In the first place, you can search the Constitution high and low and you will not find an emumerated "right to privacy". You will find a right against unreasonable searches and seizures. The right to privacy as we know it is a construct of case law, and that case law has held, in many different ways, that before there can be an invasion of privacy, there must be an expectation of privacy. In the second place, I asked you a question of basic logic. For that, the Bill of Rights, the National Enquirer and your opinions of government are irrelevant. So, you still haven't answered the question. I guess it's easier to ignore a question sometimes than to answer it. But for the record, the issue is not whether the government should have the power to negate rights. It's what are the logical limits to those rights. Or do you actually believe that you have the right to scream, "Fire!" in a crowded theater?
I would argue that anyone who wants to track anyone else on a public street may do so with no difficulty. If you wanted to do something that required privacy, you would not seek to do it on a public street.
If you're walking down a street with hundreds of other people, do you care if someone is on a rooftop watching you? Maybe not, but what if that person is taking pictures? Is that an invasion of privacy? What if one of those pictures, showing you in a crowd of a hundred people, appears on the internet? What if that same picture appears on the internet, only this time zoomed in on you? At what point does all this become a violation of privacy? We give up privacy every day. Cavemen gave up privacy whenever they appeared in public, and left footprints telling others where they'd been. Phone companies keep records of who we called and when. Airlines know where we're going. Heck, even gas stations know when we filled our tanks and where. Credit card companies can track our spending. Are our lives any worse? So what actually IS privacy, and is it really all that valuable? Sure, I don't want everyone on earth knowing what goes on in my bedroom, but if they did, and I knew what was going on in their bedrooms, do we really lose anything? Or maybe we just turn away, saying "Too much information - I don't need to know that"? At what point does all this become a problem?
But is there nothing at all that you do in public, that you wouldn't want publicized? If someone published, freely available on the Internet, every object that you purchased, every book that you riffled through at the library or bookstore, every person that you spoke to outside private homes, your route and speed on every driving trip, every food that you ate, every drink that you drank, every expression that crosses your face as you watch a movie or a show or as you dance or as you talk to a date... Wouldn't you find that creepy?
My sister was assaulted and robbed in the main street of our reasonably small town. It was before cameras. There was no chance of catching who did that. She would have liked the freedom to walk down the street in reasonable safety and in the event of being attacked, she would have liked the freedom to know that the man who did it would be apprehended. A camera makes a better witness than a victim.
I honestly wouldn't. Unless it was happening to just me, and then I would think someone had it in for me personally. And in that case it would be the actor rather than the act itself that I would find creepy. Besides, even if I was doing something a bit off like buying a copy of Mein Kampf from a Waterstones, it doesn't mean I have to read it, take it seriously, and keep it among my collection - it could be that I just wanted to give it a read out of curiosity, or buy it for a friend who is writing a paper on it, or maybe I just wanted to throw £10 away and that was the only way I could think of doing it. I certainly don't see why anyone would want to have a look at what type of underwear I buy either, or what kind of alcohol. Who on earth would be interested?
Well exactly. Although the internet is abuzz with spyware to target potential buyers and I would love the 'freedom' to zap them into oblivion. If we had to worry about anybody delving into the colour of our underwear it would be the spy in the study rather than the one in the street.
That's actually a great idea. I wish Amazon, say, would come with an option to remove spyware for your account, to stop the 'customer suggestions', and 'things other people have bought'. Just the choice would be a great improvement.
I've got no problem with spyware, in moderation of course. Although Lemex is right, Amazon should have better filters and buttons to push when we want to opt out of 'their suggestions'. I don't know why people get cross with governments over CCTV surveillance cameras, airport security checks. The people you want to get cross with are the terrorists, and those that rob, rape, murder.... they are the cause of the cameras, checks... I wouldn't want to board a plane that hasn't been security checked, or get on a train at night without any security cameras where I can be in full view. Generally talking of course, but if we started having random body searches, for no good reason, by some contracted security firm, then I'd have to get excited!
By publicizing it on the internet, they would be bringing a specific public focus to what I was doing, and I think most people would consider that harassment, which is different from an invasion of privacy. It is not the mere observation that assaults my freedom, it is the publication of those observations. Going back to the surveillance camera example, the volume of material recorded is staggering. If the agencies that do so were to carefully comb all available video records of my movements within range of those cameras and thereby compile a dossier on me, yes, that would compromise my freedoms. It would also be actionable under current law. Checks and balances again, you see. Then again, depending on how much you use your cell phone, your cell carrier can probably already put together a pretty accurate track of your daily movements because every time you use your cell, it pings a cell tower and that information can be tracked. It's one of the ways that law enforcement agencies track missing persons. At the same time, if someone is shot on a street corner at two in the morning, and the only witness is the surveillance camera, don't you want to use that to catch the criminal?
