CCTV policy

[jez9999]

What would our actual policy on CCTV be? I just read this piece by Vince Cable in the Daily mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206797/VINCE-CABLE-The-day-I-came-face-face-surveillance-state.html

... and whilst he does hint about the idea of there being too much CCTV, it's still very indicative of the furthest mainstream politicians will go to on the matter -

'Why should inconsiderate motorists, litter louts, fly-tippers and tax dodgers complain if they are caught and fined?’

Some of these arguments have force and we should be careful not to indulge in paranoia. There are, however, several good reasons why we should worry. First, Government incompetence.

He then goes on about government incompetence meaning that they should introduce ID cards, but that totally fails to address CCTV.

Frankly, it's hard to come up with really strong rebuttals against people who advocate the mass use of CCTV to catch those committing antisocial behaviour. The fact that I'm having so much difficulty coming up with a coherent argument against it makes me think - am I being irrational? Why do I hate CCTV all over the place?

Recently there was a (solar-powered, I believe!) very high-up, covert, CCTV camera installed in the middle of a grassy roundabout near where I work. I can't see for the life of me why it's there. It's just gonna 'stop crime', I guess. Whatever. It's a waste of taxpayers' money, for one thing, but (and here's where I'd have trouble convincing many) I just plain don't like being surveilled extensively. I don't have a particularly rational argument for it, but the idea of some bastard security guard sitting in a room with a ton of screens in front of him being able to snoop on people's every move just feels bad. The 'waste of taxpayers' money' line might persuade some people that no MORE CCTV's should be installed, but my lack of a rational argument against mass surveillence means I'd have trouble persuading others that what I think should happen, should happen - tear down most CCTV cameras, the ones that wouldn't pass the criterion, 'it shouldn't be there except for a very good reason'. Even if it cost more to tear the things down than leave them there, I'd just like them removed. It'd make me feel better. What do others think?

[benreyes]

I'm actually not so keen on the Pirate Party persuing a CCTV policy to reduce or remove the amount of CCTV right now.

To be honest I don't mind CCTV being everywhere in public. I actually take confort in it, during certain situations I actually wished that CCTV was in placed. As most of our CCTV systems are quite rudimentary I have no issues with the scope of our CCTV systems.

An issue worth campaigning agaisnt is something like a complex centralised CCTV system that is set to track your movements from one CCTV location to another. And this tracking is not selective.

I rather that we do not play the CCTV scare card. Though if we where to have a CCTV policy in place it should probably be more of a stance to stop future abuses of our CCTV system. I feel there are much more pressing privacy policy issues to address than CCTV.

[LogistepHater]

I have absolute reservations about joining the Pirate Party now we are talking CCTV (

A party that fights over zealous filesharing laws is awesome and something I can subscribe to.
A party that wants to reduce CCTV in a violent nation with a notable problem with yob culture is insane.

If I wanted a reduction in CCTV I'd join Liberty.

PLEASE DO NOT RUBBISH A POSITIVE MESSAGE BY CALLING FOR CCTV REFORM, ITS FINE AS IT IS

THIS SHOULD BE ABOUT FIGHTING DRACONIAN INTERNET PIRACY LAWS NOT REMOVING ONE OF THE FEW LINES OF DEFENSE AGAINST YOBS WE HAVE LEFT.


Be careful, calling for reduced CCTV will cripple your message even before it has gained proper momentum.

I was all in favour of the party until I heard mention of CCTV. Reduce CCTV in UK and you will alienate many potential allies who hate yobs, like me.

[DavidHenry]

Liberty is not a political party... however I think Liberty would support a lot of the principles people are in agreement with here.

If your main concern is fighting yobs then perhaps you should join the police or the Conservative Party? There are many ways to fight "Yob Culture" - CCTV is part of the picture and I don't believe its the most effective by far. Without CCTV there would still be yobs. CCTV has increased but so has street crime so we have to question - has it even made any difference at all?!

The Pirate Party is about freedom, snooping and surveillence takes place in many forms. Spying on what you download or who you share your files with on your computer is what the peer to peer file sharers who founded the original pirate party in Sweeden were opposed to. What you do in the privacy of your own home - CCTV peering in to your bedroom window or dozens of cameras owned by different people watching you in the street serves no purpose but to infringe on our human rights and civil liberties. Public opinion is wary of CCTV I don't think we'd loose support be proposing to propose/curb/question its use.

