One thing that I always wondered is if people just ignore the cameras.
Once I got called for questioning on a local retail store, since I was with enough free time and a good mood, so I just went with it. So the reason I was called was that the security guard noticed that I was looking at all security cameras which made me seem suspicious, my only answer was "well they're distracting".
Anyway there was no other irregularity and even the manager thought that the guard was being over zealous, but I was left wondering if other people are not uncomfortable around so many cameras. That this journalist seems surprised makes me think that maybe other people aren't even aware of them.
Tangentially related, but the other day I was at Southwark tube when I slipped and fell over in some fluid that was one the floor. I wasn't harmed, and for a laugh I requested my video footage via GDPR so I could see myself go down like a sack of spuds.
It was quite a simple process - you fill in a form, and send it along with a full length photo of yourself and a rough time, and in a few weeks they send you a passworded DVD.
They also emailed me and told me that:
"In the letter I have confirmed that the cause of the spillage was as a result of a female who had exited a train prior to yours, becoming ill and vomiting on the floor, where you fell.
This was reported via a Passenger Help Point. In fact the customer and her male colleague remained in position directing people away from the vomit initially. They left the area shortly before the arrival of your train.
"
It's real. People are deathly afraid of photographers. I try to remind people that they didn't crash cameras into the World Trade Center, but this argument never goes over very well.
Sadly, no consequences ever came from my article. I didn't get arrested. The Port Authority didn't return our phone calls. They still put "no camera" signs all over their property.
(To be completely fair, I have to assume that the signs are directed at employees that are going inside. I do think they want to scare the general public just a little bit, because they could easily have put the sign indoors if they were only targeting employees.)
Looks too dystopian to not be true in this day and age.
I'm not a native English speaker though and I'm left wondering what that "Sorted" statement at the end of it all really means. "Sort" what out? Why would you need to "sort" a person who's taking photos of video-surveillance cameras? In what way are they going to "sort" those persons out?
It will depend. One of the most valuable diagnostic tools, as border staff will tell you, is to just go be interested in people. So maybe a BTP Officer (British Transport Police) will go ask them why they're taking photos of CCTV Cameras in a railway station or other critical infrastructure.
As constables they're entitled to ask who you are, and what you're up to. They can write it up and it goes into the enormous pile of puzzle pieces for intelligence analysis.
"Taking photos of cameras at major train station" + "Purchased a truck full of fertilizer" + "Attended talk by nutjob entitled 'War to save the white race'" is three completely legal things that add up to let's authorize detailed surveillance because this is a possible terrorist.
Whereas "Taking photos of cameras at major train station" + "Attended Extinction Rebellion March holding banners that said Eat The Rich" + "Wrote angry letter to local politician saying that they'd be judged in their next life for refusing permission for a new vegan bakery" is three other legal things that add up to this is probably just a hippy and we should keep paying attention but there's no immediate threat.
"Sorted" is a word used here to mean that a task has been completed.
e.g. "Did you get that thing sorted yet?" "yeah, I sorted it out last week."
It can apply to basically anything.
You might also simply say "Sorted." as you finish doing whatever it is you're doing, to announce that you are finished. Similar to just saying "Done." or "Finished." in this respect, possibly with the added implication that there was a problem that has now been solved.
Some years ago I saw a documentary from a CCTV control room in Rotterdam, Netherlands monitoring busy shopping streets.
The operators deemed everyone walking aimlessly as suspicious, and would follow them from camera to camera. At one point a guy was reading from a piece of paper, and the camera zoomed in until the text was clearly readable. Creepy af.
The mentality there was, if you feel uncomfortable you probably have something to hide.
I very often go out at night to walk or take some picture of monuments in Berlin. I get stopped every single time by security guards, police, &c. "It's a private property you can't be there" Ah right, the sidewalk is a private property now. The worst thing is that you can't says anything, you can't call the cops on the cops...
Try taking a picture of police officers/cars or of a security camera. It's 100% legal but they'll act like it's not.
do you have some examples? I'm also around in Berlin at night taking pictures and never had a situation like that. I would love to go to these places and annoy some stupid people
Altes Stadthaus, especially if you try to take pics of the inside. Jewish museum in Lindenstr also. The cops at alexanderplatz at night. Any construction site with private security.
I have bulky medium format analog camera, a tripod and mostly do long exposure, maybe they don't like that, idk.
From the people who are not familiar with studies conducted in the software usability labs, quite a common question is - Aren't test participant aware of the very visible camera pointed at them and the monitor and therefore they would not be at their natural self?
The answer is the test participants forget that there are cameras once they start on a task.
I guess same thing is true in our daily life, once we are focused on task at hand (grocery shopping, catching bus, or driving safe...) we would stop being aware of things which doesn't come in the way of that task.
