Big Brother Watching? Cities Add Cameras

Big Brother Watching? Cities Add Cameras

abcnews.go.com

Three years after London's ubiquitous hidden cameras helped capture the July 7, 2005, London subway bombers, Washington, D.C., is modeling the United States' largest and most elaborately networked city surveillance system on that British network.

Surveillance cameras are now nearly inescapable, capturing baggage handlers who moonlight as thieves in Phoenix and elsewhere, in businesses like the Sarasota, Fla., car wash where Joseph Smith was captured on tape abducting 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, whom he was convicted of murdering. And most famously, in London, where surveillance video helped track down the subway bombers of 2005.

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Hey, thanks alot, Washington DC! One of the things folks like myself were able to point towards when saying this nation wasn't becoming a police state was the fact that the UK was completely carpeted with CCTV cams whereas no city in the US had really done this. I guess I can wad that argument up and flush it down TJ Crapper's greatest invention now...

I actually noticed something yesterday morning for the first time ever and, while I haven't found a news article mentioning it, I believe it was something initiated over the holiday weekend here in Seattle. The Metro buses now have dome cameras in them. I would have noticed this had it been in force before this week, I believe, because I generally sit in the same spot on the bus every day on my way between work & my park & ride lot, and the new dome cams are located directly above that row of seats. I guess it's official now, we're truly a big brother nation anywhere we go.

abcnews.go.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

and who do you have to thank for it? don't blame the governement, blame your fellow idiot who steals, robs, rapes, kills etc....thats why these things are installed...because people are complete ---holes!

Just think, if we were a society of people who did the RIGHT thing...no cameras would be needed. There is nothing about these cameras that should worry you one bit if your not planning on being a complete fool out in public.

Big brother can watch me all day long. I'm not that camera shy. Hell, they can put a camera in my room and watch my handsome naked ass sleep. They may be able to watch me, but they can't change my perspective. And perspective turns to knowledge, knowledge to change. I don't plan on acting like a fool in public anytime soon. They can watch me buy coffee and booze weekly though.

[edit on 8-7-2008 by USMC-oorah]

reply to post by rcwj75


BULLCRAP! There has been one major incident on a Metro bus in the last 10 years, that being a driver who was shot in 1998. These bus cameras serve one major purpose, they allow some transit security jackass to sit in the transit tunnel offices watching the monitors all day waiting for some hot chick in a low cut top to walk under the cam. Hell, the buses here are safer than the bus stops are, and they're entirely unmonitored by cameras. You're far, far more likely to be mugged standing there than while riding, and the stop itself is far more likely to be vandalised than the bus itself is.

The same is true of the areas where cameras are placed. Notice these cameras are almost always put up in open space areas like wide open public parks and major streets. When was the last time you read about open public space crime waves occuring in a major American city? You may get the occassional spree killer or public drunk, but the rapes, muggings, abductions, and other violent crimes almost without fail happen in the less traveled, unmonitored, sheltered areas.

If they wanted to stop crime in the Seattle area, for example, they would be putting cameras on the jogging trails around the greenbelt parks. That's where the weekly rapes and kidnappings happen... not outside Pike Place Market or in the federal courthouse park. The goal of these cameras isn't crime prevention and it never was crime prevention, it's a way to monitor the largest number of people at one time.