[Gavin]

I think it's because it goes against us as human beings, with CCTV everywhere we end up in a situation where we know that right now somebody could be watching us, but, we don't know if they are. At the end of the day we are a society that currently runs on other peoples opinions of us, we constantly think about how others look at us, if anybody is watching us, is somebody judging us.

Maybe so far CCTV hasn't become a big issue because of its impersonal nature, a little box on a lamp-post that nobody is thinking about, but that's taking advantage of us not caring, well, not caring yet. Once we are aware, and constantly thinking "Well, who's actually watching us through that camera" as the high-street is littered with them, how will we change our behaviour? Walking down the street, you do things you wouldn't do if you were walking with someone else. I think at such a basic level, that's why we don't like CCTV. Being watched, by something we don't know if is actually watching us, is inherently distressing to us. Good ol' fear of the unknown.

How many times a day do you break the law?
I peed up a tree the other day in a park, technically I probably broke about 3 laws and should be done for sexual exposure, if a camera was watching. I think the biggest issue with CCTV everywhere is, we can't break the littlest laws which we do everyday, and we could be prosecuted for it on the whim of someone having a bad day in the police headquarters. If there had been cameras what would I have done? I had the option of wetting myself, or peeing up a tree and wondering for the next 3 days straight "Am I going to get a fine? Am I going to end up in jail for indecent exposure?"

Right now with policemen on the beat, we know it's fair game if we get caught littering, and that is enough to make most people stop most of the time. But that 100%, I think will lead to us thinking "Well, the police are watching" before making any judgement at all, even if it's a tiny tiny variation from what we normally do, we will always think about what the watching eye will think of our action.

What happens is, leaving our house, turns into a performance. When we know everyone is watching us, every step we take could be recorded or watched anonymously, the public space actually turns into something completely different. Right now, it isn't an issue as I say because we aren't always thinking about it. But once it's at the front of our mind, society becomes completely different.

This is actually shown by the new technique of talking CCTV, and will bring the change to society quicker. If anyone has the iplayer video on losing our liberties, dig it up.
The police were talking to litterers through cameras and microphones, people were stunned, they were taken back, and they did exactly as the voice in the sky said. But what will happen when they expect it? What will happen when everyone is used to the idea of a camera watching you, then an anonymous person talking to you. It'll be a bloody horrific place I tell you, or we'll all stop giving a shit what others think of us. It's a toss up ain't it.

-------
Yes I did just use the right to pee up a tree to justify a distrust of CCTV.

[benreyes]

The issue is with the use of CCTV not with CCTV in general. If this is so I think the PPUK should make a clear stance of the differences.
There was an example being referred to about pissing on a tree. I used to live in a tower block where people regularly urinate in the lift. I pretty much wished that the council placed CCTV in the lifts to fine the person who committed the offences.

Well if PPUK would like for smaller offences in laws to be allowed, then that should be a separate policy.

Please remember that most police and state operated CCTV is on public property. There are no restrictions on making recordings on public property unless it constitutes as stalking or causes harm. I am also a photographer and I often take photos of people (usually on public display, preaching/protestors) I quite often get challenged. I am on public property, they are in public view there is nothing stopping me from capturing what I see. It would be a massive shame if it was the other way. We would never be able to capture abuses of power for example police beating a person up. And would never be able to prove it and challenge the law.

We could spend years debating if we should have CCTV or not. But I personally belive that the removal of CCTV should not be a core policy of the PPUK. There are more pressing issues to do with internet privacy which are much more pressing than CCTV. A CCTV image of you carries far less information about an indavidual than tracking online. Furthermore the PPUK risks alienating some of their potential supporters with such policy.

Edit: Also to highlight the point. I totally agree that CCTV should be to the excess in infective cases. But the PPUK should make that clear that we are not saying that we want CCTV totally eradicated. Just unnecessary surveillance.

[NDR008]

[quote="davidhenry"]
CCTV has increased but so has street crime so we have to question - has it even made any difference at all?!
[quote]

I think you hit the nail on the head. I was living in a street where every Saturday cars were being vandalised (I myself had to report it to the police twice). Soon after the second time they called me to tell me they are considering to put up a CCTV.

I must say - I was happy that maybe I don't have to sleep worrying about the car. But I think the issue is - we have been made to believe that CCTVs solve problems.

In Malta (where I originate from) and in most countries, we don't have CCTVs all over and don't have such high vandals and mobs - so perhaps CCTVs only fix the 'symptom' and not the root cause of the problem.

