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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Big Brother gets a voice This story in the Telegraph is no doubt just crazy right-wing paranoia, and we have in fact no need to worry, get annoyed or even become the tiniest bit cheesed off. Oh no. Polly has explained it all for us. To be worried about the surveillance state is a middle-class thing, apparently. All true denizens of a socialist Britain should be proud to carry ID cards and be photographed constantly.
If Polly Toynbee did not exist, we would have to invent her. Not even Ian Fleming could cook up a female villain as good as this woman. Henry Porter, meanwhile, has scathing remarks on his fellow Guardian columnist. Good for him.
Of course, if CCTVs are installed in privately owned streets, shopping malls or other privately owned buildings, I do not have a problem so long as it is pretty clear that such cameras are installed. But that is not quite the issue.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Porter: “It is difficult to think of anything more crass published in the pages of the Guardian during the last decade”.
Much as it good to see him on the right side, I have to say that is a big call.
Where’s my union rep? I want to file a greviance against Polly for plagiarism. I wrote basically the same thing a few months back and she quite plainly ripped me off.
I ought to report her to the council.
I fail to see what’s the difference between CCTV cameras on private streets or malls, and on “public” streets.
A person who steps into a public place has willingly and knowingly exposed himself to the public. He can be seen, photographed or filmed by anyone. He has implicitly agreed to that.I don’t see how my rights are violated by being captured on CCTV.
CCTV cameras do help fight crime. If they do it in a cost-efficient way – is another matter. But I can’t see what’s wrong with them.
Installing cameras in private places (like my home, a la 1984) is of course wrong. But in a public place – it’s ok.
Jacob, you are wrong. When a person walks down a street, he may have a “reasonable expectation” of being seen by other people. But such expectations are minimal. With a private place, additional requirements or standards can be set by owners of those places. Say in a private bar, the owner can set rules on things like dress codes, and the like, or instal cameras, whatever. So long as this is made clear.
You have a choice to enter private property. You do not, in most cases, have such a choice when it comes to public property, which is why cctv sprawling all over our land is seen as a Big Brother issue.
That is what is known in these parts as a sweeping statement. I see no evidence in Britain that cameras reduce crime. They may displace it, but they do not fight it. They certainly show little sign of deterring it. They may be handy in catching a criminal after the event. But they were not much use in preventing things like the 7/7 bombings in London, for instance.
While I dislike CCTV, I think that the ‘surveillance state’ argument against it isn’t the best one to make because it’s not one that’s finding a great deal of public support.
I prefer the following:
1. CCTV is used as a cheap replacement for policemen – thus CCTV is installed using money that may otherwise have gone to the police. With CCTV everywhere, more crimes are reported to the police so the existing force becomes overworked and response times go down – therefore while the crime may have been captured on CCTV, there’s no guarantee that a police response will be coming.
2. They’re a cure not a prevention – they’re used because people feel less secure in public areas, largely due to a feral underclass of teenagers produced because of the government’s cash-for-kids policies. The root cause should be addressed.
3. They don’t actually work that well – one guy in a hood with a baseball cap on under the hood looks largely like any other, and the quality of the recording is often pretty dire too.
I can’t really see though how an argument against ‘a surveillance state’ can be produced where 4 CCTV cameras overseeing a town square is somehow more of a ‘surveillance tool’ than 4 police officers overseeing a square. If you feel you need police officers in any quantity wandering around to keep order, then you have a state of surveillance – or perhaps unrest!
My local convenience store has four cameras. They also keep the Al foil behind the counter – it’s that kinda area. Now the point is a blind dutchman on a galloping horse would spot that the whole shop is on CCTV. That is done deliberately and it appears to deter the scallies. I can only speculate how it deters them and I suspect it’s got nowt to do with the fuzz.
Now, I don’t have a problem. It’s their shop and the filming is overt – you can watch all four feeds on the 17″ TFT by the till. The problem is that HMG is increasingly using surveilance in a covert manner (remember all the stuff about “hidden” speed cameras). Also, we only have their word for it that they are using this surveilance for the purposes they state whereas it is utterly transparent what the folk at the corner shop are taping us for.
