England Loses It's Freedoms and Privacy

[Johnny Hughes]

Now they are going to start recording people in the streets. Remember, these foks gave us the our first ideas of individual freeom. The Magna Carta or something.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 87,00.html

[Felonius_Monk]

[Alchemist]

Sounds good to me, anything that gets rid of the scrots in our society is a good thing.

Bring on the pre-cogs

[Thxlbx]

Sounds a bit too much like 1984 for me....privacy rights are definitely under attack here.

[NorthView]

[Molina]

[Stoneburg]

[Felonius_Monk]

My feeling on this (and I may have misinterpreted it) is that these devices will be used not to frivolously eavesdrop on conversations in a non-specific manner, but to "scan" for certain indicators of violence (raised voices and certain inflections or rates of speaking etc) and then focus the camera on the source, enabling (hopefully) photographic evidence to be taken of violent crimes. As far as I understood it's simply an automated means of picking up a few more fights and disturbances at pub chucking out time. I haven't seen anything to say that the technology will be (or indeed CAN BE) used to monitor or record people's conversations.

I'm not convinced that the technique sounds particularly effective (in fact to me it sounds like a pretty unwieldy gimmick) but perhaps in the right place it could have its uses. I dunno if it's any more insidious than the idea of having batteries of cameras poking around inner city streets (which is partly the case now anyway). I think simply employing more (and better) police may be a better option but it's all about the bottom line, isn't it...

[Beavis68]

[Molina]

[Felonius_Monk]