With AI/ML and facial recognition I wonder how long it will take before supermarkets etc. start to track the productivity of their employees and account them for it (reprimand, salary, job loss, ..).
They will be 100% aware of the cameras then, all-of-the-time.
Quite ironic to post this piece of journalism on one of the worst offenders on tracking and personalised advertisements. I can see more than 20 scripts without even having anything enabled. Set your own house in order before judging the government.
It is not OK to require people to be 100% "Pure" before seeking to improve the world around them.
Hypocrites who seek to make the government do better things even when they're doing similar bad things are still seeking to make the government do better things.
The morality of an act of activism does not change based on the personal failings of the person engaging in it. (It can change based on the intentions of that person—eg, if the thing they're trying to get the government to do would also make it easier for them to get away with currently-illegal/immoral acts, but that's a separate issue from mere hypocrisy.)
Maybe I should have clarified because it seems obvious. In my country you can't point a camera at anything that isn't your property. Which means you can't point it in a way that you can see your neighbours, or on a public street. You're not being filmed or recorded at all times and if you are, you know exactly who is doing it. This is properly enforced in almost all cases exept highways, some public libraries and entrances of public/gov buildings. Tracking is still pervasive and slowly creeping up.
Isn't 'pointing at' little nebulous. I may have setup my camera to point at my backyard, but some portion of neighbor's yard may showup in the corner. If I adjust the camera to eliminate this neighbor's yard then the other one's creeps into the view from other side.
For the both the situation my camera is squarely 'pointed at' the center of my backyard.
I wonder about the enforcement. I see Ring video doorbells popping up in lotsa places that are clearly filming public streets. Maybe enforcement is slow, or only happens after someone reports a violation.
Because its hypocritical to expect the governement to not use tools and data analytics to improve 'user experience/citizen's well being' while being guilty of the exact same behaviour.
dont wait for others to do the right thing, get your own house in order, then help the rest of the world.
While I agree with the desire to reduce tracking on that, and other, site, there is a clear difference compared to when a government does it.
For one, you could likely not avoid it if the gov did it, while you can "just" chose to not use that site.
For second, just now the post about the auctioned japanese gov disks with tax payer info on them, illustrates how such sensitive data can be lost.
And third, the risk of abuse. All it may take is an election.
So I think it's ok, although not the best, to do have a look at those in power even if the looker has a dirty house themselves. The alternative is worse.
I wonder if you could fight fire with fire on this one. Imagine a grassroots project of targeted surveillance that specifically focused on geo-tracking the people that could change things (politicians, law enforcement) but ironically operated by privacy minded folks.
Basically, anyone with a fixed camera could participate. They'd have their video uploaded to a system that would use facial recognition on regional lawmakers to produce an incredibly creepy database of all the public activity of the targets. I would think this would be creepy enough to bring a national conversation about the topic front and center.
It's a bit of a false-flag/scorched-earth operation, but the end goal being legislation that makes such invasive surveillance illegal.
Content aside, this article is really well formatted. Going photo by photo, camera by camera puts me in the shoes of the author, and frankly gives me the same feeling I had when I first read 1984 (especially when he mentioned the sky was fittingly grey).
I just country the number of cameras i saw while going to lunch from my office. It's an under 300 meter walk, and I saw 16 cameras, in a supposedly privacy friendly country like Germany.
Not quite, but you are close. It wasn't the whole population in 1984 that was monitored. Inner Party members were monitored, but could turn off telescreens. Outer Party members had to have them on all the time. Proles weren't monitored. The idea was to monitor middle class as it was considered to be necessary for lower class to revolt. Upper class had no reason to revolt as they were in power.
I'm leaving this comment mostly for people downvoting OP.
“We live in a special time: there are cameras everywhere, and we can see them. In the past, they were not everywhere. In the future, we will not be able to see them.”
One thing that really harms the utility of cameras is face coverings. Over the last 20 years the two most prolific face coverings in the UK have been attacked in society - Hoodies and Niquab/Burkas. For various reasons the UK populatino has been conditioned to see a face covering and think "Crime". The UK's equivalent of Trump has denigrate people wearing veils, the media has spent a decade attacking "hoodies" [1]
Once I got called for questioning on a local retail store, since I was with enough free time and a good mood, so I just went with it. So the reason I was called was that the security guard noticed that I was looking at all security cameras which made me seem suspicious, my only answer was "well they're distracting".
Anyway there was no other irregularity and even the manager thought that the guard was being over zealous, but I was left wondering if other people are not uncomfortable around so many cameras. That this journalist seems surprised makes me think that maybe other people aren't even aware of them.