is replaced by an
invisible, omniscient, omnipresent organisation with the power to bring
arbitrary legal troubles down on your head.

Only if all CCTV were to become publicly viewable at all times by everyone
could we speak of it as a force for social cohesion, rather than a mechanism
for amplifying differences in power.

~~~
true_religion
What I understand is that in Britain, for most cases CCTV is actually owned by
private companies---like a shop will have a CCTV that watches its alleyway.

Even in the case where CCTV is owned by the government, its operated by
individual city districts.

It's not a singular invisible omniscient organization.

------
SixSigma
If the cameras / threat of punishment work as a deterrent then simply leaving
the cameras in place without someone watching the screens should still have a
crime fighting impact.

The "tough on crime" crowd overlaps the "starve the beast" crowd, an
interesting tension.

~~~
sarreph
Exactly.

If data on specific cameras remains publicly unavailable, then the threat from
the majority of cameras remaining online serves to keep the fear of getting
caught essentially _as high_.

------
leapius
'Cash-strapped' Hah you must be kidding! I also think 6 million cameras for a
total population of 60 million is a little bit high dontchathink?!

~~~
smcl
UK local authorities are famously poorly funded and have been squeezed by the
government further over the last 5 years. The one that sticks out for me is
Newcastle Upon Tyne - here's some pretty astonishing figures from a long-ish
article[1]

"In fact, the city’s predicament already seemed impossible. The council cut
£37m from its spending in 2013-14, and another £38m is set to follow this
year. Then, according to current projections, there will be further annual
cuts of £40m, £30m, and £20m"

I think "cash-strapped" is putting it lightly.

[1] = [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/nov/24/-sp-is-saving-
ne...](http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/nov/24/-sp-is-saving-newcastle-
mission-impossible)

~~~
dazc
In the interest of balance:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/pensions/4330721/35-billion-
black-hole-in-council-pensions.html)

~~~
smcl
I had no idea, that's very eye-opening. When pension funds go underwater like
this, what are the options? Do the council (or indeed any organisation) have
any ability to renegotiate them if they are as "gold-plated" or outrageous as
the Telegraph suggests?

~~~
justincormack
Not usually. Final salary schemes were considered normal, not "gold plated",
and of course worked ok while average wages were rising, council revenues were
rising, the stock market was rising, and interest rates were high (which makes
the value of future liabilities lower). Now they are becoming a vast income
transfer from poorer young people to well off old people. In the US bankruptcy
has been tried, but not sure that is an option in the UK.

~~~
branchless
> vast income transfer from poorer young people to well off old

Hooray someone who gets it. How on earth did you escape the UK hive-mind?

Do you like how they put all the UK pension costs under the main "welfare"
heading then demand benefit cuts (excluding pensions) because the welfare bill
is too high?

Do you know anyone else in the UK who knows or cares about any of this?

~~~
stegosaurus
Heh.

I think essentially every young person in the UK realises this and cares
deeply.

I have a bunch of middle class friends. Many of their parents started out, got
a decent job, bought a house. House is now worth 500K+.

For us to ever obtain that (without inheritance; i.e. in the same way they
did) we would have to earn over £100K, or have dual income of 70K, ish. That's
5% if not 1% territory; it's essentially limited to business owners/senior
mgmt and bankers.

So everyone rents. Who are they renting from? Well, not young people.

Of course, all of this capital will flow down the generations eventually, but
only to a select lucky few. It's as if we had a golden age; a few decades of
mobility for people to work hard within; and now family wealth is basically
crystallised.

------
hatheyn
I'm curious as to whether this will be an effective cost-saving measure in the
long term.

If it makes some police investigations take longer, that seems like a more
expensive tradeoff.