The one thing I'm always amazed at is that this debate is not taking place more frequently. Google, just by the things you look at online, can build an extremely accurate impression of your personality. They have this data, they just never use it - unless it's for marketing purposes. One part of modern life is that we keep giving away more and more personal information about ourselves without ever really realizing we are doing it.
Okay--now I'm back in the game! The answer is "no," I wouldn't want that, for two solid reasons. First, what people do not know is that concept used to be called a "dragnet." If a convenience store owner was robbed by a black or a Sicilian, the cops swept up all of those individuals and interrogated them until they found the felon by dumb luck. It's a violation of Civil Rights, officially outlined by the 1983 Act. (I believe, Ed help me on that issue.) The practice went out of fashion in the mid 1960s. Now, for the second part of my rebuttal. Despite "officially" not being used since the 1960s, it's still being done--by different means. I know this, because two years ago it happened to me. One of my friends is our Country Sheriff, Dave Mahoney. One third of my friends and associates are cops, and the good guys don't like sloppy investigating themselves. You still have to make a case, you still have to obtain a conviction by solid work. Despite that, about three years ago, a drug dealer got shot on his porch in a small town near Madison. One of the members of my club was dating a woman who knew him--coincidence, nothing more. So, one day my doorbell rings, and it's two Dane County Sheriff Detectives to question me. And I blew my top. The reason, they were questioning all members of my club. My name appears on a gang task force list somewhere. I'm 62 years old. I rode actively from 1969 until 1974--do the math. Now, there is no real difference between abusing the civil rights of all blacks by cuffing and stuffing them into a squad car, or hunting them all down using a computer. Same deal, different day. When I met Dave Mahoney at the bike shop for coffee, we actually met for over an hour. He didn't know this "black bag" questioning was going on by a middle echelon detective, and the practice stopped. You cannot abridge the rights of all because it's a short cut. Edit: For our European members, the reason you cannot question people willy-nilly is our concept of "probable cause." It would be akin to a writer murdering someone, and then cops seizing all of your lap-tops "just in case." They do a search, then arrest anyone whose story has a murder theme. In this country you are innocent until proven guilty. Just because you look, act or live in a certain style is not probable cause.
But a positive photo identification of the actual perpetrator eliminates the perceived need for a "dragnet", and reduces the likelihood of innocent people being wrongly accused. BTW, I agree completely that such a practice (more recently dubbed "racial profiling") is illegal under civil rights protections passed by Congress, and actionable. Which is why I point to the US experience as one in which government's role has evolved as a protector of rights rather than a threat to rights.
They actually do use it for marketing, thats why they know which website to show you in there ads that could get your attention Remember when the movie "Minority report" came out and when Tom Cruise walked to a store and a commercial ad called him by name and offered to sell him pants(or something cant remember now) and everyone was so impressed back then how cool it was... We probably not far from that happening and can be done with some good equipment probably but i would be freaked out if i saw it. Facebook anyone? Got a friend that works in a police force(sort of like FBI in the US) and he told me once how much they actually use it and i would be surprised at how often they find someone they'r looking for by checking on facebook, says its amazing how many people put real information in there even criminals. He didnt (or couldnt) tell me though how they see it if it was by hacking in or some access.
I'm well aware they use it for marketing. That's why I said they did. It's no big secret anyway - and it's also no big secret it could easily be used to build an, in some cases, exact profile of your entire personality.
Hardly any municipal surveillance cameras have facial recognition software. To that, the perp has to have a prior criminal record to even have his face on record. Besides, it is not the government's business where law abiding citizens purchase frozen yogurt and condoms. If a crime has been committed, then do your job. But to subject all citizens to surveillance because one perp *might* commit a crime sounds like a excuse to violate rights simply because it sounds good. In the wild west you could hang a man for stealing 12 dollars. Ya' know, it still sounds good to me. Just because it sounds good should we implement that, too?
Please don't make me get into recidivist statistics. Besides, if a crime is committed on camera (and that's what we're talking about) it is still an investigative tool that eliminates the perceived requirement for dragnets. Besides, it is not the government's business where law abiding citizens purchase frozen yogurt and condoms. If a crime has been committed, then do your job. But to subject all citizens to surveillance because one perp *might* commit a crime sounds like a excuse to violate rights simply because it sounds good. [/quote] And obviously no one will be bothered with what law-abiding citizens do. And even if they were so inclined, the man-hours needed to conduce meaningful surveillance on random activities would be staggering. The only useful purpose for surveillance cameras is to catch people in the act of committing crimes, which is what they do. So, in other words, you agree with me that the frontier mentality of every man for himself and everyone enforcing his own interpretation of rough justice is inappropriate for our society. At last, a point of agreement.