And then there is the question of choice. If I objected to being taped by the shop owners there are a couple of nearby cornershops which don’t have cameras. Living in Manchester I have little choice but to be clocked approximately 500 times every time I venture into the City Centre and that is just walking the streets .
I can’t recall where I got that figure from but I didn’t make it up.
I wish it was beyond belief. Sadly not.
Perry,
To what are you referring? I’m confused.
“I see no evidence in Britain that cameras reduce crime.”
That’s another debate. Currently we are debating whether CCTV cameras infringe upon individual rights.
Suppose Perry puts a CCTV camera in his window (being the freak he is) and films all passers-by in the public street. Would that be wrong in any way ?
If not – why is it wrong when HMS does the same ?
Put it another way: would I like to have more cops on the streets ? Of course I would. Maybe those cameras are to a little extent a substitute for cops on the street.
If they are totally useless, well, then they are a waste of money, but I don’t see how they are a sinister tool of oppression.
“You! Yes, you behind the bike sheds! Stand still laddie!”
And don’t forget how they secretly switched the Gatso stills cameras to remote video to catch people blowing the damned things up.
Yeah I’m confused too Nick, but not by that.
What is confusing me is the Children are competeing to be the voice of the cameras bit.
Now these are presumably interactive cameras with real live people monitoring them in real time. So what is with the children’s voice thing?
Surely they dont intend to to have a number of pre recorded messages for different situations using the voice of a child!!??
Littering press 1
Please mister, would you put that crisp packet in the bin.
Graffiti artist press 2
Dont even think about shaking that aerosol. I’m calling the bogies right now!
If they are fully interactive, and with jessica Rabbit voiced female operators, they could be quite fun.
You’d be coming home from the pub to the sight of drunks with their arms round lamposts burbling-
“you’re my best mate you are! My wife doesn’t understand me. I can only talk to you hic
See you same time hic, tomorrow!”
Jacob,
Yes, they are potential tools of oppression. Perry can tape people walking past his gaff all he wants. He will probably find himself rather less popular for doing it but despite all the claims that Samizdata is a “heavily armed globalist illuminati” I very much doubt Perry (even in his tinfoil hat) could use that footage to fuck up my life in anyway equivalent to what the blessed combo of HMG and Crapita could manage.
There are two unknowable numbers I speculate upon. One is the number of “people” I’ve killed playing computer games and the other is the number of tourist pictures I have inadvertantly ended up upon.
It is quite possible a girl in Tokyo is pining for the ineffable hunk in the background of an image she captured outside of Madame Tussard’s and has no way of ever finding me. That or she’s thinking who’s that twat getting in the way of a great picture of my chums on our trip to London. I neither know nor care but I do care when HMG does this for motives which are not entirely transparent. And they never will be because there will always be “mission creep”.
Yes, they are potential tools of oppression.
Sure.
So are cops. Would you rather have less cops patrolling the streets ? Or ban them too ?
HMG is supposed to combat crime (acting as your agent), why deny it some advanced tool that can help ? Why confine them to old tools you are accustomed to (cops) ?
Jacob,
Cops have judgement. CCTV doesn’t. The British police force has/had a tradition of serving the community. CCTV has a short tradition of serving political ends. Dr Reid said it himself. They are about imposing “respect” and stopping “anti-social behaviour”. He never mentioned crime. Anyway, would you rather that your stabbing was recorded on tape or that there was an officer near enough to actually stop that?
See the Telegraph article Perry linked to above if you doubt Dr Reid’s motivation here.
“…but I don’t see how they [CCTV systems] are a sinister tool of oppression.”
They are sinister tools of oppression for two reasons. Firstly, although their stated purpose is reasonably clear (deterring crime and/or identifying criminals), it is not the only purpose for which they may be used. Aside from occassional abuses by one or two bad apples operating them, in more extreme cases, CCTV systems may even be used for assisting the timing and coordination of complex crimes – think of bank heists for example. Moreover, CCTV systems can assist in identifying your location, not only to the agencies of the state but to any interested 3rd parties who can blag access (not especially difficult I imagine) and who, for whatever reason, don’t exactly hold your life in high esteem. People ask ‘what have you got to hide?’ and to most of us the answer is nothing (though in my case, everything!), but if you were an enslaved Romanian girl on the run from a pimp in some cheap London brothel – your location is precisely one thing you would want to hide.