Also, had the CCTV been fitted... I am a car enthusiast, and often fix my car on my drive or the side of the road. I would be afraid to do that in case I have broken some small law.

Also with all these CCTVs.. who is going to actually stare at the monitors? They are so ineffective in the long run, they only scare people when recently fitted. And I think education and other policies should be used to prevent problems as opposed to WATCHING and inducing fear to obey.

I think CCTVs should be reduced - not made a policy to become absolute, but rather policies that would result in less CCTVs and safer neighbourhoods?

[jamesmcm]

I agree with logistephater - I don't see why CCTV is so bad, most of it is privately owned anyway so how can you get the poor shopkeeper in a rough area to stop using CCTV?

It only records what the public could see anyway, if there were CCTV cameras in our homes I would understand being against it, but as it is CCTV just provides an objective record of events which is useful to everyone - citizens in stopping police brutality and police in stopping criminals.

[WilliamFS]

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I think that the discussion going on here on CCTV is showing how important it is for the PPUK to touch this particular issue very carefully. I am thinking of it in terms of a communications strategy for the party.

While it may be true that CCTV is largely inefficient and at times positively misused, regardless of those very valid arguments, if we are too vocal and perceived as asking for CCTVs to simply be removed (even if that is not our position), that might have a very bad effect on the Party's image.

DANGERS OF ANTI-CCTV POSITION TO PPUK'S IMAGE:
Because of our name, our young support base, the fact that we are a new party, etc, our positions will tend to be misrepresented and ridiculed by many. To fight against that and make sure that people perceive us as a serious party and at least hear our actual positions is crucial. But the fact is that most of the CCTVs we are talking about are filming public spaces. Many people will think that they are decent and law abiding citizens they have nothing to hide, and will see the PPUK's argument for the removal of CCTV as indicative of the PPUK's having a problem with authority (the acceptable, needed kind of authority in a functioning society) and almost siding with criminals. Other parties and the media may use this against us in a massive way. They might positively contribute to this image of a party who is defending anarchy and that would send troubled British society further down into a caos of violence and crime, thereby getting most people to quickly dismiss the PPUK.

WAYS TO AVOID SUCH DANGERS:
As a party full of IT expertise, we will have some credibility when the issues are about new technologies, the internet, etc. On the other hand as a new party full of young people, we will have little credibility on issues of public safety and (street)crime prevention. For that reason I think it will be much wiser for us to focus mainly on excessive surveillence and misuse of technology on the internet. It should be us portraying the establishment as not forward looking enough and uncapable of dealing with the new political challenges of our age, and not them portraying us as irresponsible and easygoing about public safety.

Regarding CCTV policy we could (and this bit is more open to debate) either i) keep a simple 'let us get rid of all the CCTVs' policy but downplay it and deemphasise it or, ii) deemphasise and reformulate our position to something that would simply show concern about the misuse of CCTV and a wish to make them more effective tools for crime prevention, but not be against CCTV nor for their simple removal from our streets.


If our position was to be summarised in one line, which line does it best:
1- CCTVs in public spaces which are known for crime take away our freedoms!
2- We want to work with the authorities to make them more carefull and efficient in their use of this important crime prevention tool.

I just think we should steer towards 2.
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[jez9999]

The guy who was talking about tackling 'yob culture' - wow, you really sound like a brainwashed tabloid-reader.

As has been mentioned, this is about having a reasonable level of personal privacy, *even in a public place*. The ability to record others in even a public place is not absolute - take the instance of someone taking upskirt photographs of women... I doubt that would be legal. So, there is a dividing line, and it's just a case of where it's placed. I say it's before you have mass CCTV surveillance. The UK has (roughly) 1% of the world's population and 20% of the world's CCTV cameras. This should be telling us something - that we're way out of whack with the rest of the world, which hasn't seen fit to place CCTV everywhere. Also, as has been mentioned, the introduction of CCTV has done very little to actually reduce crime, merely to make people 'feel safer'. Wooly measures that do nothing but make people 'feel better' for an irrational reason should be opposed not just for the invasion of personal privacy, but frankly just because they're an extreme waste of taxpayers' money.

[jez9999]

I agree with logistephater - I don't see why CCTV is so bad, most of it is privately owned anyway so how can you get the poor shopkeeper in a rough area to stop using CCTV?

Or alternatively, Tesco in an affluent area having literally 100s of covert cameras monitoring your every move.