Madison is not the backwater burg it used to be, and quite often they run pictures of bank robbers, convenience store hold-up guys and even bangers shooting it out in parks on local TV news. So far, the one common element in their ultimate arrest has nothing to do with surveillance cameras. It stems from the thing that trips up criminals everytime. Stupidity. They try to use a stolen credit card. They don't ditch the gun. Someone rats them out. They get shot and later arrested at an ER. In other words, the same methods that worked 20 years ago.
Oh, I don't see that as obvious, not at all. That assumes a government free of corruption, and that's a huge assumption. Also, who's to say what "law abiding" is in the future? There were decades when a law-abiding citizen couldn't marry a citizen of another race. Or use birth control. Until very, very recently, a same-sex kiss could destroy a military career. Computers, and digital analysis algorithms, get faster and faster every day. We're not talking about man-hours here, we're talking about computer cycles. And in the future, buying those condoms, or kissing the wrong person, or buying the wrong book, or going to the wrong political rally, could become a crime. I have a reasonable level of trust in our current government - as a whole, though I'm not as confident as you that there aren't pockets of corruption that could cause a lot of harm. But I don't want the best government in the world to have a tool that could give a bad government overwhelming power. Governments change; the infrastructure remains.
Perhaps. But the cost would still be enormous, including having people to run and monitor those computer cycles. Sorry, but I just don't see where the compelling governmental interest would be in investing the resources in such a project. Seems to me that there would always be something much more urgent. First of all, I don't doubt there are pockets of corruption. Our entire system is predicated on the assumption that power corrupts, hence the need for checks and balances. That's why the thing that worries me the most these days is the increasing inability of our polity to engage in meaningful debate. We are being buried by the eight-second sound bite. Less meaningful debate means less effective oversight, and oversight is everything in a democracy. But, if government - specifically, law enforcement - does not possess the most advanced technology, do you think it is going away? No. It will be possessed, used and further developed by parties over whom the public has no oversight, and thus will enable them to do anything they like. THAT is a real threat to freedom. As it is, we pay protection money to hackers to keep our computer systems safe (we call it buying anti-virus software, but it's really a high-tech protection racket because they're really just selling us the antidotes to viruses they've already created). The answer isn't to try to deny government the most modern tools. The answer is to make certain that the government uses those tools in a way that does not impair the freedoms that it is supposed to be protecting, that it adheres to the very rule of law that was its reason for being in the first place. And that is why I have no time for those who feel they should have the right to take the law into their own hands.
Ed, your handle says "NY," which I might erroneously imply to mean 'New York City.' However, I live in Madison, Wisconsin. And while the Capital of my state, it is often known by two things. First, because of the old hippies and openly socialist air, we are sometimes referred to as "Twenty-five square miles surrounded by reality." Second, we are known as 'The biggest small town in America." Up until about five years ago the city elders all parroted that it was "safe to walk anywhere." It is not, was not, and we all knew it. We have Chicago bangers having open gunfights in broad daylight in parks over drug turf. Our police chief is black, because white guilt swept him into office--just as this same guilt saddled us with a gay, Indian, former welfare mother for our fire chief, I kid you not. We use the term "community policing." That Chief, Noble Wray, has said openly that he does not understand why crime seems to follow Section 8 housing. Also, no kidding. We do not have CSI style investigation toys, NCIS resolve or 'Justified' police officers. We have Barney Fife singing Kumbaya. Even if some thug committed a crime with his social security number on his hoodie, it would take months to find him, and perhaps just plea him out for community service. Think I'm kidding about that, too? On last night's news there was a story on how prisoners are released without supervision or a ankle bracelet for errands like doctors' appointments and many simply "walk off." New York is probably an area where your views have merit. Let me invite you to Madison. I'll take you everywhere, to the UW Campus, and to the lower east side. You can watch the news. I'll take you to my favorite coffee bar (which adjoins the food court at East Towne Mall) and we can watch drug deals while the rent-a-cops pace back and forth. Then when you've had a belly full of that I'll take you down State Street and show you aggressive panhandlers applying their trade in front of surveillance cameras on every sign post and stoplight. I'll take you down the Beltline, where speeding and road-rage go on daily despite that entire section of highway under camera supervision. Then when you come back from "Oz" with some decent Wisconsin cheese and a severe TUMS addiction from witnessing when up is down, I'd like to read the thread of your visit.
If so, then you haven't even scratched the real issue, which has nothing to do with whether surveillance cameras invade people's privacy but rather is that you're not allocating enough resources for law enforcement, which, based on what I read about Wisconsin politics, would appear to be a direct result of the "don't wanna pay no taxes for nuthin'". You folks might want to rethink that. As a New Yorker (yes, New York City, the Big Apple, Fun City, Capital of the World, etc), I can tell you that I remember the days when the only defense against a crack epidemic was a banner hung from one side of 30th Street to the other that read "Police are watching this crack block". We figured it out. It takes resources and resolve. The good news is, it works. But the police still require civilian oversight.
