From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Fri Dec 17 1999 - 08:46:09 MST
On Fri, Dec 17, 1999 at 08:12:03AM -0500, Ross A. Finlayson wrote:
>
> One can of opaque spraypaint will cover quite a few lens-sized areas.
Yup. Which is why most cameras I see in public places in the UK are
watching one another as well. And spraying the cameras is of course
an offense -- vandalism!
Also note that the majority of these cameras are private property, not
government-owned -- many local councils won't grant planning permission
to new retail or industrial establishments unless they promise to install
CCTV surveillance. Many of them therefore farm these out to the same private
security corporations that handle their store detectives and in some
cases run privatised chunks of the prison service. The point to note is
that the borderline between "state" and "private enterprise" is very blurry
here, and one should not assume that a trend that starts in one will not
spread to the other, or that they won't swap roles.
> Does the government have an "opt-out" option? Ha ha, but seriously, the largest
> portion of us are people who pay their taxes and do not commit violent crimes
> thus largely upholding the social contract, that being most of the extent of a
> legitimate one.
Yup. "But if you're innocent you have nothing to hide!"
Another really disquieting trend is the appearance of microcams. I've
seen some on sale in electronics stores that are about the size of an
old-time discrete transistor and cost about a fiver. These things are
going to be ubiquitous -- there'll be a big black box on a wall bracket to
distract the vandals, while the real surveillance will be carried out by
a massively redundant array of flea-sized wireless sensors embedded in
everything from the clothes hangars in shops to the screw heads that hold
their glass doors in position -- and the sensors will be just smart enough
to go online and snitch when they see something anomalous. (See last
week's New Scientist feature on uses of neural networks for identifying
suspicious behaviour in public for a taste of things to come.)
-- Charlie
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