It only records what the public could see anyway, if there were CCTV cameras in our homes I would understand being against it, but as it is CCTV just provides an objective record of events which is useful to everyone - citizens in stopping police brutality and police in stopping criminals.

That is a spurious argument. It is a fundamentally different thing for machines to be recording people all the time and keeping a perfect record of events, to humans monitoring some people some of the time, and those people being able to see when they are being monitored clearly.

[NDR008]

The UK has (roughly) 1% of the world's population and 20% of the world's CCTV cameras. This should be telling us something - that we're way out of whack with the rest of the world, which hasn't seen fit to place CCTV everywhere.

I believe that information like this is what can make people and understand and why PPUK's policy wording ought to be careful. Saying we intend to reform and effeciently use CCTVs... bla bla in order to make the population to CCTV ratio sensible (and hence not waste tax payer money). And as a counter to the loss of safety - have some policy (in a general philosophical sense - since PPUK does not want to widen its manifesto - good or bad) as to how for example sharing of information leads to education and better cultural coherence and in the long run less crime and rather then the need of constant big brother supervision.

[Andy_R]

The way I've been explaining this to the press is to say that we need to decide how much is too much. Banning Google street view probably isn't a good idea, but neither is allowing anyone to point a HDTV camera in your bedroom window. A line has to be drawn somewhere, and the Party wants to start a debate on where that line should be drawn, in sharp contrast to the current situation where government and business do whatever they like.

[jez9999]

Andy, this is that debate. So I guess we're not looking for the diplomatic response in this thread.

[Murton]

I agree with logistephater - I don't see why CCTV is so bad, most of it is privately owned anyway so how can you get the poor shopkeeper in a rough area to stop using CCTV?

It only records what the public could see anyway, if there were CCTV cameras in our homes I would understand being against it, but as it is CCTV just provides an objective record of events which is useful to everyone - citizens in stopping police brutality and police in stopping criminals.

I don't think anyone here has any issue with the use of CCTV in the retail sector as a means of deterring shoplifters or primary source of evidence against shoplifters, remember also that these private CCTV cameras are often if not always accompanied by a nice visible sign warning people of the CCTV surveillance, our streets however are not peppered with signs warning us that Big Brother is watching, perhaps if they were then you'd see just how big an issue unnecessary surveillance in the UK really is.

[bobappleyard]

THIS SHOULD BE ABOUT FIGHTING DRACONIAN INTERNET PIRACY LAWS NOT REMOVING ONE OF THE FEW LINES OF DEFENSE AGAINST YOBS WE HAVE LEFT.

Except, of course, that the presence of these cameras only leads to a minor change in behaviour to evade detection.

That is, wear hats or hoods. Or both, for extra effect.

[Vanders]

I'm actually not so keen on the Pirate Party persuing a CCTV policy

A party that fights over zealous filesharing laws is awesome and something I can subscribe to.
A party that wants to reduce CCTV in a violent nation with a notable problem with yob culture is insane.

I was all in favour of the party until I heard mention of CCTV. Reduce CCTV in UK and you will alienate many potential allies who hate yobs, like me.

Sorry guys, but PPUK is about Copyright & Patent reform, Privacy and Freedom of Speach. Right on the front page:

End the excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring of innocent people by Government and big businesses.

CCTV is clearly a Privacy issue and thus falls under the remit of PPUK. So does the UK Identity Database. Even if the policy is "We will leave CCTV as it is." PPUK still should have a policy on the issue.

[DavidMD]

How about we take the moderate policy that CCTV networks cannot be equiped with facial recognition software. I understand your concerns about CCTV and I share them. I have always worried that if a corrupt government came to power then an existing CCTV network with facial recognition would mean that it would be almost impossible for democracy to reassert itself. Although many people would argue that Britain will always be a democracy, the residents of the Weimar Republic probably also thought the same thing.

[Lattyware]

The fact is, the pirate party is all about what is right.

If you are in this party, it means you think that, at the very least, rediculous lawsuits against people downloading a few songs.

This is the same thing. The UK is swiftly becoming a police state. The policies to do with freedom of speech and rediculous surveilance all weave together. I don't want my every move watched online. I also don't want my every move watched in real life. CCTV may be good for fighting crime, but it's also pretty good for tracking people. The government should never have abosolue power over the people of the country, that opens opportunity for abuse.

[maven]

The UK is swiftly becoming a police state.

Don't know where you've been but the UK has been a police state for many many years. Take a look at Privacy International's league table; the UK comes near the top with such free societies as China and North Korea.