Americans Favor Surveillance Cameras (how much, financial, election, elect)

[ShadowCaver]

Originally Posted by emjbulls

I'm not. People throughout history have been willing to trade away their rights out of fear.

I am not willing to do such.

I would rather be free, to live and breath of my own accord, and to harbor my own fears in my own manner, than to be "protected" and supposedly safe.

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by emjbulls

I'm not. People throughout history have been willing to trade away their rights out of fear.

What right is addressed by surveillance cameras on a public street?

[emjbulls]

Originally Posted by LauraC

What right is addressed by surveillance cameras on a public street?

Because you don't know what the intentions will be of the people who come to power in the future. You are giving the government the ability to track everything you do and catalog everyone you meet.

Let's say sometime in the future, a government (for simplicity sake, will call them Party A) legally comes to power and decides they want to maintain power by squashing all opposition parties (Party B). Now you agree with the ideology of Party B and don't feel Party A represents what you want from the government. So there is a public information meeting given by Party B about all the things Party A is trying to do. You go there. Since Party A is the government in power, they are now able to catalouge that you went there. Then let's say after that meeting, you go to your friend's house. Your friend has now just hung out with someone that the government is watching for "subversive" behavior. Look at countries where they have been coups and see how easy it is to get people to fall in line with an abusive government when people are in fear. By allowing these cameras, you are allowing a huge potential for abuse by the government.

You are handing away your freedom on a silver platter. Depending on who uses the cameras, you are potentially giving up your freedom of speech, the right of no unreasonable search and seizure, you are giving up your right of a miranda warning because you are in violation of no law but what you say and do can be used against you without a lawyer present to protect your rights.

As I said previously, I have no problem with individuals having cameras but I have a huge issue when a government is in control because throughout history and in many countries, those in power have taken away people's rights for their own political agenda. Why give them the biggest tool possible to do that in this country?

[LauraC]

Originally Posted by emjbulls

Because you don't know what the intentions will be of the people who come to power in the future. You are giving the government the ability to track everything you do and catalog everyone you meet.

Let's say sometime in the future, a government (for simplicity sake, will call them Party A) legally comes to power and decides they want to maintain power by squashing all opposition parties (Party B). Now you agree with the ideology of Party B and don't feel Party A represents what you want from the government. So there is a public information meeting given by Party B about all the things Party A is trying to do. You go there. Since Party A is the government in power, they are now able to catalouge that you went there. Then let's say after that meeting, you go to your friend's house. Your friend has now just hung out with someone that the government is watching for "subversive" behavior. Look at countries where they have been coups and see how easy it is to get people to fall in line with an abusive government when people are in fear. By allowing these cameras, you are allowing a huge potential for abuse by the government.

You are handing away your freedom on a silver platter. Depending on who uses the cameras, you are potentially giving up your freedom of speech, the right of no unreasonable search and seizure, you are giving up your right of a miranda warning because you are in violation of no law but what you say and do can be used against you without a lawyer present to protect your rights.

If we're all exercising our second amendment rights, we won't have to worry about it.

(You were doing fine until you mentioned "lawyer" and "protect" in the same sentence...that's when I took your picture and catalogued it. Now, lick the computer screen for a DNA sample...)

[famenity]

Just seen this on British NO2ID website.

Shenzhen - the shape of things to come?
The most intrusive ID and surveillance system ever is about to be field-tested in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Starting from August, the New York Times reports, electronic "residency cards" are being issued. On the chip will be "not just the citizen's name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord's phone number" - plus the holder's "personal reproductive history". There are also plans to add "credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card". At the same time, "at least 20,000 police surveillance cameras" are being installed. These will soon be "guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognise automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity". The company behind it all is Florida-based China Public Security Technology. The German IT news service heise online quotes the firm's Robin Huang as stating that it has good relations with people like IBM, Cisco, HP and Dell: "All these US companies are working with us to build up the system". Which is handy for the Chinese government. As the firm's vice-president Michael Lin points out, if people in Shenzhen don't get the card, "they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future".

[TnHilltopper]

Originally Posted by GregW

I see surveillance cameras as a reasonably unimpeachable witness in case I have to damage a criminal that makes the mistake of assaulting me or mine.

Tampa, Florida or more precisely, Ybor City district spent millions of tax payer dollars installing 36 street cameras with facial recognition software. After all the expense they only managed to nab a handful of people of which only two were accurate and neither of the two were convicted.

If national security is the issue then I suggest looking towards porous borders, better technologies and efforts to inspect cargo and material coming into the US in the first place.

Wasn't it an ABC news poll that showed both Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul blowing away their competition then pulled the poll down because "it didn't reflect the national polls"

[famenity]

Originally Posted by TnHilltopper

Tampa, Florida or more precisely, Ybor City district spent millions of tax payer dollars installing 36 street cameras with facial recognition software. After all the expense they only managed to nab a handful of people of which only two were accurate and neither of the two were convicted.

If national security is the issue then I suggest looking towards porous borders, better technologies and efforts to inspect cargo and material coming into the US in the first place.

Wasn't it an ABC news poll that showed both Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul blowing away their competition then pulled the poll down because "it didn't reflect the national polls"

On this side of the pond district councils have been spending on cameras as if money grows on trees.

The aim of these cameras is mainly to catch young "thugs" in the act of breaking windows, shop lifting, you name it, certainly not for catching the greatest swindlers in history, our banks, (our banks have just been forced to return 7.4 billion dollars to cutomers).

So how do the young "thugs" cope with the cameras, simple they wear a 'Hoody' (a type of jumper with a hood).

Checkmate!!

[LauraC]

The thing I find interesting with many of these responses is that so few of you seem unconcerned that the issue was not part of the debate when 71% of the population is in favor of surveillance cameras.

The other thing I find strange about these responses is about how many of you are out of touch with what the majority appears to want. There may be louder people on the opposite side of this issue but who are the candidates paying attention to? If I was a Presidential candidate, I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Internet basket, if you know what I mean.

Lastly, you may have noticed the article mentions higher educated people are more apt to support the increased use of surveillance cameras. Surely, you can't use the "stupid/uninformed public" argument, now, can you?

[TnHilltopper]

Originally Posted by LauraC

The thing I find interesting with many of these responses is that so few of you seem unconcerned that the issue was not part of the debate when 71% of the population is in favor of surveillance cameras.

The other thing I find strange about these responses is about how many of you are out of touch with what the majority appears to want. There may be louder people on the opposite side of this issue but who are the candidates paying attention to? If I was a Presidential candidate, I wouldn't put all my eggs in the Internet basket, if you know what I mean.

No, 71% of the population does not favor surveillance, only 71% of the people they polled.

[Marodi]

Has anyone seen V for Vendetta? Seriously. It starts out as people giving up a little freedom out of fear, then a little more. Eventually we will be living in a dictatorship. It's inevitable the way we are going. Police can already detain you for just being a "threat" which is such a vague category it can be stretch from a certain minorty to political dissidents (look at the protests at the republican thing in 2004 i think it was, where protesters were detained while they followed every rule.)

The US has dealt with crime without security cameras, why do we need them now? Terrorism is a cop out. London has tons of cameras and look at all the attacks that still happen.

I'd rather have crime in cities than have my every moment watched.