Jeffery Rosen had an excellent bit in the NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/07/magazine/07SURVEILLANCE.html?pagewanted=print on 'that model.'
"Last year, Britain's violent crime rates actually increased by 4.3 percent, even though the cameras continued to proliferate. But CCTV cameras have a mysterious knack for justifying themselves regardless of what happens to crime. When crime goes up the cameras get the credit for detecting it, and when crime goes down, they get the credit for preventing it." On Wed, Feb 13, 2002 at 08:17:19AM -0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: | [domestic surveillance, brinworld, big bro, pseudosecurity] | | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Washington police are building what will | be the nation's biggest network of surveillance cameras to monitor | shopping areas, streets, monuments and other public places in the | U.S. capital, a move that worries civil liberties groups, The Wall | Street Journal said on Wednesday. | | The system would eventually include hundreds of cameras, linking | existing devices in Metro mass transit stations, public schools and | traffic intersections to new digital cameras mounted to watch over | neighborhoods and shopping districts, the Journal said. | | "In the context of Sept. 11, we have no choice but to accept greater | use of this technology," Stephen Gaffigan, the head of the police | department project, told the Journal. | | He said city officials had studied the British surveillance system, | which has more than 2 million cameras throughout the country, and | were "intrigued by that model." | <snip> | | http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=593227 -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume
