We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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Head-mounted video cameras for the police I found it via engadget and The Raw Feed, but I might have found it in the Guardian. The Raw Feed reported it this way:
In the belief that the world’s most surveilled society isn’t surveilled enough, eight London cops are getting HEAD-MOUNTED VIDEO CAMERAS to record their run-ins with drunks, soccer hooligans and unrestrained American tourists. The battery-operated cams will record police interactions, and may be used in court.
I do not see this as a problem. But what if the day ever comes when only government employees may use such gadgets? If present trends continue that may become the rule, especially when you consider that in a few short years time, we will be talking about devices that are pretty much invisible.
Next step, having to have a license.
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They are also getting mobile fingerprinting kit, which – entirely in defiance of the actual empirical evidence for fingerprints – it is being said “will enable officers to identify suspects within minutes”.
Highly implausible, since they are taking only index fingers.
Says the typically credulousBBC report.
Sounds to me as if they will be stopping cars that from ANPR are held by people “known to the police”, and the gadget will be confirmatory in some cases and intimidatory in most, rather than identification. (Particularly since they don’t yet have everyone’s fingerprints.)
Note this also creates yet another pretext for fingerprinting the entire population.
Need a license? “Lensmen”?
Well the police will have to be careful not to record any evidence of “happy slapping” as possession of such videos might well be illegal come 2007.
I do not understand how anyone could argue against allowing only trained, licensed government approved agents the ability to record events. If anyone may do it, then the public may well be deceived by the clever editing of the illegally obtained footage into believing almost anything. Only official photographers and video technicians should be allowed to record events as they are responsible and have a duty and obligation to show the truth.
No serious person would think otherwise.
[/Brown]
If video evidence is available, and deemed admissable and incontrivertable in court then how long before camera equipped police are allowed to dispense summary justice with the accussed having to fight for an opportunity to challenge in a court of law? It seems this is the situation currently with the majority of traffic convictions.
The police can’t lock you up, there’s no room in prison, they can only fine you, so how long until the increasing tendency to ‘charge’ perpertrators of ‘anti-social’ activity meets the surveillance society coming the other way and the police start carrying EPOS machines along with their cameras and truncheons.
Not so sure about Judge Dredd, but Judge Cashpoint seems likely. Do you think the Police will be moved under direct control of Inland Revenue any time soon?
You should be able to petition whoever keeps the recordings made by police and, unless a strong case is made otherwise, the footage should be made available. There are numerous occaisions I’ve seen police in Middlesbrough dishing out a kicking to amiable drunks while leaving the ones fighting to disperse. It would for once be a case of the citizenry surveilling the state.
Actually, having ministers bugged permanently might be a good idea too.
Mrs. II Paleologos is a copper, and has to put up with an amazing number of false complaints and unpleasant abuse.
I think they’d be only too happy to make this stuff publicly available.
Onsite fingerprinting!? Ha! They won’t get me. An FBI fingerprint technician spent 2 1/2 hours trying to fingerprint me and gave up, saying I have NO fingerprints!
(No, I wasn’t in trouble with the FBI…just trying to get fingerprints for my citizenship application.)
Re videotaping…Rodney King. As digital cams, vids, and cell phones with digicams become ubiquitous, the Po-leece better realize that surveill works two ways.
Re giving someone else’s name. Bad idea. You never know what someone else has done, or even if they are known to the fuzz. My best friend’s brother got pulled over once, and gave a friend’s name, and lo and behold, there was a warrant out for the friend’s arrest. So of course it comes out that he really isn’t that guy, reveals his own true name…and lo and behold, there’s a warrant out for him too. LOL (This was a long time ago, when that crowd was trouble; they’re all married, have kids, jobs, totally domesticated now.)
Does the UK have problems with no-knock raids? Glenn Reynolds/Instapundit posted today about a 92 year old woman being shot and killed by police in a no knock raid in Atlanta. He posts on that theme frequently. Sovereign immunity, the POleece cannot be sued as an agency or individually when they murder innocent civilians when they go to the wrong house on a no knock raid. However, a confused innocent civilian (who is NOT a drug dealer), waking up in the middle of the night to an apparent break-in/invasion, defends self and property with a gun as is his right, kills a POleece-Man, and will get charged for murder. STATIST GESTAPO!
unrestrained American tourists
Is this actually a problem? What about Australians? Or those damned Canadians?
We will all have this technology, not just the police.
I read an article the other day predicting that everybody will have a pin sized camera on their lapel connected to huge G hard-drive, and when you wake up in the morning with the dead mouse taste in the mouth, the throbbing head and no recollection of what you did last night. Just press playback to find out!
I find this very weird, but then I’m finding a lot of things weird lately.
Like Camerons policy twonk saying today, ditch Churchill and embrase Polly Toynbee’s ideas on social welfare and poverty!!!!
Duplicious Dave is NEVER EVER going to get my vote!!
It will be amazing how many cops accused of acting improperly will have failed to have turned on the camera or a technical glitch will have destroyed the record the incident.
I read a novel by David Brin, Earth I think it may have been called, but I am 3 weeks from home and can’t go and look at the bookshelf, that had a society where everyone was pretty much connected to a wireless web that stored what you saw and heard. There was not much in the way of privacy outside your own home, but physical crime was vastly reduced due to the sheer ubiquity of camera evidence, but not from the state from the individual.
If we have to live in a surveilled society, it is preferable for the citizens to do the watching so the answer to quis custodiet custodes ipsos ? is.
We are watching the watchers.
Later
Gengee
“Oops I lost the tape”
“Freak magnetic storm”
“Those damn hooligans and their EM Pulse cannons”
Speaking from personal experience in regards to an audio recording, it doesn’t matter what laws are in place that make it illegal for police to withhold footage, they will do so anyway.
This will only work when civilians are allowed to film police without fear of repurcussion, whether police “confiscating” the footage as evidence or be paid an unofficial visit from the fuzz to “politely” request the footage.
I think Tony Blair should have an arse-mounted camera.
I oppose any calls for John Prescott to be fitted with a camera in any location whatsoever.
Well, the latter can be thwarted by uploading the footage to the internet (i.e. Youtube) as soon as possible.