Loss of Privacy

The House of Lords has published a report detailing the fact that the pervasiveness of CCTV is undermining the fundamental right to privacy.

The report, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, by the Lords’ constitution committee, says Britain leads the world in the use of CCTV, with an estimated 4m cameras, and in building a national DNA database, with more than 7% of the population already logged compared with 0.5% in the America.

The peers say privacy is an “essential prerequisite to the exercise of individual freedom” and the growing use of surveillance and data collection needs to be regulated by executive and legislative restraint at all times.

Finally, the aristocracy that is left in Britain are starting to speak up.  When they realize what is happening, it’s time for the rest of the British public to do so also.  Those who were already aware of the increasing limits on privacy should not be called kooks and conspiracy nuts.  This is real.  And it needs to be dealt with.

In yet another study, this time in San Francisco, conclusions are made that reinforce previous findings that security cameras don’t work.  Researchers at the University of California have found that cameras in high crime areas do not prevent violent crimes.

The long-awaited study by the UC Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society found the program is hurt by lack of training and oversight, a failure to integrate footage with other police efforts, poor quality cameras, and what may be a fundamental weakness of cameras as anti-crime devices.

Mayor Newsom began the program four years ago, but out of concern for people’s privacy, police are not allowed to monitor cameras in real time. Investigators must wait until a crime is reported before looking at footage.

In what we already know, cameras that are not monitored do nothing except become a witness to the crime.

Get them here.

The city of London currently has more than 10,000 CCTV cameras, yet they have done little to curb crime. Most can’t even solve a crime after it has occurred, leading many to believe they are completely useless and a huge waste of money.

A comparison of the number of cameras in each London borough with the proportion of crimes solved there found that police are no more likely to catch offenders in areas with hundreds of cameras than in those with hardly any.

In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.

“We have estimated that CCTV cameras have cost the taxpayer in the region of £200million in the last 10 years but it’s not entirely clear if some of that money would not have been better spent on police officers.

Thank you! I have been saying this for years. There is no better deterrent to crime than to have a physical body present. That £200 million could have been better spent on human beings who can actually interact with citizens in helping to prevent crime and solve crimes after the fact.

Another suggestion was to spend some of that money on better street lighting, which has also shown to lower crime rates. Like cockroaches, criminals scatter in the light. Too bad we can’t get politicians to do the same.