The other reason why CCTV systems are sinister is that they are a constant reminder that trust is a rare social commodity – you cannot trust other passers-by because they may rob you, assault you or be wearing a bomb-shaped rucksack. Norms of altruistic and reciprocal behaviour simply are almost non-existant in big cities like London and New York. CCTV systems are sinister because their existence emphasises the unknown risks around you and thus your own vulnerability.
Nice one, RAB.
They’d probably send out a patrol to stop the drunk from wasting Police time.
Of course, this would be a waste of Police time, so they’d send fake police(Community Support thingy).
The final paragraph of Mike’s is a candidate for Samizdata quote of the day. Very good point.
Because cops will conduct interviews, collect relevant physical evidence, obtain warrants when required, and arrest and transport people who need to be lodged. Cameras will take pictures of Nick M minding his own business when that business isn’t anybody else’s. They may catch someone breaking into a car. Then again, they may not.
And if your government were serious about controlling crime, they might try locking up people who need to be locked up. Laugh all you want, but Billy Burglar isn’t climbing in any windows while he’s being held at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.
Or having more actual cops out doing actual policework. Say, more than one cop for every 58 on the payroll. My department on the other side of the Atlantic doesn’t have a great teeth-to-tail ratio either, but two thirds of our payroll are either non-supervisory working patrol or working detectives.
Or by not sending them on nonsense wild goose chases trying to get the all-important detection by conducting four structured interviews and a CCTV review concerning a neighbor dispute that’s frankly civil in nature and should never have been a police matter anyway.
Or by getting over this silly “Jump up and down and flap your arms if you see a crime” crap and actually be on the side of good guys who defend themselves or defend other people. I think Peel addressed that last one quite well. All we do is collect a paycheck for doing something that’s at least a little bit the entire community’s responsibility.
Or, you could have an unliveable community. I’ve seen plenty of places here where people don’t want anything to do with crime prevention in their own neighborhood, will insist they didn’t see what happened in the street in front of their house while they were on the porch because they don’t want to get involved, and can’t even be bothered to talk civilly to their own neighbors. They are, by and large, not pleasant places to live.
All cameras do is contribute a witness. A witness who can miss details that an actual human would see, and who could easily be looking in the wrong direction. In a society, there may be justifiable intrustions into people’s lives: when I get a call to a house and on arrival U hear terrified screaming inside at 2AM I’m not interested in being told that I can’t come in. If there’s nothing wrong and it’s just screaming for the sake of screaming, I’ll leave. And when a car is twenty under the limit and weaving across three lanes with his turn signal lit and his lights off after dark, the driver and I will talk about it. But in those cases, I have a specific reason to stick my oar in. I’m not pulling over the other twenty cars driving by just because I’m curious. Or kicking in the next-door neighbor’s door on the off chance that he’s smoking an unapproved noxious weed.
General surveillance in public, however, chills EVERYONE’S freedom to go about their lives unmolested.
mike and Johnathan,
CCTV systems are sinister because their existence emphasises the unknown risks around you and thus your own vulnerability.
That might be so, but the CCTV systems are not the cause of those risks or vulnerabilities, so they’re not to blame. They are sinister in some psychological associative way (maybe), not by because of any tangible harm they do.
Sunfish,
I agree with all you say; police services need to be improved; a cop is better than a CCTV camera, etc., etc.
Still: what’s wrong with CCTV cameras ? Do they cause any harm ? What harm ?
Nick M:
Cops have judgement. CCTV doesn’t.
But it’s cops who opertae the CCTVs isn’t it ? Who examines and monitors the film (if anyone at all) ?
“…but the CCTV systems are not the cause of those risks or vulnerabilities, so they’re not to blame. They are sinister in some psychological associative way (maybe), not by because of any tangible harm they do.”
I disagree with this. CCTV systems do increase the risk to our personal liberty. But let’s be clear about where these risks come from in the first place.
