City
Yonge and Dundas Security Cameras Turned Off
City News is reporting that the Toronto Police are shutting off the cameras. It seems that they were only meant to be active during the busy holiday season. For what, deterring shoplifters? I'm all for privacy and whatnot, but the cameras were guarding a public place with high traffic. Days after they were turned on, shots were fired near Sam the Record Man, and having the cameras installed didn't exactly harm the investigation. The article quotes Tabitha Boland of Frankz eatery, wherein she supports the decision to shut off the cameras, citing that "It scares people away". Well, if it scares the people with guns and knives away, that's crantastic. I'm relatively certain that homicides are worse for business than a few security cameras.
Image courtesy of Room 929, as posted to the BlogTO Flickr Pool
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If you want to know why CCTV cameras are bad, its siple: there is very poor legislation for oversight on how the police use/dispose of video.
The only publication in Toronto that has dealt with this is Spacing. Here's their article on it:
http://spacing.ca/archives/32/
It's hard to fathom that the Toronto Police have the resources to tag and catalog every instance of a face making an appearance in surveillance video, nor do they likely have the resources to keep track of a consistently growing stockpile of video with no evidence of criminal activity in it.
Still, debate is good. Look forward to hearing all sides of arguments for and against this; I'm just one person.
Keeping the public under round-the-clock surveillance does not make me feel safer, it makes me feel like I'm living in a police state. Maybe you ought to brush up on your Orwell before you go championing the use of cameras on every streetcorner.
Everyone hates a cop until they need one.
When this becomes practical, in just a few years, it will be possible to take every video ever made and run it through a system, tagging it with every person who appears on that video (and those people are themselves identified by SIN, address, name, etc.)
In other words, if you are of interest, Ryan C., the police will be able to check on your movements as far back as video is available. In 2050, they'll be able to note that you went to Sam the Record Man in 2007, assuming that video from 2007 has been saved (and there's no reason not to - storage halves in price every year). Anywhere the cameras are, your movements will be completely traceable, as far back as footage has been saved. This is not sci-fi - the technology already exists, it's just a little slow with current CPUs.
I feel a bit spooked having all of movements permanently on tape *and searchable*. That data will not be used to your benefit.
That why I oppose cameras of all sorts.
And if they do such a great job of keeping tabs on people, why has no-one been arrested in the 9 days since the shooting took place?
Sincerity at it's best.
We've got cameras in our restaurant and it was the benefit of our cameras that we were able to find out who stole from one of our customers while he left his property unattended. The culprit was caught and our customer had his property returned. So, YES, I'm in favour of surveillance. I've done nothing wrong and I've got nothing to hide, so why would I care if I'm being watched on a busy steet corner that has an unsafe history?
Tabitha
Although I disagree with the idea that "if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" I believe the privacy advocates in these cases exaggerate the level to which public cameras can infringe on a person's rights. Anon mentions technology which exists only in science fiction films such as the Minority Report or in CSI. Security camera footage is not high quality and no amount of zooming or enhancing will make it better no matter how far in the future. If, as with most cameras, the image is low grade then in the future it will still be low grade. Anyone who has viewed recorded security images will tell you that identifying a person by face is like reading a book on an ipod.
The issue here is that the surveillance is in public places not private where a person is visible to anyone and therefore should not expect privacy. If it were a camera that sees through clothing or reads your thoughts I would understand the concern. As it stands public places are public and no one in a public place has the right or ability to control who or what sees them. the Police make such a big deal about putting up the cameras only out of courtesy.
I don't understand how they can recognize people from security footage, the faces are always so grainy and fuzzy that I could never recognize someone from it.