Despite having more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in Europe, UK police have solved a whopping 3 percent of London robberies with them. Considering that all those cameras cost somewhere in the billions of pounds, or infinity dollars, that’s not exactly the return on investment many had wanted to see.
As to why the cameras aren’t being used to solve crime, New Scotland Yard says police find them hard to use—who wants to sift through hours of video tape looking for a single, grainy frame?—and that, subsequently, criminals aren’t afraid of them. Remember, CCTV was initially ushered in as a preventative measure, not a retroactive crime solver.
My initial reaction is nothing more than a Nelson “ha-ha!” laugh. If the cameras aren’t cost-effective, then there’s little reason to keep them. I could give a toss about the privacy concerns of others. Stay righteous and there’s no reason to be afraid of “The Man,” I think.
Idiot. The argument of “if you’re not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide” is total bullshit. If your mind doesn’t explode at the Great Wall of Text then read this.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/187371/-Ive-Got-Nothing-To-Hide-and-other-Misunderstandings-of-Privacy
Whew…I read six pages of the above link…and yawned.
I think if mier is going to extrapolate that Nicholas, the idiot, is extrapolating that “if you’re not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to hide”, then I should be allowed to extrapolate that Nicholas, the idiot, is extrapolating that “if you’re not doing anything wrong [in public] then you have nothing to hide [in public]”.
Public CCTV is far different from, in my opinion, warrantless searches and other Bush baddie actions.
Re: Nicholas’ article:
Only three percent of crimes solved by CCTV? Who cares? I loved seeing the videos of those chicken shit cowardly assholes that left those bombs on London’s public transit vehicles on the news. Use that evidence to go back to their neighborhoods and knock down some doors and bash in some heads.
I’d love some CCTV in San Antonio. Then, maybe, we could get some of these drunk drivers off the roads and make it safe for people who are minding their own business and being law abiding citizens.
Blech..i’m tired of typing.
perhaps a map is a better solution.
spotcrime.com/uk/london
Yeah, yeah. Sure, the average slobby bobby can’t be arsed trawling through CCTV footage – and can’t usually do it because its private.
However, in Oz, we have projects where police set up a database of cameras, which includes their frame of view, and then if a crime goes down they simply phone up the owner, request the footage, and see if anything comes to light. This then extends to the, for instance, escape routes the robbers/crims use, allowing the cops to trace them on CCTV even as far as, say, their evil genius hideout on Skull Island (aka Manchester).
For example, BlueIris.
So, yeah, CCTV’s are useless prosecutorial and investigative tools for the lo-teck web 0.0 cops. For a web 2.0 enabled policeforce which actually uses the power of relational databases and a smidge of brains, they’ll turn this prosecution rate upwards relatively easily.