Direct assault or robbery from random passers-by in a big city is one source of risk against our personal liberty. I don’t think anyone in their right mind would claim that CCTV systems actually increase the risk of assault or robbery. But do CCTV systems really minimise this risk? Do they even make a blind bit of difference either way?
The growth of arbitrary state power is a more serious risk to our personal liberty. Tools which increase that power, thereby increase that risk to our personal liberty.
Now it may be true that petty abuses of state power and simple cock-ups form a large part of that risk – and I admit that it does look a little silly to cite such things as proof that CCTV cameras are ‘sinister tools of oppression’. (Try saying that after you’ve been the unfortunate victim of a ‘simple cock-up’!)
Yet what is most sinister about CCTV systems (pace Jacob) is their potential to cause soul-destroying intangible harm in the hands of government nasties with real ambition. When correct behaviour and correct speech become a matter for automatic public surveillance*, will you dare let yourself be forgetful or go about your own business without keeping an eye on what you say, to whom you say it, the places you go to and the particular hours you keep?
*And don’t people in Britain live under elements of this nightmare already?
Jonathan: thank you, but PdH and veryretired do it better already.
When correct behavior and correct speech become a matter for automatic public surveillance*, will you dare let yourself be forgetful or go about your own business without keeping an eye on what you say, to whom you say it, the places you go to and the particular hours you keep?
Look, I lived under a communist regime. Correct behavior and correct speech were mandated, and there was a great lot of public surveillance – and they did it all without CCTV cameras. It’s not the CCTV cameras who mandate correct speech or behavior, and who punish deviants.
CCTV cameras are just a gadget. What matters is how you use them. Maybe the government in Britain is sinister and oppressive – but it’s not the fault of the cameras.
So what? CCTV does not cause repression any more than guns cause violence. But just as I want to keep people who threaten me away from guns, not because guns are bad but because those people are bad… I want to keep omnipresent CCTV out of the hands of people who have proven so often that that not only do they want to regulate my life, no state can be trusted with that sort of information. CCTV does not cause repression, it just makes it cheaper and easier if the state has easy access to it in ever more places.
I have nothing against CCTV per se… in fact I am a contributors to the running cost of the resident association owned ones on my street (which we have control over, not the state)… what I have a problem with is ones which public functionaries have casual access to for what may well be reasons that are not in my interests.
Jacob wrote:
I think it varies quite a bit. In some cases no one sees the video unless there is a viewing for evidence concerning a crime. Such investigation is normally done by the police.
For government-run (including local authority) CCTV, it is my understanding that real-time monitoring is quite common, with one person usually overseeing several cameras. In those cases, quite often that overseeing is done by non-police staff and/or by contractors. Although doubtless such staff are trained and selected with some care, they do not (or so I believe) take the Oath of Constable. The same is, I am sure, true for CCTV for shops etc, which is of private property where there is normally unrestricted access by the public. Perhaps the same is true in Perry’s street; it would be interesting to know, there, whether anyone views the video, apart from police investigating a local crime.
Now, it strikes me that having a licence (in actuality or just effect) from the government to effectively spy on people (whether or not with their knowledge or permission) is something that should be carefully regulated, in the same way as being licenced as a policeman is carefully regulated. There are similar needs concerning integrity, if not for physical strength and implicit authorisation of forceful restraint (in certain circumstances).
I would favour such “licencing” including an oath, and the formal declaration and acceptance of responsibility that goes with it.
[Note: some may well argue that such oaths are useless and so irrelevant; I don’t. I find their brevity and common sense refreshing, and they give strength to the importance of motive rather than just to the evidence of action.]
If we currently have that sort of oath for those who view CCTV, that is wonderful. But do we? If not, should we?
Best regards
Mr Porter is wrong – “social justice” and liberty ARE opposed to each other.
“Social justice” is the doctrine that income and wealth should be “distributed” according to some “fair” principle. This is not compaitible with liberty.
Polly T. knows this and has made her choice. Whereas Henry Porter thinks he can have both liberty and “social justice” when he can not.
“But many supporters of social justice also support liberty”.
No doubt they do.
