Surveillance Cameras - Pros and Cons

You apparently have zero understanding of what a public place is and what your legal expectations of privacy entail. I guess that shouldn't surprise me because I often wonder how you have enough understanding of anything to successfully make it through an entire day.

You should really read up on the concept of public places, open fields doctrine, curtilage, expectation of privacy, etc before you show your ignorance so publicly.

Legally, you have an expectation of privacy in your home and in some small area around your home. There are some other laws that address things like cameras in bathrooms, etc but that's about it.*


*In the US.

 

My guess is that they will be stolen.

 

If you are not deeply disturbed by this movment you lack the essence of what it is to be an American

 

1. I never said whether I was for or again public cameras. I merely stated the reality of no expectation of privacy in public places.

2. Your failure to comprehend privacy laws does not make me un-American. It just makes you ignorant.

 

Public places are places that you cannot be excluded from going to (historically based upon historical or social conditions). That is all they are. Some government places are public spaces. Others are not.

Did you know that if you are sitting in a public place and I am standing next to you that I can legally photograph you as much as I want to? Even if you are sitting there picking your nose or doing anything else that you might not want someone to photograph you doing?

That is all I said...you do not have an expectation of privacy in a public place. If you think you do, you are misguided and, from reading some replies, I think some people are. That is all I was stating in my post.

 

I don't expect complete privacy in public places as much as I expect a lack of government intrusion. That is the difference here. We all have to right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without government intrusion. That is the way this country was initially established and it was fundamental to the founders that government intrusion be kept to a bare minimum. Our current king and his cronies have made it a priority to consolidate as much power back into the Executive Branch as possible. They have made this crystal clear in speeches from Nixon's time to the present and their behavior has certainly backed up their stated goals. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or an extensive review of human history to figure out that the more power any one individual leader amasses, the less freedoms there are for the people under him or her. Freedoms once given away rarely come back without armed resistance and bloodshed.

 

Bush/Republican rants aside, I am not sure how you construe government intrusion on the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness by the use of public cameras. How is it different than having a police officer on the corner watching over a specific area? If the city government put a cop on your street corner 24/7, would that be some kind of infringement on your rights?

 

There are many differences between the two that are fairly obvious. Putting an officer on a street corner is vastly different from recording and storing the movements of large sections of the population for no apparent reason. A police officer wouldn't be able to walk into court and testify that any specific person was in a particular place at a particular time even the very next week much less keep a permanent record of every citizen in a given area.
I don't know where you live but in Chicago the police are about as corrupt as they come. Perhaps you've seen them beating a female bartenders on privately owned video surveillance cameras and then covering for each other. Or getting drunk and picking fights with innocent patrons in bars and again covering for each other. The cameras that caught these abuses of power are within a private business and not in a public space and the patrons are warned that they are there as they walk in. Are these types of law enforcement folks the same people you want in charge of protecting your civil rights? That scares me more than just a little bit.

 

Oh, just go out and shoot all the cameras off the light poles and red-lights on your street. That would solve the problem for the time being. After that you'd have lots of cops on the corners and no cameras.

 

I have neither...

 

So, is it better to have an unreliable and inaccurate or possibly corrupt cop or a reliable and accurate and impartial camera? You are right, that is an obvious difference.

And, just for the record, I do have a lot of reservations about camera surveillance. It is just that some of the arguments against, and my own too, are not always based upon any kind of decent logic that lets me firm up my own beliefs in a rational, rather than purely emotional, manner.

 

Another thing is that I can't think of one thing that I would do in public that I would care if anyone recorded.

 

The point was that the corrupt police would be the ones running these cameras. It just gives them yet another tool to abuse the population with. The camera may be impartial but it's those running it that worry me.

I like to think I'm being pragmatic about the issue and those that think cameras shoved into every nook and cranny are going to make us safe from crime and terrorism are the emotional sorts. I certainly understand the trade off and recognize that criminal acts would be under closer scrutiny but I wonder whether those of us that don't merit the attention criminals do would be giving up something in return? Would it really be worth the introduction of this form of intrusion say 50 years down the line? Would we wish that we had thought about it more at the time we decided to allow it? I just wonder.

 

Doesn't that sort of depend on what you might want to do in public in the future and what is allowable now that may not be allowable then? Hum?
Laws can be passed and penalties can be stiffened.

 

That possibility pretty much applies - stiffer laws, stiffer penalty for things we do legally now - with or without cameras, though, and it brings credence to argument that others have made that cameras only are of worry to those breaking the law. If the laws become so onerous to someone that they feel they have to break them, well, it is time to forcibly change them or find a better place to live. It is really independent of camera surveillance as it would be no better society to live in either way if the laws were like that.

As far as the corruption aspect, I can't help but think that it has the possibility to reduce corruption on the level you are referring to. Without a camera, if a corrupt cop were to say you resisted arrest, God help you in court. With a camera, that may not be true. Of course, that takes into account that I do not believe that everyone in a position of authority is corrupt. I know others do not believe that.

Truthfully, in the end, I think it will be a moot point. Just as what is acceptable from a moral standpoint is changing in our society, so is what is acceptable in technology. Neither slippery slope is probably going to be easily avoided.

 

But this is just a start. A coworker of mine has worked all over the world as a consultant in countries including India, Iran [pre-revolution], Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Canada, a couple of European countries and probably others that I can't recall. We had a discussion once about a similar topic and he said that the law enforcement and other people in countries with less freedom than we have aren't bad people. They are well-intentioned and just doing their job. But there are so many laws and so many people watching every move you make that it is almost impossible NOT to be in violation of some law at all times. This is something that can and is held against you by minor bureaucrats everywhere to obtain payoffs, extract fines, or just exercise their little personal mental illnesses regarding having power over people.

That said, it isn't just the surveillance. It's also the airport searches, the government monitoring the books you take out of the library, the tracking of financial transactions, the need for substantial documentation to travel, etc... No single thing is more than an inconvenience. Put together it's the end of limited government and the end of the Republic -- all to "protect" you from an idiotic foreign policy. It would be easier to pursue a noninterventionist foreign policy and let people just live their lives in freedom, but that's not what governments do, if permitted.

 

And yet, a government has to provide security for its citizens. And, as the technology of the threats change, does not the security measures to thwart them have to change also? The old 'You don't bring a knife to a gun fight' adage?

 

Anyone here read "1984"?

Orwell was right!

 

I prefered 'Brave New World'. It came coloser to describing Califirnia now.

 

The best way to provide security would be a noninterventionist foreign policy combined with a strong national defense. Taking on the policeman of the world function is incompatible with the limited representative government that was traditional in America. A police function requires a police state.

So using your analogy, it's better not attend the fight.