After all even centuries ago (for example), the German Samual Pufendorf was a leading supporter of the idea of natural law – yet he also held that all the world was given (by God) to humanity in general (this was due to his interpretation of the Book of Genesis) and that people had a right to be supported.
He failed to see that if people had to justify their property (as being for the general welfare) no property would ever really be safe (as some other people, political people, would have an interest not be convinced). The fact that John Locke went along with Pufendorf’s interpretation does not alter this in the slightest.
For example, when I read Thomas Jefferson saying “we” grant private property as a incentive to industry I get a chill down my spine for I know that such a doctrine leads to a sort of government that Jefferson would not have liked.
I am not saying that I am better thinker than Jefferson – I (and the rest of us) simply have a couple of centuries of history to look at that he did not have. I (and again every one else) also have distance – for example it is less difficult for me to see what the French Revolution was, than it was for Jefferson (who so wanted it to be something else from what it was).
To return to Pufendorf:
He also failed to see that if charity is compulsory it is not the virtue of charity – it is state power. And an opening for the poltical people to justify just about any level of taxation and other controls.
As M. J. Oakeshott put it (On Human Conduct, page 153 – footnote):
there is, of course, no place in civil association for so-called “distributive” justice: that is the distribution of desirable substantive goods. Such a “distribution” of substantive benefits or advantages requires a rule of distribution and a distributor in possession of what is to be distributed; but lex [Oakeshott is using the latin word for law – because, in English, the word “law” has come to mean any command of the state] cannot not be a rule of distribution of this sort, and civil rulers have nothing to distribute.
Paul continues his rant.
And it is not just unlimted taxation – people must be prevented from “captalistic acts” (from Robert Nozick – socialists wanting to prevent “captalistic acts between adults”) in private – otherwise income and wealth will not even be known (for at high tax levels people have a very large incentive to hide their activities).
It is not for nothing that (as F.A. Hayek pointed out in the “Constitution of Liberty”, and “Law, Legislation and Liberty” and other works) that the German term for “welfare state” (where this term came from) was always closely connected to “police state”.
One can say “I want a welfare state, but I never want a police state” – but, in the end, one must choose. If someone really wants to maintain the development of the welfare state over a long period of time “civil liberties” are going to have to go. “I want state control of economic and social matters, but not over civil liberties” does not work – it is a desire for (as Milton Friedman put it) “barking cats”.
“Stop name dropping Paul”.
O.K. – but when I do not name drop I am accused of setting myself up against the wisdom of the ages.
Sadly I doubt that either approach (me name dropping, or me laying the law) would work with Henry Porter. Just as long arguments (either logical ones or ones from experience) are not likely to work either (although they are there in some of the works I have cited above).
He wants (he really, really wants) the state to do all sorts of nice things for people, without the state violating the liberty of folk.
He can not have this (in the long term) but he really, really wants it – so he is unlikely to see he can not have it (till it is too late).
Polly T. is more clear sighted.
In fact the only difference between this lady and libertarians (in this matter) is that she sees the issues – and picks the other side.
I suppose I should make clear that there are two problems here.
The first is that of people Thomas Jefferson who support strictly limited government (especially central or national government), but who go along with philosophical conceptions (such as he world is granted, by God, to humanity in general and individual ownership has to be justified as for the benefit of others – classic “Lockian proviso” stuff that is straight from Pufendorf) that lead to something very different.
To bring things “down to Earth” the taking of private property (by local and State authorities) and giving it to developers is perfectly “Jeffersonian” according the above – becaus the developers can make “better use of it” they can produce more economic benefit.
Of course Thomas Jefferson himself might well have been horrified by this – but that shows why we must be careful of the philosophical principles we support.
Political philosophy turns out not to be so “theorectical” after all.
The second problem is (as I tried to make clear) is people like Mr Porter.
These are good people (unlike Polly T. who is just plain evil – and, contrary to Henry Porter, there are many people like her connected to the “Guardian”), who want the state to do lots of nice things – but do not see that a state with the power to do these things will also (must also) in the end violate basic liberty.
Of course, in the end, even a tyrannical state can not maintain the principle of looking after the “health, education and welfare” of the population – such a system will (sooner or later) go bust.
But it will do a lot of harm before the laws of economics catch up with it.